Port Vila Blues

Nine

The house was on a cliff top two kilometres from the post office in the centre of Port Vila. It had been built for the director of a French bank a couple of years before Independence in 1980, and that fact accounted for the two features that De Lisle had been looking for when he bought the place. One, the house was luxurious, the plunging grounds beautifully terraced, with harbour frontage and views across the blue water to Reriki, the island resort in the bay; two, the nervous French colonist had erected a steel-mesh security fence around the perimeter to keep the rebels out. Now Vanuatu was a republic but the fence was still there. In fact, De Lisle had also upgraded the alarm system inside the house. All that cash and jewellery coming in was making him nervous.

De Lisle stepped off the broad verandah and climbed down the steep steps to the little concrete dock at the bottom of the property. He’d once thought of putting in a small funicular to run between the house and the water’s edge-the climb back up the steps was a killer- but that would have been inviting trouble. He pictured thieves beaching silent canoes and swarming up the cable and into his house and cutting his throat.

At the bottom he checked that no one was lying in wait on the other side of the perimeter fence and unlocked the steel gate. He’d bought the house three years ago, soon after the first of his tours through the Pacific as a circuit magistrate. Now he had an oceangoing yacht as well, the Pegasus, a two-master gently bumping against the truck tyres along the edge of the little dock. De Lisle had crewed in a couple of Sydney to Hobarts a few years back and knew he could sail the Pegasus around the world if he wanted to. Depending upon his work schedule, he often sailed it between Port Vila and Suva. He kept the yacht fully stocked with food and equipment. In fact it was his way out of Port Vila if anything should go wrong. He had a second set of papers: in five minutes the Pegasus, Coffs Harbour, could be transformed into the Stiletto, registered to a company in Panama.

De Lisle’s various bank accounts were also in company names. It was all a smokescreen, and as necessary as food and water, now that he was moving large amounts of money into and out of Vanuatu. Being a tax shelter, the country offered security provisions and confidentiality agreements protecting his banking and other activities. No income tax, no capital gains tax, no double taxation agreements with Australia. No exchange controls or reporting of fund movements. And he was able to deposit money in whatever amounts he liked, in any currency, no questions asked.

There was nothing to excite the attention of the police in his apartment in Sydney or his house in bushland behind Coffs Harbour. He kept anything like that here in Port Vila, in safes and safety-deposit boxes.

He stepped onto the yacht, removed the security shutters, unlocked the cabin door and went below. The interior was teak-lined and when he opened the curtains it glowed a rich and satisfying colour in the morning sun.

The safe was concealed behind a small bulkhead wall oven. De Lisle unlocked the oven, pulled until it slid forward on rollers, and reached in. There were documents stacked on the bottom shelf, duplicates of the information he’d passed on to Niekirk for the next heist, the Asahi Collection of precious stones: floor plans, a map of the alarm system, staffing level, the size of the take, the best time to hit, the expected delay before the cops would respond to an alarm, what number to call in the event of an arrest. De Lisle took out everything from yesterday’s Upper Yarra job now, and fed it to the garbage compactor under the galley sink.

He leafed through the material he had on Riggs, Mansell, Niekirk, Crystal, Springett-as far as he was concerned, the only useful outcome of all those inquiries and royal commissions he’d sat on over the years. All those names: paedophiles, bagmen, cops running protection rackets or moonlighting as burglars and receivers, perjurers, officials with their fingers in the till. It was pervasive and as natural to the running of the world as mothers’ milk.

The thing was, all those names had something to hide and all were potentially useful to De Lisle. In some instances he’d had to wait. He hadn’t had a courier until Lou Crystal’s name had cropped up during an investigation into Australian sex tours to Asia, for example.

After the Asahi job he would quit. He would retire from the bar and come here to Vila to live. He’d had retirement in mind for the past year, but he was also prompted by the fact that he couldn’t count on Springett and Niekirk remaining patient forever about getting their cut of the action. And they could see with their own eyes what each hit was worth. They didn’t have the resources De Lisle had for moving the stuff, but they were men, they’d get greedy sooner or later, despite knowing that De Lisle had dirt on them that could put them away for a very long time. How serious was he about using that dirt, anyhow? They’d name him for sure, if he did. That option would be at the backs of their minds. So, time to quit while he was ahead, finish liquidating the cash and jewels from the bank raids, pay them off.

De Lisle locked the safe, secured the yacht and started up the steps to his house. He took them slowly. Only 27 degrees but 90 per cent humidity and his breathing was ragged, his shirt and underwear soaked, before he’d reached the halfway point.

He paused to catch his breath. Work tomorrow. Vanuatu lacked lawyers and judges, particularly in the north. The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Solicitor’s Office were there to get cases ready for court, but they were understaffed and the day-to-day court staff were overwhelmed with demands from jungle bunnies and expatriates wanting help with forms and claims. So, several times a year, De Lisle sat on the Supreme Court of Vanuatu to help ease the strain. He was funded by the Australian Government’s Staffing Assistance Scheme, and he loved it. He got to hear evidence in open-air courts half the time, just bamboo and palm tree fronds between him and the blue sky above. Mainly British law, with a bit of French and a bit of jungle bunny thrown in. Last time he was in the little republic he’d been obliged to turn a blind eye to a spot of police brutality. The police had been called in by a council of chiefs to warn off a man believed to be practising witchcraft, but things got out of hand and the man had died of injuries. Still, no loss to anyone.

And the trips to Vanuatu provided the perfect cover for moving the stuff that Niekirk and his crew had liberated from those Victorian bank jobs. The world was going to blow one day-corruption, erosion of values, mobs in the street-and De Lisle wasn’t about to be caught without a hedge against that kind of collapse.

He put one foot after the other again and continued up the steps. Deep breathing, that was the answer, deep breathing to control the heart, deep breathing to concentrate and clarify the mind. To centre himself, in the jargon of a fuckwit who’d insisted on making a statement to the court back in Sydney last week.

Deep breath. If he didn’t watch it he’d die of a heart attack on the job. He snorted-’on the job’ was right. The last time he’d been in the cot with Cassandra Wintergreen she’d leaned on one elbow and grabbed the spare tyre around his waist, pinching tightly, grinning cruelly: ‘Here’s a little fellow who loves his tucker.’ De Lisle had batted her hand away: ‘Quit that, Cass,’ he’d said, wishing now that he hadn’t given her that tasty Tiffany brooch from the safety-deposit hit Niekirk had pulled for him in February.

He put Wintergreen out of his mind. Half a week’s work here in Vanuatu, then spend two or three days sailing the Pegasus to Suva. A spot of Supreme Court work in Fiji, then fly back to Sydney, leaving the Pegasus moored in Suva. A quick turnaround in Sydney this time. He’d arranged his workload so that he could be in Vila to collect the Asahi stones.

Grace, De Lisle’s hi-Vanuatan servant, was waiting for him on the verandah. White cloth on the cane table, martini in a steel jug beaded with condensation, chilled glass, a plate of oysters. De Lisle stood close to her, rotated his bulk a quarter turn, fitting his groin against her thigh. Her brown skin felt cool beneath the hairline. Then cotton, a series of bumps along her spine, then her wonderful arse.

De Lisle rested the folds of his chin on her bare shoulder. He watched her stare out across the water, very still except as he began minutely to move against her.