Pay Dirt (10 page)

Happy grabbed Venables by the upper
arms and pushed him to where Trigg was standing next to the benches and wall-mounted
tools at the rear of the shed. Place his thumb down there, Trigg said,
pointing at the top of the bench.

The front of Venabless trousers
were wet. He didnt speak, just closed his eyes and swayed a little.

When the blow came he opened them,
and groaned and went limp. Happy held him up. Not much of a bounce, Trigg said,
looking in mock surprise at the head of the mallet. He dropped it on the floor,
its steel head striking a gouge in the cement, and reached for Venabless hand.
Youre going to have a nasty black nail there soon, old son.

Venables was moaning, looking sick.
Trigg stroked the back of the injured hand, letting the tips of his fingers
brush across the thumb nail. Blood was welling under the nail. The pressures
building up, Trigg said. We should do something about that. Hap, put Mr
Venabless thumb in the vice. Not too tight.

No,
Venables said. He was helpless and
rubbery on his feet.

Trigg waited until the thumb was
ready, then took a Stanley knife down from its bracket on the wall of tools. It
had a sharp, pointed blade. Happy used it for trimming upholstery.

Your poor thumb, he said, and he
bent over it and began to pick a hole in the centre of the nail. Venables went
white but watched, fascinated. In fact, Trigg was doing him a favour, but it
all looked like the end to Venables.

Suddenly the blade cut through to
the blood. It spurted out, then beaded, and Trigg said, Now, isnt that
better?

You bastard.

One grand, this time tomorrow, when
you bring the van in for servicing.

I havent got it. Ill pay you some
other way, anything you like, but I havent got it in cash.

Trigg began to push Venables out of
the shed in a series of bitter shoves. You might live to regret that offer.
Bugger off out of here.

Then he stopped. A car transporter
was outside, jutting half across the street as it backed in, the reversing
signal beeping. The sight unhinged him, bringing back the pain. A Saab and a
Mercedes, both newish, both black. Not only didnt the locals buy expensive
models any more, they didnt buy black ones, not where the roads are dusty
three-quarters of the year and muddy the rest of the time. And another batch of
pills and videos that no one wanted.

* * * *

EIGHTEEN

The
more Letterman thought about it the more pissed off he felt about Loman. Loman
knew about Wyatt but hadnt said anything. Loman had made him look foolish.

The feeling grew after his meeting
with Snyder. Hed settled in at the motel to wait until the flight left on
Monday morning, but hed made the mistake of reading an 87th Precinct novel and
that had been the last straw. He had to do something about Loman.

On Sunday evening he backed the
Fairmont out of the motel car park and drove to a service station on
Beaconsfield Parade. Here he bought two one-litre containers of engine oil. He
drove out of the service station and turned left into a dark, narrow side
street. He parked the car, got out, poured the oil into the nearest stormwater
drain. He got back into the car and made the long drive to Lomans hardware
business in Preston. Just before he got there he pulled into a Mobil self-serve
and filled the tank with unleaded. No one saw him also fill the two empty oil
containers with the fuel. He filled them to the top: he didnt want fumes building
up in them.

Loman ran a big place, taking up
one-third of a block at the end of a shopping centre. The N in his name on the
sign above the entrance was back to front. The main building was a long, low
hardware supermarket fronting onto the street. Behind it was a large storage
shed next to a paved area cluttered with do-it-yourself garden shed kits,
sample brick walls, and piles of soil and gravel in shades ranging from
pinkish-grey to black. A high pine-board fence surrounded the whole place.

In the far corner, well back from
the street, was Lomans house, a four-room transportable building resting on
wooden blocks. Letterman approached it cautiously, alert for a dog or a
nightwatchman, or kids taking short cuts home from the video library. Holding a
container of petrol in each hand, he waited for five minutes, watching and
listening. He could hear the sound of a television set coming faintly from
inside Lomans house. When he was satisfied, Letterman ran doubled-over to the
back door. He didnt tripthere was nothing to trip on. The yard surrounding
the house looked as if it had been swept to within an inch of its dull life.

Letterman never ate or drank before
a job. He felt concentrated, full of nerve endings.

This had to look right. He went from
window to window of Lomans house, checking for security alarms. He supposed a
man as neat as Loman was, a petty crim like Loman, would have some sort of
security fitted, and he found it on every window, a silver strip that would
activate an alarm if it were cut.

In other circumstances windows like
these were no problem for Letterman. Hed simply pry out the putty surround
and-move the whole pane aside. But this had to look innocent all the way.

He went around to the front door. It
was in darkness and faced a side wall of the storage shed. Putting the litre
containers down, he bent to examine the lock. It looked pretty standard. He
took out his folder of lock picks and went to work.

There were twenty picks in his kit.
Hed got themand lessons in how to use themfrom a crim hed put in Long Bay
five years ago. They were long, flat gunmetal strips with small indentations at
various stages and angles along both edges. The kit also contained key blanks,
small pry bars and ratchets, but he wouldnt be needing them tonight, only the
raking bar. He selected a pick, inserted it into the lock and pushed against
the first tumbler pin. Then, inserting the raking bar, he raked the tumbler pin
open. He repeated this operation several times, pushing the pick deeper and deeper
past the opened tumbler pins.

He reached the end, straightened to
ease the strain on his back, and opened the door. He didnt push it fully open
but waited and listened. Satisfied that no alarm had gone off, he pushed the
door open in stages. Still no alarm sounded. It probably meant that Loman had
separate systems for the door and the windows. Hed turn off the door system
when he was at home, but generally leave the window system on.

Letterman closed the door. He had
stepped straight into a lounge room. The television set wasnt here, though, it
was in one of the other rooms.

The bedroom in fact. Through the
partly open door he could see Loman stretched out on a monastic-looking single
bed, watching a night football game. He wore short pyjamas and a dressing gown.
His good leg was horribly scarred. The other was a stump. The plastic leg was
on a chair next to the bed. Apparently Loman felt the cold, for a bar heater
glowed on a floor rug in the centre of the room.

Letterman didnt waste time. He didnt
bother with pointing out Lomans sins to him but ran into the room and stunned
him with a heavy blow to the temple. He hit him again.

When he was sure that Loman was
fully unconscious he turned off the bar heater. Next he took out his knife and
gouged holes in the caps of each petrol container with the sharp, narrow point.
He squirted the room with petrolonto the walls, the wardrobe, the ceiling and
the curtains. Apart from the area around the bar heater on the floor, he
sprayed high, knowing that the arson squad would be suspicious of intensive
burning on the floor or low down on the walls. He made sure the ceiling got
plenty. He was relying on it catching early and collapsing on Loman.

Finally he soaked the quilt and
dragged a corner of it down to touch the bar heater. Then he turned the heater
on and hurriedly stepped back into the doorway. The bed caught at once. When
the flames were strong, he tossed the petrol containers onto the bed. They
wouldnt last long.

By nine oclock Letterman was back
at his motel arranging an early wake-up call. He showered, packed his bag, and
checked his reserves of cash. Thirty thousand dollarseighteen for Snyder,
twelve for expenses. He thought about informing Sydney where he was going but
changed his mind. He was his own boss, after all. He didnt have to report in
every five minutes like one of their goons. Theyd get their report, their
pictures, when the job was done.

* * * *

NINETEEN

Snyder
was the last passenger to board the 8.10 am flight to Adelaide on Monday
morning. Letterman, stretched out comfortably in first-class with the
Age
for
company, saw him come through the door looking like someone whod always made
someone wait. Letterman wanted to slam the heavy, cocksure face. Snyder was a
real picture this morning: crisp white overalls again, a chain caught in his
throat hair, chunky hippie rings on each hand. For footwear he was wearing
dazzling white gym boots. His hair frizzed, catching the light. Letterman, on
the other hand, was dressed in a light grey off-the-rack suit from David Jones.
He thought, not for the first time, that all kinds flew these days. They didnt
make an effort. They flew looking as if they were slopping around the
supermarket on a Saturday morning.

At least Snyder didnt make eye
contact. From now on we dont know each other, Letterman had told him the day
before. He watched as Snyder swaggered through to the economy seats, his cabin
baggage knocking the shoulders of passengers seated on the aisle. It was a
tough, lightweight aluminium case. His radio gear, Letterman thought.

Breakfast was tinned fruit, toast
and watery scrambled eggs. Letterman had the toast and two cups of coffee. It
gave him indigestion and he had to ask the stewardess for Quick-eze.

Fifty minutes after take-off they
landed at West Beach airport, filed off the plane and across the tarmac. A high
wind, laden with hot, oily aviation fumes gusted across the airfield. As usual
a couple of uniforms and a plain-clothes man watched them come through the
glass doors into the luggage-claim area. Letterman wondered if they had him
marked as a cop. He knew he looked like a cop. Despite the last couple of
years, he still thought, moved and spoke like a cop.

He collected his bag and reclaimed
his automatic from the airline security officer. It was a little .25 loaded
with hollow-points. Letterman liked to work close three or four rounds to the
head, the hollow-points breaking up and mashing the brain. Hed had a permit to
transport a gun on domestic flights since his days on the force. The airlines
never questioned him about it, simply took the gun and gave it back to him at
the other end.

Then he went out to the taxi rank.
There were signs up advising a passenger-share scheme, but Letterman took one
look at the tracksuits and gum-snapping jowls waiting in line and thought fuck
that for a joke. He told the driver of the first vacant taxi, City bus
station, and got into the back seat. Snyder, he noticed, was getting into a
cab with a fluffed-up blonde teenager and her younger sister, baring his teeth
at them like a pig at a trough.

Good flight?

Letterman looked up. The driver had
his head cocked, watching him in the rear-view mirror.

Just drive, Letterman said flatly.

The driver opened and closed his
mouth, shifted his shoulders around and drove. The traffic was sparse. They reached
the bus station in twelve minutes. Letterman paid and got out. Three other
taxis rolled up as he closed his door, Snyders among them. Snyder got out.
Letterman saw him wave at the blonde as the taxi departed. He saw the blonde
curl her lip at Snyder and go into a huddle with her sister.

Letterman went into the bus station
and stood in line at the ticket counter. He looked around while he waited. The
linoleum floors were worn and dirty. There were scuff marks on the walls. The
lockers were chipped and dented, the plastic seats spotted with cigarette
burns. It was nine in the morning and the place was wall to wall human garbage
and they were all eating hotdogs. Letterman pictured it: lock the doors, toss
in a Molotov cocktail.

Where to?

Vimy Ridge, aisle seat, rear of the
bus.

This seemed to upset the clerk. He
stabbed at his keyboard and said, not looking at Letterman: Return?

Yes.

The clerk told Letterman the cost.
He handled Lettermans money as if it were contaminated. He was a dreary
specimen and Letterman wanted this job to be over, wanted to be knocking back
oysters and chablis in the sun somewhere.

Letterman was first on the bus. He
sat in his seat at the rear, watching the others board. If there was trouble
coming, he wanted to be where he could see it. All he saw was Snyder with a
paper cup of vinegary chips, a sleepy soldier, a teenager plugged into a
Walkman, and half a dozen defeated-looking individuals clutching trashy
newspapers and plastic bags.

The bus left at nine-thirty and ran
north through farmland. Letterman looked out at the ripening crops and his
bleakness grew. He hated it, hated the emptiness, the panicky sheep, the farm
kids watching the bus pass with their mouths open. Then he thought he might
have to tramp across country like this when he went after Wyatt. He wasnt
dressed for it. His mood grew blacker.