Port Vila Blues

by Garry Disher

  ‘Huh,’ De Lisle said.

  ‘Is that all you can say? This fellow had a bit of style. Not your regular burglar. He wanted a chat, kind of thing. You know, where did I score the Tiffany, so on and so forth.’

  Pause. ‘Did you tell him?’

  Nasty chuckle. ‘I guess you’ll soon know one way or the other.’ Whore. ‘Cass, can I use your phone?’

  ‘Why darling, you’ve gone all pale.’

  De Lisle scowled, wheeled around, made for her study, rapidly mapping his way out of Australia. He’d need to keep the risk of detection and interception down. Ansett to Coffs, first thing in the morning, charter a small jet to Suva, bugger the cost, sail the Pegasus back to Vila, where the Asahi stones would be waiting for him.

  Meanwhile, though, he couldn’t risk going back to his apartment. De Lisle made his phone calls, wondering exactly how he could sweet-talk Cassandra Wintergreen into letting him stay the night.

  30

  After his run of piss-poor luck, things were beginning to look up, Baker could feel it. Things were beginning to fall into place.

  He’d seen the Goldman bitch before lunch the previous day, and this time he’d quizzed her about De Lisle. Just casual, not making a big thing of it, just stuff like: was De Lisle Australian? Did he have a wife and kids? Did he live in a wealthy suburb? Was it true they called him the ‘hanging judge’? Why ‘hanging judge’ when hanging wasn’t allowed any more? Did he always have a go at people in court, their surnames and stuff, making them feel small? Maybe he lived on the North Shore? When was he next headed for the Pacific? Stuff like that.

  Goldman had acted busy and abstracted again in her little partitioned office. A whole mob of ethnics going yap yap yap outside, waiting to see a duty lawyer, keyboards tapping in the background, printers whining, high heels up and down the corridors, phones ringing, clerks yelling out names and docket numbers and what court to go to. Plenty to distract the bitch but she went cagey on him and wouldn’t give him a straight answer. Just, the surname was French but as far as she knew he was born in Australia; she didn’t know about his private life; yes, he had a reputation for sternness; ‘hanging judge’ was just an expression; she was sorry, but she had no intention of discussing De Lisle’s movements or where he lived.

  She gave him a hard, level look. ‘Terry, I hope you’re not thinking of doing something stupid.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like having a go at him.’

  ‘Give us a break,’ he’d told her. ‘What do you take me for?’

  ‘A man with a grievance,’ she said, ‘just because another man called him a loafer. A man who was supposed to seek professional attention for a drug and alcohol problem but didn’t.’

  ‘Yeah, rub it in,’ he said sourly. Then he brightened. ‘Besides—’ smirking, ‘—I can’t find him in the phone book.’

  She smirked back. There wasn’t much humour in it.

  Okay, if she wouldn’t tell him where De Lisle lived, he’d follow the bastard. Baker walked right back down the corridor to the notice board, found the day’s listings, saw which court De Lisle was in, and took a seat in the back corner where he couldn’t be seen clearly.

  He watched through the long afternoon. De Lisle seemed to be in a hurry, rushing through the hearings. He’d been in the sun, Baker guessed, taking in the man’s mottled skin—unless it was due to his shitty personality. Entirely possible, Baker decided, watching De Lisle lean forward at one point, practically spitting in some poor bastard’s face: ‘Mr. Patakis, why are you dressed like that?’

  The Patakis geezer was about twenty, small, agile-looking, a gold stud in each ear, long black hair, a lot of hair on his bare arms, legs and chest. Probably what was getting to De Lisle were the loose gold satin shorts, the perforated powder-blue workout singlet, the sockless high-top Nikes.

  Patakis looked down at himself, briefly brushing one hand down the black hairs on his legs. He looked genuinely puzzled. ‘This is top gear, judge. Three-fifty, four hundred bucks worth.’ His mouth hung open. Baker knew he was handing De Lisle a line.

  So did De Lisle. He snarled, ‘It’s an insult to come into my court dressed like that.’

  Patakis took a different tack. ‘I was in court six yesterday, judge—’

  ‘Your worship, thank you.’

  ‘—worship, and my best strides got too creased to wear today. They’re at the cleaners.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have borrowed some clothes? Spent your ill-gotten gains on a decent wardrobe?’

  Patakis’ defence lawyer had been watching De Lisle and his client tiredly, amusedly, but in good conscience he couldn’t let this go by unchallenged. Baker watched, grinning despite himself, as the lawyer bobbed up from his seat. ‘Your worship, I really must—’

  De Lisle waved a hand irritably over the courtroom. ‘All right, all right. Mr. Patakis, you are charged with …’

  Baker had tuned the bastard out, thinking about how he’d fix him. An hour later he’d tailed De Lisle to Woollahra. De Lisle didn’t stay long. He came out wearing a change of clothes and was in his car and gone before Baker could get the Holden started.

  Frustrated, Baker had another look at De Lisle’s apartment block. The place looked impenetrable: ground floor apartment, lock-up garage under the building, inside elevator, swipe-card access to the lobby. He tried something that he’d seen work on TV, pushed all ten intercom buttons, but no one buzzed him in and when a woman said ‘Yes?’, all clipped and hoity-toity, Baker had gone tongue-tied and backed off.

  The next day he’d gone back after breakfast, wearing overalls and carrying a bucket and a squeegee. He waited until a suit in a BMW drove out of the underground carpark, slipped inside the building before the door had closed, and made his way to De Lisle’s patio. He knocked. No answer. Cunt, Baker thought. He’s gone for the day already.

  He lifted the sliding glass door experimentally. Piece of shit: it rose three centimetres out of the track and he had no trouble levering the bottom away and stacking the whole door against the wall.

  De Lisle’s apartment had the cool, restful air of a place that has been switched off while its owner is away. Baker roamed through the darkened rooms, pocketing a silver ashtray, a Walkman, a gold pen. The broad quilt in the main bedroom bore the impression of a suitcase and one or two shirts and items of underwear had been left behind.

  Baker found De Lisle’s study, got out the Yellow Pages and began to ring around the airlines, giving the name De Lisle, saying he was confirming his flight details.

  He hit paydirt at Ansett.

  ‘I don’t understand, Mr. De Lisle. We had you on our eight-thirty to Coffs Harbour this morning. That flight has already left.’

  ‘My mistake,’ Baker said hurriedly, breaking the connection.

  Coffs?

  He pressed the redial button, prepared to disguise his voice, but he was connected to a different booking clerk this time. ‘You got any spare seats to Coffs today?’

  ‘Let me check that for you.’

  He could hear her tapping away. ‘Nothing until tomorrow lunchtime, I’m afraid. Shall I confirm that for you?’

  It would have to do. Baker told her yes, then asked how much.

  ‘Return?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She told him and he wondered if his good luck was running out before it had begun. No way could he afford it. ‘When do I have to pay?’

  ‘When you collect the ticket, sir, an hour before departure if possible, otherwise the seat may be allocated to someone else.’

  So Baker went to the Cross after dark to earn himself an airfare.

  There was a back street where young blokes about thirteen or fourteen would hang out, hopping into the Jags, Mercs, Saabs that cruised by. A few quick blowjobs and they’d have enough to score themselves a virusy needle. But it wasn’t the kids Baker was interested in, it was the perverts driving the expensive cars. Unlike normal blokes, who bought their fucks off women inside four walls, the bloke
s who cruised for kids were usually very rich, usually puny, usually feeling dirty and guilty after.

  At least they were easy to roll. Baker simply waited until they were finished and the kid was getting out of the car, then shoved the kid aside, dived in, punched the guy in the guts. The first one he rolled thought Baker was a cop, actually offered two hundred bucks to keep it quiet. Baker accepted. He topped the two hundred up with a cash advance of four hundred from a hole in the wall using another guy’s PIN number. The third one had a gold band on his ring finger so Baker threatened to tell the man’s wife if he didn’t pay up. Another four hundred from the automatic teller machine.

  It was hard work and it was tricky and he had to deal with the dregs of humanity in the process. All in a good cause, but he’d hate to make a living out of it, not when there were easier ways to score some cash. Not this much cash though, or so quickly.

  Baker went home to bed, feeling dirty, and had a shower. He woke Carol up, really wanting to wipe the evening from his mind. Apart from a bit of soppiness after, it was pretty good.

  He got up early on Thursday morning, showered, shaved, told Carol he was going for a job interview, took the bus up to Shopping Town. He had a short back ‘n’ sides at Hair Today, bought a sports coat, strides, sunnies and an overnight bag from Target, joking ‘Tarzhay’ with the girl on the cash register, who looked at him with deep boredom. Then he went to the Edinburgh Castle to score some speed, and finally took a taxi to the airport, where he slapped cash on the counter at the Ansett desk and said, ‘I believe you’re holding a ticket in the name of Baker?’

  He’d always wanted to say that.

  31

  Wyatt had spent all of Tuesday night staking out De Lisle’s apartment in Woollahra. By dawn it was clear that the man wasn’t coming back. That left the house on the coast.

  As the first Coffs Harbour flight on Wednesday afternoon banked over the sea, wing tip angling at a thread of white sand between the breakers and the green hinterland, then levelling for the touchdown, Wyatt swallowed, and swallowed again, to clear his ears. He ran an internal gauge over himself, alighting again on the tooth. There was no pain there but his tongue would not let the jagged edges alone, automatically testing for sharpness and further erosion. He’d eaten fruitcake twenty minutes out of Sydney. The fleshy remnants of a raisin were lodged in the crevice and he knew he should take Liz Redding’s advice and have the stump pulled.

  These obsessions got him onto the ground and through the terminal building and into a taxi. Coffs Harbour straggled over the ranks of coastal hillocks that rose to the mountains behind, the buildings predominantly white in the sun. White stucco, with terracotta tiles, he noticed, as the taxi weaved through the outskirts of the town. Then the houses gave way to ochred-brick shopping precincts, flashy takeaway places, car yards and pylons, with only palms and spreading overblown tropical flowers to suggest that he was in a holiday paradise. The place had a swagger born of sun-dazed greed and hedonism, not intellect. It was all desperation underneath, as superannuated retirees from the south struggled to keep small businesses alive during the off-season. If you had money and sense you’d build yourself a gangster’s fortress back in the hills. Exactly what De Lisle’s house looked like, according to Cassandra Wintergreen.

  Wyatt got out at a small rental car concession, no more than a transportable hut in the back corner of a Caltex station. He’d reserved the car by phone from Sydney and had documents and cash ready, giving the rental man the name of a motel on the Esplanade. He bought a map in the Caltex shop, drove half a kilometre to a shopping mall, checked De Lisle’s address in a call-box phone book. The time was midday and the town was gearing up for the afternoon trade, cars and vans adding to the endless burden of the heavy traffic on the Pacific Highway which split the town from the hills.

  On impulse then, Wyatt dialled De Lisle’s number. He counted ten rings. He was wondering if that meant that De Lisle was still on his way to Coffs Harbour or had already left when a voice grunted, ‘Yeah?’

  Wyatt tried to read the voice. Someone unused to the phone? A driver, gardener, bodyguard? He didn’t want to alarm the man by hanging up, so loaded breeziness into his tone and said, ‘How are you today? My name’s Jason, I’m calling from the Pacific Spa Fitness Centre and this month we’re featuring—’

  ‘The boss isn’t here. Call back another day.’

  The phone went dead. Wyatt replaced the receiver and returned to the car. The road he took inland from the coast passed steeply banked banana plantations, crossed a river and skirted a rainforest. There were roadside stalls around every bend, signalled by misspelt blackboards advertising mangoe’s, pineapple’s, tomatoe’s.

  After twenty minutes on the blacktop he turned onto a dirt road. Here the forest had been cleared a century ago, leaving stands of tall gums along the roadside and pockets of jacaranda and native pine along the creeks and gullies—the only vegetation apart from rich, close-cropped grass, cattle growing fat on it. Here and there Wyatt spotted big houses set into the hillsides, overlooking the Pacific.

  The grounds of De Lisle’s property suggested broad, cultivated parkland. The house itself sat far back from the road gate, a vast, softly gleaming slate roof showing above glossy trees and tangled, white-flowered creepers. It suggested new money and De Lisle clearly didn’t want strangers coming in: a three-metre security fence topped with barbed wire ran around the property and the driveway was barred by a massive locked gate. It was an incongruous structure there in De Lisle’s vulgarian landscape—thick, twin wooden doors higher than the security fence and shaped to fit an archway. Very old and worn but sturdy enough to withstand a battering ram, they had probably come from a seventeenth-century Italian courtyard, admitting carriages, men on horseback.

  Wyatt drove back to Coffs Harbour. In what remained of the afternoon he went shopping, paying over the odds for some items because he couldn’t produce the necessary forms and authorisations. Then he slept.

  By 5 A.M., one hour before dawn, he was back on De Lisle’s hillside, concealing the rental car behind an abandoned tin hut in the gully below the house, where the looping road forked.

  He got out and began to climb the slope to De Lisle’s perimeter fence. Dressed entirely in black, he’d also blackened his cheeks and forehead and the backs of his hands with greasepaint from a theatrical suppliers. He’d washed in plain water before leaving Coffs Harbour: no soap, shampoo or deodorant, no chemical odours or perfumes that might betray him. He carried twin oxy-acetylene tanks strapped to his back and a knapsack in one hand. When he reached the fence he stared up at the lumpy shadows that defined the house and the trees around it. A faint light was showing. It didn’t mean anything. People burn lights in their garages and on verandahs every night of the year.

  Power to the property came from a branch line that finished at a steel and cement pole adjacent to the fence. A smaller line ran from a transformer at the top of the pole to the house itself. If Wyatt could cut the power he’d throw De Lisle’s house and grounds into darkness and cancel any alarms or traps the man might have set for someone like him. The dawn hour gave him an extra edge, for it was the hour when people were blurry with sleep. If there were guards, one would be coming off duty tired, his replacement coming on tired.

  Wyatt used a thermite charge to destroy the transformer. Thermite burns, it doesn’t explode, and he contained the fuse inside half a metre of two-centimetre PVC pipe to conceal the sparks. De Lisle would only know that his defences were being breached if he happened to be standing under the transformer. Nothing would be seen or heard from the house. For a while, at least, they’d assume there was a legitimate power cut.

  It was a fifteen-minute fuse. Wyatt heard the transformer blow and saw De Lisle’s light blink off among the black trees.

  He was ready to cut through the steel fence now, the torch head attached to the tanks, welding glasses over his eyes, heavy gloves on his hands. As soon as the transformer blew he lit the torch head wit
h a sparking tool, opened the valves on the tanks, and turned the petcock on the torch head, keeping the sparking tool in the thin stream of gas until with a whump he had a flame on the torch, cobalt blue in colour, tinged at the edges with yellow. He adjusted the valve on the oxygen slowly until the yellow disappeared. The flame was at its hottest now, and he applied it to the steel. One by one the bars turned orange, then cherry red, parting finally with a spray of molten sparks. Wyatt cut himself a hole big enough to escape through without having to duck or crawl, and went in.

  For two minutes then, he rested his eyes. The goggles had protected them from damage but, until his vision cleared, the dawn seemed to consist of fiery red bars across the dark slopes and the darker trees beyond.

  His breath, he realised, was wreathing around his head like smoke on each exhalation in the low dawn temperature. He got out a handkerchief, masked his nose and mouth with it, shrugged the knapsack onto his back and began to make his way across the grass to the outer edge of the trees.

  Wyatt reached the house unchallenged. He climbed a set of steps to a broad verandah and heard only the softly rising wind clacking the palm fronds against the roof of the house. Then a sudden gaseous stench reached his nostrils and he heard the first heavy rush of urination. A man was standing where the verandah was darkest. In that same instant, he seemed to register that Wyatt was there. He cried out, fumbling at his crotch.

  Wyatt head-butted the smear of face in the darkness and disappeared down the steps. Behind him, the man bellowed. Ahead of him were the trees. That’s where he’d be expected to run. Instead, he ducked under the verandah and, when two men clattered like horses down the steps and into the trees after him, torches probing, Wyatt slipped back onto the verandah and in through the open door.

  32

  Wyatt went through the house, rapidly checking each room, automatically noting the gun cabinet bolted to a fieldstone feature wall in the study. De Lisle wasn’t there. A short, soft, middle-aged man running to fat, the Wintergreen woman had described him. There’d been enough early light outside the house just now for Wyatt to see that neither of the men hunting for him had been De Lisle. They were the wrong age and size, more like athletes or cops who hadn’t lost their fitness.