Garry Disher - Port Vila Blues

It took him only thirty minutes to map the island in his mind. He wound his way back by the stony beach and up a crumbling cliff path to the dining room and ordered breakfast. He ate muesli for its bulk and energy, grinding only with the teeth on the right side of his face. But chips of nuts and grain caught in his broken tooth, the gum surrounding it seemed hot and swollen to his flickering tongue, and he resolved to have the tooth yanked.

Wyatt returned to his cabin with a handful of old newspapers and magazines. He sat in a cane chair, his feet on the rail, and read, and watched De Lisle’s dock across the water. A rustbucket coastal steamer glided past at the midpoint of the morning. One of the island-hopping yachts put out to sea. The ferry ploughed unvaryingly between the island and the mainland, water taxis crisscrossed the harbour, directed by the random needs of their passengers, and tourists heaved back and forth in the water adjacent to the island’s only strip of sand, skinny legs dipping and rising as they worked the paddleboats.

But no De Lisle. His house remained shut up, his dock empty.

A sensation of vulnerability crept through Wyatt. His tooth. He became convinced that pain existed and was growing worse. That and the helpless need of his tongue to explore the contours of the tooth stump and his engorged gum were dangerous distractions. He felt that he was not concentrating effectively. He told himself that even if the yacht were to dock now, De Lisle was unlikely to turn around and leave within minutes of arriving.

Wyatt sealed his cabin against the rising heat and walked down to the ferry. What he disliked about going up against an individual like De Lisle, for reasons of revenge as much as for gain, was a sense of slippery control over events. Wyatt never attempted anything that wasn’t workable, but everything about this-from the foreign location to his lack of background intelligence on the man, his house and his habits-was too loosely assembled. On the other hand, Wyatt wanted some of De Lisle’s accumulated cash, and he badly wanted to even the score for Jardine’s death and the attempted shooting in the cafй in the hills. And, if he cared to admit it, even the most workable plans contained within them an addictive element of craziness.

The ferry docked. Wyatt clambered over the aluminium bow and onto the concrete steps of the wharf. A man rang a bell on the handlebars of a rental scooter. Wyatt smiled briefly, shook his head. He reached the main road and looked along it to the downtown shops. On the harbour side was a narrow tattered strip of parkland set with market stalls. On the opposite side a cracked footpath ran past dozens of small shops and cafйs. Wyatt crossed the road. He knew he’d feel oddly exposed yet herd-like if he were to walk past the market stalls to get to where he was going.

It had been halfway acceptable, his arrangement with Jardine. His main doubt had been that it had a robbery-on-consignment aspect to it. Unless the take was hard cash, they both had to wait on someone else to get a cash return for them. In the old days, Wyatt had liked to use a ‘banker’ for his hits. The banker knew nothing about the job, who was pulling it, or how his money would be spent. Wyatt had absolute control of the investment, finding the best professionals each time, outfitting them, dividing the take afterwards, then paying back the banker twice what he’d invested. Wyatt had liked the security of that arrangement. But he was increasingly unable to control the quality of the men he worked with and the banker was eventually named in a Royal Commission and fled the country.

Wyatt glanced into each shop as he passed it. Behind the glass and neon and the global brand names the shelves were sparse, the goods costly, shopkeepers and shoppers a little defeated-looking. The air trapped between the buildings was heavy with diesel fumes.

Wyatt thought that if he could build up his fortunes again he should construct a new identity to go with it, paper by paper until it had the texture of reality-tax records, bank accounts, passport, income documents, property deeds, investment certificates. If he had genuine investments he could live off the income.

‘And do what for the rest of the time?’ he muttered, his eye caught by a sun-faded molar depicted on a dentist’s sign down a narrow alley behind a cafй. An arrow pointed up a flight of rickety steps.

Wyatt took the stairs carefully. He’d been taught, and he believed, that a man is at his most vulnerable on stairs. The terrain is awkward, you’re an easy target from above and below, the banister hems you in.

But it was only an ordinary staircase to a suite of small, airy rooms above a fishing tackle shop. The dentist was alone at a reception desk and she greeted Wyatt with a keen smile that went straight to his jaw. ‘Poor, poor man,’ she said, in softly accented English. She was round and sympathetic and took him by the arm.

‘You can do me now?’

She gestured at the empty rooms, the open doors. ‘Of course.’

She pushed him into the reclining chair and clicked on the silvery light above their heads. Then she drew on latex gloves. Wyatt told himself that he needed latex gloves for what was ahead of him.

‘Open wide, mister.’

Her hands were swift with the pick and mirror. She smelt of coffee and mango; his shoulder merged with her pliant thigh. She stepped back, almost reluctantly. ‘It must come out.’

‘Yes.’

‘I will inject you. You will have numbness for several hours afterwards, maybe a little swelling to spoil your beauty, but very little pain.’ She touched his jaw lightly, grinning at him. ‘I would not want to see you in pain, mister.’

His smile came easily. She was a balm to his risky life. Laughter bubbled from somewhere deep inside her. The University of Adelaide, according to a framed degree on the wall. Wyatt wondered what those dour Europeans had made of her.

At one point her telephone rang and she went into the other room. He pocketed a pair of latex gloves and returned to the seat, hearing her cajoling someone to come in and see her, don’t delay.

When he left her twenty minutes later, Wyatt needed a hand on each banister to get down the steps. There was no pain and no real disorientation, only the sense that there should be. He started out for Reriki. After five minutes he doubled back and went into the tackle shop beneath the dental surgery. He pointed to a long, slender knife, not trusting himself to speak, and laid out money on the counter. He didn’t touch the knife himself, but carried it out with him in a paper sack.

He was back in his cabin by four o’clock. De Lisle’s yacht had berthed while he’d been away. Everything about the tiny fat figure going up and down the steps between the dock and the house on the cliff top suggested panic.

When De Lisle returned to the house after collecting the tartan suitcase on Reriki, Grace, his hi-Vanuatuan servant, was waiting for him at the top of the steps, holding a silver tray. She’d placed a white calling card in the centre of the tray. De Lisle had trained her in a thousand little rituals and courtesies. Today she was staring at him and something about it made him uneasy. For two years she’d refused to meet his eye, as though he were an unknown guest in the house, not the man who came into her room in the servants’ quarters night after night. So why the sudden confidence?

De Lisle opened the card. It was from Walter Erakor and said simply, ‘Meet me in Ma Kincaid’s Eating House at five this afternoon’.

De Lisle dismissed Grace and fixed himself a drink. He wondered what Erakor wanted. Walter was a jungle bunny-born on the island, a law graduate of the Sorbonne, but still a jungle bunny. De Lisle worked with the man whenever he was in Vanuatu, mainly routine circuit court cases, but he’d also called on Walter Erakor’s help in getting around the kinds of legal loophole matters that required a greased palm in the local judiciary. Erakor had saved De Lisle time and trouble in setting up holding companies, bank accounts and real estate transfers. Did the man want a bigger slice of the pie? De Lisle hated dealing with the blacks. He wished he’d been in Vanuatu before Independence, when there’d been plenty of decent Frenchmen in the public service.