He paused to catch his breath. Work tomorrow. Vanuatu lacked lawyers and judges, particularly in the north. The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Public Solicitor’s Office were there to get cases ready for court, but they were understaffed and the day-to-day court staff were overwhelmed with demands from jungle bunnies and expatriates wanting help with forms and claims. So, several times a year, De Lisle sat on the Supreme Court of Vanuatu to help ease the strain. He was funded by the Australian Government’s Staffing Assistance Scheme, and he loved it. He got to hear evidence in open-air courts half the time, just bamboo and palm tree fronds between him and the blue sky above. Mainly British law, with a bit of French and a bit of jungle bunny thrown in. Last time he was in the little republic he’d been obliged to turn a blind eye to a spot of police brutality. The police had been called in by a council of chiefs to warn off a man believed to be practising witchcraft, but things got out of hand and the man had died of injuries. Still, no loss to anyone.
And the trips to Vanuatu provided the perfect cover for moving the stuff that Niekirk and his crew had liberated from those Victorian bank jobs. The world was going to blow one day-corruption, erosion of values, mobs in the street-and De Lisle wasn’t about to be caught without a hedge against that kind of collapse.
He put one foot after the other again and continued up the steps. Deep breathing, that was the answer, deep breathing to control the heart, deep breathing to concentrate and clarify the mind. To centre himself, in the jargon of a fuckwit who’d insisted on making a statement to the court back in Sydney last week.
Deep breath. If he didn’t watch it he’d die of a heart attack on the job. He snorted-’on the job’ was right. The last time he’d been in the cot with Cassandra Wintergreen she’d leaned on one elbow and grabbed the spare tyre around his waist, pinching tightly, grinning cruelly: ‘Here’s a little fellow who loves his tucker.’ De Lisle had batted her hand away: ‘Quit that, Cass,’ he’d said, wishing now that he hadn’t given her that tasty Tiffany brooch from the safety-deposit hit Niekirk had pulled for him in February.
He put Wintergreen out of his mind. Half a week’s work here in Vanuatu, then spend two or three days sailing the Pegasus to Suva. A spot of Supreme Court work in Fiji, then fly back to Sydney, leaving the Pegasus moored in Suva. A quick turnaround in Sydney this time. He’d arranged his workload so that he could be in Vila to collect the Asahi stones.
Grace, De Lisle’s hi-Vanuatan servant, was waiting for him on the verandah. White cloth on the cane table, martini in a steel jug beaded with condensation, chilled glass, a plate of oysters. De Lisle stood close to her, rotated his bulk a quarter turn, fitting his groin against her thigh. Her brown skin felt cool beneath the hairline. Then cotton, a series of bumps along her spine, then her wonderful arse.
De Lisle rested the folds of his chin on her bare shoulder. He watched her stare out across the water, very still except as he began minutely to move against her.
Ten
It was eight o’clock on Thursday morning before Niekirk got back to his motel. He crawled into bed, exhausted from the bank job and the long hours staking out the U-Store building.
He slept long into the day, then showered in scalding water, needles of heat easing the strain in his neck and shoulders. He dressed, caught a tram into the city, walked the arcades. ‘The Asahi Collection, on show from Monday 9’ said the discreet card in the window of the Soreki 5 department store. Niekirk mapped the area in his mind, then sat in a coffee shop opposite, watching the security men change shifts. Groundwork. He would spend another day doing this, then fly back to Sydney, wait for word from De Lisle.
Late in the afternoon he returned to his motel. He was turning the key and pushing the door open when a man came through the door behind him, crowding his back. Another was already in the room, smiling humourlessly at him from the edge of the bed. If Niekirk hadn’t been exhausted he might not have been bushwacked. They wore suits and he knew that was bad news.
He turned to the suit behind him, half inclined to fight his way free, but stopped when he saw the gun, a police issue.38 revolver, stopped when he heard the giggle, high and mad.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you.’
The guy leaned back against the door, a gun-happy light in his eyes, tongue tip sliding once over his upper lip. ‘Don’t make me,’ he said, giggling again, jerking his head in a nervy spasm, tossing hair away from his eyes. It was a ragged fringe of hair, cut haphazardly by someone once a month-wife or girlfriend, but maybe even mother for all Niekirk knew-over an eager killer’s face.
So Niekirk turned to the suit on the bed, who said immediately, smiling all the while: ‘A few matters to discuss, Sergeant Niekirk.’
So they had his name. Niekirk forgot about offering his fake ID. He reassessed the smile of the man on the bed. It was a reflexive, all-purpose smile, the kind used to express rage, pain, pleasure, hope, bonhomie to the media, ingratiation to the men upstairs who outranked him, and often nothing at all. The other guy had the.38 but this was the one Niekirk had to watch.
‘What matters?’
The smile. ‘This and that. Missing items.’
The voice was deep-chested, a sonorous baritone that liked to listen to itself. Niekirk said, ‘I’m entitled to a phone call.’
The senior man got to his feet. He was tall, a little stiff. He made a flowery gesture at the bedside telephone with one long, well-shaped hand. ‘Be my guest.’
Niekirk had memorised the number he was to call if the local boys in blue nabbed him. He stood rather than sat, and faced the room, the telephone cord clumsily draped across his chest. He waited for the dial tone and punched in the number. At once he heard the ringing tone on the line and a soft burr in the room. Smiling one of his smiles, the elegant senior man fished a small black fold-up phone from his pocket.
Niekirk replaced the handset. ‘You’re our green-light cop.’
The austere face kept smiling. ‘I suppose I must be.’
‘Got a name?’
The smile faded a little, deciding. ‘Springett.’
‘You’d have rank,’ Niekirk observed.
The smile came back. ‘Inspector.’
‘Who’s the cowboy on the door?’
‘Lillecrapp.’
‘Jesus Christ.’
‘It is a mouthful. Sit down. The bed.’
Niekirk complied. Springett remained standing, every hair in place, a neat, perfect knot in the bright, chaotically patterned tie at his throat. The suit itself was sombre, the shirt crisply white.
Niekirk said, ‘What missing items?’
‘Cast your mind back to your first hit, that bank job in February.’
‘What about it?’
‘You’ll recall there was a small gold butterfly encrusted with diamonds?’
‘Think I’m a philistine? I know what it was, a Tiffany.’
‘A Tiffany, exactly. Well, it’s turned up again.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I got word yesterday afternoon that a small-time character here in Melbourne is trying to fence it.’
Niekirk raced through the possibilities. He knew that Riggs and Mansell hadn’t pocketed anything from the safety-deposit boxes, for he’d packed everything himself. They couldn’t have dropped it in the alley behind the building. There couldn’t have been two Tiffanies. De Lisle wasn’t stupid enough to offload it to a small-time fence. ‘The courier,’ he said.
‘Now I wonder how come I knew you were going to say that?’ Springett said.
‘I handled the transfer. My men didn’t take the Tiffany. I didn’t take the Tiffany.’
Springett was watching him. Behind the smile he was guarded, sceptical. ‘You sound very sure of yourself.’
‘Fuck I’m sure. I’d check out the courier.’
Springett said nothing for a while, as if weighing up possibilities. ‘I take it that you know a man called De Lisle?’