Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues (17 page)

She bit her bottom lip. So you knew
I was a cop before you had sex with me. That was pretty calculated of you.

He touched her cheek with the flat
of his hand, a tender gesture for Wyatt. Calculation had nothing to do with
it.

She stared at him carefully for a
few seconds. I guess I believe you. Thousands wouldnt. How did you know about
the ID card in my shoe?

I thought my way into your skin,
Wyatt said, as fanciful as hed ever got with his language. Id carry ID if I
were working undercover. Id want it for a situation like this. Id want it if
I had to bargain for my life.

He saw the alarm in her face. Im
not going to kill you, he said, moving to the door. You helped Frank Jardine.

Youre sparing me because I helped
your friend? Is that what youre saying?

Wyatt couldnt answer that.

* * * *

Twenty-four

Springett
checked his watch. Unless thered been a balls-up, Lillecrapp should be on his
way back from making the hit about now. He pictured it, Lillecrapps wet teeth
bared, a mad light in his eyes, that falsetto giggle he was always coming out
with, roaring down out of the hills, two more bodies to his credit. As the
saying goes, a natural-born killer. Springett pondered upon that as the traffic
ahead of him shunted forward two car lengths and stopped again, trapped by a Sydney
Road tram. Lillecrapp had been useful; now he was a liability. Springett
wondered if paying him off would work. Unlikely. Lillecrapp would want more, or
hed brag to someone when he was in the sack, or grievances would begin to eat
away at him. Maybe Niekirks boys could arrange an accident for him?

The conductor appeared in the open
door of the tram, jerking his thumb at the line of cars, signalling them to
pass. Greasy hair, in need of a shave, runners on his feet: How did someone
like that keep his job? Springett accelerated, sticking his middle finger at
the man as he passed the tram.

He was in a big Falcon from the
divisional motor pool. He liked to drive with both feet, one riding the
accelerator, the other the brake, a kind of edgy dance that made his blood
race. That was the beauty of your automatic transmission.

He found his landmarks, a furniture
barn opposite a mosque, and turned off Sydney Road, into a system of narrow
streets. The red light in the Falcons rear window winked as he surged, braked,
surged, braked, steering a course between beefy cars parked outside the tiny
houses neat as pins, new cladding on the walls, wet cement gardens, Middle
Eastern smells and music hanging in the air.

Springett felt hungry. He would eat
soon, but not before he was finished with Jardine. He needed that margin of
irritation you got when hunger creeps in.

According to Liz Reddings notes,
Jardine lived in a rented house with an unmarried sister. He rarely went out.
He was ill; the sister looked after him. Springett gnawed at his bottom lip. A
shame about the sister. She wasnt involved. Jardine himself had said soit was
in Liz Reddings notes. A shame to have to knock her as well as her brother.

Springett slowed for Jardines
street, prowled along the row of houses in the car. No numbers on the front
doors or gates, of course, so he was relying on Reddings surveillance
photographs. There: the white weatherboard, a sorry-looking ruin sitting in a
patch of onion weed. He drove past, turned around, drove out of the street,
looking for the laneway that ran behind the houses. Reddings photos showed a
back gate fashioned from a sheet of iron, held shut with a twist of wire. Every
house had a high laneway fence and there were no flats overlooking the lane. He
could go in that way unobserved, catch Jardine and the sister with their pants
down, maybe literally.

Redding was thorough, at least
Springett could say that about her. Pity she had tunnel vision. Pity it had to
be her that Wyatt and Jardine contacted, instead of a real fence, for the
Tiffany would have disappeared again by now. But it was her, and it got her
thinking that she was onto the famous magnetic drill gang. Tunnel vision. No
worries, boss, shed said, Im going to follow this through to the bitter
end.

Bitter was right. A bullet between
the eyes from Lillecrapp. And an end that was sooner than shed expected.

Springett got out, locked the car,
crossed the street into the lane. If Liz Redding had been allowed to arrest
Wyatt and Jardine, been allowed to process them and stick them into interview
rooms, then there wouldnt have been a lot that Springett could have done about
it. One of them would have talked, seeking a deal, and sooner or later De Lisles
name would have come up as the main man in the chain of people whod handled
the proceeds of the Brighton bank job.

Springett had said it himself to
Niekirk: De Lisle will talk to save his neck, count on it.

Springett had a
break-and-enter-gone-wrong in mind for Jardine and the sister. He wanted it to
look like one of those random, messy, everyday tragedies that you find in the
poorer areas of the cities of the world. He didnt want the homicide boys
scratching their heads over an atypical shooting; he didnt want neighbours
reporting gunshots; he didnt want to have to get rid of a gun afterwards. He
didnt want to get rid of a knife, either, or risk blood fountaining over his
clothing.

So he was carrying a baseball bat.

Springett came to Jardines skewiff
laneway gate. He unfastened the wire, edged into the back yard. No dog Reddings
notes would have said if there was a dog.

Not much cover, either, apart from a
fig tree, a clothesline and a couple of dead tomato plants in plastic pots. And
according to Redding, Jardine liked to sit at the back of the house, where the
sun penetrated, and watch his hopeless hours pass by. No time to waste.
Springett charged across the yard, jerked open the screen door, shouldered
through the inner door, and found himself two metres away from Jardine on a daybed.

There was a tartan rug over Jardines
legs, a form guide on his chest. Jardine opened his mouth and Springett saw
fear crawl in him, literally claw its way through his body. Jardine jerked,
tried to speak, rolled back his eyes, tugged at his collar, and died.

For a long moment, Springett gaped
at the body. He closed his mouth, swallowed, looked nervously over his
shoulder, then back at Jardine again.

Jesus Christ, a stroke, he thought.
But where was the sister? He jerked into action, running into each of the other
rooms, swinging the bat. Nothing. The sister was out.

He went back to Jardine and felt for
a pulse. The guy had definitely carked it. What a fucking piece of luck. No
investigation.

Springett tucked the baseball bat
under his jacket and left through the front door, onto an ordinary street of
the struggling class, everyone indoors in front of the TV or hanging out down
the DSS.

Springett whistled, bounced on his
toes a little. Almost time to go to the public phone near the high school in
Princes Hill, wait for Lillecrapp to call in that hed plugged another two
holes in this operation.

Leaving just one big hole.

* * * *

Twenty-five

Would
he call someone to say where she could be found? Would he come back for her?
Liz Redding had wanted to be able to answer yes to either question, but she had
seen the transformation in Wyatt, and told herself no. Life for Wyatt was not a
matter of expansive gestures, throwing care to the winds for the sake of
desire, but of tactics.

She had rotated her bound wrists
uselessly after hed disappeared through the door. Nylon restraining cuffs,
lightweight, a little flexible, but nevertheless tough and effective. Shed
have to cut them somehow. If a caretaker had lived here, maybe hed left tools
behind when hed moved out?

She glanced at the mattress, now sad
and dusty-looking. What would it be like to sleep regularly with a man who was
mostly silent, who lived in some private reserve of the mind where you could
never reach him? Whose faceas soon as the striking smile fadedwas cruel
rather than appealing, the contrast swift and unsettling?

She got to her knees, lifted the
little cot onto its side, and tumbled the mattress into the corner. The tubular
frame sat on U-shaped fold-down legs, one at each end. By hooking with her feet
she was able to close the legs flush with the frame. The cot was more
manoeuvrable now; Liz lifted it off the floor and waddled with it into the
depressing kitchen.

She hadnt realised how much she
relied upon independent action in each arm. With her wrists manacled together
around the metal frame of a camping cot, opening drawers and cupboard doors
required great patience, strength and dexterity. And a sense of humour, for the
cuffs chafed her badly and the cot knocked painfully against her shins. Once
when a drawer fell out her hands fell with it before she could stop herself,
which dropped the bottom edge of the frame with a solid smack across the toecap
of her shoes. She jerked so fiercely on the cuffs in response that the nylon
broke the skin and blood began to leak stickily over her fingers.

Eureka, she muttered, opening
another drawer. A little tenon saw, the blade rusty, the handle held together
with black electrical tape. Raising her right foot to support the weight of the
cot while she worked with her hands, she flicked aside a file and a packet of
nails, then propped the tenon saw blade upright, its teeth outermost, and
nudged the drawer home until it clamped the blade in place. This gave her a
twenty-centimetre cutting edge. She began to raise and lower her arms, running
the nylon link along the saw teeth, the metal cot knocking the cupboard, her
thighs. When the link finally snapped open, the bed dropped like a stone,
falling from her supporting foot and onto the other again. The pain and regret
and humiliation brought on blinding tears.

She recovered, freed her wrists,
gathered her things. Wyatt had left both guns, including the little revolver hed
found in her crotch holster. It was a .22 Colt Cobra weighing fifteen ounces,
with a six-shot chamber and two-inch barrel. It had weighed slightly more
before shed filed down the hammer and front sight. She put it in her bag. She
would have to lose the other gun now that it tied her to the shootingor at
least lose it until she knew who the dead man was and who had sent him and
until she had her story right. Then she washed her hands and forearms, getting
rid of any telltale powder residue that might be detected by a paraffin test.

There was a heating-oil tank growing
out of weeds at the rear of the building. Liz prised open the lid, dropped the
gun, heard a dull slap as it landed in sludge at the bottom.

One minute later she was out on the
main road, flagging down a bus. In Belgrave she caught a train, express to the
city. She should have gone in and reported to someone then. Instead, she went
home and made herself a drink. She was in the mood for rebellion and proud
lament. She clacked through her CDs, the Chieftains, Sinead OConnor, the
Dubliners, settling on Clanad. Shed have some explaining to do to Internal
Investigations and her boss when this was over but, until she knew who she
could trust, she wouldnt be going by the book.

Not for the first time, Liz wondered
how much the job had changed her, how much shed lost. Working undercover meant
that she sometimes had to remind herself that she was a cop, after all. She
rarely spent time at the police complex in Elizabeth Street, and then only
entered by way of an underground corridor from a building around the corner. She
tended to meet other coppers in pubs, parks or restaurants. The rest of the
time she played a drug dealer, a fence, a street girl. It was a nervy double
life and it took its toll on her. She was resented by some elements inside the
force and only trusted outside it after painstaking groundwork. She encountered
cops who didnt like her because she was young, female, got results, had
letters after her name, and she encountered crims who would want her dead if
they knew what she did for a living. The ID in her shoe had saved her life
twice in drug deals that had gone haywire; shed flashed it, and hard men had
put up their guns and backed off rather than kill a cop, but that didnt mean
there werent also hard men walking the streets who had too much to lose or
wanted a payback or simply hated cops too much to care about an ID card.

Liz could feel the scotch burning
away the tension. At least by working burglary she had a margin of safety that
hadnt existed when shed worked for the drug squad. Dealers, buyers, they
feared ripoffs, not cops, and always went armed. They were jumpy people to deal
with and the days were long. Shed often worked eighteen-hour days, from 4 p.m.
to 4 a.m., setting up a deal and an arrest, then paperwork until 10 a.m.

Not that the drug element didnt
exist behind the citys burglaries. All crime flowed to and from drugs these
days. The street scum burgled TV sets to buy drugs. White collar addicts
committed fraud to feed their habits or pay their debts. The profits from armed
robberies and stolen car and art rackets were used to buy into drug
distribution networks. And the stakes were so high, the profits so great, the
effects of the drugs themselves so destabilising, that crims now were more
vicious, more unpredictable than theyd ever been.

Liz Redding sipped her scotch and
thought of Wyatt and Jardine. They represented an older, cleaner time and were
rapidly going out of date. Jardines ill-health, Wyatts sharkish grin and
urgency with her on the dusty mattressshe felt an ambiguous regard for each
man, she felt closer to them than to her colleagues, her dirty double life. She
didnt want to see them caught or hurt. All shed wanted was to trace the
Tiffany, trace it back to the magnetic drill gang.