Garry Disher - Port Vila Blues

They drove for three hours in silence. Mansell broke it first. They were far north now, the Hume Highway stretching across the sodden plains of central Victoria. Feeling he could relax a little, he said: ‘What do you make of Niekirk?’

Riggs stirred in his seat. ‘Arsehole.’

Mansell grunted his assent. ‘What do you think he does with the stuff?’

‘Spends it for all I know.’

‘Come on, be serious. Someone’s behind him, right?’

‘Like a cracked record, this conversation. We get paid.’

‘Yeah, twenty-five grand a job. Not much considering the risks involved. You can bet Niekirk’s getting more.’

They lapsed into silence again. There were a couple of traffic lights in Benalla, an oddly comforting sign of civilisation after the high country where Ned Kelly had once ranged and stolen horses and eluded the troopers.

Mansell parked the Range Rover behind a block of flats in a side street and they changed into casual clothing. The street lights were far apart. There were no clouds this far north. The river had flooded and receded again a few weeks earlier, leaving the little city mud-smeared and damp, smelling of wet carpets and rotting, fecund spring weed growth. Mosquitoes attacked them.

They set out along the broad, flat back streets. “The thing is, Manse,’ Riggs said, ‘where’s he getting his information? Shit, this time last year all Niekirk had us pulling was the odd burglary.’

‘The thing is,’ Mansell flung back over his shoulder, ‘how much are we dipping out?’

Riggs nodded. ‘That, too.’

They continued in silence. When they reached the lighted part of town they watched for a while from the shadows. No uniforms, no patrol cars, no unmarked cars bristling with aerials. When the bus pulled in, thirty minutes later, Riggs and Mansell were stationed several metres apart and could have been mistaken for strangers.

Wyatt looked at his watch: she was early. He made room for her on the bench.

She sat, shifted a little, looking for an opening. Finally she said: ‘I spoke to Frank on the phone. He sounded stronger.’

Wyatt nodded. But he had to make an effort, so he said, ‘Liz, I want to thank you for helping him yesterday.’

‘It was nothing.’ She said it mildly, looking away at the river.

They talked, growing easier with one another. Most people couldn’t read Wyatt and it rattled some of them. There were others, like Jardine from the old days, who had long since adjusted themselves to the fact of his stillness. To them, Wyatt was constructed of silence, a single unadorned look for all emotions and a suspicious mind. But he could be trusted, so they accepted that it was not necessary to know anything more about him. Along the way Wyatt had also run into some who found his self-containment an affront and a challenge. Men got cocksure and women tried to draw him out. Wyatt would do nothing to encourage it, but he might show a faint irritation finally, and act swiftly, irritated because he could not see the point of anyone’s interest in him.

That’s why he began to experience a forgotten pleasure, the uncomplicated company of a quirkily attractive woman, as the sun warmed his bones and broke into shards of light on the river behind a cruising pleasure boat. Liz Redding wasn’t questioning him, wasn’t wanting to know him better, wasn’t playing any games that he could detect. He relaxed marginally, crossed his legs at the ankle, tipped his face to the sun.

They were on Southbank, the stretch of the Yarra that had been reclaimed from the old industrial grime for the sake of tourists and postcard photographers. A bike path, plenty of close-cropped grass, flagpoles, cafйs, Cinzano umbrellas, the Melbourne central mile growling across the water.

Wyatt was starting to like the sun and the view and the company of the woman next to him, but he also liked the fact that he had all the exits he’d need if this were a trap. He could even swim away if he had to, and he’d toss the Tiffany butterfly into the river rather than allow cops to tie him to it.

‘No motel this time?’

‘I don’t like to repeat myself,’ Wyatt said, then clammed up a little, not wanting to talk about himself, not wanting to sound self-satisfied.

Liz Redding smiled. It wasn’t an issue. He saw her look away. Her eyes were drawn to the river as if it were a flame. His, too, though he was also drawn to Liz Redding, an unaccustomed fascination with her body and quizzical face. And he seemed to want to breathe her in, as if her skin and hair were reacting to the sun, maybe even to him.

She said, ‘Have you got it?’

Wyatt had a small gift box nestled in tissue paper on the bench between them. He was conscious of her long thigh, sheathed in a skirt this time, as he leaned to open the box. She seemed to watch his hands, big hands snarled by veins, as he prised off the lid. To anyone walking by, he might have been opening a gift from his lover.

He watched her. He would not have registered the brief intensity and concentration that passed across her face if he’d not been looking for it. ‘Lovely,’ she murmured at last.

But that wasn’t it, the loveliness of the brooch. She hadn’t responded like this yesterday. There was something else, and he’d have to wait for it.

She glanced left and right along the bicycle path and then behind her. They were alone for the moment. He saw her move the Tiffany to her lap and turn it over twice. Then she checked the path a second time, put her jeweller’s eyepiece to her right eye and bent her head over it. Wings of straight black hair swung about her cheeks, concealing her scrutiny of the diamonds. The movement also bared the back of her neck and Wyatt found himself touching her there.

She took it for a warning. Within a second she had whipped out the eyepiece and crammed it and the Tiffany into the gift box. She turned to him, smiling, getting close, part of a charade of lovers on a park bench. But Wyatt went tense at her touch so she looked around, saw that they were alone, and moved until she was a fraction apart from him again. She looked at him oddly, and Wyatt shrugged, to give himself time and something to do.

In the end, she behaved as though nothing had happened. Wyatt felt his edge of embarrassment recede. Suddenly the world seemed to be full of possibilities. But he said nothing, did nothing.

Liz Redding drew in air. ‘We won’t be cutting this up, by the way. It’ll remain intact.’

Good. She’d found a buyer. Wyatt wondered if he wanted her because she was like him or because he wanted her to be like him. The moment he met someone, he could spot the flaw in them, which was often the same thing as the trait that defined them. It was a blessing and a curse and had rarely let him down. Beneath the professionalism, Liz Redding was excited by the Tiffany and all the risks involved, his risks and hers.

Some kids went by arm in arm bawling out: ‘Rolling, rolling, rolling down the river.’ The year Wyatt had served in Vietnam, refining skills he’d learned on the street, every American GI he’d encountered had been singing that song. The Americans had terrified him. They blundered across the landscape, doped to the eyeballs, inviting an ambush. Wyatt made it a rule to stay well clear of them. The only good thing about the dope was that they all seemed to use it, including security guards at the US bases, and it made them slack and careless. Wyatt had snatched his first payroll in Vietnam. It bought him a year’s travelling in Europe when he finally quit the army.

Then Liz Redding said, half to herself, ‘Yep. This is the one. I’d been wondering when this little beauty would show up again.’

At once Wyatt went cold. His face was mostly flat cheeks, bones, unimpressed eyes and a mouth that could look prohibitive if it didn’t occasionally turn up in a smile. There was no smile now and he saw her flinch. His voice was tense and quiet: ‘Turn up? I’ve only just acquired it.’