Raymond took them to a multi-level car park in Chadstone. They had the number plates, from a wrecked Volkswagen gathering dust outside a crash repairers in Altona—now all they needed was the vehicle.
‘Check that panel van,’ Raymond said, some time later.
A white Falcon, with a roof rack and windows in the rear compartment. It wasn’t a commercial vehicle, but could be adapted without much trouble. They tailed it to the upper level and watched the driver, an elderly man, park, lock up and shuffle across to the lift.
When the man was gone, Raymond approached the driver’s door with a tyre iron. He levered a gap between the door frame and the pillar, then slid a loop of stiff plastic binding tape behind the glass. Wyatt looked intently both ways along the sloping ramp. Wednesday, early afternoon. They needed to be in the campus grounds by four on Friday, giving them two days in which to alter the van.
He turned back, just as Raymond caught the latch with the plastic hook and pulled upwards. There was a click. ‘You little beauty.’
Raymond slipped behind the wheel. Wyatt had stiffened, expecting an alarm, but there was silence. Raymond broke it. Suddenly all elbows and clenched teeth, he wrenched at the ignition with the tyre iron, splintering the plastic casing and laying bare the electronics behind it. He fired up the motor, grinning at Wyatt from amidst the wreckage. ‘Piece of cake.’
‘And obvious to anyone who takes a gander through the window,’ Wyatt said. ‘Wait there.’
He went to the front of the van and then to the rear, hooking the stolen plates over the originals. He ran his hand inside the rear wheel arch. The box was small, metal, with a sliding lid and a magnetised base. The elderly man’s spare house and van keys nestled inside the box and Wyatt dropped them in his nephew’s lap as he slid into the passenger seat. He said nothing, just buckled his seat belt, but his silence was hard and cold.
Raymond stared at the keys. There was always a smile close to the surface and it broke out over his sulky face now. ‘Ahh,’ he scoffed, ‘more fun this way.’
That afternoon they repaired the ignition lock and took the panel van to be resprayed green at a place in Richmond—$999 of Wyatt’s dwindling reserves. On Thursday they stencilled the sides of the van with the words ‘Asbestos Removal Services’, and filled the rear compartment with empty boxes, a stepladder and several lengths of PVC tubing.
They went in on Friday afternoon at four o’clock. They wore overalls and Wyatt carried a clipboard and an aluminium document case. They parked the van inside the enclosure as though they belonged to the place, got out, and asked around for the foreman.
‘That’s me.’
He was a large, loosely built man with a face mapped by broken capillaries. Friday, four o’clock. Wyatt was betting that all the man wanted to do was knock off and head for the pub.
‘EPA sent us,’ he said, flashing his clipboard.
The foreman was looking in alarm at the van. ‘Didn’t know we was working around asbestos. Bastards didn’t tell us that.’
‘You may not be. This is routine, that’s all.’
‘I mean, fuck, you been inside the place? Blokes have been breathing dust for days.’
‘There’s dust and there’s dust,’ Wyatt said.
The foreman looked at his watch. ‘It’s nearly knocking-off time. I’m out of here in ten minutes myself. Locking the gate and I’m gone.’
‘I understand.’
‘So you can’t park your van here. I’m locking up.’
‘That’s all right,’ Raymond said. ‘We’ll leave it overnight, catch a bus home.’
‘His wife,’ Wyatt explained. ‘She doesn’t want the van parked out the front of the house. Nor does mine. Can’t say I blame them.’
The foreman licked dry lips. ‘Do what you like. It’s no skin off my nose.’
‘The van’s clean,’ Wyatt said. ‘No contamination. It’s just the idea that gets to people.’
‘You can say that again.’
Men began to stream from the work site. The foreman forgot about Wyatt and Raymond, and under the cover of men shouting, stripping off their overalls and cleaning brushes and rolling up flex, they loaded their arms with lengths of PVC tubing and entered the building.
According to the f loor plans supplied by Chaffey, the departmental library was on the first floor. They went up the stairs, whistling, ready to discuss the football if they encountered anyone, and found the first floor deserted and quiet, heavy with the smell of paint, plaster and sealant. They drew on latex gloves and made their way into the gloom, Wyatt counting the doors.
‘This one.’
He tried the handle. It was locked. He took a set of picks from his overalls and leaned over the lock. Holding the tension pick at an angle, he teased with the raking pick, turning the tumblers. When it was done he breathed out, straightened and pushed open the door.
They went in, locking the door behind them. It was close and comfortable in the library. The carpet was thick, the shelves crammed with textbooks, folios and theses. A few small desks, a table and chairs, a sofa. ‘Somewhere to sleep,’ Wyatt murmured.
‘Together?’
‘One sleeps, one keeps watch.’
‘Lighten up. I was only joking.’
There was more light here than in the corridor. The outside wall was mostly glass, and let in the lowering sun.
Wyatt crossed the room to a door set into the end wall, between two bookcases. He heard a rustle and scrape behind him and dropped to the floor.
‘Quit that.’
Raymond was in the act of closing the curtains. ‘We’ll be seen.’
‘We’ll be seen from outside drawing the curtains when this room should be empty,’ Wyatt said.
‘Now we can’t turn the lights on.’
‘The power’s been disconnected, remember?’
Raymond flung himself onto a sofa. ‘You talk to me like I was a kid in school. Fucking well tell me what to do, then.’
Wyatt felt complicated emotions for his nephew, composed of love, hate and frustration. But some of the fire had gone out of Raymond, leaving him edgy and cautious, and that was a good thing as far as Wyatt was concerned. Keeping his voice mild, he clicked open the aluminium case and said, ‘We work by natural light, there’ll be a moon tonight, plus these.’ He indicated a pair of torches, their lenses all but taped over. ‘They give a narrow band. Just don’t flash them toward the window.’
Raymond shrugged. It was a shrug of tiredness, of a short, spluttering fuse. ‘One thing I’ve learned, I work better alone.’
‘Come on, son, help me with the storeroom lock.’
‘Son’ was as close to love as Wyatt could get, but saw by the twist of his nephew’s face that he’d chosen the wrong word.
Time for that later. He opened the storeroom door and they went in. ‘If you hold one of the torches, I’ll start sorting.’
The storeroom was small and windowless. Shelves started at waist height and were crammed with books, journals, binding boards and gluepots. The paintings were under the bottom shelves, leaning against two of the walls.
‘So far so good,’ Wyatt said.