Good man. Ill be in my office at eight.
Things have happened, Wyatt said. I want you to collect me now.
Stolle didnt query or demur. Where?
Carrum. The Nepean Highway crosses a channel there. Park your car somewhere, wait for me on the bridge. If I see anything I dont like, thats it, Im gone.
They settled on 3 am and Wyatt broke the connection. He checked the fuel gauge: plenty to get him across the bay. By two-thirty he was throttling back a few hundred metres from the Chelsea foreshore. He could see streetlights and occasional headlights. By day Carrum and Chelsea were parts of an endless strip of sunblighted, low-cost houses and shopfronts. Wyatt knew and hated the area but right now it had the advantage of a marina where he could moor the boat without drawing attention to himself.
Thirty minutes later he was on dry land and watching the bridge. At five minutes to three a battered white Toyota van crept across the bridge. The words Food Delivery Vehicle were stencilled on it and the rear windows had a blackness about them that had nothing to do with the night. If Stolle used it as his surveillance vehicle, it was a good one.
Wyatt waited. He saw the van draw off the road and into a parking bay. Stolle got out and walked to the centre of the bridge. He did not look around and he gave no sign that he was nervous or had brought backup along. Wyatt let ten minutes and a handful of late cruising taxis and panel vans go by, then stepped out of his cover and onto the bridge.
Stolle swung around at his approach. This had better be on the level. I didnt come here to be thumped and robbed again.
Shut up, Wyatt said. I hope you didnt bring those two clowns along with you.
Mostyns off the case and Whitney cleared out on me.
Wyatt said, Good, and walked off without waiting. Stolle caught up with him next to the van. Where to?
Your place.
Stolle said nothing to that. He unlocked the van, got in, opened the passenger door for Wyatt. He drove in silence back along the Nepean toward the city. At St Kilda Junction he headed north along Punt Road and right into the cramped streets of renovated workers cottages in Prahran. A minute later he picked up a small electronic device, pushed a button, and light spilled onto the cobblestones from a garage door in an alley ahead of them. Stolle drove in, pushed the button again. The garage door clanged, sealing them off from the night.
Stolle had a little pistol in his fist. Get out.
You wont need that.
Get out.
Wyatt waited for him at the door that led to the house. He let Stolle prod him with the gun into the kitchen and then through to a room at the front. Stolle had spent some time and money on the place: thick woollen carpets, central heating, expensive fabrics on the chairs and over the windows.
Stolles front room had the look of an underused office. The furniture smelt new; there was dust on the screen of his Apple. He shoved Wyatt in the back. Have a seat.
There was an armchair and an ergonomic desk chair. Wyatt collapsed into the armchair. He realised how tired he was and a series of tendon-stretching yawns broke out in him suddenly. Stolle grinned at him, swivelling back and forth on the rotating seat of the desk chair.
God knows what she sees in you.
Who?
The client. On the run, fresh out of luck and friends, you dont exactly inspire confidence.
Wyatt yawned again. I want to see the five thousand.
Stolle lost his grin. After a while he nodded and reached his right hand into his left sleeve. Wyatt heard a snap of elastic on flesh and then Stolle was throwing him a small packet.
He caught it with both hands. He knew at once that it contained less than five thousand dollars. He riffled the notes with his thumb: ten one-hundred dollar notes, torn cleanly in half.
This was stupid. He felt too weary to fight it. He shook his head, dropped the half notes on the floor.
Stolle reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. This time it was an envelope with a key in it. Brisbane bus station locker key. Theres four thousand dollars waiting for you. The other half of the money on the floor youll get when were on the plane tomorrow morning.
Wyatt stared fixedly at Stolle and weighed it up. He could thump Stolle for the other half and walk out of here with a thousand dollars now, but be arrested or shot tomorrow. He could let Stolle take him to Brisbane and still find trouble, whether or not the promised five thousand was attached to it. He didnt think this deal came free of trouble. It was trouble in the sun, though, a place where his face meant nothing to anyone, and those things were more important than anything else right now.
What does this woman want?
She said there was something in it for you. Maybe your parents died?
Wyatt said nothing to that.
A rich uncle maybe?
Did she give you a name?
No name.
Describe her.
Stolle swivelled unconcernedly in the chair. He shook his head. Youve come this far. By lunchtime tomorrow youll have answers, plus five thousand bucks in your pocket.
What about you?
Me? Stolle grinned. I pick up my dough and go and play in the sun. He rattled imaginary dice in his palm and tossed them across his desk.
Wyatt shrugged. He didnt gamble and didnt understand the compulsion. Chance came into his workthe bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time, an unaccountable switch in routinebut mostly he worked from verifiable information and he controlled all the factors. He got up. Youve got the tickets?
We pick them up at the airport. Stolle looked at his watch. The flight leaves at ten. Im getting some shut-eye. Id advise you to do the same.
He disappeared. It was 4 am. Wyatt stretched out on a sofa in the sitting room. When a board creaked in the hall three and a half hours later, he came awake all at once, his eyes open and staring upward into curtained daylight. He heard an extractor fan rattle into life and then water gushed in the bathroom.
They left Stolles house an hour later. Wyatt had had his first shave in five days. He wore an old suit of Stolles. It fitted badly, looking wrong by itself, so with Stolles help he made a few additionsa lightweight overcoat to drape over his arm, a scuffed briefcase, a rolled-up newspaper.
No-one stopped them; no-one looked twice at them. Stolle sat next to Wyatt on the plane but he didnt communicate with him beyond indicating a picture of Jupiters Casino in the in-flight magazine. The flight was direct to Brisbane and took two hours. Five minutes before it landed, Stolle bent down and reached for something on the floor. It was an envelope and he said to Wyatt, You dropped this. Wyatt put it in his pocket. He guessed it was the other half of the torn one thousand.
No-one stopped or noticed them at the other end. Stolle collected his bag and led the way outside the terminal building. The air was hot and dry. They took a taxi, riding in silence across the flatlands near the airport. Dead grass lined the highway and closer to the city Wyatt saw further signs of drought, patches of bare earth showing in the parks and gardens. The sky looked brown and he could smell dust above the traffic fumes. Somewhere in the interior strong winds were stripping the topsoil, lifting it high and out over the coast.
Then the taxi was plunging into the canyons of the city. It was a glassy place, brash and fast. The taxi pulled up in Adelaide Street. The driver pointed. Bus terminals through there, under street level. He spoke rapidly, strangling his words: a Queensland way of speaking.
They got out and walked through to the mall and the stairs that led down to the lockers and the bus stands. All the while Wyatt felt focused and wary, the back of his neck prickling with the weight of the hand that might reach out to spin him around. But there were only out-of-work kids in the mall, bored police watching them, Japanese tourists in baggy cotton shorts.
The number on the key was 226. Locker 226 was in the centre of several banks of grey-faced lockers. There were people there, depositing or retrieving luggage, but the one of most interest to Wyatt stood up from a moulded
