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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, theyd hide in the area until the
heat was off. The roadblocks would come down after two or three days, and theyd
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 didnt 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 oclock 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 didnt 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 didnt use the headlight. If the driver
was alertand Wyatt had to allow for a reasonable degree of alertnesshed 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 oclock, 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 hed seen in Belcowie. The bodywork looked to be one-centimetre steel
plate. The smoked-glass windows were probably bullet-proof.