Could take you days.
Weve narrowed it down to early last night, Lovell said, say, between eight and ten, one of the roulette tables. He turned to Nurse, who was watching glumly. DC White was here with his wife last night and thought he recognised one of them. Which table was it, Danny?
They ushered Nurse to the mirror-glass wall. He looked down, pointed wordlessly. Table Five, the security manager said.
He turned away to confer with a man watching a screen. Lovell dug his forefinger hard into Nurses flank. Brighten up, for Christs sake. Try to act the part.
Nurse shook himself, breathed in heavily, tried to smile.
Wayland came back carrying a tape. We can watch it in my office.
Lovell took the tape from him. Im afraid this is still a covert operation from a police point, of view. Perhaps if you could show us how to work the machine and then leave us to do our job? Wont take long, and if we see anything that concerns the casino, youll be informed straightaway.
Wayland shrugged. Suit yourself.
When he was gone, they played the tape. The time was displayed in the top right corner. It read 18:00 at the start. Lovell fastforwarded until it read 20:30, then slowed it to one and a half times normal speed. At 20:40 Nurse stiffened. There.
Lovell froze the image. It showed the roulette table, Nurse arrested in the act of staring into the cleavage of a young woman wearing a cocktail dress. There was a grimace on his face that might have been a leer, a ghastly smile on hers.
Cant tell a thing, Rice said. Move it on.
Lovell pressed the play button again. Faces and bodies became clearer in movement. The men watched for a while in silence.
Not bad, Lovell said. Did you dick her, fat man?
Nurse seemed to struggle with the question. Sure.
Bet you didnt.
Lovell concentrated on the screen again. Wonder who she is.
I know who she is, Rice said. The big detective stretched, easing a kink in his back. A gust of body odour escaped with it. Her names Carol Something. Used to work for an escort service in the city. Came down here about six months ago.
Know where I can find her?
Rice regarded him carefully. Whats on your mind, Lovell?
I just want to talk.
Sure you do.
On the way out, Rice slapped the tape into the palm of the security manager and was full of apologies. Sorry, pal, false alarm.
Wayland looked unhappily after them. But who are we supposed to look out for?
Two blokes, youngish, tanned, Rice called, describing half of the men in the casino. The other half were oldish and tanned. They plunged down the stairs and out of the building.
On the footpath outside, Rice scribbled an address on a piece of paper. Youre on your own now, pal. Remember there are things I cant turn a blind eye to.
No worries.
Lovell watched him go. The detectives suit was too small, the fabric sweat-stained and caught tight in his armpits and groin. Girls in singlet tops were leaning on an open MG. Lovell saw Rice stop to eyeball them. The mans tumescent heat was almost palpable.
Lovell clapped his arm around Nurses shoulder. Right, Chuckles, time you went home.
Is that it?
Lovells eyes were fierce and deep like coals and ice. I dont think so, do you? This is just the beginning.
He watched Nurse walk away. The address Rice had given him proved to be a block of townhouse apartments on a canal. The area was new, transported palms set in manicured lawns, private jetties and massive yellow-brick houses straight out of Boys Town raffle brochures. Lovell pulled in behind a hot-pink VW Superbug and drew on a pair of latex gloves.
The woman who had doped Nurse and stolen seventy-five grands worth of heroin from him seemed to know why he was there. In Lovells experience, people who know theyre going to die will either go berserk or collapse into a kind of sleep, limp and fatalistic. This one collapsed. She opened the door and the light left her eyes and the elasticity drained from her neck and shoulders.
Carol, Lovell said. Youve got something of mine.
She muttered softly. Lovell tilted her chin. Say again?
Not any more.
The silly cow had kept enough for her own stash and sold the rest on the street for five grand. Lovell pocketed the money. A measly five grand, meaning he had another seventy grand to find.
When he left Carol she was ODing on the stuff shed kept for herself. He liked the neatness of that. He could have used a knife on her, or a pair of her tights, but that would have spoilt Rices day.
Twenty-two
Wyatt leaned over her, scarcely brushed her forehead with his mouth, but she woke instantly and dragged him down. Stay.
No.
She sighed. Just testing.
He couldnt stay because this was an inside job and the police would look hard at anyone who knew about the bank transfer. They would look hardest at the branch staff and the security firm but when they drew a blank there they would look at other people in the know. They could conceivably question friends and neighbours and Anna Reid might find herself accounting for the strange man she was seen kissing goodbye in her dressing gown on a Sunday morning one week before the hit on the TrustBank in Logan City.
So Wyatt was leaving at 3 am. He leaned over, let her plant kisses around his neck, his ears. He tingled with it.
He caught a cruising taxi on Coronation Drive in Auchenflower and took it to a street corner four blocks from the Victoria Hotel. He walked the rest of the way. The lobby was deserted. He slept until 10 am, awoken by cleaning staff in the corridor outside his room. He felt a curious kind of peace and realised what it was. Tension like a second skin had bound him for too long but now hed torn through it. Hunted, crossed, destitute, he had been living a young punks version of viciousness and instinctive cunning. But his hours with Anna Reid, the promise of the job, had released him and now he felt compact and alert.
There was an express bus to Logan City at eleven oclock. Wyatt would have preferred a car but he didnt want to risk stealing one, he didnt want to squander Anna Reids five thousand on buying one that proved to be unreliable, and hed long ago lost all his fake ID so he couldnt hire one. There were six people on the bus: two men and a woman bleary-eyed from an all-night bender; an elderly couple dressed for church; a man in a tracksuit carrying an Adidas bag. Wyatt sat at the rear, under the push-out window where he could watch his back and his front.
The shopping centre had the blighted, end-of-the-world atmosphere of a cheap studio set. Someone had thrown a rock at a jewellers window, cracking but not breaking the glass. A pair of womens underpants cringed next to a half-consumed apple in the gutter outside the milk bar opposite the main TrustBank branch. The milk bar was open but the streets were long, broad, windswept and empty. Wyatt went in and bought coffee and a Sunday paper. He sat at a round plastic garden table by the window and drank his coffee.
Using the newspaper propped as cover, he scanned the bank on the other side of the street. It was constructed of plate glass, aluminium and prefabricated blocks of concrete, like any new bank anywhere. There was one front entrance, glass, next to an automatic teller machine set in windows screened by a broad-slatted vertical blind on the inside of the glass.
