Garry Disher - Kick Back

He looked up. ‘Remember that armoured car? Or that bank in that shopping centre? You’d spend a few days checking out car parking, front and rear access, then strike quickly when it was quiet. This job could be like that, nice and simple.’

‘I’ll check it out,’ Wyatt said.

‘I mean, me and Max need this one, Wyatt, really need it. You know how it’s been lately. No decent jobs around, no cash anymore, everything’s plastic cards or electronic transfer’

Wyatt watched him toss another mint into his mouth. Hobba was broke. He spent it, lost it, forgot it, gave it away to hangers-on and ex-wives. But he’d put his finger on the general malaise.

‘I’m not promising anything,’ Wyatt said, ‘but I want you to tell Pedersen and the woman to keep this evening free for a meeting.’

‘You going to check out Quiller Place?’

Wyatt nodded.

Hobba sighed. His jaws closed on the mint.

At two-thirty Wyatt alighted from a tram outside a strip of salons, bookshops and designer-wear showrooms on Toorak Road and walked through to Quiller Place. He wore an overcoat over a casual brown- and grey-flecked woollen suit, white shirt and plain tie. His shoes were brown. It was a suit for any purpose. He might be a professional punter, a businessman, a client keeping an appointment with his lawyer.

He had altered the contours of his face. His hair, normally fine and straw-coloured and pushed indifferently to one side, was now oil-darkened and drawn back close and gleaming against his skull. He had applied a small smudge of soot to the edge of his bony jaw. He wore steel-framed glasses with chipped lenses. The frame was crooked. It was a face of false but compelling and contradictory surfaces.

He walked once down to Quiller Place. It was one block long, ending in a T-junction at each end. There were houses along the northern side, one of them converted into the offices of Finn and the Reid woman. Opposite them were the rear entrances, courtyards and customer-parking areas of the shops on Toorak Road. That was good; the street was a backwater, meaning few potential witnesses. Then Wyatt explored one block north and one block south of Quiller Place, checking for laneway access and dead-end or one-way streets.

At five minutes to three he stopped outside number 5. It was a restored Edwardian house like those on either side of it. The stonework was soft and clean, the woodwork painted in period colours. A cobblestone driveway curved round at the front of the house and there was room for two cars at the side. A car was parked there, a pastel-green Mercedes bearing the plates FINN. The words ‘Finn and Reid, Barristers and Solicitors’ were engraved on a brass plate next to the front door. Anna Reid, Wyatt thought. He didn’t know Finn’s first name.

A smaller sign read ‘Please Enter’. He pushed open the heavy, glossy black door and found himself in a long hallway. The air, centrally heated, smelt of new carpets, paint and furniture polish. A recent injection of money, he thought. Floorboards and heating vents gleamed in the hallway. A telephone chirruped in an end room. He heard expert fingers pause on a computer keyboard. A voice said, ‘Can I help you?’

A receptionist was looking at him from a small carpeted office to the right of the front door. This was the designer-punk end of South Yarra: the receptionist had elaborately untidy black hair and wore black tights and skirt, a striped waistcoat over a scarlet lycra top, silver bracelets, and four silver rings in the cartilage of one ear. She wore plum eyeshadow like a bruising around each eye. She was happily chewing gum and the smile was genuine.

Then, as Wyatt approached her desk, she frowned. She was disconcerted by his crooked glasses and smudged cheek. Her fingers itched to make adjustments. Wyatt said, ‘You were able to squeeze me in for a three o’clock appointment with Mr Finn.’

She snapped her fingers, remembering. ‘Mr Lake?’

‘That’s right.’

An embarrassed half-smile as she looked at a point next to his ear. ‘If you’ll just take a seat in the waiting room? I’ll tell Mr Finn you’re here.’

Wyatt removed his overcoat and stood at the waiting room window, ignoring the Scandinavian-look leather armchairs in the room. He automatically studied the window and ceiling. As he expected, there was an alarm system. In a room somewhere along the corridor, a vigorous male voice talked and laughed. Finn? Was the safe in his office? Would he interview Wyatt there or take him to a consulting room? Whatever, this was all part of filling in the background. Wyatt wanted firsthand knowledge of the layout, an impression of Finn, a feeling about the job itself. If everything seemed right he would call a meeting. It was not a big job, but it was the best he’d been offered in months. If it fell through it wouldn’t be for want of solid groundwork.

He studied the rest of the room. Pale wallpaper, mass-produced prints hanging from an old-style picture rail, empty fireplace, business magazines on a glass-topped table. He returned to the window. A minute later he saw a black Volkswagen slow in the street outside, its turning indicator flashing. It gave way to a passing taxi and pulled into the driveway next to Finn’s Mercedes. A young woman got out, dressed in dark, expensive winter clothes. Wyatt stood at the window’s edge, watching her approach the front door. When he heard her footsteps in the hall he stepped back and began idly flicking through a magazine. The footsteps paused at the waiting-room door. Wyatt looked up, as anyone might. He saw solitary, complicated good looks, curious green eyes, an impression of impatience. Then she was gone and he heard her enter a room somewhere along the corridor. Hobba was right. She was too classy for Max Pedersen.

The receptionist appeared, staring this time at Wyatt’s shoulder. ‘This way, Mr Lake. Mr Finn will see you now.’

Wyatt followed her along the corridor. More evidence of the alarm system. Anna Reid had closed her door. The receptionist stopped at the end office, smiled, extended an arm, and Wyatt entered.

The man behind the massive leather-topped antique desk pushed back and half turned in his swivel chair and got up, his hand outstretched. ‘Mr Lake,’ he said. ‘David Finn. Have a seat.’

Finn was an inch taller than Wyatt, at least six-two, solid, not heavy. He was about fifty and had the blunt look of a man who gets timid clients to the point quickly. He wore an expensive suit, striped cotton shirt and a floppy, hand-tied silk bow tie. A camel hair overcoat hung on a chrome coat rack in one corner. Two stiff modern chairs faced the desk, and a bench under the window supported a fax, a telex, a paging device and two mobile phones. Leather-bound law books sat neatly in white bookshelves. Well-known Boyd and Nolan prints were on the walls. The safe was there, a squat black Chubb set on tiles in the unused fireplace. On the mantelpiece above it were sporting trophies and two small team photographs. No comfortable chairs, no ashtrays, no clutter. It was an odd room, as though furnished absent-mindedly from antique shops and designer showrooms.

Finn shook hands and abruptly sat down. ‘What can I do for you, Mr Lake?’

Wyatt hovered, then sat, hesitant, nervous, on the edge of a stiff chair opposite Finn. If Finn wanted him intimidated, he would be intimidated. In a rush of words he said, ‘I was told you’re the best person to see about problems with building permits.’

Finn straightened invisible papers on his desk. ‘Depends. What sort of problems?’

‘I’m speaking on behalf of others,’ Wyatt said. ‘If what we think is going to happen happens, we’ll be ruined.’

Finn was a busy man. ‘Mr Lake, what exactly is the problem?’