They worked hard that day. While Tobin made expert-looking road-closed signs from planks, beaten roofing iron and tins of black and yellow paint, Wyatt helped Snyder paint the breakdown-recovery truck pale blue, Brava’s colours. The next day Tobin would paint the black bull logo and the words Brava Construction on both doors. It was clear that he had a good eye and a steady hand. The truck itself was well-chosen. The tray was long and sturdy. The tailgate was easy to operate, sloping nicely to the ground, and there was a powerful winch system.
At ten o’clock Leah drove down the track in the dusty utility. She wore jeans, shirt and scarf, and was carrying a basket.
‘Where’s she off to?’ Tobin asked.
‘Every couple of days she’s been going to the short cut to pick wildflowers.’
Tobin stared at Wyatt stolidly, looking for the trick.
‘She’s checking if the local law ever go down it,’ Wyatt explained. ‘So far she hasn’t seen anyone use it, not even a local farmer, but we have to be sure.’
He watched Tobin to see that he got it. He knew it was important to take pains with Tobin. Tobin had a quick, graceful body, as if he took pleasure in using it, but his mind was plodding. What was worse, he seemed to know it.
‘Got you now,’ Tobin said.
He went back to slapping paint around. After a while he said, ‘She your bird?’
Snyder heard him. He straightened up next to the wheel hubs he was painting and said, ‘Leave it, mate.’
‘I was only asking.’ Tobin went back to his painting. Soon he was whistling a Seekers tune badly.
Wyatt got their minds off it. ‘The tarp,’ he said. ‘I misjudged the size.’
Mustering lost credit, Tobin said, ‘Looks like the boss fucked up.’
Wyatt frowned at Snyder, warning him to stay out of it, then turned back to Tobin. ‘One of us will have to go and buy another one.’
‘There’s a hardware in Vimy Ridge,’ Tobin said. ‘Plus I need toothpaste.’
They watched each other guardedly. Wyatt recognised the signs. Tobin was testing him, asking: do you trust me? If Wyatt said that he couldn’t go, the result could be resentment and trouble down the track. Wyatt also knew that he shouldn’t go in with Tobin. Tobin would think he was being chaperoned.
They continued to watch each other. Eventually Wyatt nodded. ‘Okay. Go in after lunch. Leah will be back by then. I’ll give you some money.’
They returned to their painting. Leah reappeared at twelve-thirty and they stopped work to eat sandwiches and drink cups of tea. At one o’clock Tobin changed out of his paint-splashed clothes and drove to Vimy Ridge, $500 of Wyatt’s money in his pocket. While Wyatt finished painting the truck, Leah spread maps on the table to familiarise herself with the local roads and Snyder took his big radio to the top of a hill to do a band search.
Tobin returned at four o’clock. He gazed levelly at Wyatt as he got out of the utility, then reached into the back of it and hauled out a tarpaulin. He laid it out on the grass. It was large and new. ‘All right?’ he said, looking at Wyatt again.
‘Perfect.’
They worked until five-thirty. Tobin finished the road-closed signs, then painted a couple of large Brava Construction logos on the tarpaulin. While he did that, the others washed the dirt off the Holden utility and painted it. At five-thirty, when Wyatt announced a halt, Tobin produced his football. He kicked it around with Snyder and Leah until darkness fell. Wyatt appeared to be watching from his chair on the farmhouse verandah, but in fact he was watching only the images in his head, looking at the Steelgard hit from all the angles. Dinner that night was minestrone soup and spaghetti bolognese. Dessert was a question and answer session to iron out wrinkles in the job.
TWENTY-TWO
Letterman hated the country. His suit was wrong, so were his shoes, and he’d had to park several kilometres short of the farm and go the rest of the way on foot. He’d bought the car that morning, soon after Snyder had called him on the radio. It was a clapped-out Valiant that had set him back $1900. He should have spent another hundred and bought some suitable bush gear as well.
But he’d found Wyatt. He climbed through a wire fence and cut back across a paddock to the Valiant. A mistake, he soon realised. The ground was full of traps for the kind of shoes he was wearing. They slipped off the grass tussocks and twisted on concealed stones and rabbit holes. Grass seeds hooked themselves to his socks and trousers. Now that he’d found Wyatt all he wanted to do was go back and wash the dirt off. He badly needed a Quick-eze.
The only accommodation available in Vimy Ridge had been an on-site caravan in the tourist park. Snyder had called him there at one-thirty saying he only had a moment, he was supposed to be doing a band search on his radio.
‘Where are you?’ Letterman had wanted to know.
‘We’re camped in this empty farmhouse.’
‘How the fuck am I supposed to find you? I told you to come in and get me. I didn’t give you that two thousand for nothing.’
‘Settle down. One of the others is going in. You can follow him out here.’
‘Wyatt?’
‘Not Wyatt, a guy called Tobin.’ Snyder described Tobin. ‘He’s picking something up at the hardware. The same ute that picked me up yesterday.’
‘I’ll find him.’
‘I tell you what,’ Snyder said, ‘it’s a sweet job.’
Letterman didn’t care about the job. As a concession to Snyder he’d agreed to hit Wyatt when the job was over; what he cared about was how easy Wyatt would be.
‘Tell me about Wyatt.’
‘He’s hard to read. He’s all brain and nerve reflexes. On Thursday I wouldn’t try announcing myself if I were you. I’d just go in and pop him.’
‘What about this Tobin bloke?’
‘He’s a moron. Wyatt’s the only one with a gun. Apart from me.’
There had been a pause. Letterman said, ‘Apart from you. How did you get a gun?’
Snyder had been cocky about it. ‘Brought it with me. What I do is I strip it and hide the parts with the radio gear so no one knows what it is, then reassemble it later.’
‘Very clever. I hope you’re not thinking of popping Wyatt. He’s strictly mine.’
‘It’s sort of insurance,’ Snyder said. ‘You know, in case a certain person decides he might try and get out of paying me what he owes me, kind of thing.’
Letterman had gestured irritably at the wall of his caravan. ‘Tell me about the farmhouse. I can’t get too close behind this Tobin character.’
‘Stop when you come to a tin hut in the corner of a paddock. The farm’s off to the right about three or four k’s. But we got a deal, you know. You don’t pop Wyatt till after the job.’
‘Shut up. All I’ll be doing is checking out the place. I have to know where to go on Thursday while you’re out doing the job.’
‘You better time it right Thursday. If Wyatt sees you he’ll kill you, no question. If he sees a car shouldn’t be there, he could jack it in.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Letterman said. ‘Listen, what about the locals?’
‘You’ll be right,’ Snyder said. ‘It’s the only farmhouse along there.’ He’d sniggered a little. ‘Tell you what, you could wear one of your suits. If you meet anyone on the road you could tell them you’re from the bank. They’ll think you’ve come to repossess and they’ll piss off and leave you alone. I like the grey one myself.’
Letterman thought about Snyder’s crack now as he stumbled across the paddock. Snyder would be the first to go, no question.
After breaking radio transmission Letterman had left the caravan and gone to look for Tobin. He’d picked up the big hoon at the hardware place, waited while he made a phone call at the post office and shopped at the Four Square supermarket, then settled in a kilometre behind him on the road north from Vimy Ridge. They travelled on the bitumen for several kilometres then turned onto a dirt road. Letterman had hated it. Tobin’s utility stirred up thick dust so it was like driving through brown smoke and clouds of it had poured in around the Valiant’s pissy door seals. He’d sneezed and cursed and hoped to Christ he didn’t have a head-on smash with someone coming from the opposite direction.