Pay Dirt

FIVE

The keys were in the ignition of Trigg’s LTD so Wyatt took that rather than waste time hot-wiring one of the rust buckets in the used-car lot. He headed north from Belcowie, driving the big car punishingly, feeling it bounce and shudder on the torn-up roads. He lost control at one point, spinning around in gravel and slamming against a strainer post. It slowed him down. The side panel had buckled, scraping the front tyre, and he limped into Terowie, a small town on the Broken Hill road. General MacArthur had stopped there once, in 1942; that was all Wyatt knew about the place.

Within five minutes he had stolen another car. He drove south this time, keeping to the main road. In Riverton he stole a third car. The closer he got to Adelaide, the more civilised the landscape seemed to become. The towns were closer together, the farms less wind- and sun-blighted. But he was afraid of roadblocks. At Tarlee he headed across to Nuriootpa and wound through the small towns, wineries and sleepy tourist roads of the Barossa Valley. Then, hoping they’d think he was aiming for Melbourne, he turned south-east and drove to Murray Bridge. He dumped the third car there and caught an Adelaide train, getting off in the Adelaide Hills.

He walked the final ten kilometres to Leah’s house, taking small back roads which were choked on either side with blackberry bushes. Soon his heart stopped hammering. The hills reminded him of the small farm on the Victorian coast which he’d been forced to abandon a few weeks earlier. There were the same orchards and fat white sheep, the same geometric patterns of roads, paddocks, hedges and townships. Only the sea was missing. He breathed in and out, almost enjoying himself.

He let the tension run out of his body and started to think about the chinks he’d identified in the Steelgard operation. Wyatt didn’t take foolish risks. Having a shot at the Belcowie payroll now would be risky but he thought he could make it a calculated risk. He acknowledged the element of frustration in his motives, but frustration wasn’t an emotion he had much time for.

Wyatt was forty years old. Respectable men his age were marking time until their retirement. The hard men his age were dead or in gaol. Wyatt was different. He’d never been burdened by doubt, uncertainty or personal ties. He worked from an emotionless base. He could cut to the essentials of a job and stamp his cold hard style on it.

The essentials of this job were clear-the Steelgard operation was vulnerable, at least on the Belcowie run. The guards were careless and lazy, the delivery itself unvarying and insecure. He’d have to change the how and the where, though. Belcowie and the Brava camp would be in a state of tension for the next few weeks.

A car changed down to first gear behind him and began to labour up the hill. He stepped off the road and into a clump of trees. The vehicle came into view, a faded green Land Rover with dogs and fencing wire in the back.

When it had gone, he continued walking. Ten minutes later he came to the little town where Leah lived. It was called Heindorf and revealed the German influence in its cottagey stone houses, painted wood trims and European trees.

He stood at the end of her street and crouched as if to tie his shoelaces. He couldn’t see anything that shouldn’t be there. The cars were the same ones he’d seen a few weeks ago. No one was about. He stood up, entered the street, and walked to the end. Leah’s house was halfway along. Everything looked all right. He turned the corner. The street backed onto a small pine forest. He climbed through a wire fence, circled behind the first row of trees, and stopped at the rear of Leah’s house. He checked for life in the neighbouring houses. No windows were visible, only fences and backyard fruit trees. It was early evening. Here and there a light was on.

Leah was squatting with a trowel at the edge of a strawberry patch when he cleared her back fence. He landed neatly and crouched, as still as a spooked cat in the twilight. She didn’t seem surprised to see him; she merely stabbed the trowel into the black soil and stood up.

‘It was on the six o’clock news,’ she said, brushing her hands on her jeans.

‘Immigration?’

She nodded. ‘They detained eight of Jorge’s Chileans.’

‘Anything about me?’

‘Only that one man had escaped in a stolen car,’ Leah said.

Then she looked bitter. ‘I had to tell my girls to pull out. The feds were getting nosy.’ She shook her head. ‘It was a goldmine while it lasted.’

She was getting depressed. Wyatt knew her well enough to read the signs. She’d sometimes fall into a fatalistic blackness of spirit that might be triggered by some reversal but was never entirely absent from her makeup. She thought of her past as a yoke. She’d been on the game for years, and now she ran girls who’d once been like her. She believed that she’d be happy when she broke out of that pattern. She needed luck, she’d say sometimes. Luck and money.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Wyatt said.

‘That’s what you’re good at, Wyatt.’

He let it go. He said, ‘I want another crack at the payroll. I need your help.’

He knew that she welcomed action when she got the blues. He watched her. Normally he thought of her as having the kind of grave beauty that didn’t need a smile or other signs of life, but now she grinned. Her nose wrinkled. It altered her entire face.