Port Vila Blues

by Garry Disher

  He crossed the Derwent at five o’clock. Traffic was mounting up but that didn’t mean anything in Hobart. He followed a minibus past the Government House lawns and looped down through the streets of the city. Tomorrow he’d go back there and find himself a small downtown dentist who ran a busy practice and get his tooth filled. The old sandstone buildings looked soft-edged and warm, glowing softly in the last hour before the sun settled behind the mountain. Below him, on the left, there were the same masts in the yacht basin, the same timber workers’ vigil outside the Parliament building. Then he was climbing again, curving up and left into Battery Point.

  The apartment block was a squared-off, three-storey beige brick construction from the 1960s, set into a steeply pitched part of the Battery Point hillside overlooking the Derwent. According to tourists, environmentalists and people living on the hill behind it, the building was a blight on the landscape, but it suited the tenants, who could see the water and the mountain. Wyatt had a one-year lease on a street-level flat—street level to cut down on his escape time if anyone with arrest or death in mind for him came snooping around. The rent was low, he could walk everywhere, the neighbours left him alone. There was no one to notice or care if he should slip away for a day, a week, a month. No letters came, the phone never rang, no one looked at him with interest or emotion.

  In fact, if any of those things were to happen, Wyatt would hit the ground running.

  12

  Two weeks after his meeting with Springett, Niekirk was back in Melbourne. Riggs arrived that evening, Mansell the following morning. Both had taken rostered days off work. They made it a rule never to fly in together. They met in a motel room in St. Kilda Road, and Niekirk had to wait while Mansell gabbled away about his flight down from Sydney. Mansell was like most people, governed by a set of conventions that said you wasted a few minutes kicking pleasantries around before you got down to work.

  When Mansell was finished, it was Riggs who spoke first. ‘What’s the target?’

  Niekirk wordlessly tipped floor plans, photographs, a security-system map and a page from a street directory onto the double bed. Mansell bent to pick up a photograph, then straightened, groaning, stretching his back, making a show of it.

  Riggs, as stolid and featureless as a slab of rock, crossed to look at the plans. ‘Jewellery heist?’

  Mansell peered again at the photograph. ‘Lovely bit of rock.’

  Niekirk picked up a second photograph, a necklace, white gold catching the light softly, emeralds, rubies and sapphires hard and sharp against the gold, like ice splinters in the morning sun. ‘The Asahi Collection,’ he said, ‘on loan from Japan.’

  Valued at $750,000, according to the newspapers. Niekirk had calculated his return if he were to try fencing the stones himself. Ten cents on the dollar? He knew he wouldn’t do it. There was no one he could trust, and De Lisle had a long reach.

  He watched Riggs and Mansell. Riggs was examining the plans now, giving them a grave scrutiny as if he were putting the hit together himself. He had still, capable, long-fingered hands, his body loose in grey cords, a check shirt and a heavy yachting pullover. He could have been anyone—thief, cop, car mechanic—but someone who kept himself calm and ready, and someone with an unpredictable, vicious streak. Sensing Niekirk’s scrutiny, Riggs said, ‘Where?’

  ‘We’re going there now.’

  Niekirk took them into the city, to a region of tiny arcades bounded by major streets. Satisfied that they hadn’t been tailed, he led them into a snack bar. They sat on stools at a bench that ran the length of the front window of the place. The air smelt of vinegar and superheated oil, shaken apart by a radio tuned at full volume to an easy-listening station. Niekirk’s elbow was stuck in a smear of tomato sauce but he ignored it and pointed to a raw new building across the street from the snack bar. It was a narrow, black glass department store, six storeys high, called Soreki 5. Japanese, and it had only just opened for business. There were branches like it all through the Pacific. This one had a gallery on the first floor, and management intended to show fur, porcelain, painting and jewellery collections month by month.

  Under cover of the shouted conversations around them, the radio and the thick smacking of cafeteria crockery behind the stainless steel counter, Niekirk said, ‘Their first-ever exhibition starts tomorrow morning, and will be here for the next month, so we go in tonight.’

  Tonight, when security wouldn’t be up to scratch. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘We won’t need the drill this time?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Maybe the local boys will think there’s a new crowd at work.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  They rested during the afternoon and were stationed in the alley by 2 A.M., in a white van marked ‘Food Transport Vehicle’ this time. Niekirk sat in the driver’s seat, Mansell next to him, Riggs in the back. Now and then while they waited to go into operation, Mansell fine-tuned the police band radio. Niekirk listened with half an ear as the dispatcher’s voice, ghosting with signals from the atmosphere, reported burglar alarms, broken glass, a knifing near the clubs in King Street.

  Shortly after two o’clock, Riggs got out and walked away from the van toward the Soreki 5 building. The department store sat black and glassy on the street facing the alleyway. Riggs passed from the alley into the lighted street. He wore a security patrol uniform, gold cloth badges, black trousers, brown shirt, black peaked hat, and Mansell said softly, ‘All he needs is a pair of jackboots.’

  Niekirk ignored him, intent now as Riggs crossed the street and stopped at Soreki 5’s heavy glass doors. He saw Riggs rap on the glass with the base of a torch. A moment later Riggs switched on the torch and illuminated a fistful of documents in his other hand.

  Soreki 5 employed its own security guards. They watched for shoplifters during the day and yawned over skin magazines at night. They were trained, but men like that got soft on the job and knew that they were Mickey Mouse guards compared to the men who worked the big contract patrol firms, who regularly got shot at or beaten up and generally led a riskier life. That’s how Niekirk had explained the psychology behind Riggs’ ploy at the briefing session, and now he fastened a set of headphones over his ears and began to monitor Riggs’ conversation with the Soreki 5 guard.

  The voices came through sharply, transmitted by a pickup in Riggs’ lapel:

  ‘Come on, pal, I haven’t got all night.’

  Sounds of disengaging locks, then a muffled voice growing less muffled: ‘What’s your problem?’

  ‘Medicare.’

  The Soreki 5 man was slow. He didn’t say anything and Riggs repeated, ‘Medicare. You know, on the top floor.’

  ‘Everything’s jake here. I’ve got it covered.’

  Riggs said, barely patient: ‘Maybe so, but the thing is, Medicare isn’t one of yours, right? We’ve got the contract for that, even though they rent space in the building.’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody said anything to me.’

  ‘Well, that’s your problem. So how about it, going to let me in?’

  ‘I don’t know. I better just—’

  ‘Look, pal, they had ninety grand delivered there today, to cover the next week. If anything happens to that money and it comes out that you refused to let my firm in for a look-see, then your head’s on the block, not mine. If anything happens to that money and you have let me in for a look-see, then it’s my head on the old chopping block. Right? So do us a favour, just sign me in, I’ll be out of your hair in two shakes of a dog’s dick, no problem.’

  ‘More than five minutes and I’m calling my supervisor.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘And I come with you.’

  ‘No skin off my nose.’

  Niekirk saw Riggs go in. Then he heard the big locks smack home and heard Riggs say, ‘After you.’

  The Soreki 5 guard worked some contempt into his voice. ‘We can’t just barge upstairs. I’ve got to activate some bypass switches on the alarm system
first, you know.’

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  Niekirk heard nothing for two minutes after that. But plenty was happening inside the building and he ran it through his head like a film strip: Riggs waits for the guard to deactivate the alarms on the stairs and the lifts. Riggs tickles the man’s ear with his automatic pistol. Riggs pulls a hood over the man’s head and cuffs him to a display case. Niekirk’s instructions had been clear: ‘We don’t need a hero on our hands and we don’t need a panic merchant. Keep him calm, tell him he won’t be hurt so long as he does what he’s told. If the guard is hurt, I’ll want to know the reason why.’

  Niekirk looked at his watch, thinking that Riggs should be giving the all-clear about now. He waited, still and silent, a shutdown so absolute that he might have been one of the living dead. The city streets were deserted. There was a hint of dampness in the air, a sheen of moisture glistening on the silent cars, on a beer can in the gutter, on the Elizabeth Street tram tracks. Thirty seconds later, Niekirk heard the heavy main door being unlocked, Riggs saying simply: ‘It’s a goer.’

  Niekirk nudged Mansell. ‘Anything from the boys in blue?’

  ‘Not around here.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  They got out, walked to the end of the alley and across the street to Soreki 5, as unhurried as men who did this sort of thing every night of the week. Riggs was waiting for them in the foyer. The guard, his head hooded, was on his back, one wrist in the air, bracketed to the rim of a fire hose. He was as rigid as a dead man and Niekirk looked hard at Riggs. Riggs stared back unwaveringly, shook his head in denial.

  Niekirk left it at that. There was no point in asking the prone guard how he felt. That would only risk giving the man another voice to describe to the cops and it would certainly irritate Riggs.

  He jerked his head. Riggs led the way to a narrow door set flush against the wall behind the foyer desk. He opened the door with the security guard’s keys and leaned forward to examine the bank of switches behind it.

  Niekirk watched Riggs. The big man ran his finger and eyes rapidly across and down, seeking the isolation switches to the alarms in the little gallery on the first floor. He identified three, murmuring as he deactivated each one: ‘Gallery door … electric eye … pressure pads in the display cases …’

  Then he looked at Niekirk. ‘All clear.’

  Mansell went back outside to the van. Niekirk led Riggs up the staircase in the corner of the building. There were lifts, but Niekirk considered a lift to be a potential trap. You can fight or run in a stairwell. The only way out of a lift is up, into another trapped place, a shaft narrow, dark and deep and smelling of stale air and grease-slicked cables.

  The stairwell door on the first floor released them into a vast room of women’s dresses, mannequins and fashion displays, all of it shadowy, the irregular shapes like islands in a dark sea. Niekirk turned over a couple of price tags with his gloved fingers as they passed through the room: $999, $1,200.

  The gallery was a glassed-off area at the far end of the first floor. He pushed the twin doors experimentally: they swung open and no alarm that he knew about sounded or flashed where he could see it.

  They went in. The rings, necklaces and bracelets were displayed on black velvet-covered blocks under heavy glass domes. Niekirk and Riggs lifted off the first dome, revealing a pressure switch under the rim. No lights, no sirens, no metal grilles sealing them off from safety.

  They were out of there in three minutes. Niekirk carted the Asahi collection out of the building in a photographer’s camera bag. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth, and it took up no room at all.

  Mansell picked them up at the entrance to the alley. He was mild, silent, grinning a little to see them. He swung the van onto Elizabeth Street, then left into Flinders Street. At the top end of Flinders Street he turned left again, past the Windsor Hotel, past the solitary policeman on the steps of Parliament House, and finally away from the city centre.

  Relieved now, Riggs and Mansell started to congratulate themselves. Niekirk had nothing to say. In his mind he wouldn’t be safe until he was alone again and the jewels were in the U-Store locker. He asked Mansell to stop at the junction of Nicholson Street and Johnston Street and watched the van drive away. A few minutes later he was in his cab, turning toward Spencer Street and a date with the courier.

  13

  ‘Go all right?’

  ‘Piece of cake,’ Niekirk said.

  ‘Your boys off home?’

  Niekirk nodded. ‘They took a rostered day off work for this. They’re on duty again tomorrow.’

  Springett grunted.

  Niekirk leaned forward in Springett’s unmarked car. It was five-thirty in the morning and the city was beginning to stir. ‘That’s him, bloke in the blue uniform.’

  Springett murmured into his radio and started the car. Niekirk saw Lillecrapp uncoil from the doorway of a building adjacent to the U-Store and block the courier’s path, grinning inanely, showing crooked teeth, jerking his ill-cut hair out of his eyes. The courier halted, turned to bolt, but by then the car was gliding to a stop beside him, tyres scraping the kerb, Niekirk opening the rear door for Lillecrapp to bundle him inside.

  Then Springett was accelerating along Spencer Street and Lillecrapp had cuffs on the man’s bony wrists. Niekirk fished inside the uniform jacket and pulled out a wallet.

  ‘Louis Crystal, Pacific Rim Airlines. Well, Lou, guess why we’re here.’

  ‘I’ve kept my nose clean.’

  ‘Sure you have.’

  ‘Why don’t you bastards lay off. I do my job, I stay at home, I’ve stopped all that other business.’

  ‘Makes a bloke wonder what sort of other business and how De Lisle got to hear about it,’ Niekirk said, and saw Crystal’s spirit wither a little at the name.

  Springett was racing the car toward the docklands. He found an asphalt wasteground and parked between a rusty shipping container and a weed-choked cyclone fence. He turned around, stared at Crystal over the back of his seat. ‘You must be feeling pretty sour at De Lisle. Is that why you ripped him off?’

  Crystal opened his mouth, closed it again, searching for the trap. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Cards on the table, okay, Lou? Three times since February you’ve picked up a tartan suitcase at the U-Store and delivered it to De Lisle in Sydney. Today’s delivery will be the fourth.’

  Niekirk took over. ‘So, what went wrong? De Lisle not paying you enough? Felt you’d like to get back at him? Or maybe you just got greedy?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear—’

  ‘Don’t swear, Louis, it’s not nice.’

  Crystal squirmed, looked desperately at his watch. ‘My flight goes in an hour. I’ll lose my job—’

  ‘You won’t need a job, way you’re going, skimming a bit here and there so De Lisle won’t notice, flogging it on the sly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how. Drugs leave me cold.’

  Niekirk glanced at Springett. The cringe, the shudder, the heartfelt denial seemed real.

  ‘Drugs, eh?’

  Crystal stared miserably at his hands. ‘Look, I just deliver the cases, all right? We do it all the time in my line of work. How am I supposed to know what’s in them? You can’t pin trafficking on me.’

  ‘Tiffany’s more your style?’

  Again Crystal looked for the trick in the question. Giving up, he said, ‘Never met her.’

  Springett laughed. ‘Good one, Lou. Must remember that one.’

  Bewildered, Crystal said, ‘I’m going to miss my flight.’

  ‘Assuming for the moment that you haven’t been pinching stuff from the cases, how do you work the delivery?’ Niekirk demanded. ‘Does De Lisle meet you in Sydney face to face? Maybe you put the suitcase through with the other luggage and he collects it himself?’

  ‘Not Sydney. Never Sydney.’

  Springett was surprised. ‘Here in Melbourne? Bit risky.’<
br />
  ‘No, no,’ Crystal said, deeply agitated. ‘Vanuatu.’

  ‘Vanuatu?’

  ‘I put the case among the luggage for one of the resorts, Reriki. De Lisle picks it up, takes it to his place.’

  Springett frowned at Niekirk. ‘His place, Lou?’

  Crystal, sensing that he was being let off the hook, said, ‘Yeah. This mansion, kind of thing, overlooking the harbour in Port Vila.’

  ‘Mansion.’

  ‘Yeah. I asked around; he’s retiring there.’

  ‘You’ve made every delivery to Vanuatu?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You suspected it was drugs?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I want you to look at some photos,’ Springett said.

  They watched Crystal examine the file snap of Frank Jardine and the blurry surveillance photograph of the man they now knew was called Wyatt, with a woman on a park bench, the Arts Centre behind them. Crystal looked up anxiously. ‘Never seen these people before. Should I know them?’

  Springett smiled a wide smile of apparent warmth, reached over the seat, slapped Crystal’s knee. ‘Lou, it’s time you were gone. Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.’

  As Crystal got out at the U-Store, visibly relieved, Springett said: ‘A word to the wise, old son. Keep this to yourself, all right? If I get the slightest hint that De Lisle knows you’ve been talking to us, I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks.’

  Crystal swallowed, nodded, glanced agitatedly at his watch, disappeared into the U-Store to collect the case.

  They watched him go. Niekirk said, ‘I let you play it as you saw it, but I would’ve held onto the case, used it to bargain with, find out what De Lisle’s up to.’

  ‘One,’ Springett said, ‘we don’t want to alert him. We don’t want him closing down and shooting through on us before we get what’s owed to us. Two, I for one don’t want to be stuck with a suitcase load of hot jewellery I haven’t got a hope in hell of moving. I think we agree Crystal’s in the clear? He wouldn’t have the nerve to dip his hand in.’