Garry Disher - Kick Back

She turned her head slightly. ‘It wasn’t play-acting, you know, me with you.’

‘Forget that,’ Wyatt said. ‘You left the cash in the safe and hid,’ pointing his gun at the bag on the seat beside her, ‘that crap in your office?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where?’

‘Can’t we do this somewhere more comfortable?’

‘Answer.’

‘I bet you were anal retentive. Under the tiles in the fireplace. What does it matter where?’

‘You had to leave it there in case the police searched your place.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you know when to do the job?’

She breathed in and out heavily. ‘Is this all necessary? Let’s get it over and done with, whatever it is.’

Wyatt ground the barrel against her jaw again. ‘Just answer.’

‘You’re hurting me.’ When the pressure didn’t relax she went on. ‘When I realised Finn was distributing, I started watching until I’d worked out the pattern. The stuff would arrive late in the week and all the yuppie dealers in South Yarra would buy from him on the weekends. So I waited until there was a big planning kickback there at the same time.’

A taxi entered Quiller Place and drove slowly down it, the driver shining a spotlight at house numbers. Wyatt pressed the gun warningly against Anna Reid’s temple and waited while the taxi stopped and bipped its horn and collected a home-care nurse from one of the houses.

When it was gone, he said, ‘You didn’t want to risk stealing from him directly. Robbing the safe was a smokescreen.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you just run with the stuff that night?’

‘I never intended to run with it. I’ve got a long-term plan. I’m going to sell it all slowly, on the quiet.’

Wyatt said nothing. The pieces kept falling into different patterns. ‘Tell me about Pedersen,’ he said.

‘What about him?’

‘Was he going to do the selling?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s not involved. I just needed his talents.’

Wyatt went cold. This had never been his job, his plan. It had always been hers. ‘You were taking a risk,’ he said. ‘You caused heat for all of us. The sort of people Finn distributes for don’t rest when something like this happens.’

Neither spoke for some time. Then Anna said, ‘You told Max there was a dead man at my place.’

‘There is, but I said it to flush out Pedersen. I thought he was behind it.’

‘And I came out instead,’ Anna said, nodding her head, her glossy hair sliding apart on either side of the pistol barrel. ‘Who is it?’ she asked.

‘It’s a professional called Bauer. A hit-man, somebody who worked for whoever runs Finn.’

She shivered. ‘So your friend Sugarfoot is still out there?’

‘I doubt it. I think both Youngers are dead. They gave Bauer some names, Bauer tortured Hobba, got your name, and came looking.’

She turned her head a fraction. ‘Tortured?’

Wyatt said, ‘This isn’t Playschool.’

He saw Anna stiffen. ‘Finn will know about me by now.’

Wyatt said bleakly, ‘I wouldn’t worry your pretty head about it. Bauer killed him too. These people get rid of their liabilities.’

She breathed in sharply. ‘I know you’re angry. All I can say is, I wasn’t faking it with you.’

Wyatt pressed warningly with the gun. She changed tack immediately. ‘Oh dear, he’s in a sulk.’

The mocking voice was a tactic. She would try to get a rise out of him, then, bit by bit, try to turn him. Wyatt ignored it.

They were silent, then Anna said, ‘Why did he kill Finn?’

‘He would’ve learned from Hobba that there were no drugs in the safe, so he thought Finn was trying to pull something. Finn was already bad news for carrying on his kickback scam on the sly.’

She shivered again. ‘He tortured Finn too?’

Wyatt didn’t answer. He wasn’t interested in Finn.

‘I’m glad you got him, Wyatt,’ Anna said. She lifted a hand from the steering wheel. ‘Can I put my hands down now? My arms are aching.’

‘No. Did you kill Pedersen?’

‘God, Wyatt. What do you take me for? He’s waiting there for you. I told him I was going out for a while.’

‘Last Monday night,’ Wyatt said, ‘you came on to me so I’d forget my suspicions, right?’

‘No! That part was genuine.’

She took her hands off the steering wheel and turned in her seat and looked at him over the top of it. He leaned back, still keeping the gun on her. The wound in his side seemed to tear open and before he could control it, he breathed in sharply and groaned.

‘Oh, you’re hurt,’ she said. She reached a hand across the seat. He stared at it. She drew back again.

Then her voice took on its low growl and her face moved expressively. He remembered how desire had animated it. ‘All those things you said about working together?’ she said. ‘We still can.’ She picked up the bag on the passenger seat. ‘This would set us up.’

‘You’ve been doing fine by yourself.’

She put the bag down. ‘We can, Wyatt. It’ll be good. We’ll have a holiday first. No-one knows anything about us.’

‘There’s a dead man in your house,’ Wyatt said. ‘You’re the partner of a man who was tortured to death. The cops will find the connection. I’d say you’re fucked.’

‘If I go down, you’ll go too. Think about it. Come away with me, or help me get the body out of my house.’

Wyatt watched her for a while. He felt trapped, and he hated it. ‘One condition,’ he said. ‘You give up the drugs. If we plant them at Finn’s, the cops and whoever Finn worked for won’t look any further.’

She frowned at that. He waited. He heard the safety catch, very faint, as she apparently shifted position to get more comfortable.

When her face emptied of expression, he fired through the seat. Anna jerked back in shock and there was a crack as the windscreen frosted near her head.

‘I won’t give you a second chance,’ Wyatt said.

He reached over and dealt her wrist a numbing blow with the barrel of the Browning. Her.38 fell back in the bag again. All in all, he thought, he’d been a step ahead of her this time. It was like getting his sight back after a period of blindness. He watched her shake and moan. ‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You’ve still got your share of the money.’

‘What now?’ she asked flatly.

‘We mop up,’ he said.

He punched a hole in her shattered windscreen, gave her the keys to the Hertz Falcon, and told her to follow him back across the city.

At her house they worked in wary, hostile silence. She kept tools, ladders, paint, rollers and drop-sheets in her garden shed. Wyatt wrapped Bauer’s body in a drop-sheet and she helped him carry it out to the Falcon. Then she righted her furniture and replaced her drawers and he mopped up blood, his own and Bauer’s. Then he mixed plaster from a packet and plugged bullet holes and gouges in the hallway. Finally he dragged in a tin of white paint and a stepladder. He felt dangerously light-headed, and bone tired.

‘What are you doing?’ she said.

‘Not me,’ Wyatt said. ‘You. You’re going to paint the hall. Not tomorrow, now.’

‘Now?’

‘You might have visitors in the morning. If they seem curious, tell them the hold-up upset you, you’ve been painting to relax.’

Anna Reid’s face took on a shut-down, sullen expression. It was still there when Wyatt nodded goodbye and let himself out the front door.

He drove the Hertz Falcon to Finn’s house in Hawthorn. It was a Federation-style house set behind a thick hedge. Finn was there, a swollen-tongued, leering, trussed-up shape on a king-size bed. Wyatt unwrapped Bauer and dumped him on the floor next to the bed. He also dumped the guns. Let the cops work it out. He distributed the coke and heroin packets behind heating vents, in shoeboxes, and among suitcases in a closet.