Port Vila Blues

by Garry Disher

  Bodyguards? It didn’t seem likely. They’d made a makeshift camp of the sitting room, leaving cans of beer on the carpet and the smeared-foil remains of microwaved frozen dinners on the coffee table. Apparently they’d been taking turns to sleep on the sofa: cushions piled at one end, a blanket bundled at the other. They’d been waiting for De Lisle by the look of it.

  Wyatt was armed only with Jardine’s little .32. Otherwise all he had was a rope and a jemmy in the pack on his back. He needed to improve the odds a little, especially if the action moved out into the grounds of the property. He returned to the gun cabinet, splintered open the glass door with the jemmy. There was one shotgun, two rifles with telescopic sights, a little .22 for shooting at rabbits. He selected one of the rifles, a Steyr-Mannlicher SSG, .30 calibre, capable of planting a six-centimetre grouping in a target at five hundred metres, and was just pocketing a box of shells for it when he felt a faint vibration under his feet. The men were crossing the verandah.

  ‘Look at the floor, Manse. I told you, he’s in the house.’

  Wyatt looked down. The grass had been dewy out there. He’d left the damp evidence of his presence on the carpets of the house. The men entered the hall, tracking him. He wiped the residue of moisture and sodden grass from his shoes, looked wildly for an exit, somewhere to hide until he knew where he could find De Lisle.

  There was a place. The main bookcase reached almost to the ceiling. It was heavy, mahogany, with cupboards beneath the shelves and an elaborate carved facia about forty centimetres high across the top. Wyatt climbed the shelves, gently placed the rifle in the hollow space behind the facia board, tumbled in after it.

  The men came in a few seconds later. Wyatt heard only a couple of whispers, a scrape of fabric as they moved, a soft swish of feet in the thick wool pile on the floor.

  Then a murmur: ‘See that? He’s armed himself.’

  ‘I don’t like this, Riggs. Who the hell is he?’

  The man called Riggs said heavily, ‘We know it’s not De Lisle, we know he’s a threat, end of story.’

  ‘Okay, keep your shirt on.’

  They were gone again, whispering through the house like ghosts. Wyatt waited for ten minutes, staring at the ceiling as dawn light gathered in the room. When he heard them again they were not bothering to be silent.

  ‘Grab yourself that shotgun. I’ll take the rifle. He’ll be outside somewhere and I don’t intend to tackle him with a .38, not when he’s got a rifle himself.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘How the fuck do I know where? Jesus, Mansell, use your eyes. If he’s gone back across the grass there’ll be tracks.’

  ‘Yeah, but what then? Have you thought about this?’

  ‘Want me to pull the trigger for you?’

  Wyatt gave them a minute to leave the house and enter the trees, then climbed down with the rifle and went hunting for them. Their natural inclination would be to spread out and head downhill toward the road and the gate. Wyatt went uphill, striking away from the house at a sharp angle. He had no intention of trapping himself in the house.

  He kept to the trees where there was no dew to betray him, only the springy mulch of fallen leaves. He was looking for a high vantage point, one that gave him a wide-angled field of fire, taking in not only the house but also the lower belt of trees and the open grass stretching down to the gate. In the end he chose a tree. The lowest branches were three metres above his head. He could stand on them and not be seen; lean against the trunk or rest the rifle on a higher branch and pick off one man and then the other.

  Wyatt slung the rifle across his back, the strap around his chest and shoulders, then weighted one end of the rope with the jemmy and slung it over the branch, throwing twice before the jemmied end looped over the branch, dragging one half of the rope with it. Using both halves then, Wyatt hauled himself into the tree. When he was comfortable he pulled the rope and jemmy up after him and folded them back into the knapsack.

  Of course there was another way of doing it. He could go on the offensive, running low, weaving wherever the ground was open, coming up on the flank of each man to kill him while he was in a state of surprise, still bringing his gun around.

  But there were two men. Which one should he choose first? Which flank, left or right? What if one or both men had anticipated him and changed direction? These were the questions Wyatt had played with as he made his choice. They were remembered from his old training, a drill instructor drumming them into him, Wyatt his best pupil.

  This was the better way. He would not let himself be drawn, not break cover. If your enemies don’t see you move, they don’t know if you’ve left the area, stayed put or are moving without being seen. It forces them to search in several directions, splitting their forces and their concentration. That’s how Wyatt read it. Better to let them make the moves, the mistakes. Better to let them come across open ground than to cross such ground himself.

  What he wanted was a clear shot at the man with the rifle, the man called Riggs. Riggs had to go first; he was the one to watch. It would mean giving away his hide in the tree to the man with the shotgun, but Wyatt was counting on the shotgun being out of close range.

  He settled in to wait. Now and then he caught brief glimpses of each man at the lower reaches of the trees around the house, but lacked a clear shot at them. They were keeping to cover, not risking the open grass between the trees and the fence.

  At other times they tended to disappear for minutes at a time. Wyatt guessed that when they found no return tracks across the grass they would begin to circle back, searching the grounds tree by tree before searching the house again. Wyatt did what he’d done in Vietnam, switched off his mind as if some aura of himself might be sensed by the men who were hunting him. It wasn’t something he’d been trained to do; it was instinct and it had got him out of that foul place alive.

  The sun was fully above the horizon now, casting long shadows, winking in the dew. Now and then Wyatt drew deep breaths to expel carbon dioxide from his system, to cut down on the natural trembling in his hands. He blinked, trying to distinguish human shapes in the tricky light.

  In blinking he seemed to place an apparition in the landscape. He shook his head to clear it. Not an apparition but a man, stepping through the holed fence and hurrying at an absurd crouch up the slope toward the house. He was dressed curiously in a stiff new sports coat and polyester trousers. Wyatt put his eye to the rubber cup on the scope, cutting out extraneous light. The man’s haircut looked new and raw and Wyatt could see the damage of cigarettes, alcohol and bad diet in his face. There were two rings in one ear lobe, tattoos on the backs of his hands. He had the nervy appearance of a burnt-out minor hoon dressed for church.

  Wyatt pulled back from the scope. If he hadn’t, he would not have seen a movement among the trees on the left flank, Riggs sighting the hunting rifle on the man coming across the grass.

  Riggs fired and Wyatt fired. Wyatt’s shot was clean and on target, punching into Riggs’ back, between the shoulderblades. Riggs’ shot caught the stranger in the stomach. The third man showed himself then, clearly panicked. Wyatt watched him make short, senseless runs left and right, weaving as he made for the house.

  Wyatt let him go. He climbed down from the tree and set out at a lope across the back lawn, flattening against the back wall when he reached the house. He listened, tracking the man through the rooms. Then he went in.

  He found the man called Mansell crouched at a window in the study. He let Mansell hear the oily snap as he worked the slide of the rifle. ‘Drop the gun and turn around.’

  Mansell turned but he brought the shotgun around with him. Wyatt saw fear and confusion in him and didn’t fire. He waited, letting the growing silence work for him. Mansell was mostly a bluffer but Wyatt knew it could be a mistake to push a bluffer too far, for he might then look at himself and become fatalistic or despairing about his inadequacies and decide to take a foolish risk, to cure himself of them.

  But final
ly Mansell sulked and threw the shotgun down and told Wyatt most of the things he needed to know about the magnetic drill robberies. Wyatt locked him in the cellar. There had been a reason to kill Riggs; there was no reason to kill Mansell.

  That still left De Lisle unaccounted for. Wyatt doubted that he was still in Australia. The Wintergreen woman had mentioned Suva, Port Vila, a yacht. Wyatt searched De Lisle’s study. Rolodex, desk diary, silver-framed photograph of a lovely two-master, Pegasus stamped on her bow. Wyatt checked the Rolodex, lifted the handset of De Lisle’s phone and tapped in the number for the yacht basin in Suva Harbour. Yes, sir, Mr. De Lisle flew in yesterday evening. He immediately put to sea. Estimated sailing time to Port Vila? Two or three days, sir.

  On the way out Wyatt went through the pockets of the stranger in the grass. He found an Ansett ticket in the name of Terence Baker. The name meant nothing to him at all.

  33

  The initial search had failed to find him, and so had a more thorough sweep of the building. Liz had felt time slipping through their hands. Springett had got out somehow, had got himself onto the street and away unobserved. She’d sent a divisional van to his house, waited impatiently for them to call back. ‘Not here,’ they said. ‘The place is shut up.’

  She shrugged. It had been a long shot. She went home. Nothing more she could do.

  The next morning she gathered all the paperwork there was on Springett and read it in Montgomery’s office, drumming her fingers on his desk as she read. Montgomery came in at nine, sporting a bandage and a black eye. ‘Make yourself at home, Ms. Redding.’

  Said with a half smile. She blushed, gathered her files together. ‘I think we’ve lost him, sir.’

  Montgomery eased himself into his chair. ‘If you were him, where would you go?’

  ‘I wouldn’t stay in Australia.’

  ‘You’ve alerted the airlines?’

  ‘For what good it will do. Rudimentary disguise, false passport, what’s to stop him? He’ll have an indirect route mapped out as well. France via New Zealand, for example.’

  Montgomery nodded for a long time. ‘I shouldn’t have doubted you.’

  ‘Boss, I want to search his house.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Montgomery said, enlivened suddenly.

  Thirty minutes later, they stood looking around at the walls and furniture in Springett’s Glen Iris house. ‘No obvious signs that he’s bent,’ Montgomery said. ‘No Merc in the carport, nothing funny inside.’

  Liz ignored him. She didn’t want Montgomery here with her. It was as though he wanted to atone somehow, be supportive, but he was ineffectual and he was in her way. She sat on the carpet and began to sort through paper scraps from Springett’s rubbish bin and documents from drawers in his study, kitchen and sitting room.

  His telephone bills seemed to be worth a closer look, several monthly bills from Optus, a quarterly from Telecom. Why the separate Optus account? As far as she could tell, it listed only a handful of interstate numbers. The same numbers cropped up on each bill, except for the most recent, which listed a new number. Liz went to the Touchfone on Springett’s desk, called the most frequently called number. A recorded message told her that she had reached the residence of Vincent De Lisle and that he wasn’t in right now. She was offered the choice of leaving a message or trying him at the North Sydney Magistrates’ Court.

  She tried the other number. A harsh, clipped, recorded voice said: ‘Niekirk. Leave a message.’

  So she had the names of the people Springett was dealing with but not where he was hiding himself. She sighed, glanced around the room. There was something about the floorboards behind Springett’s desk chair. One of them was a poor fit.

  Then Montgomery broke in upon her thoughts. A heavy smoker, he was fidgeting. ‘I’ll see you back at the car.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Liz stood for a moment. Then, on an impulse, she pressed the redial key and, as Niekirk’s cruel voice unwound, pressed the #1 key. If Niekirk’s answering machine had a remote access function, one of the keys would activate the messages his callers had recorded. She went through the numbers and it was the #6 key that switched the machine over. There were a couple of hangups, then this: ‘It’s all falling apart here, better make yourself scarce. I’m going after De Lisle in Vila, collect what’s owing, if you want to meet me there.’

  Liz grinned to herself. She didn’t leave immediately but probed experimentally around the edge of the offending floorboard.

  34

  Wyatt caught a Pacific Rim flight originating in Brisbane. He could have made the connection in Sydney, but he wanted to minimise all risks, and the advantage of flight 204 was that Brisbane passengers were not required to disembark at Sydney while connecting passengers boarded the plane. If the authorities were circulating his description they’d be circulating it at Sydney airport.

  He had a seat in first class, the only seat available on Pacific Rim. It had been a while since he’d been able to afford first class. There had been a time when he always flew first class, a time when the big jobs had been easier, netting him first-class spending power.

  Twenty minutes later they were still sitting on the ground at Sydney. Maybe he’d been spotted flying to Brisbane from Coffs Harbour? He flipped through the in-flight magazine, unconsciously running the tip of his tongue over the hole in his tooth. He had a sudden sensation of himself as an ordinary man after all, small and afraid, trapped inside a thin metal skin. Then the pilot announced another fifteen minutes, saying that air traffic above Sydney was clogged and they were waiting for it to clear, and Wyatt felt the tension ebb a little.

  In Port Vila Wyatt joined the passengers making for the front exit door of the Pacific Rim 747, stepped out into the air of Vanuatu, and was engulfed by old sensations. They were a compound of remembered people, places, sounds and bitter risks, encouraged into life by the smells of the tropics, the warm humid air blanketing his skin. He was in Indo-China again, a knife-edge time, on the run after snatching a base payroll in Long Tan, ten months before the Prime Minister brought the troops home. It was another four years before Wyatt had gone home. He had a new identity by then, his skills were sharper, and he was even less inclined to lead a straight life.

  The passengers straggled across the tarmac to the immigration hall. Three queues formed, a small one for local residents returning to Vanuatu, two longer ones for the visitors, Australian and New Zealand tourists mostly, with a handful of others there on business of some kind.

  Wyatt passed through immigration after ten minutes in the queue and collected his luggage. It was a collapsible leather suitcase which he’d bought at Melbourne airport and stuffed with T-shirts, paperbacks and pharmacy items from the shops scattered through the international and domestic terminals. He hoped it would pass inspection. He had nothing to declare but plenty to hide. The customs official who tried to imagine a life from the contents of Wyatt’s case would end up with more questions than answers.

  But he was waved through to the arrivals lounge. He stood uncertainly near the main terminal exits. It was a small place, consisting of no more than a bank, a duty-free shop and tourist information counter. Well, he’d need money before he could do anything. He crossed to the bank, changed a hundred dollars for small denomination vatu notes, and went in search of a telephone. De Lisle was listed: a number in the high thousands on Kumul Highway.

  Wyatt left the terminal. Overhead signs listed various resort destinations: Le Lagon, White Sands, Radisson, Royal Palms, Reriki Island. He began to queue for a minibus but noticed the people ahead of him giving vouchers to the driver. He slipped away from the queue, walked back down the line of waiting buses, and caught a taxi.

  It was a battered, newish blue Datsun. Left-hand drive, he noticed. He climbed into the back seat with his case and gave the driver an address twenty houses beyond De Lisle’s.

  The driver nodded. He didn’t speak and Wyatt didn’t try to encourage him. There was a small child in the fron
t seat. She had coppery skin and a short, tight furze of red-blond hair. She wore a blue and yellow cotton dress and gazed at Wyatt solemnly as her father drove out of the airport and along the narrow, pitted six-kilometre stretch to Port Vila.

  Wyatt had washed up in central and southern Africa when he left Indo-China, smuggling emeralds and De Beer diamonds. Something about the roadside commerce on the drive to Port Vila reminded him of Africa: the plain, flat-topped general stores painted white or left the colour of cement; the Coke signs, the palm trees and vines, the skin-and-bone dogs sniffing the dirt, the people themselves, bare-footed, dressed in bright simple cottons, watching the cars from shopfront verandah steps. But there was a torn, damaged look to some of the trees, a collapsed wall here and there, roofing iron weighed down with heavy stones as though frequent storms lashed the islands. Then the road climbed briefly and Wyatt found himself looking down into the cramped compound of the main prison. Meanwhile the taxi continued to brake and shudder on the broken road and Wyatt’s tooth ached.

  The road flattened again as it entered Port Vila. The taxi crawled along the narrow main street, past small banks, cafes and all-purpose stores. Wyatt glimpsed the harbour between the buildings, twenty or thirty moored yachts and Reriki Island farther out in the bay. A bloated, rusting shape at one end of the island materialised as a wrecked ship belly-up on the coral. Rusty inter-island cargo ships were moored at various points along the waterfront. For all the taxis, pedestrians, noise and colour it was a strangely still, flat-spirited place.

  The taxi began to chug uphill, leaving the buildings and warehouses behind. The highway had been sliced into the hillside and Wyatt had a sensation of burial, the deep edges appearing to fold in on the taxi.