Pay Dirt

THIRTY-NINE

He lay there for thirty-six hours. Happy checked on him from time to time, giving him water and food. They had their shorthand conversations but Happy wouldn’t be drawn. Wyatt gave up trying to turn the big man against Trigg and lay in the darkness, adjusting to the silence.

His sleep was fitful. He felt cold during the night and the thin mattress was uncomfortable. On Sunday morning when Happy came to check on him he complained about it. ‘Some cushions or a chair, Hap.’

What Happy did with his face was close to a grin. ‘Not worth it,’ he said.

Wyatt shrugged. ‘Tell me, Hap-how will you do it? Dig another pit?’

Happy shook his massive head. ‘Accident. Hallam Gorge.’

Hallam Gorge was an ugly buckling of the earth’s plates a few kilometres north of Goyder. Wyatt had driven around it one day when he was working with Brava Construction’s surveyor. At one point the road narrowed and all that lay between it and a sheer drop of half a kilometre was a white guard rail. He knew what Trigg and Happy had in mind now and he could see the appeal of it. There would be no one around when they left later that night. On Monday morning someone would see the hole in the guard rail and call the cops. The cops would find the wreckage of the truck and the van at the bottom, Wyatt’s body at the wheel. They’d be able to close this part of the investigation. They’d assume Wyatt had been holed up in the area and was pulling out again when he misjudged a curve and ran off the road. They’d assume that left only the guard, and he would have the money. They’d go through the usual channels, checking flight lists, putting the guard’s photo on the wire. They’d trace Wyatt back to Brava-that’s if he had any skin left on his face after plunging half a kilometre down a cliff face.

‘Where’s Trigg?’ he asked.

‘Home.’

‘Nice place? Does all right for himself does he, while you live in a shithole?’

Happy’s features grew a few degrees warmer. ‘I got simple tastes,’ he said as he went out.

Trigg turned up late on Sunday afternoon, checked on Wyatt, left him in darkness again. Wyatt could sense the decent people of the little city settling into sleep in front of their TV screens. Work tomorrow. Early to bed.

At 2 am, when the night was at its blackest, Trigg and Happy came to get him. Trigg held the.38 on him while Happy clasped his arms. Parked outside the doors of the shipping container was a roomy, late model family sedan with a sloping rear window. The boot was open.

‘Get in,’ Trigg said.

‘I get claustrophobic’

‘Get in.’

Happy pushed Wyatt’s head down and shoved him hard. His thighs hit the lip of the boot. He fell forward, feeling Happy lift his legs and tumble him into the boot. Then the lid slammed behind him and he was in darkness again.

He lay there listening. The two men walked away from the car. He heard a steel door opening and a minute later he heard the uneven note of a diesel motor. It made a series of short snarls: Happy was backing it out of the panel-beating shed. Then the steel door crashed shut and footsteps approached the car. The car rocked a little as someone got in and shut the door. The engine started and they were moving.

The boot had been vacuumed recently. There was a faint pine perfume in the coarse fibres of the carpet under Wyatt. He began to search with his hands, running them into the corners. Nothing. No tools, jack or wheel brace. He knew the spare tyre was in a recessed space under him but he took up most of the floor so he couldn’t prise up the flap. He didn’t think he’d find anything anyway. He tried the lock next. All he got out of that was grease on his fingers. And then the air around him began to shake and pound, lush and insistent. Jennifer Rush, ‘The Power of Love.’ That figured; that was the sort of cassette tape Trigg would own.

Wyatt reached up. The speakers were set in the wide shelf between the back seat and the big, sloping rear window. The shelf was made of some cheap, manufactured material. He could feel the vibrations in his fingers.

Wyatt approached the problem laterally. He couldn’t get out of the car but he could go further in. He pushed upwards experimentally. He felt the shelf bend slightly. He waited through a pause between songs and explored the underside of the shelf until he found the holding screws. In time with the thudding bass he kicked at the area around the screws, stopping occasionally to test his progress.

The shelf was tearing away from the screws.

When the shelf was moving freely he got into position. Stealth had got him this far. Now it was force all the way. The leads would tear away from the rear speakers but the front door speakers would continue to work. He waited while a song ended and another began. The opening bars were heavy and pounding. Wyatt heaved upwards, flipping the rear shelf down over the seat back, and dived through to the space behind Trigg.

The little man turned partway around in shock, then tried to dig into his pocket with his free hand. ‘Forget it,’ Wyatt said, clamping his forearm around Trigg’s neck. He reached down and retrieved the.38. The car swerved violently into the oncoming lane and back again. Wyatt increased the pressure on Trigg’s larynx, released him, squeezed him again. ‘Stop the car.’

Trigg steered off the road and pulled on the handbrake. Wyatt tickled the little man’s ear with the.38. ‘Turn that crap off.’

With the music gone the only sounds were the wind over the car and Trigg’s frightened breathing. Trigg spoke first. ‘We can work something out.’

Wyatt ducked his head and peered through the windscreen. There were red tail-lights in the darkness ahead of them. They went in and out of sight as the road dipped and turned between the black crops on either side.

Wyatt didn’t want Happy to see that the headlights behind him were no longer moving. ‘Turn the lights off.’

‘Look, I can cut you in on some great action.’

‘Turn the lights off.’

Trigg swung uselessly around at Wyatt. ‘Do it,’ Wyatt said.

When the lights were off he said, ‘Get out.’

Trigg had his door open a couple of seconds before Wyatt and he was twenty metres down the road, going hard, when Wyatt shot him. The bullet was like a punch in the back and Trigg sprawled face down on the road.

Wyatt picked up the body and put it in the front passenger seat. By now a minute had gone by and Happy would be wondering why instead of intermittent lights behind him there were none. Wyatt started the car and put his foot down.

He caught up with the truck a minute later and settled in close behind it. They travelled like that for ten minutes until he saw the truck’s brake lights go on. Happy was turning into a lay-by. Wyatt followed in the car. A couple of road signs flared briefly in the headlights. Sharp curves ahead, they warned. Falling rocks.

Wyatt put the headlights on high beam and angled the car at the flank of the truck. He sat Trigg’s body upright behind the steering wheel then stepped to the back of the car. He watched Happy get down from the truck cabin. The headlights were blinding the big man. He ducked his head as he approached the car and put his arm across his eyes. He was blinking, trying to get a response out of the little man who’d been his boss, when Wyatt shot him in the back of the head.

This was the final stage of a heist gone wrong but that didn’t change the way that Wyatt went about it. He handled the steps one at a time, covering himself. He wiped his prints off the gun and tossed it away. He robbed the bodies and dragged them to the blind side of the truck and turned on the parking lights so no one would get too nosy. On his way back through Goyder he stopped to wipe his prints off Letterman’s Valiant. Much later he passed within a few kilometres of Leah’s house but he didn’t think about her. He might later, when he’d got his money back from the Mesics and there were no more hired guns on his back.