Port Vila Blues

Forty-one

The window was open. He looked in. Liz Redding had reached De Lisle before he had but it hadn’t done her any good at all. She sat slumped in a chair, blood clogging her nose, while the magistrate quivered on the carpet a metre in front of her. There was more blood on her shirt, a spill of it that had none of the sheen of blood recently spilled. Her head lolled and once or twice she tipped it back and shuddered.

‘Again, how did you get in?’

‘Walked in.’

De Lisle reddened, a fat, easily aggravated man who welcomed anger as a natural condition. He sucked on an asthma spray and said: ‘I haven’t got time for this.’ He darted forward, punching her inexpertly in the stomach and darting back out of reach.

Wyatt felt his hands clench. He wanted to slice through the flywire and wade among the fussy antiques between the window and where De Lisle was ranting, shove the flare pistol down the man’s throat. The feeling came naturally, surprising him with its intensity.

He fought down the impulse and watched De Lisle slap at the cop’s upper arms. It puzzled Wyatt. De Lisle had the vicious tendencies of a torturer but none of the technique.

‘Tell me.’

Liz Redding controlled the slackness in her neck for long enough to say, ‘The gate was open,’ and spit blood at a point near De Lisle’s shoes.

‘Open? Grace, that bloody cow.’

De Lisle paced up and down. He looked at his watch. ‘Why did you have to come here? Look what it’s got you.’

‘Mr De Lisle, if you cooperate, if you fly back with me now, I’ll see to it that the court takes it into account.’

De Lisle put his face close to hers. “There’s no underestimating the stupidity of people like you, is there? Missy, you’re in no position to bargain.’

She went on doggedly: ‘Do you want to spend the rest of your life running and hiding?’

De Lisle was growing tired of playing with her. He looked at his watch, glanced at the window, seemed to listen for something. Suddenly he tipped back his head and bellowed: ‘Come on, Springett. What’s going on out there?’

Too late, Wyatt understood. He began to back away from the window. He stopped when the man whom De Lisle had been calling said softly: ‘That’ll do.’

Wyatt began to turn. The voice grew harsher. ‘No you don’t. Drop whatever it is you’ve got there, then straighten up and walk slowly around the corner. I don’t want to discuss it, I don’t want to see your face, just go on ahead of me into the house. If you don’t, I’ll shoot you, and there’s a suppressor on the barrel, so I’m not worrying about noise.’

Wyatt dropped the flare pistol. Springett snorted. ‘What good was that going to do you? Go on, get moving.’

Wyatt took three crushing steps along the coral-grit path before he heard the start of footsteps behind him. That put Springett three metres back, out of range for a spin and kick, in range for getting a bullet in the spine.

He did as he’d been told and walked around the corner and onto a verandah, ducking under latticework choked with bougainvillea.

In along a broad, dark hallway, toward an open door spilling light at the end. Springett was moving stealthily; Wyatt listened but could not place him in the geography of floorboards, carpet runner and hallstand behind him.

Into the room where De Lisle was waiting. De Lisle looked at him with satisfaction, then past him to Springett. ‘I told you I heard something.’

‘Also your gate’s open. The alarm system’s off.’

‘My servant, bloody cow. She thinks the local cops are coming for me, only I’ve paid them off for twenty-four hours.’

‘You’re a fuckup, De Lisle.’

Wyatt felt the gun for the first time, prodding him across the room. De Lisle danced out of his way. He stopped next to Liz Redding. He gazed curiously at her. It would look suspicious if he ignored her. She was breathing through her mouth; he saw a plug of blood in each nostril. The nose itself didn’t look broken. ‘Can I turn around?’

‘Yeah, let’s look at you.’

Wyatt had discounted De Lisle as the immediate threat. His eyes went straight to Springett. The gun was a Glock, mostly ceramic, maybe smuggled past the metal detectors. Springett himself stared back, full of forbearance and contemplation, taking Wyatt’s measure. He made no movement, and Wyatt began to ready himself for a pointless contest of wills, but it was over before it had begun. Springett wore the ease of a man in charge. He said, ‘All paths lead to Rome.’

Wyatt stayed neutral, limber, putting his weight on the balls of his feet. De Lisle said abruptly, jerking his head at Springett, ‘Come on, mate. Help me get rid of them.’

Springett snarled, ‘Fuckups like you, you invoke mateship whenever it suits, but you’d shop your own mother to stay out of gaol.’

The differences and tension between the two men became palpable to Wyatt. Some things united them- they were about to go on the run, there was desperation underneath the swagger, they’d swipe at threats-but they didn’t trust each other and Springett clearly thought that De Lisle had been cheating him.

De Lisle flushed. He said stubbornly, ‘We have to get rid of these two.’

‘Like, leave a couple of bodies behind, kind of thing? Give the local cops an extra incentive to track us down?’

‘Well, you sort something out.’

Springett gestured. ‘Simple. We take them with us. Burial at sea.’

‘We can’t leave till the morning, not till after the banks open.’

Wyatt heard Liz Redding cough and spit again. She said, ‘You won’t get far. Why don’t you just give yourselves over to my custody, fly back with me and we’ll forget the assault. You don’t want murder charges on top of everything else.’

She was going through the motions. Still, it would suit Wyatt if Springett and De Lisle did go back with her, leaving him behind to loot the yacht.

But it wasn’t going to happen. Wyatt had only one thing in his favour-he knew about the concealed safe on the yacht and what was in it. Springett and Liz Redding clearly didn’t. Springett was expecting to collect when the banks opened in the morning. For reasons of his own, De Lisle had chosen not to tell Springett that he hadn’t got around to depositing the jewel collection in one of his safety-deposit boxes.

‘Springett,’ Liz Redding was saying, ‘don’t stuff up more than you have already.’

Springett said nothing. He stepped forward and smacked the edge of his hand on the bridge of her damaged nose. He knew what he was doing. He also sensed something in Wyatt, for he swung the gun around warningly: ‘Don’t even think about it.’

He turned to De Lisle. ‘How much is in the house?’

‘I told you, nothing. Walter Erakor cleaned me out.’

‘You trust him?’

‘We mistrust each other. The thing is, he wants the deeds to this house as well. He can’t get them until the banks open in the morning, so meanwhile he’s keeping the cops off my back.’

Springett mused on it. ‘We’ll take these two down to the boat now. Out of sight, out of mind.’

De Lisle spread his arms fatly. ‘At last, movement at the station.’

With barely concealed fury, Springett moved behind Wyatt and Liz Redding. ‘Let’s go.’

They began the descent through the steeply terraced garden, stepping carefully in the light of the moon, De Lisle leading, then Wyatt, supporting Liz Redding, Springett in the rear. Wyatt had reached the halfway point when a voice screamed ‘De Lisle!’ and a fiery light leapt at him from the shadowy house above.