De Lisle trudged through the humid late afternoon. There were more market stalls now, crowding the footpath. No one was buying and the only people looking were elderly tourists from a cruise ship moored in the harbour. De Lisle saw them picking over dyed coral, shell necklaces, carved animals. He supposed they’d buy something. They generally did. They would tip, despite what the guidebooks advised. Some of the locals would accept it, too, as though they hadn’t read the guidebooks that claimed they’d be offended and embarrassed to be offered a tip.
It was dim and cool inside Ma Kincaid’s. Ceiling fans stirred the air, a couple of tourists and sailors sat at the bar, some local Europeans ate at the tables. De Lisle nodded at one or two of them. They were French and had stayed on after Independence. A table of yachting types in the far corner were speaking English. De Lisle listened: Kiwis and Australians, five men and a woman. De Lisle was betting that they were on the run from something shady. They might stay here for a few months before moving on. One or two of them might even stay permanently and open the kind of import-export business that helped to launder cash and offered ways of smuggling anything from coconut soap to arms or New Guinea cannabis and pink rock heroin from Thailand.
Walter Erakor was waiting for him in a back room. De Lisle didn’t like the look on the man’s face. Erakor seemed to be suppressing glee at bad tidings and doing a poor job of it.
‘Well?’ De Lisle demanded.
It bubbled out of Erakor. ‘Bon jour, my friend. I’m afraid you must flee the island. Tonight, tomorrow, you must leave.’
De Lisle went still. He decided to play it straight. ‘Leave? Why? I just got here. There’s work to do.’
Walter tapped the side of his nose. ‘A little bird tells me.’
‘Tells you what?’
‘You are under investigation.’
De Lisle didn’t reply immediately. He continued to stare at Erakor. Surely the Australian authorities weren’t onto him, requesting his extradition? Not so soon. And certainly not when the island was riddled with Australian con-men, thieves and dealers straight out of ‘Australia’s Most Wanted’ on TV. He looked at his watch. He had time. Wheels would be turning slowly back home.
He said at last, ‘Who’s investigating me?’
‘Vice police.’
‘Vice police?’
‘Your servant, Grace-her father has lodged a complaint against you.’
‘She’s an adult, for Christ’s sake. She knows what she’s doing.’
Walter Erakor leaned over the table and said very quietly, ‘But she was under age when she first went to work for you.’
‘I didn’t know that. Besides, it’s her word against mine.’
‘Maybe so, my friend, but her father is a chief, you know.’
Chief, De Lisle thought. A man who ran a rusty Mazda minibus, that’s all he was.
‘A certain zeal has entered the investigation,’ Erakor continued. ‘The police have asked for warrants to search your bank records and other business dealings.’
De Lisle leaned forward, hissing. ‘You bastard. Grace isn’t the issue, you’re just using her as an excuse. You want my money. You bastard.’
Erakor shrugged. ‘I’m not in charge of the investigation.’
‘But you told them about my bank holdings, right? You and your crooked cronies want to rip me off, seize my deposits, under-declare what was there and keep the rest for yourselves. I know how it works.’
Erakor gazed at him levelly. ‘I’m giving you a chance to escape.’
De Lisle changed tack. ‘Have you issued the warrants yet? Can’t you do something to rescind them? Walter, old friend-’
Walter Erakor was flat and hard and there was no friendship in him. ‘We issue them tomorrow, maybe the next day.’
Relief flooded De Lisle. ‘I need twenty-four hours, maybe less. I need to be here when the banks open in the morning.’
Walter Erakor began to smile. It was a beam that said he could delay the warrants in return for a cash consideration. De Lisle groaned. He looked at his watch. Just as well the yacht was ready to put to sea. God, why hadn’t he given the Tiffany to Grace instead of that Wintergreen slag? None of this would have happened.
He groaned again. Who was he kidding? Keeping Grace sweet wouldn’t have stopped Erakor and his mates getting greedy. They must have loved it when Grace showed up with her nose out of joint, giving them the excuse they needed.
He looked at Erakor. ‘How much?’
Thirty-seven
It had to do with context. If you see a workman among a slouch of workmen, that’s all he is. Similarly, you don’t look twice at an airline passenger aboard a plane-load of passengers, not when you’ve got your mind on more pressing matters. But when one of those passengers, standing alone in the Port Vila terminal building, held his head tilted at a certain angle, Niekirk knew that he’d seen him before. A minute later the answer came to him: Wyatt, meeting the fence on a park bench in Melbourne.
Where was Springett? On the island? Coming by a later flight, a different airline?
Niekirk, keeping well back in another taxi, tailed Wyatt to a cliff-top mansion on the other side of the harbour. He saw Wyatt get out and check casually for outside cameras and sensor alarms. Later he tailed Wyatt to the ferry stop for the island resort across the harbour.
He recalled that there had been a few passengers in first class when he boarded in Sydney, and the man had been among them. The surveillance photograph had shown only the man’s inclined head, animated by the woman’s company, and his shoulders. Now Niekirk had a clearer image of him: hooked, pitiless kind of face, black hair pushed indifferently off his forehead, tall and loose in the frame, a habit of touching his jaw every few minutes. The guy had a poor dress sense for the tropics: trousers, shoes, long-sleeved shirt rolled back at the wrists. Niekirk was wearing yellow shorts, sandals and a ‘Life’s a bitch, then you die’ T-shirt so that he’d melt in with the Australian yobbos who populated Asia and the Pacific.
Niekirk couldn’t watch two places at once. He’d come here for De Lisle, so he went back to the house on the cliff top and slept fitfully through the night in the passenger seat of a rental car. He had a story ready, but no one came near him.
The first rattling diesel motors of the day woke him at five-thirty. He crossed the road. The house still had its shuttered look; the yacht still hadn’t docked.
Niekirk drove down to the wharf, bought coffee and sandwiches, and returned to his watch over De Lisle’s house. He wondered what Riggs and Mansell were doing. Maybe they’d shot each other by now. When told what De Lisle was up to and that there’d be no more jobs, Riggs had gone very still, dangerously quiet, and Mansell had blustered. Neither man felt ready to quit: ‘Not when we’re onto something good,’ Mansell said. The only analogy Niekirk could think of was grief: it was as though a loved one had been snatched away and they wanted a sense of closure before they could put the grief to rest. He’d given them the address of De Lisle’s house in the hills behind Coffs, told them they might pick up some goodies for themselves there, told them to keep De Lisle on ice if he happened to show up.
Niekirk saw the shutters open at three o’clock in the afternoon. He crossed the road and stood where he could see down between the houses to the water. The yacht had come in. As he watched, a water taxi called in at the dock and De Lisle stepped aboard. He saw it sweep among the moored yachts and tie up at Reriki Island. Certainty began to settle in Niekirk. Wyatt was here to meet De Lisle. Wyatt and Jardine had been fencing stuff on behalf of De Lisle all along.
He sweated it out, only relaxing when he saw the water taxi skimming back across the water, De Lisle upright in the back. When De Lisle got out, he had the tartan suitcase with him. So, the island was the drop-off point.
Niekirk went back to his car. But maybe Wyatt had been ripped off, too, and was here to even the score. Niekirk sat there for an hour, sticking to the vinyl seat, baking in his glass and metal cocoon. He was still there late in the afternoon when De Lisle appeared again, walking this time.