Free The Heat by Garry Disher Page A

Noosa Parade and looped around again. Leah Quarrell had sent him to the world of holidaymakers on modest incomes. Even the river view apartments were unobtrusive—albeit worth up to a million each on the open market. Very little through traffic, and plenty of exits for a man on the run: the river itself, the inland waterways, Noosa Parade at either end of the crescent.
    He idled outside the apartment block that faced the street, eyeing the pebbly white main wall set with an electronic gate. Through the metal bars of the gate he could see parking bays under the building, and glimpsed the concrete steps that took residents to the upper levels. He looked across the top of the wall, seeing palm tree fronds reaching to the little rear balconies of each apartment. If forced to escape, he could knot sheets and blankets into an escape rope, he supposed; the palms were too small, their tops too flimsy, to shimmy down.
    As he watched, curtains stirred in the breeze. Bathing suits and towels flapped on portable drying racks. A woman shook out a bright beach towel and draped it over her railing. On another balcony, a pair of propped feet swayed slowly. Their owner was thinking, perhaps, or listening to music.
    The feet reassured Wyatt. Leaving the Mazda parked at the kerb, he plonked a baseball cap on his head and climbed a patch of sloping lawn to the office at the base of the riverside apartments, where a woman was stacking brochures in a wire rack.
    Looking diffident, he said, ‘An apartment’s been reserved for me in the name of Sandford.’
    ‘Oh, yes, Leah just rang to confirm.’
    She found the reservation on her computer screen and began to type. While he waited, Wyatt eyed the room: a door to the manager’s apartment on the back wall, a computer with wi-fi for the guests to use, DVDs and tennis racquets for hire, racks of tourist brochures, a library of well-thumbed paperbacks, some in Dutch and German. A small TV tuned to the football, hopes pinned on the Brisbane Lions winning through to the grand final next weekend. He could hear kids hitting a ball around down on the tennis court. A car creeping by on the crescent. Watching it without appearing to, he saw it enter the driveway of a house on the other side of the road. Heard the office computer ping as an email came in.
    They were normal sight and sounds. He relaxed minutely, even though he was never fully relaxed. Nothing bad ever happened here, he supposed. Apartment crockery got broken, a toilet might flood, kids forget to return their tennis racquets. The barbecue heroes might fail to clean the outdoor hotplates. That was about all.
    The manager pulled a few brochures from the racks but Wyatt stopped her with a smile. ‘The wife and kids are baking in the car,’ he explained. ‘Better get them indoors and unpacked before I’ve got a riot on my hands.’
    It disarmed the woman, told her he was a respectable father and husband. About thirty, she wore a plain short-sleeved shirt that showed plenty of tanned skin, plenty of gold on her fingers, wrists and neck. He saw a woman comfortable with her body, in love with the sun and the air on her skin. A Queensland woman. ‘Of course, Mr Sandford,’
she said. ‘Flat 53.’
    She handed him an apartment key, an external balcony door key and a remote for the gate. Wyatt returned to his hire car, pressed a button and drove in, joining six other vehicles: three hire cars, two private sedans, a Nissan Patrol with roof racks. He slid into the slot for 53, hemmed in by a concrete column and the Patrol, and climbed the steps to his apartment. He encountered no one. The kids on the tennis court and in the pool paid him no attention.
    The outer door to 53 opened onto a balcony set with a glass-topped table, chairs and an air-conditioning unit. Palm tree fronds filtered the light, as if he were stepping into an airy cavern. Below him were the pool, courts and garden, a fence leading to the caravan park, and the river beyond it,