Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (23 page)

Wyatt left the terminal. Overhead
signs listed various resort destinations: Le Lagon, White Sands, Radisson, Royal
Palms, Reriki Island. He began to queue for a minibus but noticed the people
ahead of him giving vouchers to the driver. He slipped away from the queue,
walked back down the line of waiting buses, and caught a taxi.

It was a battered, newish blue
Datsun. Left-hand drive, he noticed. He climbed into the back seat with his
case and gave the driver an address twenty houses beyond De Lisles.

The driver nodded. He didnt speak
and Wyatt didnt try to encourage him. There was a small child in the front
seat. She had coppery skin and a short, tight furze of red-blond hair. She wore
a blue and yellow cotton dress and gazed at Wyatt solemnly as her father drove
out of the airport and along the narrow, pitted six-kilometre stretch to Port
Vila.

Wyatt had washed up in central and
southern Africa when he left Indo-China, smuggling emeralds and De Beer
diamonds. Something about the roadside commerce on the drive to Port Vila
reminded him of Africa: the plain, flat-topped general stores painted white or
left the colour of cement; the Coke signs, the palm trees and vines, the
skin-and-bone dogs sniffing the dirt, the people themselves, bare-footed,
dressed in bright simple cottons, watching the cars from shopfront verandah
steps. But there was a torn, damaged look to some of the trees, a collapsed
wall here and there, roofing iron weighed down with heavy stones as though
frequent storms lashed the islands. Then the road climbed briefly and Wyatt
found himself looking down into the cramped compound of the main prison.
Meanwhile the taxi continued to brake and shudder on the broken road and Wyatts
tooth ached.

The road flattened again as it
entered Port Vila. The taxi crawled along the narrow main street, past small
banks, cafs and all-purpose stores. Wyatt glimpsed the harbour between the
buildings, twenty or thirty moored yachts and Reriki Island farther out in the
bay. A bloated, rusting shape at one end of the island materialised as a
wrecked ship belly-up on the coral. Rusty inter-island cargo ships were moored
at various points along the waterfront. For all the taxis, pedestrians, noise
and colour it was a strangely still, flat-spirited place.

The taxi began to chug uphill,
leaving the buildings and warehouses behind. The highway had been sliced into
the hillside and Wyatt had a sensation of burial, the deep edges appearing to
fold in on the taxi.

Then the road levelled again and ran
parallel to a strip of costly cliff-top mansions overlooking the bay. The taxi
drew into the kerb a minute later. The driver pointed. We are here, sir. One
thousand vatu please.

There was no footpath, only a track
in the dirt. Wyatt saw high fences and hedges, tiled roofs squatting low behind
them. He paid the driver, got out, and walked back to De Lisles house,
narrowing his eyes against the glare.

Three metres high, toughened steel,
looped with razor wire, protected by alarms and sweep cameras, just like De
Lisles place in the hills behind Coffs Harbour. Wyatt checked both corners at
the front of the property: the fence plunged downhill to the water on each side
of the house. Midway along the road edge was a locked gate that led directly to
a short driveway that looped past the front door.

There were three ways in: scale a
ladder and throw a bag over the razor wire, assuming he could find a ladder and
a bag; cut his way through the steel mesh, assuming he could buy what he needed
in Port Vila and do the cutting without being seen from the street; break open
the lock on the gate, assuming he could get his hands on something like a tyre
iron. And assuming he could evade alarms and cameras when he did get in. Wyatt
prowled along the fenceline again, whistling softly, checking for dogs. There
didnt appear to be any.

He crossed to the other side of the
road to a bench along the main wall of a tiny market. Judging by the Suva
harbour masters estimation, De Lisle wouldnt be arriving for another
twenty-four hours. A quick check of this part of the Kumul Highway told Wyatt
that there were no hotels or motels nearby, so where could he station himself
to watch and wait?

The island. It faced across to Port
Vila and the cliff-top mansions on the Kumul Highway. Wyatt hailed a passing
taxi and two minutes later he was in a small dirt parking area near the wharves
at the bottom of the hill.

He could see the island clearly, a
humped shape in the centre of the harbour, fringed with tropical trees, cabins
on stilts just above the waterline. Two more rows of cabins were set further
back and there was a large complex at the centre which Wyatt guessed housed
offices, bars and dining rooms. There was also a roof among the trees at the
peak of the hump. Hed read in Pacific Rims in-flight magazine that it had
been the British Commissioners residence during the period of Condominium
Government.

The Reriki Resort minibus had
already delivered its load of passengers from the airport. Wyatt joined them
under the shelter at the edge of the wharf. One or two looked at him curiously.
He nodded and half smiled, not because he wanted to and they had shared a
flight together but because it was expected of him and he didnt want to draw
attention to himself. Then the ferry drew in and they filed aboard.

The turnaround took thirty seconds,
the crossing to the island two minutes. Wyatt examined the moored yachts
keenly. Sydney, Southampton, Vancouver, Catalina Island. T-shirts, towels,
shorts and underwear were pegged to dry on the rigging of the smaller yachts.
One man was repairing a sail. Two couples were playing cards on a fast-looking
red trimaran. The men wore shorts and beards, the women bikini tops and
sarongs. There was an idle, easy assumption of privilege in the way they were
indifferent to the ferry and the lives being led beyond the nearby harbour front.

Wyatts case was collected and he
climbed the steep path to the main building. There were a dozen people waiting
to be checked in. Wyatt pushed through to the desk, smiling apologetically. I
havent booked. Are you full?

The clerk smiled at him. Off
season, sir. No problem.

Wyatt slipped to the back of the
line. A woman wearing a flower in her hair came out from behind the desk and
showed him to a small waiting area. A minute later a waitress came by with a
tray of drinks. It was the way things were done here, so Wyatt took a tall
frosted glass of something and thanked her. He didnt drink it. His case, he
noticed, sat with a stack of luggage at the porters station, a tiny wooden
stand like a pulpit in an impoverished church. Then he was called to the desk
and he handed over his false passport and filled out the registration form and
collected his key.

The porter showed him to number
five, in the first row of cabins behind those at the waterline. Wyatt liked
what he saw. The door opened onto a small alcove consisting of a wardrobe,
refrigerator and handbasin. There was a bathroom off to the left. A doorway
ahead of him led to a large main room furnished with a queen-size bed, cane
lounge chairs and glass-topped coffee table, desk, television set, bedside
phone and reading lamps, prints on the walls. The airconditioning hummed
softly. A ceiling fan hung motionless above the bed. Wyatt turned the fan on,
the airconditioning off, and checked under the bed, inside the wardrobe and
behind the shower curtain.

Then he called room service and
ordered a gin and tonic. He took it out to the balcony. A purple evening light
was beginning to soften the edges of things. He eased his long trunk and legs
into a cane chair and watched the ships and harbour lights wink on, the water darken
and finally go black. At De Lisles house across the harbour there were no
lights burning and the private dock was empty.

* * * *

Thirty-five

The
resort was deceptive. When dawn broke the next morning, Wyatt set out along the
paths that stitched the parts of the island together, and found orderly rows of
cabins stretching back up the hillside, concealed from sight by coconut palms,
canopies of flowering vines, and small, almost comical trees which resembled
stick insects, their rows of exposed roots like flexing legs.

Then the path gave way to a walking
track which led through dense tropical growth as high as houses on either side
of him. The soil felt springy under his feet and Wyatt enjoyed the sensation of
his solitary state, the only man alive to see the sky brighten and smell the
air grow steadily warmer and sweeter. There were spiders the size of his hands
spread in ambush in dewy webs along the smaller corridors between the trees.
Wyatt was reminded by their patience of his chosen life and reminded by their task
that he could not afford to sit and wait, he was here to attack.

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 Lisles 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 islands 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 wasnt
workable, but everything about thisfrom the foreign location to his lack of
background intelligence on the man, his house and his habitswas too loosely
assembled. On the other hand, Wyatt wanted some of De Lisles accumulated cash,
and he badly wanted to even the score for Jardines death and the attempted
shooting in the caf 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 cafs. Wyatt crossed the road. He knew hed 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 hed
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 realitytax 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 dentists
sign down a narrow alley behind a caf. An arrow pointed up a flight of rickety
steps.

Wyatt took the stairs carefully. Hed
been taught, and he believed, that a man is at his most vulnerable on stairs.
The terrain is awkward, youre 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.