Workplace safety check, Wyatt told the security man at the door.
The man shrugged. It meant nothing to him. The world was full of grey men in dustcoats writing things on clipboards.
Wyatt and Harbutt went inside. Wooden trestle tables groaned under the weight of Taiwanese calculators, Korean batteries, Chinese shoes. Refrigerators and toasters were stacked around the walls. Armchairs and sofa beds littered an area the size of a tennis court in one corner. Sales staff hurried around, pricing goods and pasting large SALE signs on the walls.
At the rear of the building a broad staircase led to a narrow mezzanine level that extended halfway down the length of the building on each side. There were a number of frosted glass doors leading to plasterboard petitioned offices. Under the stairs were toilets and a storeroom.
Wyatt looked around swiftly. It seemed promising. Harbutt, he noticed, was sweating. He hadnt been drinking, the job was making him edgy.
They prowled around the shop floor. By six oclock the last of the goods had been delivered and the sales staff were heading for their cars. The nightwatchman had based himself at the door. He was middle-aged, beer fat and unhealthy looking. All his attention was on the young women as they left the building. He stared after them, rubbing his palms on his thighs. Hed set a bright red canvas directors chair nearby. He looked like a man who intended to get the weight off his feet when the place was empty. Sit in his chair and stare out at the night.
He didnt see Wyatt and Harbutt in the dark rear of the big room. They climbed the stairs, let themselves into the first office. It contained a desk, photocopier and filing cabinet. They settled down to wait. A dim globe at the head of the stairs leaked enough light through the frosted glass for them to see one another. Later, when the nightwatchman was dozing or inattentive, they would check the other offices. From time to time they murmured. Harbutt talked edgily, as though the building bothered him: too big, too isolated, too many sounds of its own. Wyatt let him talk. They wouldnt be heard here and theyd know if the nightwatchman was climbing the stairs. If he did climb them, that ishe had no reason to.
At nine oclock, two things happened. A vehicle pulled up outside, there were voices, a different vehicle drove away.
And lights went on all over the building.
Thirteen
Light flooded the tiny office. Wyatt stiffened. He shifted around the wall until the desk screened him from the door. From that position he could see Harbutt clearly. Harbutt was on the floor, his back to the wall, legs straight out. He was slack, fatalistic, as if hed expected the lights. Now he drew up his knees, rested his forehead on them. For a short time, nothing happened. Wyatt watched Harbutt coldly. After a while, Harbutt felt the force of Wyatt there in the room with him, and began to talk. His voice was low, scarcely audible, and what he said was:
Its not easy getting retrenched at my age. It gets to you, eats away at you. I doubt if Ill find another joba bloke like me, Im for the scrap heap. I cant turn pro. Im not like you, I cant put something together and make it work.
Wyatt didnt reply. He might have been listening to Harbutt, or listening to the vast silence outside the door. He had his Colt out.
You were right to drop us, Harbutts muffled voice went on. Derns not solid enough. Anyone can see that. Theas got a vicious streak. She doesnt like to be crossed.
The building sat silent and brightly lit on the dark plain. Presently Wyatt said, Youd better tell me what happened.
Harbutt shifted his rump to get comfortable. After you shot through the other night, Dern kicked Thea out of his car and said he was finished with her. I gave her a lift home. You know what shes like, Wyatt. One thing led to another. I mustve been crazy. I mean, it shouldve been clear as the nose on my face it wasnt me she was interested in. She thought Id lead her to you, I suppose.
You told her about tonight?
Its getting sacked like that, mate. It was a shock. I was never that good at putting money away. My redundancys already eaten up with the mortgage. He looked directly at Wyatt for the first time. Theres a price on your head, twenty grand, did you know that?
You and Thea shopped me to the Outfit?
Harbutt nodded.
And our nightwatchmans been bribed to go and get himself a cup of coffee for the next hour or two?
Harbutt nodded again. And thats all I know about it, I swear. I dont know if theres one gun out there or a dozen.
Not a dozen, Wyatt thought. The Outfit was Sydney based, weak in Melbourne, so they wouldnt have organised that many guns. They would have sent a local, maybe two. He slid along the floor and eased open the door to the corridor.
They were waiting for him. A shot rang out and the frosted glass splintered above his head. He rolled, putting distance between himself and the door.
The position was bad, as though hed treed himself. The only way out was down the stairs, where hed make an easy target. His only cover was the waist-high safety barrier that ran around the edge of the mezzanine level corridor. He crouched behind it, conscious that it was plasterboard and wouldnt save him from a lucky or a careful shot.
He chanced a look over the rail and ducked again, twisting to his right. There was another shot and plaster shards sprinkled his face. Then a series of shots had him flat to the floor and moving back through the open door again into the office. Now he knew where the gunman wason the mezzanine floor, facing him from the corridor on the opposite side of the building. And it was an automatic rifle. His Colt could not match it for range, velocity or accuracy.
Wyatt rested a moment, thinking it through. He was alone in this. Harbutt was still on the floor, head buried in his arms, rocking his upper body. If there were two guns outside, the second one covering the stairs from the bottom, there was no way out. If the gun opposite was the only one, there was a chance. The rail around the mezzanine was an equaliser. Wyatt couldnt be seen, but nor could the man opposite him. With time, the other man might get off a lucky shot. Or hed remember what hed come here for and move around to this part of the mezzanine and force a confrontation.
Wyatt could wait, it was what he was good at, but he decided to push matters. The office photocopier sat on an open-shelved cabinet crammed with paper, pens and toner cartridges. There was also a bottle of methylated spirits. He broke open four packs of A4 paper and poured the methylated spirits over them, fanning the edges with his thumb to allow penetration. He soaked several cleaning rags with the fluid, and his dustcoat. Finally he searched the desk. He found a Bic lighter in the drawer. He tested it, turning the flame to high.
Still keeping low, he carried everything out into the corridor and weighed up the next stage. He needed to cut down on the amount of light that framed him and he needed to distract the gunman.
Leaning back, he sighted the Colt and squeezed off a shot. The corridor light went out, glass flakes falling to the floor. He sighted again and shot out the light at the head of the stairs. He chanced a third shot, smashing the closest of the three main lights in the hall. It didnt give him darkness but he was harder to see now, here above the remaining lights suspended over the shop floor below.
Without pausing he rested the Colt on the rail and snapped off four shots at the man opposite him. He heard them pass through the plaster and heard the soft thump of someone rolling for cover.
Wyatt judged that he had about five seconds before the gunman felt secure enough to return the volley. He lit the rags and the dustcoat, and flung them over the rail. Then he lit the paper bundles, watched the flames take hold, and scattered them onto the furniture below.
The rifle opened up again, so he scooted back along the corridor toward the stairs. Four shots, then silence.