Garry Disher - Kick Back

Satisfied that the gunman wasn’t faking it, Wyatt approached and crouched next to him.

‘I need a doctor,’ the man said.

Wyatt propped him against the door frame and loosened his belt and collar. He searched the man’s pockets. There was no identification. He looked at the face. It was tight, gaunt, the hair cropped close to the skull. The body was slight, wiry, suggesting fitness. The accent was unusual. South African, Wyatt thought.

The man coughed. His mouth filled with blood. He’d taken a bullet in the lungs, giving his voice and his breathing a frothy, whistling, watery quality. ‘My arm,’ he said.

The left elbow was shattered. Wyatt wrapped the fingers of the gunman’s right hand around a handkerchief over the welling blood.

The man seemed to doze, then collect himself. ‘You are Wyatt? Hobba described you. I am Bauer,’ he said. He seemed to be asking for recognition.

‘Never heard of you,’ Wyatt said. ‘Who hired you? The Youngers? Did you turn on them?’

Bauer frowned with effort, spat blood from his mouth and said, ‘The Youngers are nothing.’

‘Finn?’

‘Finn is nothing. He’s dead.’

Wyatt watched the face twisted in pain. ‘Because he lost the money? Were you brought in to get it back?’

Bauer didn’t reply but drooped and slid to one side. Wyatt forced him upright. ‘Listen to me. If you want a doctor, answer some questions.’

Bauer coughed. ‘You robbed the wrong safe, my friend. You’ve made powerful enemies. Give it back.’ He closed his eyes then. He’d gone grey; traces of blood flecked his slack mouth.

Wyatt said, ‘Finn was connected, is that what you’re trying to tell me?’

‘Give it back,’ Bauer said.

Wyatt leaned back to consider the problem, but the movement twisted his wound. He breathed in sharply, alerting Bauer, who said, ‘I hit you.’

Wyatt ignored him. ‘Three hundred thousand dollars isn’t exactly a fortune. Not enough to send someone like you after us. Whose toes did we tread on?’

Bauer coughed again, exhausting himself. His breathing was shallow. ‘I am dying.’

‘Answer,’ Wyatt said.

Bauer gathered himself. ‘The money was not important,’ he said finally.

‘Then what are you talking about. The insult?’

Bauer uttered a rattling laugh and subsided again. Wyatt tapped the Browning against the shattered elbow. Bauer screamed. ‘No mysteries,’ Wyatt said. ‘Explain.’

Bauer’s breathing was a series of wet gasps. He was close to the end. ‘Cocaine. Heroin. That rubbish. Give it back.’

Wyatt rocked back on his heels, going cold.

He’d been lookout on the street when Hobba and Pedersen blew the safe. There’d been that long delay before they gave him the all-clear to join them.

Plenty of time.

But the drugs. Hobba apparently didn’t have them, because Bauer wouldn’t still be looking for them. That meant Pedersen had them. Given his habit, his contacts, that made sense.

Wyatt said, ‘Who are you working for?’

No answer. He tapped his Browning against the shattered elbow again. But the rattling breathing had stopped and there was no response.

Wyatt got to his feet. Hobba and Pedersen must have made a snap decision, he thought, in those seconds when they realised they also had drugs in the safe. Pedersen had the know-how and the connections; both of them knew Wyatt wouldn’t be in on it.

They might have got away with it if Sugarfoot Younger hadn’t blundered in. Wyatt followed this train: perhaps the Youngers tried to sell information to Finn, not knowing what they were getting into. If Ivan was dead, Sugarfoot was too.

Not that any of that mattered. He had to get Anna away from the safe house.

He left Bauer and made his way back to the Falcon. The wound in his side was beginning to ache dully. He tried to imagine Pedersen’s state-popping pills, getting agitated as he wondered what Wyatt was doing and what he might find out. He’d be dangerous tackled in the safe house. Anna could get hurt or killed-assuming he hadn’t killed her already. The answer was to lure him out.

It took Wyatt fifteen minutes to cross the city. The traffic was heavy and bad-tempered, and cars on the prowl choked the nightclub end of King Street.

On Queens Road he stopped outside a public telephone. He dialled, and when Anna answered, relief flooded him, surprising him with its intensity. He said, ‘I want you to be neutral when you reply to what I say now. Do you understand?’

A wary ‘Yes.’

‘Is Pedersen still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Has he been taking anything? Is he hyped-up?’

‘Yes.’

‘He might try something. If he does, shoot him.’

‘I see.’

‘I’ll explain later. Meanwhile I want to speak to him.’

The phone clattered onto a hard surface and he heard Anna say, ‘Wyatt wants to talk to you.’

Pedersen came on a moment later. ‘Is Hobba okay?’

Wyatt wasn’t surprised to hear Pedersen lead with this question. He said, ‘He’s dead.’

Pedersen seemed to explode. ‘What about Sugarfoot? Haven’t you got the bastard yet?’

‘It’s all taken care of.’

The relief was palpable. ‘Thank Christ for that. So it’s over.’

‘We can all go home,’ Wyatt agreed. ‘Except Anna. Tell her to wait there for me. There’s a body in her house.’

He cut the connection, drove to a shadowy area between street lights a hundred metres from the safe house, and waited for Pedersen to come out.

All the doors and windows of Finn’s law offices in Quiller Place were locked but light showed faintly in an office at the side of the old house. Wyatt decided to wait. If he forced his way in now, he’d lose the advantage. And alert the old people of the street, blinking in the darkness as they waited through the long night for sleep or death to claim them.

The black Volkswagen was angled carelessly in the driveway. The driver’s door hadn’t been locked. Wyatt climbed into the space behind the front seat to wait. He moved stiffly. His clothes were a sodden wad at his waist.

It didn’t take long. He heard the expensive lock click home on the front door of the building, heard approaching footsteps, saw a shape materialise next to the car. The door opened and a bag was flung onto the passenger seat. Then the car shifted gently on its springs as Anna Reid got in and Wyatt sat up behind her and pressed his Browning to her ear.

She stiffened. A moment later she said his name. She didn’t turn around.

‘Both hands on the wheel,’ Wyatt said. ‘Where’s the gun I gave you?’

‘In my coat.’

‘Right pocket?’

‘Yes.’

‘Reach across with your left hand. Take it out by the barrel and drop it in the bag.’

He watched her closely. For the few seconds her hand was out of sight he ground the Browning against the hinge of her jaw.

She dropped the gun. ‘How did you know?’

Wyatt was silent. Then he said, ‘Let’s start with the safe. You removed the drugs when Finn went out for coffee on Friday afternoon?’

She laughed harshly. ‘Is this a grilling?’ She took one hand from the wheel and gestured with it. ‘Come with me, Wyatt. The stuff in that bag is worth a fortune.’

Wyatt beat the gun barrel against her cheek. ‘Both hands on the wheel. Answer the question.’

She sighed elaborately. ‘When he went for coffee, yes. Just before you hit the place.’

‘You knew the combination of his safe?’

‘I’ve always known it. When I first came here, before he started dealing, I found it written down on the side of his desk drawer one day’

It was plausible. Pedersen himself liked to say that most ‘unexplained’ safecracking could be traced to people leaving the combination lying around.