Free Wyatt - 06 - The Fallout by Garry Disher Page B

hand jerked involuntarily, scattering
the hamburger. A kind of sulky defiance and embarrassment showed on his face.
He sniggered. Wyatt knew exactly what it meant. The boy was saying, Missed
me but I wouldnt have minded if youd run me down. Death or food
and a warm bed in hospital would be better than the life Ive got. Wyatt
felt that he knew the boy. His home was a place where you got smacked about the
head and thrown across the room. Where a belt buckle drew your blood for no
reason at all. It was a pathology Wyatt recognised.

    Grief settled in him, dull and dark.
Wyatt and his brother had had uncles when they were kids. One after the
other. Those men hadnt stayed for long. They didnt want a couple of kids
hanging around. They were bitter and afraid and their only solace was to witness
fear in the two boys. Wyatt had made sure that they never saw it in him. His
brother hadnt been so lucky. Wyatts brother had absorbed all of that
bitterness and it had erupted when he had a son of his own, Raymond.

    Wyatt glanced at his watch. Almost
lunchtime. He decided to call in at his mail drop, a dingy barbershop on the
other side of the downtown area of the little city. When he got there, the
barber said, almost relishing it, Nothing. Wyatt shrugged. He hadnt really
been expecting mail or messages. He crossed back to the waterfront, climbed the
Kelly Steps into Battery Point.

    Wyatt lived on the ground floor of a
squat, tan brick and white stucco block of flats overlooking the Derwent. Hed
been there for a year, in this city where no-one knew him, where no-one cared
that he came and went once a month or so, where no-one connected his movements
with a rifled office safe in Toorak, a hallway stripped of Streetons in
Vaucluse, an empty jewellery box on the Gold Coast.

    A man called Frank Jardine had put
these jobs together for him, but Jardine was dead now, and Wyatt would have to
go back to putting his own jobs together.

    He turned left at the top of Kelly
Street, crossed over and began to wind his way through the little streets, over
the hump of Battery Point, toward the down slope on the other side. Wyatt was a
good burglar, but only if he had a shopping list, and was acting on information
supplied by someone like Jardine. His chief talent lay in hitting banks and
payroll vans, hitting hard and fast with a team of experts. A wasted talent
now, for all of the experts were gone. He still got sweet invitations from
time to time, but knew that it was better to stay put than to make a mistake;
better to reject the sweet money than risk his life or his freedom.

    So, how sweet was Raymonds art
heist?

    Wyatt unpacked his bag and rested.
That evening he made his way back to a bistro in Salamanca Place. He ordered
wine and pasta, then coffee. In the old days there had been experts he could
work with, men who could drive, bypass a security system, crack a safe, all
without a shot being fired. Now there were only youngsters with jumpy eyes and
muscle twitches, in need of a fix, their brains fried, as likely to shoot dead
a cop or a nun as Wyatt himself if they felt mean enough, or paranoid enough,
or heard enough voices telling them to do it. Or they talked too much before
the job, boasting in the pub to their mates or their girlfriends, who then
whispered it to the law.

    He finished eating and walked back,
misty rain blurring the street lights. As a potential partner, Raymond looked
pretty good to Wyatt. It was in this frame of mind, assessing, reflective, that
Wyatt let himself into his flat and into trouble.

    * * * *

    Twelve

    He
should have taken a moment to clear his head before going in. He should have
looked, waited, thought, had a back-up plan ready, a way out.

    For when he let the door close
behind him, flicking on the light as he did so, all he got was the sound of the
switch. The darkness was absolute.

    Then an arm went around his neck and
the twin barrels of a shotgun, apparently cut short with a hacksaw, tore the
skin at