Pay Dirt

TWENTY-SIX

Then he turned around. ‘Leah,’ he said.

He made the word sharp and clear, to get her attention. She was looking down, paralysed, at Snyder. People see killings on films all the time, but it never prepares them for the real thing. The real thing- even one man punching another-is shocking: the sound, the suddenness and emptiness. Wyatt didn’t want her to slide into depression again. He had to snap her out of it ‘Leah.’

She continued to look down at the body. ‘Just like that.’

‘He was going to kill us.’

She gestured helplessly. ‘Everything’s changed.’

‘Nothing’s changed. We bury him first, that’s all.’

‘Where?’

‘The farm, fuck it. We can’t leave him out here, and we can’t risk carting him around.’

At that moment, the Steelgard driver called in again, gabbling a little as if relieved to be near the end of the line. ETA Belcowie, fifteen minutes.

Wyatt turned the radio off. He had to get Leah moving, get her thinking about survival, not emotions. ‘Grab his feet.’

‘His feet?’

‘Help me put him in the ute. Grab his feet.’

He thought she might lose it again. Her face was strained. But then she bent down, grabbed Snyder’s feet, and they lifted together. It brought the colour back to her face. They tumbled Snyder into the tray and Wyatt unzipped the sleeping bags and covered the body. Then he hauled the bike onto its wheels. Fuel had sloshed onto the road and the engine was smeared with dirt but it started immediately, smoking a little before it cleared.

‘You go on ahead,’ he said, ‘while I pick up the road signs. Call me on the radio if you see anything that shouldn’t be there.’

Her face changed again. She seemed to recoil from him. ‘No thanks, I’m going home. I don’t need this.’

She put on her helmet and swung her leg over the bike. Wyatt didn’t say anything. He watched her go. He put her out of his mind then and got into the utility and drove to the far end of the short cut. He found the road sign where Tobin had tossed it into the grass. He loaded it, turned around and doubled back.

This was automatic, taking care of the loose ends. He did it calmly and systematically. Behind it he was thinking hard. Steelgard’s route change bothered him. So did the business with Snyder. He turned on the radio again.

The drive back to the turn-off took him five minutes. He got out, collected the other road sign, and tossed it into the back of the utility. Seven minutes. He turned left onto the main road and accelerated toward the tin-hut corner. Eleven minutes. He felt uneasy, then realised why. There should have been something on the radio by now.

That’s when the voice erupted, tinged with worry. ‘Steelgard One, this is Goyder Base, are you receiving me, over?’

Wyatt leaned forward, listening, imagining the dispatcher hunched over the transmitter dials.

‘Steelgard One, this is Goyder Base, your position please, over.’

There was real concern in the voice now. Wyatt drove on, picturing it from their end. Goyder Base would continue to call the van, but by now they would also be talking to the Brava pay officer in Belcowie. They would spend a couple of minutes debating whether or not it was too soon to call the cops. The cops would spend a few minutes asking questions before deciding to send a car out. It would take the cops thirty minutes to arrive and begin the search.

Perhaps forty minutes altogether. Leah would be okay. She’d be long gone by then. Wyatt slowed, turned the utility around and retraced the van’s route past the turn-off. He took it slowly. He knew how deceptive an open country road could be. There are always haystacks, fire-water tanks, clumps of trees, ditches and roadside farm buildings along them. He slowed to a walking pace whenever he passed one of these, accelerating again when he saw there was no Steelgard van sheltering there.

The most likely place was a side road. He stopped and got out at the first two. There were tracks, but not the tracks he remembered seeing left by the van on the short cut a week ago.

He found the answer at the third side road. A detour sign had been tossed into the grass. The dirt was powdery, registering clearly the tyre tracks of a heavy vehicle. Wyatt remembered from the maps that this track came out four kilometres south of Belcowie.

He went in. He didn’t find the van, but he found where it had stopped. Found the fat driver sprawled in the ditch, the back of his head shot away.