Still Venables hadn’t liked it. Was Trigg sure it would work? Was he sure the cops wouldn’t think it was an inside job?
You trying to chicken out? Trigg had demanded. You want to go on paying me interest for the rest of your life? Do this little thing for me, old son, and all your debts are cancelled.
Stupid prick.
All that remained now was to clear up a few loose ends, get rid of the evidence, deliver the money to Melbourne.
Trigg was looking forward to that part of it. He’d rung to say he was coming over. He had a plane ordered for seven that evening. Goyder Air Service didn’t run to Lear Jets but they’d assured him they had a turbo-prop Beechcraft that was fast and comfortable. Get him to Melbourne before ten o’clock, they said. Well, the local graziers did this sort of thing all the time, flew interstate to the ram sales wearing their moleskins, Akubras and R. M. Williams elastic-sided boots, and Trigg didn’t see why he shouldn’t pose a bit too.
Except your average grazier these days doesn’t carry three hundred grand around with him.
Trigg thought about how it would go at the other end. He could take a taxi to the Mesic compound, but something about that seemed low-class. He reached for the intercom.
‘Liz?’
‘Yes, Mr Trigg.’
‘I want you to get on the blower and see if you can arrange a limo for me.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Doesn’t have to be a stretch limo. An ordinary one will do, like a Jag. So long as it’s black and there’s a chauffeur and he’s waiting when I touch down in Melbourne tonight.’
There was a long pause. Trigg waited. He knew the locals were a bit slow. It took them a while to take on board new notions like stretch limos, even though they saw them on TV all the time. ‘Got that?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Mr Trigg.’
‘Good girl.’
Drive up to the compound gates in the limo, wait while the guy at the gate calls ahead for permission to let him in, then creep slowly through the compound to the main house.
The compound. Trigg had never seen anything like it before. The Mesics had bought up an entire suburban block in Melbourne, knocked down most of the houses except one for the servants, erected two mansions-one for the old man, the other for Leo Mesic and his wife-planted a few trees, built a high fence around it, put in the latest alarm system and a few armed guards, and no one could touch them.
That was the way your top boys did it these days.
This time tomorrow, Trigg thought, the Mesics will be three hundred grand richer. They’ll also be off my frigging back.
At five-thirty he left the office and went through to reception. Marg, as usual, had slipped away early. Liz was staring into space. ‘How did you go?’ he asked her.
‘Sorry?’
It was always the same. He said it again, slowly, carefully. ‘The limo. Were you able to line up a limo for me in Melbourne?’
Liz beamed. ‘Sorry, yes, something called an SEL.’
Mercedes, Trigg thought. Nice.
‘But I couldn’t arrange one this end.’
Now it was Trigg’s turn to look perplexed. ‘Sorry?’
‘I asked around. No one does chauffeur cars in Goyder.’
Trigg counted to ten. ‘That’s okay. I’ll drive myself. You’ve done a good job.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Well, if you’ve finished for the day you might as well toddle off home.’
Liz got into a muddle over that but by five-forty he was alone. He went across to the service bay where Happy was greasing a Volvo. ‘All set?’
Happy didn’t reply. He usually didn’t. He put down the wrench he was using, wiped his hands and together they crossed the lot to the panel-beating shed.
It was crowded in there. When the good folk of Goyder were asleep in their beds on Sunday evening, they intended to dump the truck with the van still aboard it into Hallam Gorge, but until then they had to edge around each other, avoiding the old-fashioned mechanics’ pit in the floor. Next to the pit was a new hydraulic hoist, still in its packing case. Bags of cement were stacked against one wall.
Trigg and Happy dragged cutting equipment to the rear doors of the Steelgard van and started work. They had just cut out the lock on the Steelgard van when Tobin found them. He was beery and flatulent, wavering on his feet as he watched Happy prise open the doors. He burped. ‘Wasn’t your usual Arnie.’
This was too much for Trigg. He turned and snarled, ‘What the hell are you on about?’
‘The movie. Nothing like your usual Schwarzenegger.’
Trigg turned away from him in time to see the doors spring open. The guard lay sprawled on the floor of the van. There were steel cabinets built into the floor and walls. That’s where the money would be.
Trigg thought he might as well do it now. In a single motion he picked up a steel mallet and swung around with it, adjusting for Tobin’s height. The metal head was swinging upwards when it smacked under Tobin’s jaw. Tobin dropped as if all the elasticity had gone out of him. Trigg hit him again to make sure, then tumbled him into the pit. He let Happy do the guard.
THIRTY-TWO
Wyatt spilled off the bike sometime in the middle of the afternoon. It was a bad fall, leaving him bruised and winded. Partly it was the change in the terrain. As he pushed farther south the grazing land gave way to cultivated land-wheat, oats, barley, peas, lucerne, all tightly sown in coarse, ploughed furrows. The Suzuki’s front tyre hit irrigation piping concealed in thick lucerne. The handlebars were wrenched out of his grasp, and he was off. He landed heavily on his side, one leg twisted under the bike frame. He lay there for a minute, thinking how quiet it was without the engine screaming under him. The stubby lucerne, crushed and tangled under his cheek, smelt fresh and clean. He longed to stay there, but the exhaust pipe began to burn through his overalls.
He struggled free and stood up. It was more than the change in terrain, he realised. He’d been rough-riding the Suzuki for almost three hours and he was tired, his body so jarred that he didn’t trust his judgement any more.
The spill helped him decide-he needed to rest, and he needed to find a car. He looked around. The farmland here was more closely settled. There was a town in the distance. A bitumen road went through it. Wyatt counted the traffic. There seemed to be a vehicle every minute or so.
There were other reasons why he should dump the bike. The cops would have found bike tracks at the farm by now. Sooner or later they’d compare notes with the chopper crew and realise that the figure they’d seen looking at his sheep hadn’t been a farmer. They’d also got a good look at his face, so he’d have to do something about that soon as well. And he could smell petrol. Some had spilled onto the ground. He shook the bike: there wasn’t much in the tank. He would rather steal a car than a tankful of petrol for the bike.
He uprooted clumps of lucerne, covered the bike and set off across the paddocks on foot. He felt exposed. The sky above him was open, the flat land benign under the afternoon sun, but he knew it could turn bad quickly. Two men shot to death, signs of occupancy in an abandoned farmhouse nearby; a missing security van with up to half a million on board-it all added up to crusading cops, trigger-happy farmers and nervy civilians all over the state. The search would be big and thorough and there wouldn’t be any second chances once they’d found him.
Wyatt also wanted to get his hands on a radio. The ABC and the commercial stations would be running hot with this story. He might learn things about the police operation that would help him escape the net, and he might hear if there had been any arrests-hear if Leah or Tobin had been nabbed, or anyone else from the other team. Information was like blood to Wyatt.
He was not sure of the next stage. He walked until he came to the town, stopping just short of it and skirting the edge until he came to a quarry carved like an ugly bite in a hill half a kilometre behind the town. From there he had a clear view of the main street and the grid of smaller streets on both sides of it. It looked to be bigger than Belcowie. It had two of everything. He thought if he waited long enough he’d see a lapse in someone’s security.