The Heat Read Online Free Page B

to pull this off, it had to be tomorrow, not next week.
    Shireen started about it the wrong way. It was right not to tell her husband what she was doing, but wrong to tell the policeman at the reception desk of her nearest police station that she feared her son was taking drugs.
    He yawned. ‘I’m not sure there’s much we can do, Mrs Eejazz.’ He waved at the wire racks bolted to the walls. ‘We do have some literature on drug counselling and specialist rehab clinics.’
    So Shireen edged closer to the topic that worried her. ‘He tried to rob someone last year. What if he does it again?’
    ‘If we acted on what an individual might do, we’d never act on what others have actually done,’ the desk sergeant said. Overweight and given to smirking, Shireen thought. Given to barely veiled contempt for people with dark skin, too.
    That’s when she told him about the shotgun and the disguise. After that things started to happen and she found herself talking to detectives.
    On Thursday evening, Vidovic entered the change room of the gym and sat tying and untying his shoelaces until the SecureCor guard appeared. He stood then, contriving a clumsy stumble against the lockers and benches.
    ‘Phew,’ he said. ‘Must have overdone it on the weights.’
    The guard helped him up. ‘You got to work up to it.’
    ‘Yeah, I think I just found that out,’ Vidovic said. He gathered his gear together, said, ‘Thanks, mate,’ and left with the man’s dry-cleaning ticket.
    Next, he used fake ID to obtain a costume-hire pistol and gun belt, then went straight around to the shed in Collingwood and stole the van. It now had the SecureCor name and logo on the panels. Crudely done; okay from a distance.
    On Friday morning Vidovic collected and changed into the guard’s dry-cleaned uniform, strapped on the pistol and began to hit the supermarkets. Not the banks: they had security guards stationed front and back. The supermarkets—their rear entrances usually a grimy yard spattered with rotting vegetables—were less security-conscious, and by late morning he had $58,000.
    He could feel it burning a hole in his pocket. Then he thought about his toes and fingers and drove to Arlo Waterfield’s place of business. Paid his debt in full, Arlo demanding twenty-eight grand, the prick.
    Still, Vidovic had thirty to play with. Place it wisely on sure bets, he could double it. Triple it, probably.

4
    Late Friday morning, Wyatt took the shuttle bus to Melbourne Airport. He preferred to fly, if the journey was long. He wasn’t a man given to self-reflection, but he was aware that driving long distances depressed him—mindless, tedious. And he’d been shot, stabbed and beaten at times in the past. His body bore the trauma, on the surface and deeper in his bones. Better two hours on a plane than two days at the wheel of a car.
    The drawback was he couldn’t take his pistol on board, and that might prove to be a problem at the other end. It would be impossible for a man like him to buy one legally when he arrived, and too risky to meet a stranger behind a pub. Ambush; undercover cops; getting saddled with a gun that was not only expensive but liable to have a nasty history or mechanical defects. He’d ask Minto to provide one.
    Facing a long wait in the gate lounge at Melbourne Airport, Wyatt positioned himself in a chair that allowed a clear view along the branch corridor from the check-in counter. Two federal policemen strolled past at one point, chatting, barely interested in the waiting passengers. Still, he tensed a little, gauging where he’d run if it came to it. His gaze passed over the men and women streaming by, the children, the sports teams. None posed an immediate threat.
    If not for his restless interest in his surroundings, masked by a newspaper open at the letters page, he might not have glanced at the TV bolted to the wall. Breaking news: police had swooped on two properties, arresting a man at the first, shooting dead a