Cross Kill w-4 Page 5

  The CIB man slapped his back. ‘Strangled before he could shoot his load.’

  They snickered and looked at the pictures again. ‘Poor bastard’s parents found him,’ the CIB man said. ‘Want us to find the murderer.’

  Napper’s head shake said you wouldn’t credit the ignorance of parents and he went back to his desk. He opened a file and the telephone rang. It was his solicitor, with news that threatened to ruin Napper’s day. ‘What do you mean, they’ve got the right?’

  ‘Just what I said,’ the solicitor replied. ‘Under law they’ve got the right to divert tax refunds to meet back payments owed by the husband.’

  Napper directed a hot and bitter look along the line. ‘How? Tell me that.’

  ‘The Child Support Agency has revenue-collecting powers through the Taxation Office.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Napper said.

  He stared moodily at a picture of the Queen. She was fly-spotted. Things were falling apart there, too, except your royals weren’t strapped for cash like he was. ‘I love my kid,’ he said into the receiver. ‘I’d never let her go without. I was late, that’s all.’

  ‘Nap,’ the solicitor said, ‘I warned you what could happen. Next time they’ll be much tougher. There’ve been cases of the Agency obtaining court orders for the sale of assets to meet back payments. They could make you sell your house, your car…’

  ‘Bastards,’ Napper said again. His voice grew harsh. ‘Look, I paid her five hundred bucks the other day.’

  ‘But you owe her nine thousand. They’re not going to wear that.’

  ‘I haven’t got it. I can’t earn it. I drive a fifteen-year-old Holden ute, for Christ’s sake. Have another go. Show them some figures.’

  The solicitor was doubtful. ‘I’ll do what I can, but there comes a point when you can’t massage the figures any further. Like I said, they’ve taken greater powers on board. Next thing you know they’ll have the power to freeze bank accounts. Last month they subpoenaed some bloke’s Visa card statements. Turns out while he was crying poor to the Child Support Agency, he was dipping his wick in some brothel twice a week.’

  Napper wasn’t interested in the sordid lives of other non-custodial fathers. ‘Do what you can,’ he said, and hung up.

  For a while, ten minutes, he stared at his files. At 3.30 he went to the locker room, changed into stretch, stonewashed jeans and flanelette shirt, and signed off duty. He had to get a couple of the boys to help him push-start the ute. By 3.45 he was in a Fitzroy side street, field-glasses clamped to his eyes.

  There she was, his little darling, at the edge of the pool, eight years old and slipping in and out of the water like a frog in her red Speedos. She was doing backflips and bellyflops with a couple of other little frogs, happy and tireless, in and out, in and out. It brought a lump to his throat.

  Napper lowered the field-glasses and Roxanne became just a tiny red flash in the general scenery-a small park, a cyclone fence, sunbathers on the lawn, the kiddies wading pool, the main pool beyond it. His ex-wife brought Roxanne here every afternoon after school. It hadn’t taken Napper long to establish that. Anyway, you can’t stop a bloke from looking at his own flesh and blood. He raised the glasses again and felt his heart clench. Roxie had hurt herself. She was standing, head bent, and her little mates were crouched around, and the world and Napper were focused on her right knee. But then she grinned and everything was all right again. Aqua Profonda, said the sign at the end of the pool.

  Napper sat back and drained a can of Fosters. The ute cabin was a hot place-the sun on the glass, the exhaust pipe showing through the rust holes in the floor. Out on Alexander Parade the traffic was building up, pouring toward the freeway. Only four o’clock, but already bastards were going home. Not for the first time did Napper tell himself the country was getting slack.

  And there had to be something wrong with a system that allowed a woman to bleed her ex-husband dry and still not let him see the kid he’d fathered. Napper closed his eyes, blocking out the poisonous shit they’d heaped on him in the Family Court. For two bucks he’d jack it all in and bum around overseas for the rest of his life. He thought about it: golden beaches, a glassy sea, topless birds speaking French and Italian, long cold drinks under a Cinzano umbrella. Except that wasn’t exactly bumming around. It would require cash and he didn’t have it. He didn’t even have enough to keep his kid in Weeboks, the style his ex-wife had accustomed her to.

  Napper raised the glasses for a last look at his daughter. Her shoulder-blades, her funny little poddy stomach, her long legs: God, he could practically feel her squirming and rubbery in his arms.

  4.15. The kids disappeared into the changing room. Napper was leaning forward, turning the ignition key, listening for life in the battery, when women surrounded his ute, snapping wet towels at the sorry, sun-blasted blue duco. Napper couldn’t believe it. He edged his stomach under the steering wheel and got out. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

  ‘Pervert,’ the women said.

  The ring-leader was his ex-wife and she had got the other mothers worked up. They said, ‘Pervert, pervert,’ and snapped their towels. Napper put up a meaty hand. ‘Back off, or I’ll have you in the lockup so fast your heads’ll spin.’

  ‘Oh, big man,’ the women said, dropping into hoarse baritones.

  ‘Come on, Josie,’ Napper said. ‘Give me a break.’

  ‘Give me maintenance and I’ll give you a break,’ his ex-wife said.

  ‘Give him hell,’ the women said, but they were stepping back, watching to see what he’d do. What he did was not risk embarrassment with the battery. He walked to the Caltex service station on the corner.

  ****

  Eleven

  Wyatt watched the London Hotel for three hours that afternoon, standing patiently at the first-floor window of a second-hand bookshop on the opposite corner. At four o’clock he slipped across the street. Ornamental trees in terracotta pots stood on either side of the sliding glass doors of the hotel. Using one of them as cover, Wyatt surveyed the reception desk and the lobby. The clerk was talking on the telephone. The man’s clothes flapped and sagged on his body and his face was rubbery with anxiety, his left hand worrying the manufactured knot in his bow tie. The lobby itself was empty. Wyatt wondered how best to work this. If he went in now, the clerk would spot him and run. There were probably side and back entrances but they would take time to find.

  At that moment two taxis drew into the kerb behind him. Several young women got out. They wore suits with shoulderpads and carried white vinyl conference wallets. He stood back and watched them enter the lobby. A couple of the women glanced at him. It was covetous, as though they were intoxicated by the day and wanted to admit an element of risk into it.

  Wyatt waited. He watched the women walk across the lobby to claim their room keys. He went in then, using them as cover. While they conversed noisily at the reception desk, Wyatt buried his nose in a revolving display of brochures of Melbourne’s beauty spots. When the women were gone he stepped up to the desk and opened his windbreaker.

  The clerk saw the.38, closed his eyes and tried to make the best of it. ‘Is sir enjoying his stay?’

  Wyatt didn’t say anything. He watched the scared, eyes, waiting for the man to break.

  It didn’t take long. ‘I was just doing my job,’ the clerk muttered.

  Wyatt ignored that. ‘You were on the phone just now. You looked worried.’

  The clerk swallowed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about?’

  The clerk said, ‘Look, it’s nothing personal. I had orders to watch your movements, that’s all.’

  Wyatt tried again. ‘I know that. I want to know what the phone call you had just now was about.’

  ‘They’ve been calling every fifteen minutes in case you came back here.’

  ‘And here I am,’ Wyatt said. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s four. What time do you knock off work?’

  ‘Any minute. I’m on eight till four.’


  ‘You were also on duty when I got in last night.’

  ‘They asked me to do extra shifts.’

  ‘So you could keep an eye on me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is anyone else here on the payroll? Anyone else told to keep an eye out for me?’

  The clerk shook his head. ‘Just me,’ he said miserably.

  ‘I’ll need to collect my things.’

  The clerk began to look panicky. ‘I was told to pack up everything in your room after you left this morning.’

  ‘Have you done it?’

  The clerk nodded. ‘It’s all out the back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ve got a room here.’

  ‘We’re going to chat a while, until your replacement comes on duty.’

  The clerk swallowed. ‘Then what?’

  ‘That’s up to you. For the moment all you have to do is act like I’m a mate who’s dropped by for a drink.’

  The evening-shift clerk arrived soon after that. Wyatt’s man took off his bow tie, shrugged himself into a zippered nylon jacket and led Wyatt through dark corridors to a poky courtyard room next to the motel kitchen. The air smelt of rotting food. There was a rattly airconditioning unit nearby. The clerk hesitated at his door. Wyatt nudged him with the.38. ‘If it’s any consolation, I don’t intend to kill you,’ he said, ‘although that’s open to change.’ The clerk’s shoulders slumped. He opened his door.

  The room smelt of poverty. There was a dull, oily sheen to the walls, from cheap paint badly mixed and meanly applied, revealing green paint underneath. Against one wall was a plywood wardrobe with a spotty mirror, next to a varnished desk with a world map on it. A frayed armchair was in one corner, a cheap stereo in another. At some stage in the past, cigarettes had been stubbed out on the smoky plastic turntable lid. The tits-and-bums calendar on the wall was two months out of date. The feature for July was a tanned backside awkwardly cocked with grains of yellow sand clinging to the flesh.

  Wyatt pushed the clerk down into the armchair and sat on the bed opposite him, the.38 dangling loosely between his knees. ‘What’s your name?’

  The clerk opened and closed his mouth. Finally he said, ‘Philip.’

  ‘Phil, or Philip?’

  ‘Whatever. Doesn’t matter.’

  It mattered to Wyatt. This was all part of relaxing the man, letting him feel he had some identity, some importance, despite the circumstances. ‘Which do you prefer?’

  ‘Philip.’

  ‘Okay, Philip, all I want from you is some information.’

  ‘They’ll kill me.’

  ‘Why should they do that? Why should they even know you’ve been talking to me?’

  Philip was silent, thinking about it. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘You fingered me, correct?’

  Philip said yes. He was looking at the floor.

  ‘How did you know it was me? Who told you to look out for me?’

  ‘You were seen arriving in Melbourne a few days ago. They tailed you. They knew where you’d checked in.’

  ‘They. Who do you mean by they?’

  Philip looked up. ‘They’re from Sydney.’

  ‘The Outfit?’

  Philip nodded.

  ‘Do you work for them?’

  ‘Not me. I was given five hundred bucks to keep my eyes open, pass on messages, that kind of thing.’

  Wyatt smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Five hundred bucks. You’re beginning to feel that’s a bit on the low side, eh, Philip? You thought your life was worth more than that.’

  ‘Give us a break,’ the man said, and he began to list his fears, creating a picture of meanness and badness in the Outfit. When Philip had talked himself out, Wyatt said, ‘Did you know there’s a contract out on me?’

  ‘Forty thousand bucks.’

  The clerk smirked a little. To kill that, Wyatt raised his.38, cocked it, released the hammer, cocked it, released the hammer, until the smart look left Philip’s face. He lowered the gun again. ‘Who do you take your orders from? Kepler in Sydney?’

  ‘I don’t know. All I do is ring this number they gave me.’

  ‘Have you got a Melbourne address for them?’

  Philip looked up at Wyatt. ‘I don’t know where they’re based down here. Look, forget it, stay clear, you’re just buying yourself a lot of strife.’

  But Wyatt had no intention of staying clear. He couldn’t work while there was still a price on his head. He couldn’t put a team together against the Mesics while forty thousand dollars was distracting every punk on the street.

  He stood up to go. There was a safe-at-last look on Philip’s face. Wyatt removed it. He said flatly, ‘I know where to find you, Philip.’

  ****

  Twelve

  Wyatt needed a bed for the night and he needed a safe passage to Sydney, but the Outfit was a threat on both counts. He didn’t think they’d have the clout to cover every hotel, every booking office, but he didn’t want to test it. He killed time in a cinema then found a bar in a side street and nursed a Scotch, thinking it through, Renting a car was out, sitting behind a wheel for ten hours on a highway where the fuel tankers jackknifed and jobless rural kids tried to end it all by steering into the oncoming traffic. That’s also why he wouldn’t hitchhike-that and the fact that he liked to have more control when he was on the move. He could change his face, but that required time and a bolthole, and he was running out of both. He couldn’t fly-the Outfit would concentrate its energies on the check-in counters. If he wasn’t so broke, he’d charter a plane and avoid the normal passenger formalities, but his funds were low and he’d need all of it to bankroll his hit on the Mesics. That left a bus or a train-assuming the Outfit didn’t have city terminal staff on its payroll or hadn’t brought extra people down from Sydney to find him now that he’d been spotted.

  ‘Same again, sir?’ the barmaid said.

  Wyatt had been staring past her, sitting as still as a tombstone, his concentration absolute. He knew he couldn’t walk to Sydney, or swim or flap his arms or somehow materialise there, so he went through the options again, looking for holes.

  He found one, blinked and smiled.

  ‘It moves, it breathes, it’s alive,’ the barmaid said.

  Wyatt was aware of her watching him after that, polishing glasses, one eyebrow hooked, ready to banter with him. He guessed that she bantered with everybody, it was second nature to her, but something told him that banter was only part of her act this time. She seemed to like him and, as evening approached, he felt drawn to her. When finally he grinned, her face grew watchful and anticipatory. It was an engaging face, smart and humorous. She moved easily and well as she worked. An hour later he had a bed for the night.

  Her name was Marion and she lived in cluttered comfort in an East Preston weatherboard house. The floor seemed to dip dangerously under Wyatt’s feet, and doors sprang open as he walked past them, but the central heating had kicked in an hour earlier and immense cushions and bright fabrics gave the house a cheery edge. A child’s hectic drawings were stuck to the refrigerator but Marion, brewing tea in the light of a candle and touching Wyatt’s arm from time to time as she moved about the kitchen, said nothing about having a child. She was frank and generous and uncomplicated, and had little to say to him at all.

  Until, curled next to him on a sofa, she said idly, ‘Are you on the run?’

  He stared at her. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘No car. You’re travelling light. You don’t strike me as completely broke, or too mean to pay for a motel.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘I’d say you genuinely want to be with me, but you also need a bed for the night, somewhere safe.’

  He shrugged, and she put her hand on his chest as though to shut him up. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I know you’re in trouble-I’m just trusting that none of it’s going to follow you here, into my house.’

  Afterwards, when she fell instantly asleep in her big bed, he watched her
for a while on his elbow and the strain of his chosen life began to look absurd to him.

  She remained asleep when he got up on Wednesday morning. He showered, dressed, consumed toast and coffee and touched her neck goodbye, and she remained asleep through all of it, as though she felt safe. He pocketed her keys and left a note telling her where she could find her car. Then he heard the front gate scrape open.

  Wyatt stiffened. Before he could act, a key moved in the front door lock and a man pushed a small child ahead of him into the house. If this was the boy’s father, he was a sulky-looking specimen, ginger-haired and sleep-bleary, wearing bright new stretch jeans that gave the appearance of strangling his genitals and stomach. His hair was uncombed, he was badly shaven, and he threw a gym bag and a bundle of sodden sheets onto the floor at his son’s feet.

  ‘See how your mother likes it for a change.’

  Then he saw Wyatt and a look born of ignorance and vicious poverty soured his face. ‘Oh that’s fucking terrific. Terrific example for my kid.’

  The man slammed the door and was gone. Wyatt and the boy stared at one another. Wyatt fitted a smile to his face but dropped it when he realised that the boy was gulping for breath. No more than eight years old, his thin chest heaving, his hand struggling to release the clothing binding his neck, the boy seemed suddenly close to death.

  ‘Medicine?’ Wyatt said.

  The boy turned painfully, pointed to the gym bag. Wyatt zippered it open. Among the tangled shirts and pants he found an asthma spray, pale blue plastic the size of a man’s hooked thumb. The child snatched it from him, fitted one end to his mouth, sucked greedily. He stood for a moment, swaying, his eyes closed. Wyatt held him, one big hand on each side of the boy’s waist. New sensations swept through him briefly, feelings close to attachment and affection.

  ‘Okay now?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Want to get into bed with your mum?’

  The boy nodded again and Wyatt led him by the hand down the tilting hallway floor.