By Garry DIsher
He could go home now. The heat would be off him. Not that he was risking a computer check of the passenger list: this morning he had paid eight hundred guilders for a passport with the name Ross on it. His own photograph, though, now that he’d made some slight but convincing alterations to his face.
The problem was money. At 2.00 Wyatt walked to the post office on the other side of the canal and spent the remainder of his money calling Melbourne. It was night there, late, but late was the only time you’d catch Milne.
Wyatt didn’t give his name: Milne would know his voice. He said, ‘I’m in Amsterdam.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m coming home.’
‘I see,’ Milne said.
‘I need the fare,’ Wyatt said. A moment later he said, ‘I’m prepared to work for it.’
Milne was silent. Interference crackled softly on the line. Finally he said, ‘Where are you staying?’
Wyatt gave the address and phone number of his pensione.
‘Someone will contact you in a few hours,’ Milne said. ‘Don’t go out.’
‘There are jobs I won’t do,’ Wyatt said.
‘I’m aware of that,’ Milne said.
* * * *
Wyatt returned to the Duyfken and asked Wilhemina for his key. ‘I’m expecting a telephone call,’ he said. ‘It’s important. I’ll be in my room.’
Wilhemina shrugged. It was nothing to do with her. The Duyfken was a place where strangers stayed a short while and muttered on the telephone and slipped out at night. She said, ‘Mr Ross, you must pay for your room.’
‘I’ll pay,’ Wyatt said, turning away from her.
He went upstairs to his room. It was at the front of the building, its smeared window overlooking the street and the canal. Two-thirty. The sun was high, flooding the houses beyond the canal with light. Most had their shutters closed; red geraniums spilled out of every window box. Respectable people lived there. Wyatt saw them buying croissants in the mornings and breadsticks in the evenings and he imagined their lives, their decent narrowness of range. He had nothing against them. He knew them—here and in Melbourne and everywhere else on the globe. They read newspapers that sniffed around crime like eager dogs. Men like Wyatt thrilled and appalled them.
He turned away and stretched out on the bed. He was well known in Melbourne now, but it hadn’t always been like that. Just ten months ago, life had been sweet for him. High-fliers in Brighton, Doncaster, South Yarra, finding themselves short of cash, would contact Milne, who hired Wyatt to burgle their homes for a percentage of the insurance or the reward money. Everyone was happy. But they had been relying on a bent assessor and a bent cop, and when the Fraud Squad eventually set up a job, Wyatt found himself in the frame. He shot and wounded a cop to get out of it. He couldn’t stay in the country after that. Now it was time to go back. Milne had helped him get to Europe, Milne would help him get home again.
He was dozing when Wilhemina tapped on his door. He followed her downstairs to the grubby coin telephone in the hallway next to the reception desk and picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?’
A hectoring man’s voice said, ‘You will be in your room at five o’clock.’
‘Have you got a ticket for me? And I need cash.’
‘Five o’clock,’ the voice said.
At 4.30 Wyatt walked out to one of the sidewalk cafe tables next door to the Duyfken. He sat where he could watch the pensione. Behind him three backpackers were consulting a Baedeker, and an elderly Englishwoman at the next table smiled at him briefly over her Nicolas Freeling. Wyatt stretched out his legs and ordered lager from the waiter. A tourist launch grumbled by on the canal. Somewhere a scooter howled through a back street.
At five o’clock a black Mercedes crept past the Duyfken. It was chauffeur-driven and two men were in the back seat. Wyatt watched as it slowed for the next side street, hugging the kerb as though the driver intended to pull over as soon as he’d turned the corner.
He remained seated until a man appeared at the corner and approached the Duyfken. He was about forty, carrying a briefcase, an overweight, balding pink man obviously distressed by the heat.
Wyatt waited for the man to enter the pensione, then he crossed the street to the path by the canal and sauntered along it until he could see into the side street. The black Mercedes was parked fifty metres down from the corner. The driver was slouched behind the wheel. The second passenger was outside the car, leaning on the boot, smoking a cigarette. Wyatt automatically fixed the man in his mind: a gloomy, pinched face, expensive dark suit, heavy-rimmed glasses, a few wisps of black hair scraped back over his scalp, an air of coldness.
Keeping it casual, Wyatt turned and leaned his forearms on the canal wall. A couple of minutes later, he wandered back the way he’d come.
The sweaty man with the briefcase was arguing with Wilhemina at the reception desk. ‘There,’ she said, pointing at Wyatt.
The man turned. ‘You are Mr Ross?’ It was the voice on the telephone.
‘Come with me,’ Wyatt said. He returned Wilhemina’s level, non-committal expression, took his key from her and led the way upstairs and into his room.
‘You were told to stay here,’ the fat man said. He wiped his face. ‘Won’t you open that window?’
‘Windows have ears,’ Wyatt said. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘This.’ The man opened the briefcase and took out a blue folder fastened with pink ribbon. The words Souvenir of the Rijksmuseum: Modern Drawings were printed on it in Dutch, English, German, French, Spanish and Japanese.
‘Something other than prints for tourists, I guess,’ Wyatt said. He twisted his mouth in what might have been a grin.
‘It is not necessary for you to know what it is,’ the fat man said. He sniffed, holding his large body primly.
Wyatt walked to the door. ‘Then it’s no deal. Get out.’
The man gestured helplessly and wiped the perspiration from his face and neck. ‘Original drawings, not reproductions.’
‘From the Rijksmuseum?’
‘Of course not.’ The big man spoke in a rush: ‘Stolen from private collections. We have a collector in Melbourne.’
‘Show me.’
Wyatt leaned forward. A gust of perspiration hit him as the big man spread the drawings on the bed briefly before bundling them together again and returning them to the folder. The man seemed scared. Wyatt didn’t touch the drawings but he recognised names and styles: Picasso, Grosz, Dali, Nash, Hockney. All were on stiff, heavy, expensive-looking paper.
He said, ‘A customs officer wouldn’t know an original from a print, is that how you figure it?’
The man smiled wetly.
Wyatt said, ‘I deliver these to Milne?’
‘Yes. He will pay you ten thousand dollars.’
‘When do I leave?’
The man took a KLM ticket from his pocket and gave it to Wyatt. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘You’re forgetting something.’
There was distaste on the big man’s face. He took in Wyatt’s slight, quick shape, worn jeans, T-shirt and sandals and said, taking out his wallet, ‘You may have four hundred guilders.’
‘It’s not a handout ,’Wyatt said. ‘This is a job I’m doing for you people.’
* * * *
It was an airport like any other in Europe, a glass, cement and aluminium structure hectic with streaming humanity, public announcements, duty-free shops, the cold, winking green of monitor screens. The airport police resembled soldiers. Some wore pimples and most had the look of men who’d prefer shooting people to watching them.
Wyatt did not check in but sat on a yellow vinyl bench under a plate-glass window, his suitcase next to his feet. The folder of drawings was packed beneath a layer of shirts. At no point had he let his fingers touch it. With the folder were some touristy gifts he’d bought that morning. Here was the traveller, returning to his family.
Wyatt waited, watching the staff at the KLM desk. If there had been a tip-off he hoped to recognise the signs: wary clerks and airport police; authority’s anonymous dark suit and ardent expectation of the quarry in the trap.
As Wyatt watched, KLM opened its counters and queues began to form. He watched for thirty minutes, and saw nothing but unflappable clerks, weary travellers, efficiency. The two airport police nearby yawned and stretched the kinks in their backs.
Ninety minutes till flight time. Wyatt picked up his suitcase and approached the shortest queue—but then, like a man remembering something, he veered left and entered a duty-free shop. He was tense. His heart hammered.
He ignored the shop assistant. She spoke to him in Dutch, and then in English, but Wyatt didn’t hear her. He peered between shelves of fountain pens, intent on the man he’d seen enter the terminal building and walk toward the KLM counters. Tall, receding black hair, a gloomy expression, prosperous-looking in a suit and heavy-rimmed glasses, wearing the same gloomy expression he’d seen in the side street outside the Duyfken less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Time enough later to work out what that might mean. Wyatt nodded absently at the assistant and went into the next shop. He bought a pair of close-fitting gloves and put them on. He went into another shop and bought a second suitcase, similar in size, shape and colour to his other one. In a women’s-wear shop he bought bras, knickers, slips, blouses, a cotton pullover, slacks, a cotton skirt and a black dress, and perfume, tampons and make-up. The woman serving him smiled, a smile that grew tight and hot.
Wyatt didn’t have much time. Still wearing his gloves, he took his purchases into the men’s room, shut himself in a cubicle, and began stripping away the wrappings and price tags. He crumpled the new clothing a little, rubbed floor grime onto the neck and wrists of the blouse, and sprinkled small amounts of talc and perfume onto everything. He repacked the cases. It was cramped in the cubicle. Now and then someone used a washbasin outside. Last call, KLM to Melbourne.
When he had finished, Wyatt walked to the KLM desk and checked in both cases. He watched tensely as the clerk snapped a destination label to the handle of each suitcase and stapled the luggage tags to his ticket. She passed him the ticket and said, smiling tiredly, automatically, ‘Enjoy your flight, sir.’ Wyatt smiled back at her. She was startled by its intensity.
She had given him a middle seat, in the smoking section, but he had been late checking in and he could put up with it. The gloomy-faced man, he noticed, was sitting in the first-class section. It was a long flight. Wyatt dozed. At meal times he drank orange juice, not alcohol. On the last leg of the journey he washed and shaved and relieved his pockets of the airport bus ticket, boarding pass, one luggage tag from his KLM ticket, and other paper scraps related to his flight.
* * * *
Low cloud in Melbourne, the captain announced. Some rain expected; maximum temperature, twelve degrees; estimated time of arrival, 5.30 a.m. local time.
When the plane landed, Wyatt shrugged himself into an old leather jacket and pulled on the gloves. By 6 a.m. three hundred passengers stood in a bottleneck at passport control. The air was chilly and Wyatt shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced around the huge hall. It looked normal enough, the usual range of airport staff working or idling at their jobs and no-one talking much at this hour on a Sunday morning. The man from Amsterdam was far back in the queue.
The officer who examined Wyatt’s passport merely flipped through it and said, ‘Next!’, his manner bored.
Wyatt passed on to the luggage carousel. He felt more tense now, and forced himself to breathe evenly as he waited for the KLM luggage to begin tumbling out. Last on, first off, he thought, and within five minutes he had spotted both his cases. He let them go around twice, occasionally making a play of straightening other people’s jumbled luggage. When he was certain, he selected one of the cases, turned with it, and began walking through the nothing-to-declare exit.
They must have been waiting for him. There was no discernible shift in the atmosphere but, almost immediately it seemed, two men were blocking his way and a customs officer was saying: ‘Is this your case, sir?’
Wyatt said that it was.
The officer hauled it on to a bench. ‘Open it please, sir,’ she said.
It was a cheap black vinyl affair. Wyatt undid the buckled strap, pulled around the zip, and folded back the lid of the case. ‘That’s funny,’ he said, peering in.
The customs officer ignored him. She burrowed into the clothing, found the blue Rijksmuseum folder immediately, opened it and examined the prints. She nodded to the two men. They clasped Wyatt’s elbows and one man said, ‘Will you come with us, please, sir?’
Wyatt said, ‘That’s not my case. You can see it’s not my case.’
‘Just come with us, please, sir.’
They took Wyatt to a small, stale-smelling room and told him to sit down. One man remained in the room, the other left with the black case. The room held an odour of years of fear arid guilt; the dirty white walls seemed to shrill: Someone must have planted it on me. A polished steel lavatory bowl stood in one corner of the room. ‘If they think you’ve swallowed anything,’ an acquaintance told Wyatt once, ‘they’ll wait till you pass it naturally.’
The second man returned with a third man, who carried Wyatt’s suitcase. Cop, Wyatt thought, taking in the polyester shirt, loosened tie and stretched suit trousers. A pen had leaked in the man’s shirt pocket.
‘Mr Ross, is it? My name is Jansen, I’m a detective sergeant. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us how you came by this?’
He held up the Rijksmuseum folder and Wyatt said, ‘Never seen it before.’
Jansen looked tiredly at him. ‘Now I wonder where I’ve heard that before.’
The man at the door sniggered. Wyatt said, ‘I picked up the wrong suitcase. Look at that stuff: bras, dresses.’
‘Is a woman travelling with you?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed.’
‘Why are you wearing gloves?’
‘The cold,’ Wyatt said. ‘I get arthritis, chilblains.’
Jansen nodded. Wyatt could not read the man’s expression, but that was all part of the game, and he half-expected them to start using the tough cop/sympathetic cop routine.
‘I’ll show you,’ Wyatt said, taking out his KLM ticket. By now it was creased and torn.
Jansen scowled at the other men. ‘Did either of you check?’
One of them looked uncomfortable. ‘We were told to watch for—’
‘That will do,’ Jansen said. He took the ticket from Wyatt, muttering, ‘This looks as if it’s been through a wringer.’ He compared the label on the black suitcase with the stub stapled to Wyatt’s ticket. Then he breathed out and it was a sound full of weariness and acceptance. ‘Different number,’ he said.
Wyatt nodded.
Jansen tried to rally. ‘What I’m wondering is,’ he said, ‘was there a second luggage tag stapled to this?’ He held the crumpled ticket to the light. ‘Difficult to tell.’ He looked at Wyatt. ‘Take off your clothes.’
‘Now come on,’ Wyatt said.
‘Quick about it,’Jansen said. ‘You two, search pockets and linings. You’re looking for a luggage claim tag.’
Wyatt stripped off all his clothes and waited, his arms around his chest. ‘Nothing,’ the men said.
‘Get dressed,’ Jansen said. ‘Okay, Mr Ross, describe your luggage to me.’
‘It’s a case similar to this one,’ Wyatt said, except the knickers fit.’
The man at the door stirred. ‘Smartarse. Let me have him for a couple of minutes, boss.’
Shut up,’ Jansen told the man. Take this case downstairs and have it sent up on the luggage escalator again, then go back and see who picks it up. You,’ he said to Wyatt, ‘come with me.’
Jansen led Wyatt to the luggage carousel. Most of the cases had been claimed by now. The man from Amsterdam was not among those passengers who were still waiting. Wyatt leaned forward, picked up his case, and checked the number on the label. ‘This is it,’ he said.
‘Come with me.’
Jansen took him back to the depressing white room. This time a sniffer dog was brought in. As Jansen stood by sourly, the dog ran its nose around the case, before sitting back on its haunches, its expression close to apologetic.
Jansen opened the case. Wyatt watched him sift through the familiar jeans, T-shirts, gifts and shaving gear. Then Jansen jerked his head. It was a way of saying that Wyatt was free to go.
‘Folders, sniffer dogs,’ Wyatt said. ‘What was all that about?’
‘Don’t push your luck,’ Jansen said.
* * * *
An hour later, Wyatt said: ‘You owe me.’ He said it several times as the day progressed, and by six o’clock that evening he had acquired a Smith & Wesson .38 Chief’s Special revolver, two sets of handcuffs and fake ID to hire an old Datsun from Rent-a-Wreck.
Sunday evening. Milne would be at home, just starting to do business. Wyatt had spent most of the day in the exhausted streets of Footscray, and now he was passing among the screened, vigilant houses of Brighton, a region of beloved dogs, car phones and middle-aged men whose young wives seemed permanently dressed for aerobics or the Derby.
Milne’s car was in his driveway and lights were on in the house. Wyatt parked the Datsun in the next street and walked back to Milne’s house, slipping among a stand of ornamental trees and making for the garage at the back. He spent some time there, sniffing experimentally at gaps around the sealed door and windows.
Wyatt had never visited Milne here, and knew little about him, so he circled the house to get an impression of its layout. The curtains were open in only one room, the kitchen, where a light had been left on. It was a bare, gleaming room, showing no sign of a family’s domestic clutter. Milne’s got a housekeeper, Wyatt thought. He lives alone.
He made a second circuit of the house, testing locks on doors and windows. One window was unlocked; a small, narrow bathroom window. Familiar shapes showed on the shelf beyond the insect screen. Wyatt cut open a corner flap of the screen, lifted it, and tucked the .38 and the handcuffs behind a pack of toilet-paper rolls.
The man who answered his ring on the doorbell was one of Milne’s hoons, Hempel, wearing a South Yarra disco suit, black silk shirt, tasselled shoes, designer stubble, earring, and his hair drawn back in a ponytail. It all made Wyatt bitter and weary.
‘Milne in?’ he said.
‘Who wants to know?’
Hempel hadn’t recognised his new face. Wyatt decided to keep it that way. He said, ‘Tell him Mr Ross, just in from Amsterdam.’
Hempel’s mouth hung open as he wrestled with this. ‘Pardon?’
‘Just do it; Wyatt said.
There was a sulky flicker on the dull face. ‘You can fucking well wait out here,’ Hempel said. He shut the door behind him.
Wyatt waited. He heard a muttered curse and soon the door opened again and Hempel was pointing a gun at him, an automatic too heavy, too fancy, to be of much use to the little prick. ‘Cowboy,’ Wyatt said.
‘Put your hands against the wall.’
‘I’m not carrying.’
‘Just do it,’ Hempel said.
He patted Wyatt’s legs and waist and under his arms inexpertly, then pushed him into the entrance hall. ‘First room on your left.’
It was a large, oppressive sitting room. Milne stood before an open fire, a drink in one pudgy hand, the other draped carelessly along the mantelpiece. He was not alone. The man from Amsterdam, his face drawn and tired, sat on a sofa, next to an open briefcase and a stack of blue Rijksmuseum folders.
Milne smiled uncertainly. ‘Wyatt? You look different, mate.’
Milne was a glossy, well-tended man at ease in his ugly room. There were three sofas, pink leather, arranged in a U-shape facing the fire; Ken Done prints hung on the walls; classy muzak played on the stereo; assorted liquor bottles sat on a silver tray on a chunky sideboard. The fittings were clearly expensive but they had the look of cheap vinyl and plastic wood veneer.
‘Thought you must of missed your plane,’ Milne said, keeping it light and cheerful.
‘Didn’t want to get here too early,’ Wyatt said. ‘Get you out of bed or something.’
Wyatt stayed near the door, staring at Milne. He saw the smile fade and turned his bleak face to the other man. He said nothing. Hempel hovered behind him with the gun.
‘Come in,’ Milne said. ‘Have a drink. Hempel, put that bloody thing away. Wyatt, this is Walter Paulsen.’
Wyatt nodded briefly.
Milne moved to the drinks tray. ‘How was the flight?’
Wyatt gestured suddenly in embarrassment. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I ate something that didn’t agree with me. Could I use your bathroom?’
Faint distaste showed on Milne’s face. He looked past Wyatt to Hempel and said, ‘Show the man where it is.’
Hempel grinned at Wyatt. ‘Bit urgent, is it?’
They left the room and walked down to the bathroom. Hempel waited while Wyatt went inside. After several minutes, Wyatt flushed the toilet and stuck the .38 and the handcuffs into his waistband at the small of his back, under his jacket.
He came out, ignoring Hempel’s mindless grin. Wyatt was not interested in Hempel, only in Hempel’s gun. But not now, not here.
They returned to Milne and Paulsen, who were standing by the fire. The two men had been talking; Wyatt could sense their muttered recriminations and speculations.
‘We have to talk,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ Milne said. ‘Walter is just leaving.’
‘Walter too,’ Wyatt said.
Then he stepped to one side, took out his .38 and waved it at Hempel. ‘Drop your cannon on the floor and get over there with Milne and Paulsen.’
Milne’s face went ugly. ‘You useless prick, I thought you searched him.’
‘I did,’ Hempel said. His voice rose. ‘Honest.’
Wyatt motioned with his gun again. ‘Hempel, drop the gun and get over there with the others.’
Hempel hesitated. He took the gun from his pocket.
‘Now drop it.’
The big automatic was loose in Hempel’s hand. He was watching Wyatt’s face.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Wyatt warned. ‘Okay? Just drop it.’
Hempel began to raise the gun. He continued to stare at Wyatt.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake,’ Wyatt said.
There was no point in trying for accuracy. He fired at Hempel’s trunk. The bullet struck Hempel at the waistline like a punch, knocking him on to his back. His heels scraped along the carpet.
Milne said, ‘Jesus, Wyatt.’
Wyatt stooped down and pocketed Hempel’s pistol. ‘If they carry a gun,’ he said, ‘I have to assume they’re prepared to use it.’
‘But Jesus,’ Milne said. He cocked his head to listen. But these were oblivious streets, the houses set far apart from one another. No-one ever heard the miseries they contained.
‘Put these on,’ Wyatt said, tossing Paulsen the handcuffs. ‘Your right wrist and ankle to Milne’s.’
Milne and Paulsen, pale and shocked, awkwardly cuffed together, stood side-on as Wyatt began to speak.
‘Six months ago, when I was forced to run, you set me up. You were moving out of the insurance racket into something you knew I’d never touch, so you had to get me off the scene.’
‘Utter crap,’ Milne said. His glossy head moved in irritation. ‘Things got stuffed up, that’s all.’
Wyatt ignored him. ‘You set me up again this morning. You assumed the Feds, wouldn’t bother looking for a second courier’—he gestured at Paulsen—’especially one travelling in first-class and wearing a suit.’ He shook his head at Milne. ‘Trafficking in smack and LSD, I’d be put away for years.’
‘The fuck are you talking about, smack?’ Milne said. ‘Drawings,’ he said. ‘Fucking art.’
‘My guess is they’re reproductions,’ Wyatt said. ‘What matters is the paper itself.’ He put on his gloves, crossed to the sofa and picked up a Rijksmuseum folder. He took out one of the drawings. It felt stiff, starchy. ‘Soaked in heroin or LSD solution and allowed to dry, is that it? I heard all about the chemistry set in your garage today. Heard all kinds of things, Milne.’
‘Look,’ Milne said. ‘We’re talking goldmine here. We’ll cut you in.’ He craned his head, looking to Paulsen for confirmation.
But Wyatt said, ‘All I want is the ten thousand you owe me.’
Paulsen’s fee lay stacked in the briefcase next to the pile of folders. Wyatt counted out ten thousand dollars. There was at least another forty thousand there. He pocketed the money and began to wipe his prints off everything he’d touched.
‘Mate,’ Milne said, ‘help yourself to as much as you like. Take the lot—there’s more where that came from.’
He felt relieved. All this drama was just Wyatt’s fucking sense of getting fair payment for the work he did. ‘Just leave us the keys on your way out; he called, lifting his cuffed wrist as Wyatt left the room.
Milne and Paulsen heard Wyatt walk along the hall to the bathroom. Soon after that they heard him leave the house. They soaped their wrists then, and fiddled with knife points and paper clips, but the cuffs stayed on, right through Jansen’s arrival and the arrival of the reporters and the ride to the lockup in Russell Street.