Pay Dirt

EIGHT

That was Wednesday. On Thursday Wyatt woke with the dawn, feeling stiff and bruised from the hard ride the previous afternoon and the unyielding floor that had been his bed. He’d heard rats in the night. This morning there were rat droppings near the sleeping bag. He could smell dust and the damp staleness of the walls and floors. Outside, the sparrows and finches were making a racket, but he didn’t mind that, and the sunlight was soft and warm.

His breakfast was black coffee, sweet and strong, and muesli bars. He explored the area around the house and assessed the surrounding hills. The farmhouse was set higher than he’d remembered it, which was good, for it gave a clear view of the approach roads. There was a way out of the valley behind the farm along a twisting, rutted track. The implement shed had doors on it and room for a couple of vehicles. The house itself was habitable enough to shelter three or four men for a few days.

Wyatt had a delayed getaway in mind. Instead of running, and risking roadblocks, they’d hide in the area until the heat was off. The roadblocks would come down after two or three days, and they’d make their run then.

He washed and shaved in a zinc bucket, put on clean jeans, a leather jacket and the helmet, and rode out of the valley. According to the road and ordinance survey maps that Leah had bought for him in Adelaide, Goyder was seventy kilometres from Belcowie, making it ninety kilometres from the farmhouse. Wyatt didn’t bother with back roads. He headed for the bitumen and made Goyder well before the shops and banks had opened.

Goyder called itself a city, and reinforced the notion with parking meters, three sets of traffic lights and a pedestrian mall. There were branches of Myer and David Jones in the mall, and a convent, a high school, a TAFE college and a hospital on the outer edges. It had fast-food and video joints, and service stations on every corner. Trigg Motors sprawled over an entire block. There were coin barbecues and a Christ-in-the-Manger scene in the memorial park. Goyder was vulgar and it would have been smug if the local landowners had had more money to spend in it.

Wyatt found Steelgard on a street behind Trigg Motors. There was a motor accessories shop opposite, so he propped the bike outside that and watched the Steelgard place in the window reflections. The time was eight o’clock and Steelgard was opening its shutters and doors. He saw people go in the front door, and then the gate at the side was opened, revealing an open garage and a parking apron. As Wyatt watched, drivers got into three of the Steelgard vans and drove them out and across the street to the diesel bowsers at Trigg Motors.

Just then a pimply kid came along the footpath. He stopped next to Wyatt and unlocked the front door of the shop. He wore moleskins, desert boots and a skinny leather tie over a khaki shirt. He smiled at Wyatt. ‘Great day,’ he said.

‘Sure is,’ Wyatt replied. Although he still had the helmet on, he kept his face averted. Who knows, the kid might have a photographic memory.

‘Help you with anythink?’ the kid asked.

‘Just riding through.’

‘Fair enough,’ the kid said, and he went inside and opened up the shop.

Wyatt fired up the Suzuki again, swung round so that he could see the Steelgard place more clearly, and rode out of the city.

He didn’t know where else Steelgard went on Thursdays, but he did know there was only one road out for the van delivering the Belcowie payroll. He waited for it in a layby on the outskirts of Goyder. A fruit and vegetable stall was set up there, so he ate an apple while he waited. The land here was richer than around Belcowie. Small wineries and horse studs patterned the flats and nearby hills.

The Steelgard van went by shortly after eight-thirty. Wyatt gave it a minute, then tossed away the apple and set off after it. He stayed well back. He didn’t use the headlight. If the driver was alert-and Wyatt had to allow for a reasonable degree of alertness-he’d see only a distant, intermittent shape on the road behind, if anything.

By the time the Steelgard van was nearing the end of its run in Belcowie, Wyatt had followed it for three and a half hours. It stopped at eight banks and two building society agencies in nine different towns. Each pick-up and delivery took ten minutes. There was only one other stop, at ten o’clock, when the driver pulled over in a busy town to buy takeaway coffee. The van kept to the speed limit, obeyed all the road rules and stayed on the main roads.

Between stops, Wyatt thought about the van itself. It was the same short-wheel-base Isuzu, with the same two-man crew he’d seen in Belcowie. The bodywork looked to be one-centimetre steel plate. The smoked-glass windows were probably bullet-proof. The rear doors looked more promising. The locks were concealed but the hinges weren’t. They could be prised off with the right tools. The ventilators also looked promising. If he could be sure that Steelgard was too lax to carry gasmasks, he’d try dropping tear gas down the ventilators.

He recalled other security van snatches that he’d pulled. There had been the time his gang came in underneath, forcing a way through the mesh floor of the van, and the time they’d forced a way through the engine bay to gas the driver. Both methods had worked, but required time and a great deal of effort, starting with detour signs to lure the van somewhere quiet, and experts to work the expensive, noisy cutting gear.

But you couldn’t rely on using the same method twice. The security firms had got wise. Soon drivers were always varying the route and never straying off the main roads. If confronted with a detour sign they radioed in for the okay before taking it. The vans themselves became harder to penetrate. Wyatt had heard of concealed aerials in the wing mirrors, sirens that could wake the dead, sonar tracking signals and complete shutdowns where the brakes locked and none of the doors would open.

He wondered if Steelgard had moved up to that kind of protection. He doubted it somehow. But that didn’t mean it would be easy. He still had to find a way in. There was still the radio link the van would maintain with the Goyder base. There were still witnesses to consider. The main roads here couldn’t be called busy, but even one car every five minutes was one car too many.

The solution to the problem of witnesses presented itself on the last stage of the Steelgard run. Wyatt was following the van along a firm dirt road that looped around to Belcowie when he saw flaring brake lights and a back-up of dust. The van was turning off the good dirt road and onto a lesser dirt road. It was taking a short cut.

Wyatt throttled back. He didn’t go in but stopped to examine the van’s tyre tread pattern in the dust. He would follow again next Thursday. If they used the same route he would hit them the following week.

The way into the money itself he’d worry about later. The van’s radio was a different matter. He’d call Melbourne tonight, ask Eddie Loman to send him someone who’d have the equipment and know-how to jam it.