Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues by Garry Disher

mornings sometimes hed see spiders the size of his hand waiting
motionless at the centre of huge webs strung between glossy trees.

    There were half a dozen people
waiting in the Reriki Island minibus. The driver was leaning against the canopied
luggage trailer, smoking a cigarette. He smirked at Crystal, took the proffered
suitcase and stored it on the covered trailer. Then he went back to smoking and
waiting and forgot about Crystal. For his part, Crystal was glad to be rid of
the case. He was guessing drugs, and drugs were bad news, even in this
backwater.

    Pacific Rim pilots and cabin crew on
stopover were obliged to stay at the Palmtree Lodge, a small collection of
motel units on a crabbed, featureless lagoon south-east of Port Vila. Fifteen
minutes by car, a fare of eleven hundred vatu, and thats where Lou Crystal
should have been going when he climbed into the dented Toyota taxi.

    Yu go wea? Palmtree Lodge? the driver asked,
recognising Crystal as a regular and addressing him in Bislama.

    Crystal shook his head. Malapoa
Restaurant.

    The driver started the engine. He
nodded cannily. Good coconut crab.

    Thats right, Crystal said.

    The drive took ten minutes, past
small houses and flat-roofed cement-walled shops set amongst cyclone-stripped
palm trees. Crystal had been on Vanuatu when the last cyclone had hit the
islands. Hed been unnerved by it, a ceaseless wind that bent palm trees almost
to the horizontal, tore apart coral reefs and dumped ships hundreds of metres
in from the waters edge. Hed seen flying tin cut a womans arm off and his
balcony furniture at the Palmtree Lodge had cartwheeled across the coarse
cropped lawns between the motel units and the coral beach.

    The taxi pulled off the road and
stopped. Nine hundred vatu, the driver said.

    Crystal paid him and got out. The
Malapoa Restaurant was on a tiny spit of land jutting into Port Vila harbour.
Crystal had eaten excellent coconut crab there. If it hadnt been for the
patronsidle yachting types from all over the world, shouting at one anotherhe
would have eaten there more often.

    He let the driver see him walk into
the Malapoa courtyard. When the taxi was gone, Crystal re-emerged and walked
fifty metres to a public toilet block. He went into one of the cubicles, his
head reeling from the urine-thick atmosphere, and stripped off his uniform,
exchanging it for shorts, T-shirt and sandals that hed packed in the top of
his weekender bag.

    The toilet block was set on the edge
of a narrow carpark attached to a small concrete wharf. Water taxis and
harbour-cruise boats used the wharf. So did the Reriki Island ferry, and thats
all Crystal was interested in.

    He stood under a corrugated iron
shelter to wait. Reriki Island dominated Port Vila harbour. It was a humped,
jungly lump of land in a small bay, the shore lined with airconditioned,
balconied huts on stilts. It was a resort island; the manager lived in a
red-roofed house among palm trees on the highest point of the island. There
were three restaurants, a swimming pool, boats for hire and a tiny wharf. You
did not have to be a resident to visit the place, and thats what Crystal was
banking on now.

    He saw the ferry leave the island.
It made the harbourside run every few minutes, twenty-four hours a day, a
two-minute trip each way. Crystal watched the ferry skirt around a couple of
two-masted yachts. One looked worn and hard-working. A bearded man was pegging
towels and T-shirts to a rope above the galley. The words Miami Florida were
painted across the stern. The other yacht was tidier and more seaworthy by
about a quarter of a million dollars. It came from Portsmouth and Crystal was
betting the owner was one of the loudmouths in the Malapoa Restaurant.

    The ferry docked and Crystal got
ready to board. It was a long, low, flat-bottomed aluminium craft fitted with a
canopy roof. The sides were painted in bright splashes of colour: words,
symbols and shapes that reminded Crystal of the sanctioned