Cross Kill

Twelve

Wyatt needed a bed for the night and he needed a safe passage to Sydney, but the Outfit was a threat on both counts. He didn’t think they’d have the clout to cover every hotel, every booking office, but he didn’t want to test it. He killed time in a cinema then found a bar in a side street and nursed a Scotch, thinking it through, Renting a car was out, sitting behind a wheel for ten hours on a highway where the fuel tankers jackknifed and jobless rural kids tried to end it all by steering into the oncoming traffic. That’s also why he wouldn’t hitchhike-that and the fact that he liked to have more control when he was on the move. He could change his face, but that required time and a bolthole, and he was running out of both. He couldn’t fly-the Outfit would concentrate its energies on the check-in counters. If he wasn’t so broke, he’d charter a plane and avoid the normal passenger formalities, but his funds were low and he’d need all of it to bankroll his hit on the Mesics. That left a bus or a train-assuming the Outfit didn’t have city terminal staff on its payroll or hadn’t brought extra people down from Sydney to find him now that he’d been spotted.

‘Same again, sir?’ the barmaid said.

Wyatt had been staring past her, sitting as still as a tombstone, his concentration absolute. He knew he couldn’t walk to Sydney, or swim or flap his arms or somehow materialise there, so he went through the options again, looking for holes.

He found one, blinked and smiled.

‘It moves, it breathes, it’s alive,’ the barmaid said.

Wyatt was aware of her watching him after that, polishing glasses, one eyebrow hooked, ready to banter with him. He guessed that she bantered with everybody, it was second nature to her, but something told him that banter was only part of her act this time. She seemed to like him and, as evening approached, he felt drawn to her. When finally he grinned, her face grew watchful and anticipatory. It was an engaging face, smart and humorous. She moved easily and well as she worked. An hour later he had a bed for the night.

Her name was Marion and she lived in cluttered comfort in an East Preston weatherboard house. The floor seemed to dip dangerously under Wyatt’s feet, and doors sprang open as he walked past them, but the central heating had kicked in an hour earlier and immense cushions and bright fabrics gave the house a cheery edge. A child’s hectic drawings were stuck to the refrigerator but Marion, brewing tea in the light of a candle and touching Wyatt’s arm from time to time as she moved about the kitchen, said nothing about having a child. She was frank and generous and uncomplicated, and had little to say to him at all.

Until, curled next to him on a sofa, she said idly, ‘Are you on the run?’

He stared at her. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘No car. You’re travelling light. You don’t strike me as completely broke, or too mean to pay for a motel.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘I’d say you genuinely want to be with me, but you also need a bed for the night, somewhere safe.’

He shrugged, and she put her hand on his chest as though to shut him up. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I know you’re in trouble-I’m just trusting that none of it’s going to follow you here, into my house.’

Afterwards, when she fell instantly asleep in her big bed, he watched her for a while on his elbow and the strain of his chosen life began to look absurd to him.

She remained asleep when he got up on Wednesday morning. He showered, dressed, consumed toast and coffee and touched her neck goodbye, and she remained asleep through all of it, as though she felt safe. He pocketed her keys and left a note telling her where she could find her car. Then he heard the front gate scrape open.

Wyatt stiffened. Before he could act, a key moved in the front door lock and a man pushed a small child ahead of him into the house. If this was the boy’s father, he was a sulky-looking specimen, ginger-haired and sleep-bleary, wearing bright new stretch jeans that gave the appearance of strangling his genitals and stomach. His hair was uncombed, he was badly shaven, and he threw a gym bag and a bundle of sodden sheets onto the floor at his son’s feet.

‘See how your mother likes it for a change.’

Then he saw Wyatt and a look born of ignorance and vicious poverty soured his face. ‘Oh that’s fucking terrific. Terrific example for my kid.’

The man slammed the door and was gone. Wyatt and the boy stared at one another. Wyatt fitted a smile to his face but dropped it when he realised that the boy was gulping for breath. No more than eight years old, his thin chest heaving, his hand struggling to release the clothing binding his neck, the boy seemed suddenly close to death.

‘Medicine?’ Wyatt said.

The boy turned painfully, pointed to the gym bag. Wyatt zippered it open. Among the tangled shirts and pants he found an asthma spray, pale blue plastic the size of a man’s hooked thumb. The child snatched it from him, fitted one end to his mouth, sucked greedily. He stood for a moment, swaying, his eyes closed. Wyatt held him, one big hand on each side of the boy’s waist. New sensations swept through him briefly, feelings close to attachment and affection.

‘Okay now?’

The boy nodded.

‘Want to get into bed with your mum?’

The boy nodded again and Wyatt led him by the hand down the tilting hallway floor.