Port Vila Blues

Twenty-four

Springett checked his watch. Unless there’d been a balls-up, Lillecrapp should be on his way back from making the hit about now. He pictured it, Lillecrapp’s wet teeth bared, a mad light in his eyes, that falsetto giggle he was always coming out with, roaring down out of the hills, two more bodies to his credit. As the saying goes, a natural-born killer. Springett pondered upon that as the traffic ahead of him shunted forward two car lengths and stopped again, trapped by a Sydney Road tram. Lillecrapp had been useful; now he was a liability. Springett wondered if paying him off would work. Unlikely. Lillecrapp would want more, or he’d brag to someone when he was in the sack, or grievances would begin to eat away at him. Maybe Niekirk’s boys could arrange an accident for him?

The conductor appeared in the open door of the tram, jerking his thumb at the line of cars, signalling them to pass. Greasy hair, in need of a shave, runners on his feet: How did someone like that keep his job? Springett accelerated, sticking his middle finger at the man as he passed the tram.

He was in a big Falcon from the divisional motor pool. He liked to drive with both feet, one riding the accelerator, the other the brake, a kind of edgy dance that made his blood race. That was the beauty of your automatic transmission.

He found his landmarks, a furniture barn opposite a mosque, and turned off Sydney Road, into a system of narrow streets. The red light in the Falcon’s rear window winked as he surged, braked, surged, braked, steering a course between beefy cars parked outside the tiny houses neat as pins, new cladding on the walls, wet cement gardens, Middle Eastern smells and music hanging in the air.

Springett felt hungry. He would eat soon, but not before he was finished with Jardine. He needed that margin of irritation you got when hunger creeps in.

According to Liz Redding’s notes, Jardine lived in a rented house with an unmarried sister. He rarely went out. He was ill; the sister looked after him. Springett gnawed at his bottom lip. A shame about the sister. She wasn’t involved. Jardine himself had said so-it was in Liz Redding’s notes. A shame to have to knock her as well as her brother.

Springett slowed for Jardine’s street, prowled along the row of houses in the car. No numbers on the front doors or gates, of course, so he was relying on Redding’s surveillance photographs. There: the white weatherboard, a sorry-looking ruin sitting in a patch of onion weed. He drove past, turned around, drove out of the street, looking for the laneway that ran behind the houses. Redding’s photos showed a back gate fashioned from a sheet of iron, held shut with a twist of wire. Every house had a high laneway fence and there were no flats overlooking the lane. He could go in that way unobserved, catch Jardine and the sister with their pants down, maybe literally.

Redding was thorough, at least Springett could say that about her. Pity she had tunnel vision. Pity it had to be her that Wyatt and Jardine contacted, instead of a real fence, for the Tiffany would have disappeared again by now. But it was her, and it got her thinking that she was onto the famous magnetic drill gang. Tunnel vision. ‘No worries, boss,’ she’d said, ‘I’m going to follow this through to the bitter end.’

Bitter was right. A bullet between the eyes from Lillecrapp. And an end that was sooner than she’d expected.

Springett got out, locked the car, crossed the street into the lane. If Liz Redding had been allowed to arrest Wyatt and Jardine, been allowed to process them and stick them into interview rooms, then there wouldn’t have been a lot that Springett could have done about it. One of them would have talked, seeking a deal, and sooner or later De Lisle’s name would have come up as the main man in the chain of people who’d handled the proceeds of the Brighton bank job.

Springett had said it himself to Niekirk: De Lisle will talk to save his neck, count on it.

Springett had a break-and-enter-gone-wrong in mind for Jardine and the sister. He wanted it to look like one of those random, messy, everyday tragedies that you find in the poorer areas of the cities of the world. He didn’t want the homicide boys scratching their heads over an atypical shooting; he didn’t want neighbours reporting gunshots; he didn’t want to have to get rid of a gun afterwards. He didn’t want to get rid of a knife, either, or risk blood fountaining over his clothing.

So he was carrying a baseball bat.

Springett came to Jardine’s skewiff laneway gate. He unfastened the wire, edged into the back yard. No dog- Redding’s notes would have said if there was a dog.

Not much cover, either, apart from a fig tree, a clothesline and a couple of dead tomato plants in plastic pots. And according to Redding, Jardine liked to sit at the back of the house, where the sun penetrated, and watch his hopeless hours pass by. No time to waste. Springett charged across the yard, jerked open the screen door, shouldered through the inner door, and found himself two metres away from Jardine on a daybed.

There was a tartan rug over Jardine’s legs, a form guide on his chest. Jardine opened his mouth and Springett saw fear crawl in him, literally claw its way through his body. Jardine jerked, tried to speak, rolled back his eyes, tugged at his collar, and died.

For a long moment, Springett gaped at the body. He closed his mouth, swallowed, looked nervously over his shoulder, then back at Jardine again.

Jesus Christ, a stroke, he thought. But where was the sister? He jerked into action, running into each of the other rooms, swinging the bat. Nothing. The sister was out.

He went back to Jardine and felt for a pulse. The guy had definitely carked it. What a fucking piece of luck. No investigation.

Springett tucked the baseball bat under his jacket and left through the front door, onto an ordinary street of the struggling class, everyone indoors in front of the TV or hanging out down the DSS.

Springett whistled, bounced on his toes a little. Almost time to go to the public phone near the high school in Princes Hill, wait for Lillecrapp to call in that he’d plugged another two holes in this operation.

Leaving just one big hole.