Port Vila Blues

Thirteen

‘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 die 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.’

‘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.’

‘You’re saying De Lisle’s been converting the stuff all this time, right? He should have paid us by now?’

“Think about it. Vanuatu’s one of those places, no tax, no-questions-asked banking. He’s even got a house there. I mean, what a set-up. We can’t touch him.’

‘Yeah, but he is a circuit judge in the area.’

‘Perfect cover, right? Bastard.’

‘Okay, you’ve made your point. So what do we do?’

‘Tread very carefully,’ Springett said. ‘He could put me away for ten years, don’t know about you.’

‘Me, too,’ Niekirk said.

‘What’s he got on you, out of interest?’

‘About three years ago he came to see me during an inquiry into police corruption, waving a deposition in my face.’

‘And you were mentioned.’

Niekirk nodded. He could almost remember the text of that deposition word for word:

‘My name is Bratton, I’m a senior constable with the New South Wales Police and I work with Sergeant Niekirk. During the past three years we have used the police radio network and code names to mount and coordinate break-and-enter operations against private homes and small businesses around Sydney. We often use department equipment to force entry. If necessary we manipulate fellow officers and the courts to our advantage. A number of known burglars have owned up to our burglaries in return for sentence consideration. The extent of our burglaries has therefore been concealed, and at the same time the force appeared to have a good clear-up rate. The system worked because we were eager to prove our loyalty and toughness to one another.’

And Niekirk could remember what De Lisle had said:

‘Looks like the culture of secrecy and protection in the force doesn’t extend to you, eh, my little mate?’

Then De Lisle’s face had sobered. ‘Okay, you don’t need to be an Einstein to know you’re fucked if I decide to table this before the Commission.’ He cocked his head. ‘Come on, Niekirk. This is the point where you’re supposed to ask: “What do you want?” ‘

Niekirk had said it flatly: ‘What do you want.’

“That’s better,’ De Lisle had said. ‘In return for my not tabling this document, I want you to do the occasional little favour for me.’

And that’s how Niekirk explained it to Springett. ‘I did bugger-all for him, really,’ he concluded. ‘Couple of small jobs. Information about a few people. Until now.’

‘He paid well?’

‘Yep.’

‘In effect, you never felt threatened. It felt like a working relationship, not blackmail.’

Niekirk curled his lip. ‘Springett, the psychiatrist. Yeah, that’s how it worked.’

Springett turned one of his smiles into a rare laugh. ‘What happened to Bratton?’

Niekirk shook his head. He’d sent Riggs after Bratton, a nasty accident, but he wasn’t about to tell Springett that. ‘Your turn.’

‘Same kind of thing. I was working Vice. A fair number of the Melbourne brothels are run by the Sydney Outfit. You could say I was on a retainer and De Lisle found out about it.’

‘What did you do for him?’

‘Like you, information, leaned on a couple of people, that type of thing.’

‘He must have creamed his pants when you joined the Armed Robbers. His very own green-light cop.’

Springett’s smile widened. ‘Steering my team away from your team.’

Lillecrapp giggled. He was so stolid and obliging that Niekirk had forgotten he was there.

‘Okay, so we don’t tackle De Lisle. What do we do?’ He picked up the surveillance photographs of Wyatt and Jardine. ‘What if these characters shoot their mouths off about where they got the brooch? What if they’re arrested and start making deals? I don’t want to wake up one morning to find the toecutters on my doorstep. I don’t want to wake up knowing I’ve been ripped off.’

‘You go on back to Sydney, keep an eye on De Lisle,’ Springett said easily. He glanced at Lillecrapp. ‘Meanwhile I’ll plug a few holes down here.’