The Brush-Off (40 page)

He straddled a chair, folded his arms over the backrest and dropped his voice a notch. ‘And to cap it off, the city's finest now find themselves in the embarrassing situation of having left a homicidal maniac on the loose for three days longer than absolutely necessary. They had grounds for questioning Eastlake on Saturday. If they had, most of this shit could have been avoided. They didn't because the fraud squad guys decided their undercover investigation into the Obelisk fiddle took precedence over the Taylor homicide investigation.'

The implications of what he was saying were clear. People were dead because of a police fuck-up. ‘If this gets out,' he said. ‘The boys in blue will have very red faces.' The fixer's fixer had at last found something worthy of his mettle. If Ken Sproule could square this one away, the Chief Commissioner would be eating out of Gil Methven's lap for years to come.

Sproule jumped up and gave another display of shadow boxing. ‘It's going to take some fancy footwork to get our ducks in a row on this little baby,' he said. ‘You with me?'

‘I don't see why I should be.' Spider Webb might have saved my life but, if what Ken said was true, only after he'd put it at risk in the first place. I had no reason to want to let the cops off the hook. And Ken hadn't exactly been 100 per cent frank with me last time I'd spoken to him, so I was in no big rush to do him any favours.

Sproule didn't smoke but he had some cigarettes. Was this standard interview-room procedure, I wondered? The informant smoked a hearty cigarette and agreed to co-operate with the authorities. I drew the smoke into my lungs and waited for the phone book around the head.

He straddled the chair again like he was doing the bad cop/good cop routine as a one-man show. ‘What's the first rule of government, Murray? The one that precedes and supersedes all others. The
sine qua non
of political power.'

I didn't know Ken could speak Latin. And he was a philosopher as well. It was a surprise-packed day.

‘Keep the cops happy,' he said. ‘That's the paramount rule of political survival. Cause if the cops are unhappy, life just ain't worth living. Doesn't matter if you're Joseph Stalin or Mahatma Gandhi. It's a universal truth.'

‘What do you want me to do?' I said. Ken's logic had an unarguability to it that I just couldn't argue with. And I might, at least, find out what he had in mind.

‘Good boy.' He got up and started pacing again. If this kept up much longer, I'd get dizzy and pass out. And then Ken would start to go through my pockets and find what I had in my Reg Grundys. ‘Everybody wants the lid put on this thing as fast as possible. The Chief Commissioner has okayed it for you and me to sit down with the cops involved and see if we can't come up with a result that everyone can live with.'

‘Two conditions,' I said.

Ken was ready for that. He would have thought less of me if I hadn't asked. ‘Gil Methven is prepared to say that Eastlake resigned from all his official Arts positions as of the end of last year,' he said, correctly anticipating my first demand. ‘That way, none of this will reflect on Angelo Agnelli as current minister. What's your other condition?'

‘That depends on how long this little pow-wow takes,' I said. ‘And it's more of a favour than a condition. I might not even need it. But it's well within your power, if I'm any judge. I'll tell you what it is at the end of the meeting.'

As a matter of principle, Ken Sproule didn't like dealing in the dark. But he didn't have much time to manoeuvre. The press would already be making a beeline for the Domain Road flat. ‘Okay,' he scowled. ‘Let's go. And try not to give too much cheek. The cops have long memories, you know. Mind your manners.'

It wasn't my manners I was worried about. It was the spondulicks in my dank underdaks. They were beginning to itch. If I didn't get them out of there soon, I'd have a very nasty rash.

We went upstairs to a conference room with venetian blinds on the windows and rings from coffee cups on the tabletop. Webb was already there and two other cops I'd never seen before, both in their fifties, one in a suit, the other in uniform. You could tell the one in the suit was a senior officer by the cast of his face and way Noel Webb approached him on all fours. The one in uniform was an Assistant Commissioner. I knew that because his epaulette insignia consisted of crossed silver batons in a laurel wreath surround. Also because he was wearing a name tag that said
Eric Worrall, Assistant Commissioner—Crime
. Eric was a gaunt, expressionless man who could have got a job walking behind the hearse in a Charles Dickens novel.

The guy in the suit was introduced as Chief Inspector Brian Buchanan. He was all neck and looked like he'd gladly bust Santa Claus for driving an unregistered sleigh.

None of the cops were delirious with joy about me and Sproule being there and they didn't go to a lot of trouble to conceal the fact. Having to share trade secrets with a couple of political flacks was bad enough, never mind that one of them had his shirt hanging out and smelt like he should have been in the care of the Salvation Army. I tried to take up as little space as possible and resist the urge to scratch.

Micaelis arrived just as we'd finished the introductions. Assistant Commissioner Worrall waved us into our seats. ‘This is strictly informal,' he said. ‘And strictly confidential. The objective is to pool our information and determine a course of action. Agreed?' Ken Sproule and I nodded. Worrall handed the running of the meeting to Buchanan.

‘Let's get on with it,' said Buchanan. He had a pencil in his hand and pointed at Micaelis with it. ‘What did the Lambert woman have to say?'

‘She's on pain-killers, sir, but reasonably lucid.' Micaelis' hitherto pally demeanour was no longer in evidence. ‘She says she has no idea why Eastlake attacked her. Claims they'd been lovers for about a year but never quarrelled. She says she'd seen him earlier today and he was agitated about business matters, but otherwise normal towards her.'

Which meant, as I had hoped, that she had enough cunning not to mention the money. She probably wondered why Micaelis didn't ask her about it.

‘What about the other one?' said Buchanan. ‘Fleet.'

Micaelis had a sheaf of paper in front of him. ‘She contacted us this afternoon and came in with her solicitor while I was in attendance at the Lambert residence. She had a statement already prepared.' He shuffled the papers around until he found what he wanted, referring to it as he spoke. ‘She and Eastlake were both on the committee that recommends arts grants. Last August, about the time that applications were being considered, she was having a relationship with Marcus Taylor. She recommended him for a grant and spoke highly of his technical skills and his'—Micaelis' finger found the exact phrase—‘his post-modernist sensibility in relation to the validity of quotation and appropriation.'

‘What the hell's that supposed to mean?' Buchanan pointed his pencil at me. He seemed to think I was an art expert.

‘It means he could do good fakes,' I said.

‘You can get a grant for that?' For a man who thought he was an orchestra conductor, Buchanan was harbouring some deep cultural insecurities.

‘Only a small one, sir,' said Micaelis. ‘And Fleet thinks that was only to keep her happy. But, a few weeks later, Eastlake approached her wanting to know more about Taylor. In particular, he wanted to know if she thought Taylor could paint him some pictures in the manner of certain well-known artists. He even produced a list.'

Sproule spoke, addressing himself to the Assistant Commissioner. ‘The background here relates to the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme. Eastlake had persuaded the CUSS to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in an art collection, using a front called Austral Fine Art. The collection was a fiction. It existed only on paper. He used the money to keep his Obelisk round-robin going. He probably had in mind that when the Karlcraft project eventually paid off, Austral could recommend liquidating the collection. He got away with it for nearly a year, pretending to buy and sell artworks. But then the CUSS board decided it wanted to have an exhibition. Got all excited about the idea. Eastlake had no option but to play along. Suddenly he needed real paintings.'

Micaelis resumed. ‘Fleet approached Taylor on Eastlake's behalf. She claims she was never party to any deception he may have subsequently engaged in, but she clearly knew what was going on. Taylor began producing paintings of the kind Eastlake required. The pictures were painted in his studio at the old YMCA building. Fleet informed Eastlake when they were ready. They were then picked up by Senior Sergeant Webb.'

‘The sergeant was already working undercover as Eastlake's driver,' Buchanan explained to Worrall. ‘Part of a long-term fraud squad investigation of Eastlake's activities in relation to the Obelisk Trust.'

Ken Sproule tipped me a quiet wink. A vision came to me of the Members' carpark at Flemington, of Sproule convincing a well-tanked Eastlake to hand his car keys to Noel, the helpful man from the detailing company.

‘Eastlake assumed I had no interest in his business affairs,' said Webb. ‘I had access to his home, his office, documents, telephone conversations and so on. We were well on the way to establishing a strong case against him in relation to Obelisk when this business with the paintings began. My instructions were to collect them from Taylor's studio—as many as two or three a week for nearly three months—and store them in the garage of Eastlake's house in Toorak.'

‘We suspected these paintings related to some illegal activity,' said Buchanan. ‘But our main focus was on the Obelisk investigation and it was only after the events of last Friday night that we began to realise the significance of the art works.'

By then, I'd worked out that Buchanan was the fraud-squad head honcho. He and Webb were very concerned that Assistant Commissioner Worrall adopt a favourable view of their activities. ‘And exactly what happened last Friday?' said the big chief.

Yeah, I thought. Exactly what did happen? I leaned forward in my seat and adjusted my underpants under the rim of the table. There was a slight rustling sound.

Noel Webb cleared his throat and worked his jaw as if he wished he hadn't chucked his chewy away. ‘About 9.30 on Friday night, I was driving Eastlake along Domain Road when we passed Taylor staggering drunkenly down the footpath. We picked him up and Eastlake had me drive the two of them around while he talked to Taylor about some particular painting. Something special, by the sound of it, in the style of a painter called Szabo. First he tried to convince Taylor just to let him see the picture. Taylor said he had it hidden away somewhere and nobody was going to see it until the time was right. Eastlake had a bottle of scotch and plied Taylor with it, but he wasn't getting much joy. Taylor wouldn't say where he had the painting. Eastlake offered him money for it, sight unseen. Twenty grand. Taylor reckoned that Eastlake was just trying to find out where the picture was hidden. Taylor was maudlin drunk. He kept going on about Fiona Lambert, how he was going to settle the score with her. He had no idea that she was Eastlake's bit on the side. Meanwhile, I was driving around in circles through the Domain.'

Police headquarters weren't centrally air conditioned. The cooler in the window frame kicked in with a whirr like an asthmatic fridge compressor. Noel Webb had our undivided attention.

‘After a couple of hours of this, Eastlake told me to park the car and dismissed me for the night. This was across the road from the National Gallery. I hung around for a bit, watching, but all they were doing was sitting in the back seat talking and drinking. I left them to it and went home.'

He paused at this anti-climax, as if offering us the opportunity to ask questions. Assistant Commissioner Worrall had one. ‘Can somebody enlighten me on the significance of this conversation?'

Micaelis could. ‘According to Salina Fleet, sir, Taylor had a grudge against Lambert. She'd knocked him back for an exhibition of his real pictures, told him they weren't up to scratch. Plus there was some sort of bad blood relating to a dead painter by the name of Victor Szabo. On Lambert's recommendation, the Centre for Modern Art recently purchased a painting by this Victor Szabo. So Taylor got the idea of painting a copy of the Szabo and using it to discredit Lambert in some way. He was getting quite het up about it, apparently. Fleet realised this might cause problems for Eastlake and alerted him to the fact. She also tried to dissuade Taylor. But he got drunk and went off half-cocked at an exhibition at the Centre for Modern Art last Friday night, threatening to blow the whistle.'

I thought it was about time I said something, just so I didn't get taken for granted. ‘I was there,' I volunteered. ‘Taylor had been drinking, psyching himself up, and he fell over mid-speech. Made me cut my finger on a broken champagne glass.' I held up the damaged digit. Worrall looked at me like I'd just given him further grounds to doubt the wisdom of the Chief Commissioner's information-sharing policy. ‘Because Taylor was drunk, nobody paid any attention to what he was saying,' I said. ‘But it must have given Eastlake a scare. If Taylor made himself the centre of an art-world brouhaha, the whole CUSS fraud would be at risk.'

Webb took up the narrative from there. ‘The next morning, I'd just heard about Taylor being found dead when Eastlake told me to go clear out his studio. He particularly wanted any paintings of a house with a lawn-mower.'