Garry Disher - Port Vila Blues

Niekirk left it at that. There was no point in asking the prone guard how he felt. That would only risk giving the man another voice to describe to the cops and it would certainly irritate Riggs.

He jerked his head. Riggs led the way to a narrow door set flush into the wall behind the foyer desk. He opened the door with the security guard’s keys and leaned forward to examine the bank of switches behind it.

Niekirk watched Riggs. The big man ran his finger and eyes rapidly across and down, seeking the isolation switches to the alarms in the little gallery on the first floor. He identified three, murmuring as he deactivated each one: ‘Gallery door… electric eye… pressure pads in the display cases…’

Then he looked at Niekirk. ‘All clear.’

Mansell went back outside to the van. Niekirk led Riggs up the staircase in the corner of the building. There were lifts, but Niekirk considered a lift to be a potential trap. You can fight or run in a stairwell. The only way out of a lift is up, into another trapped place, a shaft narrow, dark and deep and smelling of stale air and grease-slicked cables.

The stairwell door on the first floor released them into a vast room of women’s dresses, mannequins and fashion displays, all of it shadowy, the irregular shapes like islands in a dark sea. Niekirk turned over a couple of price tags with his gloved fingers as they passed through the room: $999, $1,200.

The gallery was a glassed-off area at the far end of the first floor. He pushed the twin doors experimentally: they swung open and no alarm that he knew about sounded or flashed where he could see it.

They went in. The rings, necklaces and bracelets were displayed on black velvet-covered blocks under heavy glass domes. Niekirk and Riggs lifted off the first dome, revealing a pressure switch under the rim. No lights, no sirens, no metal grilles sealing them off from safety.

They were out of there in three minutes. Niekirk carted the Asahi collection out of the building in a photographer’s camera bag. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth, and it took up no room at all.

Mansell picked them up at the entrance to the alley. He was mild, silent, grinning a little to see them. He swung the van onto Elizabeth Street, they left into Flinders Street. At the top end of Flinders Street he turned left again, past the Windsor Hotel, past the solitary policeman on the steps of Parliament House, and finally away from the city centre.

Relieved now, Riggs and Mansell started to congratulate themselves. Niekirk had nothing to say. In his mind he wouldn’t be safe until he was alone again and the jewels were in the U-Store locker. He asked Mansell to stop at the junction of Nicholson Street and Johnston Street and watched the van drive away. A few minutes later he was in his cab, turning toward Spencer Street and a date with the courier.

‘Go all right?’

‘Piece of cake,’ Niekirk said.

‘Your boys off home?’

Niekirk nodded. “They took a rostered day off work for this. They’re on duty again tomorrow.’

Springett grunted.

Niekirk leaned forward in Springett’s unmarked car. It was five-thirty in the morning and the city was beginning to stir. ‘That’s him, bloke in the blue uniform.’

Springett murmured into his radio and started the car. Niekirk saw Lillecrapp uncoil from the doorway of a building adjacent to the U-Store and block the courier’s path, grinning inanely, showing crooked teeth, jerking his ill-cut hair out of his eyes. The courier halted, turned to bolt, but by then the car was gliding to a stop beside him, tyres scraping the kerb, Niekirk opening the rear door for Lillecrapp to bundle him inside.

Then Springett was accelerating along Spencer Street and Lillecrapp had cuffs on the man’s bony wrists. Niekirk fished inside the uniform jacket and pulled out a wallet.

‘Louis Crystal, Pacific Rim Airlines. Well, Lou, guess why we’re here.’

‘I’ve kept my nose clean.’

‘Sure you have.’

‘Why don’t you bastards lay off. I do my job, I stay at home, I’ve stopped all that other business.’

‘Makes a bloke wonder what sort of other business and how De Lisle got to hear about it,’ Niekirk said, and saw Crystal’s spirit wither a little at the name.

Springett was racing the car toward the docklands. He found an asphalt wasteground and parked between a rusty shipping container and a weed-choked cyclone fence. He turned around, stared at Crystal over the back of his seat. ‘You must be feeling pretty sour at De Lisle. Is that why you ripped him off?’

Crystal opened his mouth, closed it again, searching for the trap. ‘Don’t know what you mean.’

‘Cards on the table, okay, Lou? Three times since February you’ve picked up a tartan suitcase at the U-Store and delivered it to De Lisle in Sydney. Today’s delivery will be the fourth.’

Niekirk took over. ‘So, what went wrong? De Lisle not paying you enough? Felt you’d like to get back at him? Or maybe you just got greedy?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear-’

‘Don’t swear, Louis, it’s not nice.’

Crystal squirmed, looked desperately at his watch. ‘My flight goes in an hour. I’ll lose my job-’

‘You won’t need a job, way you’re going, skimming a bit here and there so De Lisle won’t notice, flogging it on the sly.’

‘I wouldn’t know how. Drugs leave me cold.’

Niekirk glanced at Springett. The cringe, the shudder, the heartfelt denial seemed real.

‘Drugs, eh?’

Crystal stared miserably at his hands. ‘Look, I just deliver the cases, all right? We do it all the time in my line of work. How am I supposed to know what’s in them? You can’t pin trafficking on me.’

‘Tiffany’s more your style?’

Again Crystal looked for the trick in die question. Giving up, he said, ‘Never met her.’

Springett laughed. ‘Good one, Lou. Must remember that one.’

Bewildered, Crystal said, ‘I’m going to miss my flight.’

‘Assuming for the moment that you haven’t been pinching stuff from the cases, how do you work the delivery?’ Niekirk demanded. ‘Does De Lisle meet you in Sydney face to face? Maybe you put the suitcase through with the other luggage and he collects it himself?’

‘Not Sydney. Never Sydney.’

Springett was surprised. ‘Here in Melbourne? Bit risky.’

‘No, no,’ Crystal said, deeply agitated. ‘Vanuatu.’

‘Vanuatu?’

‘I put the case among the luggage for one of the resorts, Reriki. De Lisle picks it up, takes it to his place.’

Springett frowned at Niekirk. ‘His place, Lou?’

Crystal, sensing that he was being let off the hook, said, ‘Yeah. This mansion, kind of thing, overlooking the harbour in Port Vila.’

‘Mansion.’

‘Yeah. I asked around; he’s retiring there.’

‘You’ve made every delivery to Vanuatu?’

‘Yes.’

‘You suspected it was drugs?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘I want you to look at some photos,’ Springett said.

They watched Crystal examine the file snap of Frank Jardine and the blurry surveillance photograph of the man they now knew was called Wyatt, with a woman on a park bench, the Arts Centre behind them. Crystal looked up anxiously. ‘Never seen these people before. Should I know them?’

Springett smiled a wide smile of apparent warmth, reached over the seat, slapped Crystal’s knee. ‘Lou, it’s time you were gone. Wouldn’t want you to miss your flight.’

As Crystal got out at the U-Store, visibly relieved, Springett said: ‘A word to the wise, old son. Keep this to yourself, all right? If I get the slightest hint that De Lisle knows you’ve been talking to us, I’ll be down on you like a ton of bricks.’