Garry Disher - Pay Dirt

‘Not a bad likeness,’ the postmaster said. ‘I tell you what, we were flabbergasted. Seemed a nice sort of a bloke, kept to himself, kind of thing. No one here had a clue.’

Letterman put the picture away. Everyone had a clue now, though. It was quite a story, front-page stuff. Gang warfare, the headlines said. Organised crime elements from Sydney battling it out with local criminals, several of whom had been shot dead. Police were looking for a man who called himself variously Warner, Lake and Wyatt, last seen at his farm on the Mornington Peninsula.

‘I’m putting together a story about the hidden lives of people like him,’ Letterman said.

The postmaster pursed his lips and looked out of the window. Letterman wasn’t perturbed. The guy was trying to say he was canny, you couldn’t put anything over on him. ‘A Brisbane paper, you say?’

‘That’s right,’ Letterman said.

‘You heard about it up there?’

The way to this bloke’s heart was pride. ‘I’ll say,’ Letterman said. ‘It was a bloody big story.’

The postmaster beamed, then looked regretful. ‘There’s not much I can tell you, though.’

‘For starters, did he get any mail? Readers like to know about that kind of thing. You know, letters from girlfriends, letters from overseas, letters from interstate, stuff like that.’

The postmaster shook his head. ‘Like I told the police, he might’ve posted letters, but he never received any. People don’t write like they used to. They use the phone these days.’

Letterman thanked him and got directions to Wyatt’s farm. The house was sealed up. All the grass needed cutting. The dirt track showed no sign that vehicles had been along it recently. Wyatt is long gone, Letterman thought, and he won’t be coming back. Letterman said as much to a neighbour, an angry-looking farmer. ‘You’d be mad, wouldn’t you,’ the man demanded, ‘to try coming back? We were pretty upset about the whole thing. If he did show himself now, no one would give him the time of day.’

Letterman got back into the Fairmont. It had been a wasted trip, a long shot that hadn’t paid off, and he’d stepped in cow shit and pulled a thread of his suit on a barbed wire fence. He hated the bush, didn’t know why anyone would want to live there.

Frustration brought on his indigestion, and during the long drive back to Melbourne he let himself reflect upon the past couple of years. They’d said he could make Commissioner one day. He’d come up through the ranks, and he’d done law and accounting part-time in his younger days. He’d had his own detail in the vice squad, and been second in command in the drug squad.

But you don’t get anywhere waiting for information, so he’d built himself a good network of snouts, turned a blind eye where necessary, picked up the odd suitcase from a station locker.

Then came the whispers; that he’d corrupted junior officers, made deals with underworld figures, assaulted witnesses. He faced them all down. Then he was charged: conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, attempted bribery. They didn’t have a shred of evidence, their witnesses suddenly got cold feet or went on holiday, and Letterman had walked, but eighteen months ago the police tribunal had sustained five out of eight misconduct charges against him and he was given the boot.

He’d cleaned out his desk and gone home. That evening the phone had rung. It was the Outfit. You scratched our back in the past, they said, so we scratched yours, dropped a few quiet words in a few ears. So how about it? Want to continue doing what you’re good at?

As he drove through Moorabbin Letterman pictured again the hate on the faces of the cops who’d tried to put him away. He fished a Quick-eze out of his pocket and chewed on it. His belly rumbled and the pain eased. What he most liked about this job, apart from being his own boss, was there were no more logbooks, no more manuals, no more working by the book.

St Kilda Junction was coming up. Letterman crossed into the left lane, ready to turn into Barkly Street and his motel. Change his suit, clean the shit off his shoes, then back on the streets.

Known associates. When everything had blown up in Melbourne six weeks ago, three names surfaced: Wyatt, Hobba, Pedersen. Hobba was dead. Wyatt was the reason for all this in the first place. That left Pedersen.

‘A woman is good cover, Wyatt. Think about it.’

Wyatt thought about it. Leah had a sharp mind and she liked to use it. He’d noticed that five years ago, when she’d done some background work for two jobs he’d pulled in Adelaide. And now she was bombarding him with ideas for the Steel-gard hit. Most of them made sense. All the same, he didn’t want her to be involved at an active level.

‘I’ve got a stake in this, Wyatt.’

He stared at her face. Intelligence and a kind of fury were animating it. Her eyes were alive. Her fists, clenched on her dining room table as she leaned toward him, looked impatient and ready for action.

Then her eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t think I can do it.’

Wyatt gestured irritably. He didn’t speak.

‘What, then?’ she demanded.

Wyatt wasn’t going to tell her that the job had become messier, costlier and more difficult than he liked. It had started off as an uncomplicated snatch, but the federal police raid had changed all that. He forced a smile. ‘We need someone useful here on the outside.’

She ignored the smile. ‘I’ll be more useful there with you than back here. I can drive, shop, take photos, whatever.’

Wyatt nodded slowly. They were drinking-his last drink before he started work-and he could feel his resistance slipping away. He watched Leah watching him. Her body was still but gave an impression of being charged with energy.

She was frowning faintly, and her eyes were restless.

‘I could keep watch,’ she continued. ‘You’ll need someone on a radio to tell you when the van enters the short cut.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Think about it.’

Wyatt regarded her calmly. He didn’t speak.

She went on. ‘Tell me more about this guy coming from Melbourne.’

‘He knows about locks. He’s also good with radios. The van will be equipped with long-range VHF on a constant band. We’ll need to jam it. With any luck the Steelgard base will think it’s a signal weakness.’

‘But you don’t know yet how you’re going to break through to the money.’

‘There’s always a way. I’ll set up a camp first.’

‘You’ll brainstorm the job first,’ Leah snapped.

Wyatt rarely got angry with other people. He didn’t get close enough to them for that. Their problems and opinions didn’t interest him. The sort of people who angered him were the punks he’d sometimes worked with, whose grievances and ignorance put his life at risk. But he felt angry now. He felt it rising in him.

Something in his face betrayed it. Leah blinked and jerked her forearms back from the table. She picked up her wineglass and drained it.

‘You don’t like working with a woman,’ she said.

But that wasn’t it. He didn’t like to be rushed. The answers always came to him when he was alone, concentrating hard. Just now he didn’t feel like concentrating. He was aching after riding the Suzuki all over the state and the wine made him feel sleepy and he wanted Leah to have her mind on him, not the job. Then he caught himself. He didn’t like that sort of thinking in himself.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we’ll brainstorm the job.’

‘Bribe someone on the inside,’ she said promptly.

‘Like who? The driver? The guard? What will you ask them to do? What if they talk? Do you actually know anyone at Steelgard?’