Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (9 page)

So no one was looking twice at
Wyatt, but Wyatt, pretematurally wary, was going home the long way. After
leaving Liz Redding he had driven to Moorabbin Airport, on the flat lands
south-east of the city. Cessnas, Pipers, a couple of helicopters and one Lear
Jet were parked near the hangars, fuselages and wings reflecting the
late-morning sun. There was a handful of student pilots in the air, circling
the field, touch landing and taking off again. Wyatt watched for a couple of
minutes then entered the terminal building.

Island Air was a desk front three
metres long, staffed by a young woman wearing a polka-dot dress. According to
her name tag she was called Nicole and she smiled at Wyatt. I hope youre Mr
White.

Wyatt agreed that he was.

We thought you werent going to
make it. The others are just boarding now.

Wyatt looked at his watch, then at
the clock on the wall behind her. The difference in time was twenty minutes and
that meant his watch was faulty.

Nicole was all smiles. Battery?

Must be, Wyatt agreed.

It wasnt the kind of mistake he
could afford to make. It wasnt the kind of mistake hed normally anticipate,
either. He gave Nicole his ticket and watched her fingers on the VDU keyboard.
Island Air flew to King Island twice a day, at 11.30 a.m. and 3.30 p.m. He was
booked on the eleven-thirty, timed to connect with a TasAir flight from King
Island to Wynyard. It was a long way home, costly and tedious, but Wyatt liked
to avoid showing his face in the terminal building of major airports. He had a
car at Wynyard. From there to the flat he rented in Hobart was a three or four
hour drive.

Nicoles smile was a wide seam of
white teeth. She leaned on the counter and pointed to double-glass doors at the
side of the terminal. Through there, Mr White.

Island Air flew twin-engine,
ten-seater Chieftains on the King Island route. The flight took fifty minutes
and Wyatt ignored the other passengers and read about the magnetic drill gangs
raid on a bank in the Upper Yarra region outside Melbourne. The
Age
gave
it a bare, three-sentence outline. The
Herald-Sun
police reporter gave
it ten sentences and was inclined to be hysterical. She finished the story with
a quote from a man in the street: It certainly makes you think. If thats a
gauge of the ordinary Australians powers of reflection, Wyatt thought, then he
deserves everything he gets.

King Island looked green and hilly
in the water below, dairy farms stitched together in irregular patterns by
narrow roads. The Chieftain touched down at twelve-twenty; ten minutes later,
Wyatt was aboard a fifteen-seater Heron. He was offered sandwiches and coffee
but his first hesitant bite of the sandwich fired up his bad tooth and his
first sip of the coffee made it worse. He swallowed two paracetamol tablets and
closed his eyes, the thin planes of his face drawn together in strain and
exhaustion.

He awoke, senses dulled, when the
Heron bounced down at Wynyard. On the drive south, Wyatt judged that he had
about another twelve months with Jardine. They wouldnt have a falling out,
they wouldnt get caught Jardine would simply run out of good jobs for him.
What then? Wyatt couldnt see any big scores on the horizon, he couldnt see
himself doing contract work for organised people like the Sydney Outfit, he
couldnt see himself putting teams of unknowns together again. The old ways
were gone, it seemed. Men like himprivate, professional, meticulouswere
anachronistic in a world given over to impulse and display.

A great deal was at stake. Ten,
fifteen years ago, Wyatt had been able to pull just a few big jobs each year,
living on the proceeds, spending weeks or months at a time in places where no
one knew him. He liked having a safe haven, a place where he was unknown and
overlooked, a place he could slip home to between jobs. Hed had it once, a
comfortable old farmhouse on fifty hectares on the Victorian coast south-east
of Melbourne, bought with the proceeds of a bullion heist at Melbourne airport.
His windows had looked out over the sea and Phillip Island, and for Wyatt living
there was like a rest from running.

Then everything had gone wrong and
hed been forced into a life of mistakes and betrayals and looking over his
shoulder for the man carrying a gun or a knife or a badge. For three years hed
felt hunted, on edge. But now he had a chance to regain the things hed lost
and control the strings that had pulled him into risks he should never have
taken. He had sufficient money to live on, no one in Tasmania knew who he was
and, once hed paid his debt to Jardine, he would buy an end to his running.

He crossed the Derwent at five oclock.
Traffic was mounting up but that didnt mean anything in Hobart. He followed a
minibus past the Government House lawns and looped down through the streets of
the city. Tomorrow hed go back there and find himself a small downtown dentist
who ran a busy practice and get his tooth filled. The old sandstone buildings
looked soft-edged and warm, glowing softly in the last hour before the sun
settled behind the mountain. Below him, on the left, there were the same masts
in the yacht basin, the same timber workers vigil outside the Parliament
building. Then he was climbing again, curving up and left into Battery Point.

The apartment block was a
squared-off, three-storey beige brick construction from the 1960s, set into a
steeply pitched part of the Battery Point hillside overlooking the Derwent.
According to tourists, environmentalists and people living on the hill behind
it, the building was a blight on the landscape, but it suited the tenants, who
could see the water and the mountain. Wyatt had a one-year lease on a
street-level flatstreet level to cut down on his escape time if anyone with
arrest or death in mind for him came snooping around. The rent was low, he
could walk everywhere, the neighbours left him alone. There was no one to
notice or care if he should slip away for a day, a week, a month. No letters
came, the phone never rang, no one looked at him with interest or emotion.

In fact, if any of those things
were
to happen, Wyatt would hit the ground running.

* * * *

Twelve

Two
weeks after his meeting with Springett, Niekirk was back in Melbourne. Riggs
arrived that evening, Mansell the following morning. Both had taken rostered
days off work. They made it a rule never to fly in together. They met in a
motel room in St Kilda Road, and Niekirk had to wait while Mansell gabbled away
about his flight down from Sydney. Mansell was like most people, governed by a
set of conventions that said you wasted a few minutes kicking pleasantries
around before you got down to work.

When Mansell was finished, it was
Riggs who spoke first. Whats the target?

Niekirk wordlessly tipped floor
plans, photographs, a security-system map and a page from a street directory
onto the double bed. Mansell bent to pick up a photograph, then straightened,
groaning, stretching his back, making a show of it.

Riggs, as stolid and featureless as
a slab of rock, crossed to look at the plans. Jewellery heist?

Mansell peered again at the
photograph. Lovely bit of rock.

Niekirk picked up a second
photograph, a necklace, white gold catching the light softly, emeralds, rubies
and sapphires hard and sharp against the gold, like ice splinters in the
morning sun. The Asahi Collection, he said, on loan from Japan.

Valued at $750,000, according to the
newspapers. Niekirk had calculated his return if he were to try fencing the
stones himself. Ten cents in the dollar? He knew he wouldnt do it. There was
no one he could trust, and De Lisle had a long reach.

He watched Riggs and Mansell. Riggs
was examining the plans now, giving them a grave scrutiny as if he were putting
the hit together himself. He had still, capable, long-fingered hands, his body
loose in grey cords, a check shirt and a heavy yachting pullover. He could have
been anyonethief, cop, car mechanicbut someone who kept himself calm and
ready, and someone with an unpredictable, vicious streak. Sensing Niekirks
scrutiny, Riggs said, Where?

Were going there now.

Niekirk took them into the city, to
a region of tiny arcades bounded by major streets. Satisfied that they hadnt
been tailed, he led them into a snack bar. They sat on stools at a bench that
ran the length of the front window of the place. The air smelt of vinegar and
superheated oil, shaken apart by a radio tuned at full volume to an
easy-listening station. Niekirks elbow was stuck in a smear of tomato sauce
but he ignored it and pointed to a raw new building across the street from the
snack bar. It was a narrow, black glass department store, six storeys high,
called Soreki 5. Japanese, and it had only just opened for business. There were
branches like it all through the Pacific. This one had a gallery on the first
floor, and management intended to show fur, porcelain, painting and jewellery
collections month by month.

Under cover of the shouted
conversations around them, the radio and the thick smacking of cafteria
crockery behind the stainless steel counter, Niekirk said, Their first-ever
exhibition starts tomorrow morning, and will be here for the next month, so we
go in tonight.

Tonight, when security wouldnt be
up to scratch. Any questions?

We wont need the drill this time?

Correct.

Maybe the local boys will think
theres a new crowd at work.

Maybe.

They rested during the afternoon and
were stationed in the alley by 2 a.m., in a white van marked Food Transport
Vehicle this time. Niekirk sat in the drivers seat, Mansell next to him,
Riggs in the back. Now and then while they waited to go into operation, Mansell
fine-tuned the police band radio. Niekirk listened with half an ear as the
dispatchers voice, ghosting with signals from the atmosphere, reported burglar
alarms, broken glass, a knifing near the clubs in King Street.

Shortly after two oclock, Riggs got
out and walked away from the van toward the Soreki 5 building. The department
store sat black and glassy on the street facing the alleyway. Riggs passed from
the alley into the lighted street. He wore a security patrol uniform, gold
cloth badges, black trousers, brown shirt, black peaked hat, and Mansell said
softly, All he needs is a pair of jackboots.

Niekirk ignored him, intent now as
Riggs crossed the street and stopped at Soreki 5s heavy glass doors. He saw
Riggs rap on the glass with the base of a torch. A moment later Riggs switched
on the torch and illuminated a fistful of documents in his other hand.

Soreki 5 employed its own security
guards. They watched for shoplifters during the day and yawned over skin
magazines at night. They were trained, but men like that got soft on the job
and knew that they were Mickey Mouse guards compared to the men who worked the
big contract patrol firms, who regularly got shot at or beaten up and generally
led a riskier life. Thats how Niekirk had explained the psychology behind
Riggs ploy at the briefing session, and now he fastened a set of headphones over
his ears and began to monitor Riggs conversation with the Soreki 5 guard.

The voices came through sharply,
transmitted by a pickup in Riggs lapel:

Come on, pal, I havent got all
night.

Sounds of disengaging locks, then a
muffled voice growing less muffled: Whats your problem?

Medicare.

The Soreki 5 man was slow. He didnt
say anything and Riggs repeated, Medicare. You know, on the top floor.

Everythings jake here. Ive got it
covered.

Riggs said, barely patient: Maybe
so, but the thing is, Medicare isnt one of yours, right? Weve got the
contract for that, even though they rent space in the building.

I dont know. Nobody said anything
to me.

Well, thats your problem. So how
about it, going to let me in?

I dont know. I better just

Look, pal, they had ninety grand
delivered there today, to cover the next week. If anything happens to that
money and it comes out that you refused to let my firm in for a look-see, then
your heads on the block, not mine. If anything happens to that money and you
have
let me in for a look-see, then its my head on the old chopping block.
Right? So do us a favour, just sign me in, Ill be out of your hair in two
shakes of a dogs dick, no problem.

More than five minutes and Im
calling my supervisor.

No problem.

And I come with you.

No skin off my nose.

Niekirk saw Riggs go in. Then he
heard the big locks smack home and heard Riggs say, After you.

The Soreki 5 guard worked some
contempt into his voice. We cant just barge upstairs. Ive got to activate
some bypass switches on the alarm system first, you know.

Youre the boss.

Niekirk heard nothing for two
minutes after that. But plenty was happening inside the building and he ran it
through his head like a film strip: Riggs waits for the guard to deactivate the
alarms on the stairs and the lifts. Riggs tickles the mans ear with his
automatic pistol. Riggs pulls a hood over the mans head and cuffs him to a
display case. Niekirks instructions had been clear: We dont need a hero on
our hands and we dont need a panic merchant. Keep him calm, tell him he wont
be hurt so long as he does what hes told. If the guard is hurt, Ill want to
know the reason why.