Wyatt - 05 - Port Vila Blues by Garry Disher Page B

looking for when he bought the place. One, the house was
luxurious, the plunging grounds beautifully terraced, with harbour frontage and
views across the blue water to Reriki, the island resort in the bay; two, the
nervous French colonist had erected a steel-mesh security fence around the
perimeter to keep the rebels out. Now Vanuatu was a republic but the fence was
still there. In fact, De Lisle had also upgraded the alarm system inside the
house. All that cash and jewellery coming in was making him nervous.

    De Lisle stepped off the broad
verandah and climbed down the steep steps to the little concrete dock at the
bottom of the property. Hed once thought of putting in a small funicular to
run between the house and the waters edgethe climb back up the steps was a
killer but that would have been inviting trouble. He pictured thieves beaching
silent canoes and swarming up the cable and into his house and cutting his
throat.

    At the bottom he checked that no one
was lying in wait on the other side of the perimeter fence and unlocked the
steel gate. Hed bought the house three years ago, soon after the first of his
tours through the Pacific as a circuit magistrate. Now he had an oceangoing
yacht as well, the Pegasus, a two-master gently bumping against the
truck tyres along the edge of the little dock. De Lisle had crewed in a couple
of Sydney to Hobarts a few years back and knew he could sail the Pegasus around
the world if he wanted to. Depending upon his work schedule, he often sailed it
between Port Vila and Suva. He kept the yacht fully stocked with food and
equipment. In fact it was his way out of Port Vila if anything should go wrong.
He had a second set of papers: in five minutes the Pegasus, Coffs
Harbour, could be transformed into the Stiletto, registered to a company
in Panama.

    De Lisles various bank accounts
were also in company names. It was all a smokescreen, and as necessary as food
and water, now that he was moving large amounts of money into and out of
Vanuatu. Being a tax shelter, the country offered security provisions and
confidentiality agreements protecting his banking and other activities. No
income tax, no capital gains tax, no double taxation agreements with Australia.
No exchange controls or reporting of fund movements. And he was able to deposit
money in whatever amounts he liked, in any currency, no questions asked.

    There was nothing to excite the
attention of the police in his apartment in Sydney or his house in bushland
behind Coffs Harbour. He kept anything like that here in Port Vila, in safes
and safety-deposit boxes.

    He stepped onto the yacht, removed
the security shutters, unlocked the cabin door and went below. The interior was
teak-lined and when he opened the curtains it glowed a rich and satisfying
colour in the morning sun.

    The safe was concealed behind a
small bulkhead wall oven. De Lisle unlocked the oven, pulled until it slid
forward on rollers, and reached in. There were documents stacked on the bottom
shelf, duplicates of the information hed passed on to Niekirk for the next
heist, the Asahi Collection of precious stones: floor plans, a map of the alarm
system, staffing level, the size of the take, the best time to hit, the
expected delay before the cops would respond to an alarm, what number to call
in the event of an arrest. De Lisle took out everything from yesterdays Upper
Yarra job now, and fed it to the garbage compactor under the galley sink.

    He leafed through the material he had
on Riggs, Mansell, Niekirk, Crystal, Springettas far as he was concerned, the
only useful outcome of all those inquiries and royal commissions hed sat on
over the years. All those names: paedophiles, bagmen, cops running protection
rackets or moonlighting as burglars and receivers, perjurers, officials with
their fingers in the till. It was pervasive and as natural to the running of
the world as mothers milk.

    The thing was, all those names had
something to hide and all were potentially