Port Vila Blues

Six

After leaving Niekirk and the money, Riggs and Mansell had driven north, Mansell winding the Range Rover through farming land beyond the hills of the Yarra Valley, Riggs hunting through the FM bands on the radio, filling the vehicle with gulps of sound. Where 3UY should have been there was nothing, only a faint scratching. He switched off and settled back in his seat. ‘Done the locals a favour tonight, no more golden oldies.’

Mansell slowed for a hairpin bend. ‘What’d you do to him?’

‘Clobbered him, tied him to his chair.’

Mansell shook his head. ‘Jesus, Riggsy.’

‘What?’

‘It looks bad. It’s the sort of thing that gets the local boys bent out of shape.’

Riggs could feel anger rising in him. ‘You weren’t there, pal. He was going for the microphone.’

‘What if you’d killed him?’

‘That crap he was playing,’ Riggs replied, ‘I should’ve finished the job.’

Despite himself, Mansell sniggered. He said what Niekirk was always telling them, mimicking Niekirk’s flat tones: ‘Quick, clean, that’s our trademark. We appear out of nowhere, pull the job, disappear without a trace.’

Riggs laughed harshly. ‘Niekirk, writing headlines in his head.’

Mansell said soberly, ‘If he falls, we fall with him, and for blokes like us that’s a bloody long drop.’

Riggs snaked his hand out, clamping his fingers around Mansell’s lower jaw. ‘But it’s not going to happen, is it, old son? Eh? It’s not going to happen.’

He stared at the side of Mansell’s head. After a while he released him. Mansell jerked away, hunching his shoulders. For the next hour, neither man spoke. Riggs gazed sourly out at the blackness beyond the shapes at the road’s edge and Mansell concentrated on throwing the Range Rover through the switchback curves of the road.

They had far to go. The airport was closed for the night and they knew that morning flights, and bus and train departures, could be monitored. The best option they had was to drive-not all the way back to Sydney but as far as Benalla. Here they would dump the Range Rover, change into casual clothes and catch a coach to Sydney. ‘No jobs on our own turf,’ as Niekirk put it. Mansell could see the sense in that. Three times now they’d slipped down into Victoria, robbed a bank, slipped back again, netting themselves $25,000 each time. He only wished he felt free to pick and choose, come and go, like your average holdup man.

They drove for three hours in silence. Mansell broke it first. They were far north now, the Hume Highway stretching across the sodden plains of central Victoria. Feeling he could relax a little, he said: ‘What do you make of Niekirk?’

Riggs stirred in his seat. ‘Arsehole.’

Mansell grunted his assent. ‘What do you think he does with the stuff?’

‘Spends it for all I know.’

‘Come on, be serious. Someone’s behind him, right?’

‘Like a cracked record, this conversation. We get paid.’

‘Yeah, twenty-five grand a job. Not much considering the risks involved. You can bet Niekirk’s getting more.’

They lapsed into silence again. There were a couple of traffic lights in Benalla, an oddly comforting sign of civilisation after the high country where Ned Kelly had once ranged and stolen horses and eluded the troopers.

Mansell parked the Range Rover behind a block of flats in a side street and they changed into casual clothing. The street lights were far apart. There were no clouds this far north. The river had flooded and receded again a few weeks earlier, leaving the little city mud-smeared and damp, smelling of wet carpets and rotting, fecund spring weed growth. Mosquitoes attacked them.

They set out along the broad, flat back streets. “The thing is, Manse,’ Riggs said, ‘where’s he getting his information? Shit, this time last year all Niekirk had us pulling was the odd burglary.’

‘The thing is,’ Mansell flung back over his shoulder, ‘how much are we dipping out?’

Riggs nodded. ‘That, too.’

They continued in silence. When they reached the lighted part of town they watched for a while from the shadows. No uniforms, no patrol cars, no unmarked cars bristling with aerials. When the bus pulled in, thirty minutes later, Riggs and Mansell were stationed several metres apart and could have been mistaken for strangers.