Port Vila Blues

Twenty

Wyatt slowed for a traffic bottleneck in Ringwood, the hills clarifying in the distance, and considered just how murky this deal with the Tiffany had become. If Liz Redding were simply a fence, he’d be wary out of habit, knowing that the only other factor to take into account was the ripoff factor: you can’t get rid of the goods yourself, fences can, so you’re forced to rely on them, knowing they’ll always rip you off a few per cent. But at least you also knew that neither you nor the fence wanted the law involved.

But that kind of certainty didn’t exist when it came to someone who walked the murky ground between the insurance companies and lawless professionals like Wyatt. The insurance companies were ostensibly on the side of the law. The only thing in Wyatt’s favour here was their well-known reluctance to fork out the full value on any claim. They would rather fork out a few thousand dollars to get the Tiffany back intact, no questions asked, than pay the full replacement value-which didn’t mean they wouldn’t also work with the law if it suited them to do so.

With that in mind, Wyatt did what he could to stack the odds in his favour. He hadn’t been carrying for months-too much metal, too many airport metal detectors, and Jardine’s burglaries hadn’t warranted a gun. But today he had Jardine’s unused, untraceable.32 automatic in the waistband at the small of his back. Not his preferred handgun, but it would do if the shooting were close and fast.

Next was the handover place itself. If there’d been more time and if he were dealing with a buyer or a fence, then he’d have insisted on meeting in the safety-deposit vault of a bank. He’d have a safety-deposit box, the buyer would have a box. He’d have the Tiffany, the buyer would have scales, pincers, jeweller’s eyeglass and purchase cash. They’d complete the trade in complete privacy and neither would be tempted to pull a cross, not with so many guards, cameras, witnesses and steel doors around.

But there wasn’t the time, and Liz Redding wasn’t a simple buyer or fence, so he’d suggested a Devonshire tea place near Emerald. It was taking him over an hour to get there, but the hills offered escape routes and boltholes. He could slip away on one of the back roads or hole up in a weekender cabin or even perch up a tree for a few hours. He’d be hard to track from the air and hard to follow in the dense ground cover.

He thought through the getaway alternatives. If this were a trap he was walking into, he’d run and keep running, assuming he had the initiative to begin with. If not, then he was left with holing up in Emerald until the heat was off, or holing up a few kilometres away until it was safe to leave. He thought he knew how the cops would work it. They’d block the roads out first. If he didn’t show, they’d move the search closer to Emerald. Clearly the answer was, if he got away in the initial confusion he’d hide where he could watch the roadblocks. When they came down for the cops to narrow the circle, that was the time to run and keep running.

Assuming the cafй itself wasn’t being staked out, the interior crowded with cops posing as customers, waiters, cashiers, cooks.

Finally, Wyatt had worked on himself, doing what he always did before a hit. He’d eaten a modest breakfast, enough to give him energy but not slow him down. He had a train timetable in his pocket, and reserves of cash to buy his way out of trouble. And he was wearing a useful, quick-change disguise if he needed one: the jacket was reversible, there was a beret folded into an inside pocket, he wore sunglasses. Change all three factors and he might change his appearance sufficiently to get away unnoticed.

The cafй offering Devonshire teas was on the northern edge of the town, separated from the first of the shops by a belt of gums, tree ferns and bracken. Wyatt parked the car in a bay outside a milkbar, went in, bought an icecream, came out again. He set off down the street, heading away from the cafй. He strolled for four blocks, not hurrying, taking tiny smears of the icecream into his mouth to make it last. Then he crossed the street and came back, pausing now and then at the window of a craft shop, a nursery, a display of New Age crystals and self-help books. The crystals and the books were incomprehensible to Wyatt.

The sweep was smooth, methodical, made with the steady, quiet competence with which he stamped all his jobs. He didn’t let the tension of his situation work on his nerves. It helped that he didn’t see anything that he hadn’t expected to see. There were a few tourists like himself, a few local merchants, housewives doing the shopping, a couple of horticultural types in Land Rovers and here and there a stoned-looking sixties’ counter-culture throwback, probably from a hovel back in the hills somewhere. Wyatt preferred the pure, peeping bellbirds to any of them.

By now he had a clear picture of the Devonshire tea place. It had a first floor balcony with umbrellas open to the sun, but he wasn’t about to tree himself there. He’d meet Liz Redding on the ground floor: plenty of doors to the open, and plenty of windows if it should come to a dive through the plate glass, his jacket over his face and arms for protection. Otherwise there seemed to be a basement, a rose arbour at the side, a couple of shadowed porches and alcoves of greenish, weathered boards. He’d stay clear of places like that, just as he stayed clear of any place where he might find his exits blocked in front of him and some final threat coming hard behind him.

So, he was as safe as he could make himself. That left only the negotiation itself. Wyatt had no doubts about his strength there: he had the Tiffany, Liz Redding wanted it.

What else did she want? He wanted her, but that didn’t mean he was going to act on it. Then he stopped thinking those things and watched a car pull into the small asphalted area in front of the cafй. Liz Redding was driving but it was not the car she’d been driving the day he and Jardine had met her at the motel in Preston. No sticker of any kind in the rear window.

She got out. Plenty of loose material hanging on her slim frame today: baggy pants, a billowing white T-shirt reaching to her knees. She swung the strap of a black purse over one shoulder and strode into the cafй. He went in after her, knowing that he wouldn’t feel any more or less safe five minutes from now.