degrees to the right. There was a yelp as the flank of the car slammed into the man with the gun, knocking him to the ground. The rear tyres were spinning, looking for purchase in the gravel. Wyatt kept his foot planted. Slowly the other tyre mounted the barrier and the front of the Camira was over. Wyatt heard the bottom of the sump tear away. He wouldnt get far with a seized engine.
Far enough was all he wanted.
He looked back as the back wheels climbed the barrier. The first man reached a hand into the boot, neatly plucking out the strongbox as the Camira finally surged free of the barrier. There was now a squat blue-metal automatic in the mans other hand. Wyatt half turned with his own gun. For a moment the two men locked eyes. A kind of signal passed from the man with the strongbox to Wyatt: I will shoot you from here in the time it takes you to swing around on me. Just go. Then he turned away from the car, straddled the man on the ground, and shot him in the head.
Wyatts jaws snapped as the rear tyres bit in and the Camira accelerated. The distance from the concrete barrier to the white, single rail fence around the hockey field was six metres. He felt a hesitation as the radiator grill tore free a section of the rail. The impact was enough to swing the car to the left. Before Wyatt could correct with the steering wheel, the Camira ploughed into a massive turf roller. The machine was stationary, gathering rust, but it was as big as a boat and heavy enough to flatten kinks in the earth. Wyatt jerked in his seatbelt, the back of his head flipping against the whiplash support.
The engine cut out. Wyatt wasnt going anywhere in the Camira now. He got out. Exactly two minutes had passed and it had been two minutes of screams and gunfire, yet the only witnesses were a groundsman on a tractor far away and a clump of cyclists on the ring road. The cyclists slowed, saw that Wyatt was all right, and sped away again.
But somebody would be calling the university security patrol soon. The groundsman would want to know why someone was churning up the field he was paid to keep close-cropped and flat. Wyatt figured that he had about one minute to get out.
He started to move. The black Range Rover was pulling away, leaving plenty of rubber behind. In the drivers seat of the Commodore, Phelps was waking up, rolling his head on his neck.
He was Wyatts ticket out. Wyatt began to run.
But a look of panic twisted the big mans face. He fumbled, started the engine, backed out. Wyatt reached the car, beat uselessly on the side panel, fell back as Phelps accelerated away from him.
All he could do now was get an answer to a question. He knelt. The man on the ground was dead, blood seeping from a wound in the temple. Footsteps sounded behind Wyatt. Using his body as a shield, he peeled off the mans stocking and pocketed it.
What happened?
Wyatt stood, pushing his hair back from his forehead and hooking the black-rimmed glasses on his face again. He turned. Four or five students. Loading distress into his voice he said, It was terrible. Hit and run. This man was knocked down and I was run off the road. They just took off like animals.
Animals, someone said.
Anyone get the number?
We should get an ambulance.
He looks bad. Anyone here know first aid?
Youre not supposed to move them.
Anyone a med student?
They were dealing with it. Wyatt stepped back. Hed recognised the dead man. It was a face from three weeks ago, on the Victorian/South Australian border. Mostyn, who worked for Stolle. Meaning Stolle had the money now. Stolle and Anna Reid.
Thirty-six
Wyatt crossed the road to the joggers path next to the river and turned left, toward the city. There would be police soon, security men. His only way out was the Dutton Park ferry.
At this time of the morning there were no students waiting on the university side of the river. The traffic was all one-way, from Dutton Park to the university. Wyatt waited on the ramp that extended over the water. On the opposite bank cars were pulling into the carpark and students were gathering to cross. The ferry was in midstream. It swung around in a wide arc, drew in, and Wyatt stood back as the passengers filed off. There were one or two older people among them, academics or campus workers, but most were students wearing the puffed faces of recent sleep and anxiety and morning lecture panic. Some wheeled bikes. One or two looked curiously at Wyatt. You didnt get many suits on this ferry.
Wyatt paid his dollar and sat down. The ferryman waited a couple of minutes. When no-one else appeared, he cast off.
Ten-thirty. Wyatt found that he was trembling. Mostyns blood had streaked his fingers. He stood up, shoving them into his pockets, and remembered the loose cash from the vault. Standing where the ferryman couldnt see him, he counted it: fifteen thousand dollars in fifties and hundreds.
His heart stopped thudding and slowly the fright ebbed and a cold anger took its place. She had set this up with Stolle. They had brought him in to do the hard work, the kind of planning and execution work that he did better than anyone, then Stolle had stepped in at the point where Wyatt was most vulnerable, the final switch of vehicles. He thought bitterly about the code he worked by and how this time hed betrayed it. One: people who cross you once will do it againnever give them a break. Two: never let feelings affect your judgment. Three: never tell the people you work for more than they need to know. Hed told Anna Reid exactly how they would do the job and where the getaway vehicles would be waiting.
He heard the ferryman throw the motor into reverse. Water churned and the ferry edged with a bump against the rubber tyres on the Dutton Park landing. Wyatt stepped out, threaded through the students waiting on the ramp, and climbed the hill behind it.
He walked. He had fifteen thousand dollars that he could be spending on transport but it was enough that the ferryman had seen him without taxi or bus drivers pinpointing his movements any further.
Wyatt walked through Highgate Hill to South Brisbane and in thirty minutes he was at the rear of the State Library. He went in, found a mens room outside the Childrens Library, and cleaned the dirt from his clothes and shoes, the blood from his hands. Then he worked water into his hair and used his fingers like a comb, creating a new part and a lock over his forehead. He removed the tie and put the suitcoat over his arm, the. 38 in a pocket where he could reach it quickly. He walked over the Victoria Bridge into the city like any white collar worker in the sun.
Eleven oclock. Hed told Anna Reid not to do anything that would draw attention to herself on the day of the robbery, so shed be at work now. Her firm was in a building on Allenby Street. It had a flat, innocuous, concrete slab exterior that offered no pleasures for the eye. Wyatt went in through the main doors and straight to the lifts as though he had business there.
He waited. A lift arrived and he stepped in, pushing the button to close the doors, then pushing buttons for the seventh and ninth floors. He put on his suitcoat and tie again and moved the. 38 from his coat pocket to the waistband at the small of his back.
The lift climbed. In a panel above the door, green numerals formed and dissolved, formed and dissolved: 4… 5… 6… Then 7, where Anna Reid worked. Wyatt would not get out at 7 but he needed to know the layout, where the offices were in relation to the corridor, where the stairwell might be. He lounged at the back of the lift when it stopped, just a man on his way to an upper level.
The lift gave a shudder, the door seemed to hesitate, then the three panels slid back into the door recess and Anna Reid stood staring at him.
The blood drained from her face, as though she knew hed come to kill her.
Neither moved. Wyatt stared at her neutrally, then at the men standing with her, one at each elbow. One made to step into the lift, pulling Anna with him, but the other said, Its going up.
The first man nodded, resumed his position and his hold on Annas arm.
