Wyatt - 04 - Cross Kill (21 page)

This time Wyatt was ready for the
stabbing in his head. He rolled out from under Jardine and found a light switch
in the front room. It leaked enough light into the hall to tell him that
Jardine had been hit in the head and that his upper body and the carpet under
him were blood soaked. He reached around and explored Jardines scalp with his
fingers a little at a time. It didnt tell him anything, only that Jardines
hair was clogged with blood.

Wyatt leaned against the wall to
think about it. The bag with the money was gone. Jardine needed attention. The
Outfit gun had jammed, meaning they might come back to finish the job. Rose, he
guessed. Shed been his dangerous shadow from the start. A smudge on the wall
caught his eye. He looked up to see a series of them, shoe marks reaching up to
an open manhole in the ceiling. Shed got in through the roof, and shed taken
out the light bulb.

Wyatt used the telephone in the
kitchen. He was expecting Ross or Eileen to answer, not the son. The son was
supposed to be in remand. He didnt give his name. Your dad there?

Ill just get him, Niall Rossiter
said.

When Rossiter came on Wyatt said, I
need a doctor who wont ask questions.

Rossiter took that in. You hurt
bad?

Jardines been head shot.

Lets see, Rossiter said, and
Wyatt listened to him thinking. Theres Ounsted.

Ive heard the name. How can I get
hold of him?

He does a moonlight flit every few
months, Rossiter said. Hang on a sec, and Wyatt heard the receiver clatter
onto some hard surface before he could warn Rossiter to keep his trap shut.

Rossiter came back on the line with
an address and telephone number in North Carlton. According to the wife its
still current. There was a pause. What went wrong?

Ive got some sorting out to do,
Wyatt said, with a chill that seemed to reach Rossiter on the end of the line.
Rossiter said, Right, hurriedly and rang off.

Wyatt took Jardine to the North
Carlton address in the rental car. The doctor lived in a small, flat-faced,
cement-rendered place sandwiched between a couple of stately brick terraces on
a leafy street. It was a street of academics, TV writers and yoga fanatics who
drove Landcruisers and soft-top VWs, but Ounsteds car matched his house. It
was parked outside it, a Peugeot station wagon, ancient, soft-springed, rust in
the doors.

The man who answered his knock was
slight, undernourished, dressed in a crumpled suit with broad lapels. He smelt
of whisky and cigarettes and tried to hide it with fluttering, gingery hands.
His face had the chalky shut-away look of a man who shudders at the sun. He
looked about sixty, but was probably younger. Ounsted had been struck off the
register fifteen years ago and now he treated patients who suffered from the
kinds of injuries and ailments they couldnt let the authorities know about. He
supplied morphine, plugged gunshot wounds, sewed up knife cuts.

Theres a lane behind the house,
he told Wyatt. Drive around while I get the surgery ready. Well bring your
friend in the back way.

The lane was narrow; the Mazda
juddered on the bluestone cobbles. Wyatt stopped halfway along, the engine
idling, waiting for Ounsted to open the gate. Every back wall except Ounsteds
had been replaced in the past ten years. Some were topped with jasmine-choked
lattice. Ounsteds rear entrance was a warped, padlocked wooden gate on hinges,
four metres high. Hed coiled barbed wire around the upper frame.

Wyatt could smell booze and tobacco
inside the house as well, but there was a layer of antiseptic under that and
one of the rooms was clean enough: a drugs cabinet, stainless steel trays,
lights, an operating table. The rest of the house was like the doctor himself,
battling and apologetic.

They put Jardine on the operating
table and Ounsted gave him a painkiller and a sedative. Hell be okay for the
moment, Ounsted said, a kind of clipped professionalism entering his voice. Now
youd better let me look at you.

Wyatt sat where Ounsted could
examine his head. Youll live. Bruising, swelling, and a small patch of broken
skin. A painkiller and youll be okay. Just take it easy for a while. Rest up
for a couple of days.

Ive got things to do.

Oh, I know that, Ounsted said. I
was just going through the motions, thats all.

Then he went to work on Jardine,
Wyatt helping him to wash the blood from Jardines head and clean and bandage
the wound. The bullet had scored a shallow trench above the right ear. Ounsted
murmured as he worked: A fraction further to the right and hed be in worse
shape than this. Hell need to stay here for a few days. Hes a lucky man. But
its amazing what the body can withstand. I remember . . .

The man wanted to talk. Wyatt
screened him out. He thought about his options. Hed start with Kepler, but it
didnt have to be immediatelythe Outfit would always be there. What he needed
most now was rest, a safe house for the night. When Ounsted was finished he
said, How much do I owe you?

Ounsted seemed to take an interest
in the carpet. Two fifty should cover it.

Ill give you three hundred, Wyatt
said. I need a bed here for the night.

Ounsted looked at Wyatt
professionally. Wise man. You look knackered. Ill give you something for the
pain, itll help you sleep.

No drugs.

Suit yourself. The spare rooms
through here.

Ounsted took Wyatt to a small room
at the front of the house. There were two narrow beds in it. Wyatt considered
them: one was as good as the other. He stood in the centre of the room and
stared at Ounsted. The doctor grew uncomfortable and moved toward the door. Bathrooms
down the hall. Ill see you in the morning.

* * * *

Thirty-six

Something
woke him, some shift in the atmosphere. He lay on his back, feeling his skin
creep, his nerve ends coming alive.

He knew where he was, and that he
felt rested, the pain in his head less acute. No one was shooting at him,
screaming at him to get on the ground, aiming lights in his eyes. In fact, the
house was peaceful. But it felt wrong.

He lay still, feeling the blood
pulse in him. Maybe he simply was cold. He pulled the bedclothes to his neck.
The substance of his half-asleep, half-awake condition clarified with the
movement, and he remembered that there had been the sound of a telephone, of a
voice in the far reaches of the house.

Wyatt supposed that Ounsteds nights
were like that, sleep punctuated by calls to come save a life or inject a hit.
He concentrated, eliminating the expected sounds of Ounsteds life, his house,
this street at night, to see what he was left with.

He heard Ounsted at the front door,
then at the gate that opened onto the footpath. There were Venetian blinds in
the window. He forced an aperture in the slats and looked out. Ounsted, wearing
a coat and a hat, carrying the medical bag. Wyatt watched him get into the
Peugeot, crank it into life, turn on the lights. Ounsted turned right at the
end of the street and after that it was quiet.

Wyatt dozed. He would kill Kepler
and leave it at that. If he went after Rose, after Towns, he would have to go
after the whole bunch of them and he didnt have the time or the energy or the
resources to do that. The orders had come from Kepler to begin with. Towns
would take over from Kepler. Towns was someone Wyatt could make a deal with
that would stick. The money mattered but hed never get the actual two hundred
thousand back. Hed have to screw the money out of the Outfit some other way.

Ounsted was away for almost half an
hour. Wyatt recognised the Peugeots rattling tappets and complaining differential,
and checked the time: 11.02 pm. He clacked a gap in the blind, watched the
doctor park the car, come through the gate, shut the door behind him.

There was the problem of getting to
Sydney, getting at Kepler. It would take time and it would take money. Wyatt
had all the time he needed but his funds were low. He would do what hed done
in the past, hire himself out to a crooked insurance agent or snatch the daily
take of a restaurant in a suburb where nothing much ever happened, the kind of
small-time hit that would earn him a bankroll but no credit at all.

Wyatt slept then, until Ounsted
turned on the bedside light and prodded him awakeonly it wasnt Ounsted, it
was Rose, wearing the doctors hat and coat and holding her own gun in her
hand.

That explained the phone call. Theyd
called Ounsted out of the house and Rose had switched places with him.

Rose stepped clear of the bed and
grinned down at Wyatt. The legend himself. Shame he had to die in bed with his
boots off. She centred the barrel on Wyatts forehead. You can close your
eyes if you like.

She wasnt good at this after all.
She shouldnt have stopped to speak to him. She was letting emotion and competition
get the better of her. She was gloating, letting him know hed lost, letting
him see her, making sure he knew he was going to die and who was pulling the
trigger. It was unprofessional and Wyatt shot her through the bedclothes. There
was a spurt of blood and tissue and she slammed back against the wardrobe, then
forward onto the floor. Her limbs thrashed but, as Wyatt watched, there was a
final heave, an involuntary finger spasm and then she was still.

Wyatt found the keys to the Peugeot
in her coat pocket. He checked that Jardine was sleeping peacefully in the
surgery and a minute later he was in the alley at the rear of Ounsteds house.
He circled the block, saw no one. Rose had come without backup. He was the
hunter now.

* * * *

Thirty-seven

East
Melbourne was leafy, damp and full of shadows, but a hundred metres away some light
leaked into the darkness from the Outfit apartment building. Wyatt checked the
time11.30and settled against the door of Ounsteds car to wait.

Some time later he straightened. He
saw the glass door open and a uniformed doorman touched his cap to a man in a
hooded grey tracksuit. Wyatt didnt know who the jogger was. He only knew that
twice since Mondays meeting he and Jardine had met with Towns late at night
after watching the Mesics, and each time hed seen joggers leave the building.
The jogger padded past the Peugeot and out of sight.

A couple of minutes later a second
jogger came through the door. He got closer. Wyatt had already removed the cars
interior light, so there was nothing to warn the man that the passenger door
was swinging open. He smacked hard against it, the breath gushed from his body,
and Wyatt watched him collapse onto the footpath.

There was no one around. Wyatt got
out, poured ether from Ounsteds surgery onto a handkerchief, and clamped it
over the joggers face. He finished by stripping off the mans tracksuit,
putting it on over his own clothes, and hauling the man into the back of the
car.

He waited. Fifteen minutes later,
the first jogger finished his circuit of the nearby streets and approached the
building. Wyatt slipped out of the car and caught up to him. They ran in place
on the footpath, marking time, Wyatt with the tracksuit hood concealing his
face. He let his breathing sound hoarse and strained. It was a sound of the
city, and as necessary to jogging as two hundred dollar shoes, and it worked.
The first man glanced around at him, nodded abstractedly, rapped on the glass
door a second time. The doorman acknowledged them, the lock clicked open, and
they were in.

The first jogger entered a ground
floor apartment. The lift door was at the far end of the foyer. Staying in
character, Wyatt trotted across the marble floor, pushed the up button, and
touched his toes until the lift arrived.

The door slid open and he stepped
into the lift. The interior walls were mirrors. He was disconcerted to see his
reflection, a hooded figure wearing clothes hed never normally wear. He turned
his back on the mirror, stared out across the foyer, waited for the doors to
close.

The lift was whisper quiet. Wyatt
took out his .38. He was wearing gloves. The lift shook gently to a stop, the
doors pinged open, and he Stepped out into the Outfits little entrance hall
and pushed the gun under the chin of the man called Drew. There was a pair of
suitcases in the bald accountants hands. He froze when Wyatt said, Freeze,
and dropped the cases.

Inside, Wyatt said.

He followed Drew into the apartment.
Apart from Towns, who was in one of the bedrooms stacking shirts in a suitcase,
the place was empty. He pushed both men face down onto the floor. You seem to
be leaving in a hurry.

Towns said, as if that explained it,
Rose hasnt come back.

Wheres Hami?

Fetching the car around.

Towns, we had an agreement. I want
my money back.

Towns twisted his head around to
stare at Wyatt, looking puzzled, his mind working but not finding answers. I
havent got your money.

You knew about the house in
Northcote and sent Rose after us, Wyatt said. She jumped us and took off with
the money.

Towns shook his head. There must be
another player involved. We havent got your money.

So she was acting alone?