Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (25 page)

* * * *

Thirty-eight

Wyatt
didnt hear anything until it was too late. He was on the narrow balcony,
watching the cliff-top house across the water as the sun weakened behind the
mountains, waiting for full dark so that he could cross to the mainland and
tackle De Lisle, and heard nothing above the chopping blades of the ceiling fan
in the room behind him, the mutter of the islands generator, the scrape and
rattle of wind in the palm tree fronds, the band thumping in the dining room a
short distance away, the men and women toiling up the path from the ferry,
spectres with white teeth, shirts and dresses, drenched in duty-free lotions.
And now and then his tongue flickered over the hole torn inside his upper jaw.
Deep, raw, salty; a dull, receding ache; a huge relief. So all of Wyatts
senses were distracted and he was unprepared for an attack from behind.

Until he heard a slick, oiled,
double click, the slide of an automatic pistol jacking a round into the firing
chamber. The voice came from inside the room; just inside the open sliding
door, was Wyatts estimation. He stiffened his arms on the chair.

Uh uh. Wrap your arms around
yourself as if you were cold. Thats it. Now stand, turn, come back here into
the room, nice and easy, all the time in the world.

Wyatt tracked the voice. The man was
retreating farther into the room. He read the voice: arrogance, certainty,
experience, wasting nothing.

Wyatt hadnt wanted a light behind
him as he waited on the balcony and so the room was dark, illuminated only by
the green LED time display of the bedside clock. It was reading 20:05 and
picked out the mans face in a play of pallid cheeks and eye sockets and solid
bones. The dark pistol gestured: On the bed. Now, place both pillows on the
floorI said place, not throw.

There was a pause, the man
satisfying himself that Wyatt hadnt secreted a weapon under the pillows. Now
I want you flat on your back, head touching the bedhead, hands clasped under
your head.

Wyatt complied. It was not a
position hed want to maintain for long. He knew his arms would begin to ache.
He was too rigid, too awkward, placed so that hed signal any intention to go
on the offensive long before it could do him any good, and the gunman was
counting on that.

Whats your connection to De Lisle?

Nothing. Never met him.

Youve been selling stuff for him.

No.

You were photographed with Frank
Jardine and a fence back in Melbourne. You were trying to offload a Tiffany
brooch for De Lisle.

Not for De Lisle. For myself.

As Wyatts eyes adjusted further to
the dark, he saw a sinewy frame, a thick tangle of nondescript hair, and
dispassionate eyes set in a cold face, facial lines like cracks in cement. Was
this the man whod frightened Jardine to death? He imagined the man playing
with Jardine, resting on his friend a set of dark eyes that would have seemed
bottomless and unendurable.

I stole the Tiffany, Wyatt said. I
found out later Id stolen it from someone De Lisle was shagging.

It was language he hoped the man
would appreciate. The planes of the mans face shifted, became less controlled,
and the voice lost its metallic edge as emotion moved it: He gave it to some
sheila? Jesus Christ.

As if he were talking to himself.
Wyatt shifted a little, crossing his feet at the ankle, moving his hands until they
clasped the back of his neck, not his head.

The man stiffened automatically, his
gun arm tensed, but Wyatt could see that his attention was mostly inwards, on
De Lisle.

Now hes getting ready to run,
Wyatt said, keeping the focus away from himself. You do all the dirty work, he
fucks up and still reaps all of the profit.

The man laughed. Keep guessing,
pal. Youre history anyway. Reach one hand over and turn on the bedside light.

Wyatt saw the man step back into the
corner as the light came on, then pull on the drawstring that closed the
curtains over the sliding insect-screen door leading to the balcony. Finally
the man reached down dreamily, picked up a cushion, and advanced on the bed.
There was no suppressor on the pistol, so a cushion, interspersed at
point-blank range, was the next best thing. Wyatt said, to distract the man
again:

How did you get a gun into the
country?

Had a permit, didnt I.

A cop? The Niekirk character Mansell
had told him about? Wyatt said, I can help you get De Lisle.

Forget it, Niekirk said, stepping
forward.

Wyatt sidearmed his water glass
across the space between them. Niekirk lifted the tip of his gun, let the glass
sail by. That was his mistake; it granted Wyatt one more second of life. He
used it to yank on the electric flex of the bedside lamp and in the sudden
darkness he rolled away from the snapping pistol, over the side and onto the
floor.

He scrabbled along the carpet to the
end of the bed and waited a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness
again. Niekirk fired twice, placing his shots, keeping them low, but he didnt
have a target, only intuition and hope.

Wyatt tensed. He had marked a
passage between the cane armchairs to the balcony, where the glass door was
open and only a curtain separated him from the night. He sprang from the gap
between the bed and the wall, streaked low across the room.

Niekirk had him now. He snapped off
three more shots. Too quick, too careless. Glass broke in the side window of
the balcony. He paused, waiting for Wyatt to fumble at the curtains, to
silhouette himself and present a solid target into which he could empty his
clip.

Wyatt read his intentions. Staying
low, he picked up the glass-topped coffee table and threw it, aiming at Niekirks
knees. Niekirk went down; there was another shot.

Lights and voices started in the
darkness. I heard a gun.

Come away, dear.

I tell you, someone shot a hole
through our window.

Then there were other voices, other
lights.

Call security.

What number?

I dont know, do I? Use your
brains, woman. Call reception.

Theres no need to take that tone.

Behind Wyatt, Niekirk was rolling
onto one hip, patting the carpet for the gun. Wyatt reached one hand over his
shoulder to the space beneath his collar, between his shoulderblades, and drew
and threw the fishing knife. He wanted the throat and got it, the blade
spearing Niekirks windpipe, taking away his voice, leaving him with only the
froth and rattle of his useless breathing to keep him company as he died.

Wyatt left through the balcony door
and slipped over the side, a shadow among the shadows.

* * * *

Thirty-nine

He
edged down the terraced garden slope, dodging fleshy spurs, exposed root cages
and stiff vine tendrils. The islands generator continued to throb through the
night, the only calm point in a place of alarmed cries and running feet and
jerking torch beams. Once or twice he froze; but there were security guards and
paths and lighted areas to get around, so he moved again, showing himself this
time.

Shouting, running, waving his arms
to confound the searchers and witnesses: The shots came from that room ... I
saw someone over here . . . Careful, hes armed ... He ran up the hill . . .

The row of cabins at the waters
edge sat on stilts. When he was clear of the confusion above him, Wyatt took
shelter under the cabin closest to the ferry mooring, his feet ankle deep in
seawater. The ferry wasnt there. He could see it across the harbour, waiting
at the little wharf on the mainland. It wouldnt be in a hurry to return to the
island. The traffic this late at night was all oneway, guests returning from
the mainland casinos.

Wyatt considered his options. He
didnt want to swim. His shoes would protect him from the spines of stonefish
as he waded into the water but the island was ringed with coral and the
guidebooks warned against sea snakes, cone shells and sea urchins. He imagined
the coral tearing open his skin, his blood attracting sharks; he imagined the
numbing pain as venom shut down his nervous system. These were fears he could
only live with in the daylight, when he could see what was coming.

There were plenty of small boats on
the island. Half a dozen aluminium dinghies powered by outboard motors were
moored to the jetty. A paddleboat and snorkel hire concession operated from a
shack at the edge of the only stretch of sand on the island, just beyond the
jetty.

Wyatt slipped out of the sheltering
cabin and ran half-crouched toward the jetty. Then he stopped, flattening
himself on the mossy wetness of the stone shelf that led into the water.
Figures were loping along the jetty. Wyatt watched as they peered into each
dinghy. A moment later they were gone, leaving two men to continue the search
of the hire boats. Finally a security guard growled a few orders, climbed into
one of the dinghies and sped away across the black harbour, trailing
phosphorescence and a high, small-motor whine.

Wyatt crouched ready to run again
but was warned off a second time. Somebody had called the police. Three
launches were approaching the island from the mainland, going fast,
searchlights poking at the dead water.

Wyatt allowed himself half a minutes
grace, mentally mapping the harbour and the high ground opposite, where the
costly white houses sat on green lawns that stretched to private moorings on
the water. There was a light burning above De Lisles mooring.

Just then a searchlight swept
erratically along the shoreline, highlighting cabins and mangroves. Wyatt
ducked. People were gathering on the jetty, shouting, encouraging the police
launches.

Wyatts options were shrinking. The
ferry was out of the question; so were the bulbous orange paddleboats the
tourists played about in. He couldnt head inland, into finger-pointing chaos.
That left only the rocky shoreline at the uninhabited corner of the island. He
slipped under the first cabin again, then down the row away from the jetty. The
world beyond the final cabin was dark, treacherous, and thats where he let
himself be swallowed up by the night.

Away from the jetty and garden
lights his eyes began to adjust to the gloom. He came upon cliffs first,
limestone scored and fissured and sharp enough to tear open his hands and
shoes. Then the cliffs dropped away and he was wading knee-deep in water and
finally picking a path along a metre-wide band of coarse, corally sand.
Mosquitoes swarmed around his head, and in the darkness and the urgency of his
slapping hands he didnt see the object that spilled him onto his face.

He was out for a few seconds, all
the breath driven from his body. When he could move again he climbed free of
the trap and explored his ribs, hoping he hadnt cracked them. It hurt to
breathe and his head swam dizzily.

He sat on the sand for a while,
breathing shallowly, concentrating, reducing the pain to a size he could shape
and channel. It wasnt a mangrove root that had caught his shins, and he hadnt
pitched onto a sharp-edged logit was something unchanged in centuries that had
trapped him and it was also his salvation.

Wyatt got to his feet. The outrigger
section had been fashioned from a sturdy branch about two metres long, pointed
at both ends and shaped to slice through the water. It was separated from the
body of the canoe itself by two bamboo poles about three metres long. The
canoeist sat in a hacked-out tree trunk. Even in the darkness Wyatt could see
that both the outrigged float and the main body had been daubed in bright
paint. The only concession to the twentieth century was the binding: nylon rope
instead of vines or raffia fibre.

Wyatt turned the canoe over. The
paddle was underneath, fashioned from a machined board that had probably washed
up after a storm. He tried to imagine the man or woman who owned the canoe:
someone who had nowhere else to store it, someone who fished the dark side of
the island, away from the eyes of the Europeans who still ran the little
republic.

He hauled the canoe over the sand to
the seas edge, tugging it by the axe-fashioned bow. It was heavy, and sat low
in the water. He waded out until he was waist deep, the water cold and
sobering, erasing the clutter from his mind. For the next couple of minutes he
eyed the narrow stretch of water between the island and the mainland. The
police launches were concentrating their search around the international yachts
and the two ferry stops. Wyatt had no need or intention of straying there.
Where he wanted to cross, the harbour was black, impenetrable. If he set out
now, he wouldnt be spotted.

He climbed in, began to paddle. His
bruised ribs shot pain that made his eyes water, but the little outrigger was
like an arrow, skimming him across the calm surface, past the wrecked steamer,
between the rusty buoys, toward De Lisle on the other side.

* * * *

Forty

The
black water was not so black once he was upon it. Wyatt found a style with the
paddle that would not swamp the canoe or waste energy in spurts and
misdirections, and began to see phosphorescence boiling around him, shoreline
reflections, and a low, sombre tone in the water itself, a colour he couldnt
name. Far to his left there were shouts, incoherent above the restless ping of
sail rigging slapping the masts of the big yachts as they gently tossed at
anchor.