The Heat Read Online Free PDF Page A

man at the second. The dead man was named as Leon Pepper, and his brother—Jack Pepper, 27, believed armed and dangerous—was on the run.
    Another man was helping police with their inquiries.
    Wyatt thought about that. Someone had talked. The junkie, Syed Ijaz? Would he spill names? In particular, Wyatt’s? Unable to hear the newsreader over the clamour of the waiting passengers tending to toddlers, rustling newspapers, poking at mobile devices, Wyatt watched the screen intently. A line of script at the bottom, images of a street, a house, police cars, uniformed and plainclothes police. Then Jack Pepper’s face filled the screen. He looked hunted, half-demented, raising a glass at some social function, his black bow tie askew.
    Then another story: a man disguised as a security guard, and driving a security van, had staged a series of robberies in the bay suburbs south-east of the city centre. It was presented as a separate story, but Wyatt knew better.
    The common denominator was Stefan Vidovic.
    His flight was called and he boarded. A man named John Sandford, not given to frills, a man you wouldn’t look at twice. This was the dangerous time, when police might swarm at the gate or on the plane itself. He found his aisle seat and sat, tense. Business class as always. The seating and the aisle were more open and closer to the main door. Also business class passengers were valued by the airlines and assumed not to be killers and thieves—a psychological advantage that might give him a few seconds of physical advantage if the police came for him. At take-off, Wyatt plugged in a headset to save him from conversation with the man next to him.
    Two hours later they were on the ground. The police hadn’t stopped him on take-off;
they might on landing. Wyatt was poised for that when he stepped into the close, warm air of the Gold Coast. Following the other passengers into the terminal, barely conscious of the mountains etched along the horizon, he was making snap assessments. The many vehicles parked around the buildings and aircraft bays. The faces in the terminal. Police; there were always police. He passed three of them: they watched him. Nothing kindled in their faces. Then he passed the luggage carousel, another vulnerable place, but only if you were waiting for your bags, boxed in by a hundred other passengers. Wyatt was travelling light, cabin luggage only, a small case with room enough for his razor, toothbrush, makeup items and a couple of changes of clothes. That’s all he needed. That kind of thinking, that habitual alertness, ruled his every waking moment.
    David Minto had offered to send a car for him, but Wyatt wanted to eyeball Minto’s house on his own terms. He found a men’s room, changed into shorts, sandals and polo shirt, and caught a bus like any tourist on a budget.
    He sat as it swayed and surged away from the airport and along the commercial streets. This was a semi-tropical world and Wyatt hadn’t been here for a while. He was accustomed to Melbourne—the reserve, the greyness, the business suits and well-mannered thievery. The Gold Coast was brash and hungry. People settled here to worship sunshine and quick profits, and desiccated into stringy middle-age or corpulence within a few years. Still wearing shorts and T-shirts, their children growing into lithe, golden-haired gods. There was no need of thought here. No one expected it and the sun burned off any mental process as it lit up the perfect white teeth, the perfect tanned flesh. Politicians called it God’s own country, but Wyatt thought God was pretty much away on business most of the time.
    He glanced out at the Gold Coast streets, not registering the sun glint, the glossy palm fronds and the endless sky. Thinking about David Minto, a man he didn’t know well and didn’t want to know but mostly trusted. Minto was a property developer, real estate lawyer and back-room Labor Party hack. Minto said he hadn’t met a Labor parliamentarian