Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (24 page)

You can do me now?

She gestured at the empty rooms, the
open doors. Of course.

She pushed him into the reclining
chair and clicked on the silvery light above their heads. Then she drew on
latex gloves. Wyatt told himself that he needed latex gloves for what was ahead
of him.

Open wide, mister.

Her hands were swift with the pick
and mirror. She smelt of coffee and mango; his shoulder merged with her pliant
thigh. She stepped back, almost reluctantly. It must come out.

Yes.

I will inject you. You will have
numbness for several hours afterwards, maybe a little swelling to spoil your
beauty, but very little pain. She touched his jaw lightly, grinning at him. I
would not want to see you in pain, mister.

His smile came easily. She was a
balm to his risky life. Laughter bubbled from somewhere deep inside her. The
University of Adelaide, according to a framed degree on the wall. Wyatt
wondered what those dour Europeans had made of her.

At one point her telephone rang and
she went into the other room. He pocketed a pair of latex gloves and returned
to the seat, hearing her cajoling someone to come in and see her, dont delay.

When he left her twenty minutes
later, Wyatt needed a hand on each banister to get down the steps. There was no
pain and no real disorientation, only the sense that there should be. He
started out for Reriki. After five minutes he doubled back and went into the
tackle shop beneath the dental surgery. He pointed to a long, slender knife,
not trusting himself to speak, and laid out money on the counter. He didnt
touch the knife himself, but carried it out with him in a paper sack.

He was back in his cabin by four oclock.
De Lisles yacht had berthed while hed been away. Everything about the tiny
fat figure going up and down the steps between the dock and the house on the
cliff top suggested panic.

* * * *

Thirty-six

When
De Lisle returned to the house after collecting the tartan suitcase on Reriki,
Grace, his hi-Vanuatuan servant, was waiting for him at the top of the steps,
holding a silver tray. Shed placed a white calling card in the centre of the
tray. De Lisle had trained her in a thousand little rituals and courtesies.
Today she was staring at him and something about it made him uneasy. For two
years shed refused to meet his eye, as though he were an unknown guest in the
house, not the man who came into her room in the servants quarters night after
night. So why the sudden confidence?

De Lisle opened the card. It was
from Walter Erakor and said simply, Meet me in Ma Kincaids Eating House at
five this afternoon.

De Lisle dismissed Grace and fixed
himself a drink. He wondered what Erakor wanted. Walter was a jungle bunnyborn
on the island, a law graduate of the Sorbonne, but still a jungle bunny. De
Lisle worked with the man whenever he was in Vanuatu, mainly routine circuit
court cases, but hed also called on Walter Erakors help in getting around the
kinds of legal loophole matters that required a greased palm in the local
judiciary. Erakor had saved De Lisle time and trouble in setting up holding
companies, bank accounts and real estate transfers. Did the man want a bigger
slice of the pie? De Lisle hated dealing with the blacks. He wished hed been
in Vanuatu before Independence, when thered been plenty of decent Frenchmen in
the public service.

De Lisle checked his watch: almost
five. Too late to deposit the Asahi Collection jewels in a safety-deposit box.
He stashed the tartan suitcase temporarily in the safe in his bedroom and
decided to walk to Ma Kincaids. It was downhill all the way and it would help
keep him fit. He could get a taxi back.

A ceaseless stream of badly tuned
cars and vans passed him on the way down the hill, Port Vilas version of rush
hour at the end of the working day. De Lisle felt safer at the bottom of the
hill. The road began to level out at the diving school and soon he was walking
on a proper footpath. Today was market day. One or two stallkeepers were
selling cowrie shells, fresh coconuts and bright, flimsy, cotton dresses in the
parking lot for the Reriki Island ferry. Most of the small businesses had shut
their doors but the Vietnamese supermarket was still open, run by the
descendants of plantation workers brought to Vanuatu by French planters in the
1920s.

De Lisle trudged through the humid
late afternoon. There were more market stalls now, crowding the footpath. No
one was buying and the only people looking were elderly tourists from a cruise
ship moored in the harbour. De Lisle saw them picking over dyed coral, shell
necklaces, carved animals. He supposed theyd buy something. They generally
did. They would tip, despite what the guidebooks advised. Some of the locals
would accept it, too, as though they hadnt read the guidebooks that claimed
theyd be offended and embarrassed to be offered a tip.

It was dim and cool inside Ma
Kincaids. Ceiling fans stirred the air, a couple of tourists and sailors sat
at the bar, some local Europeans ate at the tables. De Lisle nodded at one or
two of them. They were French and had stayed on after Independence. A table of
yachting types in the far corner were speaking English. De Lisle listened:
Kiwis and Australians, five men and a woman. De Lisle was betting that they
were on the run from something shady. They might stay here for a few months
before moving on. One or two of them might even stay permanently and open the
kind of import-export business that helped to launder cash and offered ways of
smuggling anything from coconut soap to arms or New Guinea cannabis and pink
rock heroin from Thailand.

Walter Erakor was waiting for him in
a back room. De Lisle didnt like the look on the mans face. Erakor seemed to
be suppressing glee at bad tidings and doing a poor job of it.

Well? De Lisle demanded.

It bubbled out of Erakor.
Bon jour,
my friend. Im afraid you must flee the island. Tonight, tomorrow, you must
leave.

De Lisle went still. He decided to
play it straight. Leave? Why? I just got here. Theres work to do.

Walter tapped the side of his nose. A
little bird tells me.

Tells you what?

You are under investigation.

De Lisle didnt reply immediately.
He continued to stare at Erakor. Surely the Australian authorities werent onto
him, requesting his extradition? Not so soon. And certainly not when the island
was riddled with Australian con-men, thieves and dealers straight out of Australias
Most Wanted on TV. He looked at his watch. He had time. Wheels would be
turning slowly back home.

He said at last, Whos
investigating me?

Vice police.

Vice
police?

Your servant, Graceher father has
lodged a complaint against you.

Shes an adult, for Christs sake.
She knows what shes doing.

Walter Erakor leaned over the table
and said very quietly, But she was under age when she first went to work for
you.

I didnt know that. Besides, its
her word against mine.

Maybe so, my friend, but her father
is a chief, you know.

Chief, De Lisle thought. A man who
ran a rusty Mazda minibus, thats all he was.

A certain zeal has entered the
investigation, Erakor continued. The police have asked for warrants to search
your bank records and other business dealings.

De Lisle leaned forward, hissing. You
bastard. Grace isnt the issue, youre just using her as an excuse. You want my
money. You bastard.

Erakor shrugged. Im not in charge
of the investigation.

But you told them about my bank
holdings, right? You and your crooked cronies want to rip me off, seize my
deposits, under-declare what was there and keep the rest for yourselves. I know
how it works.

Erakor gazed at him levelly. Im
giving you a chance to escape.

De Lisle changed tack. Have you
issued the warrants yet? Cant you do something to rescind them? Walter, old
friend

Walter Erakor was flat and hard and
there was no friendship in him. We issue them tomorrow, maybe the next day.

Relief flooded De Lisle. I need
twenty-four hours, maybe less. I need to be here when the banks open in the
morning.

Walter Erakor began to smile. It was
a beam that said he could delay the warrants in return for a cash
consideration. De Lisle groaned. He looked at his watch. Just as well the yacht
was ready to put to sea. God, why hadnt he given the Tiffany to Grace instead
of that Wintergreen slag? None of this would have happened.

He groaned again. Who was he
kidding? Keeping Grace sweet wouldnt have stopped Erakor and his mates getting
greedy. They must have loved it when Grace showed up with her nose out of
joint, giving them the excuse they needed.

He looked at Erakor. How much?

* * * *

Thirty-seven

It
had to do with context. If you see a workman among a slouch of workmen, thats
all he is. Similarly, you dont look twice at an airline passenger aboard a
plane-load of passengers, not when youve got your mind on more pressing
matters. But when one of those passengers, standing alone in the Port Vila
terminal building, held his head tilted at a certain angle, Niekirk knew that
hed seen him before. A minute later the answer came to him: Wyatt, meeting the
fence on a park bench in Melbourne.

Where was Springett? On the island?
Coming by a later flight, a different airline?

Niekirk, keeping well back in
another taxi, tailed Wyatt to a cliff-top mansion on the other side of the
harbour. He saw Wyatt get out and check casually for outside cameras and sensor
alarms. Later he tailed Wyatt to the ferry stop for the island resort across
the harbour.

He recalled that there had been a
few passengers in first class when he boarded in Sydney, and the man had been
among them. The surveillance photograph had shown only the mans inclined head,
animated by the womans company, and his shoulders. Now Niekirk had a clearer
image of him: hooked, pitiless kind of face, black hair pushed indifferently
off his forehead, tall and loose in the frame, a habit of touching his jaw
every few minutes. The guy had a poor dress sense for the tropics: trousers,
shoes, long-sleeved shirt rolled back at the wrists. Niekirk was wearing yellow
shorts, sandals and a Lifes a bitch, then you die T-shirt so that hed melt in
with the Australian yobbos who populated Asia and the Pacific.

Niekirk couldnt watch two places at
once. Hed come here for De Lisle, so he went back to the house on the cliff
top and slept fitfully through the night in the passenger seat of a rental car.
He had a story ready, but no one came near him.

The first rattling diesel motors of
the day woke him at five-thirty. He crossed the road. The house still had its
shuttered look; the yacht still hadnt docked.

Niekirk drove down to the wharf,
bought coffee and sandwiches, and returned to his watch over De Lisles house.
He wondered what Riggs and Mansell were doing. Maybe theyd shot each other by
now. When told what De Lisle was up to and that thered be no more jobs, Riggs
had gone very still, dangerously quiet, and Mansell had blustered. Neither man
felt ready to quit: Not when were onto something good, Mansell said. The
only analogy Niekirk could think of was grief: it was as though a loved one had
been snatched away and they wanted a sense of closure before they could put the
grief to rest. Hed given them the address of De Lisles house in the hills
behind Coffs, told them they might pick up some goodies for themselves there,
told them to keep De Lisle on ice if he happened to show up.

Niekirk saw the shutters open at
three oclock in the afternoon. He crossed the road and stood where he could
see down between the houses to the water. The yacht had come in. As he watched,
a water taxi called in at the dock and De Lisle stepped aboard. He saw it sweep
among the moored yachts and tie up at Reriki Island. Certainty began to settle
in Niekirk. Wyatt was here to meet De Lisle. Wyatt and Jardine had been fencing
stuff on behalf of De Lisle all along.

He sweated it out, only relaxing
when he saw the water taxi skimming back across the water, De Lisle upright in
the back. When De Lisle got out, he had the tartan suitcase with him. So, the
island was the drop-off point.

Niekirk went back to his car. But
maybe Wyatt had been ripped off, too, and was here to even the score. Niekirk
sat there for an hour, sticking to the vinyl seat, baking in his glass and
metal cocoon. He was still there late in the afternoon when De Lisle appeared
again, walking this time.

Niekirk began to hate it all. If he
shadowed De Lisle on foot, he risked losing him if the little shit got picked
up by a vehicle later on. If he took the car, there was the hassle of traffic
and parking in the narrow streets. In the end he got out and tailed De Lisle on
foot. De Lisle wasnt carrying anything, so at least he wasnt on the run with
their stuff.

De Lisle made for a caf called Ma
Kincaids. Niekirk was watching it from under a Cinzano umbrella across the
road, face disguised by a straw stuck in a frosty glass of iced coffee, when Wyatt
appeared from an alley behind Ma Kincaids. He had his mouth open, his tongue
apparently exploring the back of his mouth, and he was carrying a parcel and
seemed pleased about something. Niekirk liked none of it.