Free Wyatt - 01 - Kick Back by Garry Disher

Bauer in action this afternoon had left him feeling unsettled
and excited. Bauer had the right idea.

    Monday night bouncer? Collector of
small debts? No input into planning? Fuck that. One swift, clean, impressive
hit, thats all hed need.

    He finished work at one oclock. By
one-thirty he was sitting in the Customline in the car park of the Housing
Commission flats in Racecourse Road. Hobba lived on the eighth floor, but
Sugarfoot didnt go up to check it out. Too many ethnics about. Leave your car
unattended and theyd strip it. Look twice at them and theyd knife you.

    Sugarfoot started the Customline and
drove out of the car park and across to a long, narrow street in Brunswick. He
looked sourly at the houses. They were small workers bungalows, but the street
was well on the way to becoming yuppie heaven. Already there were brass
numerals and restored verandahs. Pedersens weatherboard was set amid tidy
garden beds and gravel paths. Gloomy fruit trees dominated the back yard.

    Sugarfoot sat for a while. There was
no sign of life, but he didnt expect there to be. If Hobba and Pedersen did
have something planned with Wyatt, and if it hadnt happened yet, their daytime
movements might be the key. Meanwhile, finding out where they lived was all part
of the groundwork.

    Sugarfoot drove home and set the
alarm for eight oclock. Fucking terrible hour but he was treating Tuesday as
the first day of the rest of his life.

    * * * *

    Fifteen

    Before
going for the guns on Tuesday morning, Wyatt checked out of the Gatehouse. He
never spent more than one night in a place when he was setting up a job. He
checked into a cheap hotel nearby, put his remaining cash in a money belt
around his waist, and entered the Underground at Parliament Station. He caught
a train that went through Burnley. Out of habit he sat at the end of the
carriage, where he had a clear view of the aisle and the entry and connecting
doors. He kept his hand on the knife in his pocket. That was habit, too. But
knives were useful. People respected the swift threat of a blade where a gun or
a raised fist simply flustered them.

    The carriage was almost empty. Two
men, one elderly, the other about forty, sat near the middle doors. Three
middle-aged women were going home with their shopping. Wyatt listened to them
comparing the hairdressing salons in Myer and David Jones. Two young Vietnamese
men, quick and glittering, sat at the far end of the carriage. Across from
Wyatt was an overweight teenage mother wearing stretch jeans and scuffed
moccasins. She had trouble keeping still, and shouted rather than spoke
endearments to a squawling child in a pusher. There was graffiti on the
windows, the script bold and mocking.

    He got off at Burnley Station and
stood at the timetable board watching others get off, watching for lingerers.
He saw the young mother light a cigarette and shake the pusher. She joined a
huddle of people at the exit gate, people who could easily be her parents,
siblings, neighbours. They disappeared into the flat, exhausted streets. Sour
poverty and contention and mindless pride, Wyatt thought. Hed grown up in a
suburb like this. Everyone had talked solidarity, but hed never seen it.

    Other trains came in and pulled out
again. He left the station and walked to Cowper Road, a narrow street of sodden
workers cottages and grimy workshops. Cars heaved across small craters in the
road surface, throwing up gouts of oily water.

    Number twenty-nine was a
corrugated-iron shed about thirty metres deep. A sign above the door said
Burnley Metal Fabricators. On a smaller sign was the word office and an arrow
that pointed left to a turn-of-the-century cottage which shared a wall with the
shed.

    Apart from the patchy lawn and a
chained Alsatian on the verandah, there was no sign of life at the cottage. The
curtains were imitation lace. Steel bars secured the windows. Keeping a wary
eye on the Alsatian, Wyatt mounted the steps to the door. The dog opened and
closed an eye