Kick Back

Thirty-eight

The big Customline was parked in the street. The road surface under it was bone-dry, indicating that it had been there for some time. The house itself looked to be vacant, an impression encouraged by the peeling window frames and verandah posts and the expensive renovation of the houses on either side of it.

Wyatt rapped the front door knocker. When there was no answer, he walked around to the back of the house. Out of habit he looked in the two sheds built against the back fence. One contained newspapers stacked for recycling, the other a workbench and a number of bicycle spare parts.

The back door key was under a bluestone block that supported a terracotta pot of herbs. Wyatt turned the key softly and let himself into the house. He stood, listening, for two minutes, then began a rapid search of the rooms on both floors.

He rejected the common living areas and two of the bedrooms-one because it clearly belonged to a womaer because he doubted that Surgarfoot subscribed to bush-walking magazines.

That left a elarge front room on the first floor. It was dimly lit, the air heavy with an atmosphere of cloaked obsessions. Among the pulp novels in the bookcase were sets of American handgun magazines and several large folios on weaponry from remainder bookshops. One shelf was crammed with war and western videos, heroes posed like gods on the covers. There was a small desk under the window. The drawers were locked. Against one wall was a large, gloomy wardrobe. It, too, was locked. Wyatt looked under the bed. He saw a padlocked chest but didn’t bother to drag it out or force the lock. He had a good idea what he’d find.

He went downstairs again. He locked the back door behind him, put the key under the bluestone block, and walked around to the front of the house.

A voice demanded, ‘Who are you?’

The woman had just come home. She had a sharp, unhappy face and stiff, chopped white hair. A badge on her overalls said, ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.’ She glared at Wyatt. ‘What do you want?’

‘I’m after Sugarfoot. I did knock,’ Wyatt said, ‘then I went to see if he was around the back.’

‘Are you a friend of his?’

Wyatt watched her. She was hostile, but not towards him, so he said, ‘Not exactly. He owes me some money.’

Her lip curled. ‘That would be right. You could try his brother’s place. He said he was going there to pick up a bookshelf. But that was this morning.’ She fished in her pocket for the front door key. ‘If you see him,’ she said, ‘tell him to bring back my Kombi now, or I’m reporting it stolen.’ She slammed the door.

Wyatt left. In Carlton, and again in Footscray, he encountered heavy football traffic. The victors’ cars seemed to ride high in the fast lane and flow with the green lights, streaming ribbons and scarves. The losers were miserably bunched in family sedans. They progressed in frustrating short surges. Glowering fathers slapped at legs in the back seat. Then it began to rain and a car clipped a bus and Wyatt was stalled in banked-up traffic. The city was moving uselessly, resentfully, into Saturday evening.

By six o’clock he was parked in the alley behind Bargain City. The rear door was locked. He walked around to the street entrance. Metal screens secured the door and windows. There were no lights on. All life seemed to be centred on the video shop and the takeaway cafй. Wyatt returned to his car, pursued by gusts of music, film images, vinegar sharp on fish and chips.

He was covering bases. He drove the two kilometres to Ivan Younger’s house. Ivan liked to say, ‘Footscray is where I was born, it’s where I operate from, it’s where I belong,’ as if he saw himself as a godfather living among his people. His sprawling 1950s brick and tile house was set on a large block of land in a street of workers’ cottages. A high bluestone wall, topped with broken glass, surrounded the house and grounds. Above the steel entrance gate was a security camera. Wyatt stayed clear of the gate, guessing that it would be locked. He stood where he could see through to the house. It appeared to be in darkness.

Just then a child appeared on the footpath. She wore a parka and was clumping home from the corner shop on rollerskates. Her movements were clumsy. She needed her arms for balance, but held them tight against her body, supporting milk cartons and a breadstick. Where the footpath dipped to allow car access to Younger’s gate, she began to lose her balance. She stumbled, clown-like, against the gate.

It swung inwards. The girl, clinging to the vertical bars, swung with it, her skates scooting out from under her, milk and bread tumbling out of her grasp. Wyatt watched her fall onto her stomach.

It was awkward, unexpected, painful. She began to cry. Wyatt saw her turn onto her back, sit up, and test her skates and brush at her knees and elbows. Then she got up, gathered the milk and the bread, and continued shakily along the footpath. He watched her go. There was no-one else in the street.

When she was out of sight he watched the security camera for several minutes. It was the sweep-movement kind, but wasn’t moving. He crossed the road, stepped through the gate, and made his way to the house, avoiding the gravel driveway.

He circled the house once, keeping to the shrubs and trees, and then circled it again, testing doors and windows. The window bars and fancy internal wooden shutters made it difficult for him to see in. All the doors were closed. He didn’t touch them. He assumed they were locked. It was frustrating. Ivan Younger lived alone and he might well be in there, shut away peacefully in an inner room.

Wyatt turned his attention to the garage. The door was open, revealing a shabby Kombi van gleaming dully in the light from the distant street. There was no other vehicle. Wyatt put his palm against the Kombi’s engine panel. It was cold. The doors were locked. He tried the door leading from the garage to the house. It, too, was locked.

He stood for a moment, moodily contemplating the fuse box. It was on the wall of the house, next to the garage door. He opened the grey metal cover, revealing the electricity meter. There was just enough light from the street for Wyatt to see that the power disc was not spinning. Ivan Younger was paranoid about security. He had a camera on the gate and there would be alarms and beams inside the house. These used tiny amounts of power, barely more than a trickle, but enough to register on the meter. The alarm system had been turned off.

Suddenly the disc began to spin. Wyatt froze, and ducked into an area of darkness, expecting lights, alarms, shouting voices.

But nothing happened. He crouched, thinking about it, then realised: the lights and alarms had been turned off but the refrigerator would continue to cut in and out.

Certain now, Wyatt returned to the garage. He found masking tape on a shelf next to twine and tins of glue. Then he walked around to the back of the house. Bathroom windows were always the easiest. He taped over the glass, cracked it with a stone, and removed a broken section near the latch. He reached in, turned the latch, and tugged upwards on the bottom half of the window. Nothing. The window had been locked where the two sections met at the middle. All he could do now was remove the rest of the glass and climb through. He hated doing that. It wasted time, and meant a narrow aperture possibly lined with shards of glass.

Inside the bathroom, Wyatt stood and listened. An old-fashioned clock ticked loudly in the hall. From where he stood in the doorway, he heard nothing else and saw no telltale gleam of light in other parts of the house. It all felt wrong.

This was confirmed in the sitting room. He smelt cordite first, very faint, then saw a human shape in the darkness, in an old armchair facing the television set. Hearing nothing, knowing now that no-one was in the house, Wyatt flicked his torch on and off, long enough to see Ivan Younger’s head slumped on his chest.

He crossed the room and felt for a pulse. There was none. He used the torch again. There was no apparent wound either. He began to feel around the hairline, concentrating on the area where the skull is at its thinnest. That’s where he found it, a small patch of crusted blood. Small calibre, Wyatt thought. Someone who knew what he was doing.