Whispering Death (28 page)

Meaning dog, meaning the dogs of the police force, the Ethical Standards officers, were sniffing around.

Galt had said ‘Fuck,' shoved her aside and simply walked out of the flat.

She'd tried to imagine what he'd do, where he'd go. They'd been after him before, he told her one night, both of them slick from lovemaking. ‘There was this sergeant, looking at me funny for a few weeks.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Put a bullet in his letterbox.'

The message plain:
this has your name on it
.

‘What happened?'

‘He transferred to a station in the bush, that's what happened.'

‘To you, I mean.'

A raised eyebrow. ‘Nothing.'

But this time something had happened. The dogs had come for her a few days later, threatening serious jail time in order to get at him. Sweetening the deal with the offer of witness protection. Instead, she'd protected herself.

Her aloneness had been her chief advantage. No friends, family or work colleagues to tug at her heart, no one who might unwittingly or deliberately feed information to the wrong people. No habits, gym routine, favourite pub or hobby magazine subscription that might give her away. And rather than become someone with a definable character and lifestyle, she'd become a flibbertigibbet, a young woman who seemed to change her looks, job and car every few months. The fact that there wasn't a job didn't matter, it was all about appearances. She gave people a box to put her in. She didn't do anything to attract the law—well, apart from being a career thief. No speeding tickets, no drink driving, no arguments with noisy neighbours. When the Breamlea house was burgled in her absence last year, she hadn't reported it, not wanting a police investigation, a fingerprint search. And she'd told herself that she could walk away in an instant. If she were in bed and heard a noise, she wouldn't think ‘It's a burglar', she'd think ‘It's the man who has come to kill me.'

She hadn't counted on a threat from another direction.

Grace returned to the main street and found a public phone. She didn't give Finch a chance to talk. ‘You know who it is. There's a payphone in the 7-Eleven around the corner from where you live. I'll call you on it in five.'

‘How do you know the number of—'

She cut him off. She counted down the minutes, called the 7-Eleven payphone and demanded: ‘What exactly did they say?'

‘Hello to you, too.'

‘
Steve
.'

‘Okay, okay. Look, I've done a bit of business with them over the years, so they know I handle the odd
objet d'art
, and they came into the shop yesterday, showed me your picture.'

‘They asked if you knew me?'

‘Yes. I said no.'

‘Then what did they say?'

‘They said if you, or anyone else, came in wanting to offload a little Klee oil painting, I had to let them know, pronto.'

Grace chewed on that.

‘You robbed the wrong people, Sue.'

‘Let me think about this.'

But she didn't hang up.

‘Tell you what, we can make a few dollars out of this,' Finch said.

‘How?'

‘I'll tell them you
did
make contact, and it was quick because you were nervous, and you told me you'd heard about me on the grapevine as someone who deals in art from time to time, and I asked did you have something in particular you wanted me to handle, and you showed me a picture, and it was a Paul Klee oil painting, and I said I might be able to shift it for you.' He paused. ‘That's what I'll tell them.'

‘In fewer words than that, I hope. Steve, get to the point.'

‘Okay, so I tell them I can get the painting back for them, only you want ten grand. Five each, Suze.'

Five grand was five grand. If she didn't return the painting, they'd continue to hunt her down. Maybe even inform the police.

‘I can't get at it until Monday.'

‘You're doing the right thing, Suze,' Steve Finch said.

44

Mara Niekirk was a good hater.

And she really hated Steven Finch.

Late Saturday afternoon: he'd driven down from Williamstown all excited, saying, ‘Guess what?'

Warren was somewhere in the house, her daughter and the nanny somewhere else in the house, so Mara was obliged to deal with the grubby little man. She wasn't in the mood for games, merely stared at him.

‘That chick you showed me a picture of, she was in the shop this afternoon. Definitely her, and she definitely has the painting.'

‘Really,' said Mara flatly.

‘I know,' said Finch, shaking his head at the wonder of it. ‘Couldn't believe it myself.'

‘It's just as well we notified you,' Mara said.

‘Exactly.'

Mara watched him wander around her sitting room as though he owned it, tilting a vase to read the maker's mark on the bottom, peering into her china cabinet, cocking his head at her Howard Arkley.

He pointed his chin at it. ‘Original?'

‘Yes,' said Mara, wondering what his game was. Had he bought the Klee from the thief? And she wasn't entirely convinced that he hadn't commissioned the theft in the first place.

Meanwhile the moron continued to examine her Arkley, his face dubious. ‘Easy to fake, that airbrushed-suburban-house-in-a-riot-of-fluorescent-colours schtick.'

Mara recalled the Dickerson. ‘You would know.'

‘Now, now.'

Mara said, ‘You want a finder's fee? Is that it?'

‘The woman who stole it wants a fee. I'm happy to be the middleman.'

‘Expecting that we'll be appropriately grateful.'

Finch shrugged, still looking at the Arkley painting. ‘Opportunity knocks, and all that.'

Mara watched him from her fat round armchair. If she sat there long enough, addressing his scrawny back, maybe it would dawn on him what a rude bastard he was. ‘Leaving aside the money for the moment, what if we said we'd changed our minds, didn't want the painting returned? What then?'

Finch swung around on her with a sharkish smile. ‘You'd just give it up? A beautiful painting like that? Maybe worth millions?'

And, without invitation, he was sprawling in the chair opposite, his bony knees too close. Mara's skin crawled. Somewhere in the depths of the house, delighted laughter broke out, and she glanced at the diamond encrusted Cartier on her wrist: Natalia's bath time. She also heard the deeper note of adult laughter.
Two
adults, Warren and the tart who called herself a nanny.

‘I have things to do. Get to the point, then get out.'

A flash of something nasty in Finch's face. ‘It's not all about you, Mara. There are other people who might be interested.'

‘How much?'

Finch shifted on the expensive fabric of her armchair. ‘Twenty thousand,' he said. ‘I managed to beat her down from fifty.'

‘That was big of you,' Mara said.

The seconds ticked by and she watched him expressionlessly. Emanated a chill, perhaps, but that was normal. Shadows were gathering beyond the window, populating her garden with lumpish shapes. A young woman perhaps known to this awful man had stood out there one afternoon and chatted about the beauty of the landscape, the headiness of the perfumed air, blah, blah, blah. And then had come back and robbed her.

Playing for time, she said, ‘It
is
a beautiful painting.'

The relief was palpable. ‘It is, it really is.'

It was as if he needed to act now, before his luck slipped away. ‘Twenty thousand?' she asked.

He leaned forward until their knees touched and she wanted to gag. ‘Look on it as good-will money, Mara.'

‘You get the money
only
when we get the painting.'

Steven Finch held his arms wide. ‘Not a problem. I can get it to you after work on Monday.'

When evening deepened into night, Mara sought out the nanny. ‘We'll be gone tomorrow and Monday.'

Feeling super responsible, she added: ‘I don't want Natalia to wake up in the morning and wonder where we are.'

Tayla, reading in bed after an exhausting day, blinked at Mara, who was a forbidding shape backlit by the hallway light. ‘But tomorrow's my day off.'

‘All right, all right,' Mara snarled. ‘Triple pay. Satisfied?'

‘I mean, what about Natalia?'

‘What about her?'

Tayla tried and failed to find a common moral, ethical and commonsensical ground with her boss. ‘She was looking forward to Mummy and Daddy taking her to the pirate ship playground tomorrow.'

‘
She'll
…
have
…
you
,' said Mara, and Tayla saw the warning signs: rapidly blinking eyes, heightened colour and clenched jaw and fists.

She thought hard about the triple pay, and swallowed. ‘I guess I could take her.'

‘What a good idea,' said Mara, hugely bored already, heading back down the hallway to her husband's room. ‘Aren't you ready yet?'

‘Almost.'

But he wasn't, and she told him what she thought about that for a while. That had him shoving clothing and toiletries into an overnight bag, until, at long last, Mara was able to drive the Mercedes van out onto Goddard Road.

‘I didn't say goodbye to Natalia.'

‘I said it for you,' Mara said, wondering why on earth he wanted to say goodbye to a sleeping child. What was the point?

They set off in the moonlight. After a while she relaxed, and, with almost sleepy nonchalance and sensual grace, steered the big van up through Frankston and on to Eastlink. What they were about to do, use Finch to find the woman who'd robbed them, gave her a peculiarly sexual tug deep inside. She fondled the bulge in Warren's trousers for a while, until he gasped and folded over his lap and said, ‘Thank you.'

‘You're welcome.'

The road unwound all the way up to the tunnel and across to the city's northern exits and finally into downtown Melbourne and out the other side to Williamstown.

45

Only one person had responded to Challis's advertisements, a man in Albury named Hopgood. He'd e-mailed Challis to expect him late on Sunday morning, and now it was 11.30 and Challis was reading the
Sunday Age
at his kitchen table, waiting for a knock on his door. Would long-service leave be like this, a lot of sitting around, waiting?

When the knock came, he found a grey haired man on the veranda, a restored Mk II Jaguar in the driveway—British Racing Green, wire wheels, a lovely car.

‘Coffee?'

‘Mate, I'm in a bit of a hurry.'

So Challis took him around to the rear of the house, and the first thing Hopgood said was an incredulous, ‘Twenty-five grand?'

‘There's one in Canberra going for
thirty
-five grand,' said Challis mildly.

‘Bud, I've seen that car. Overpriced, and in a lot better nick than this one.'

Challis glanced at the sky. Warmish, a slight threat of rain by nightfall, and when it came it would bucket down. Typical spring weather, in fact, and he wanted the sale to go through before it rained. It had to go through, didn't it? The guy had driven a long distance to be here, and owned an outfit named Brands Hatch Classic Cars.

He gave Hopgood a quick once-over. About sixty, wiry, weather-beaten, inclined to be impatient and self-important. Challis saw a man who bullied his male employees, fondled the female, and over-charged his clients.

His mind drifted. It often occurred to him that criminality was closely bound up in motor vehicles. Transport, getaway, an expression of personality, a weapon, a tomb. A payoff. Cars could be tied to everything he'd ever investigated, yet were taken for granted. They deserved their own science.

‘Rust, bottom of both doors.'

Challis knew that. You could see it with the naked eye and he'd said as much in the ads.

‘Yes.'

Hopgood took a fridge magnet from his pocket and, with a no-flies-on-me air, tested every square inch of the car. It seemed to cringe under so much scrutiny: ‘Sorry, getting old, got a few flaws…'

Then the guy was poking around in the engine bay. ‘New hoses.'

And new spark plug leads, thought Challis, new coil leads, new everything that had been chewed by the rats. ‘Yes.'

After that, Hopgood took the car for a test run. He was gone for twenty minutes, and when he returned he stood in Challis's driveway with his hands on his hips and fired a summary:

‘She's burning oil, so she'll need a new set of rings. Rides the bumps rough, so new suspension. I'll need to replace the windscreen and offside turning light, both import items. Goodish tyres. Seat fabric's okay but stretched. New soft top needed, get one of these made up in Sydney, bloke who does a lot of work for me.'

So, are you making me an offer? thought Challis. He glanced at his watch and said nothing. He'd told Hopgood that another buyer was coming, which was an outright lie.

‘Fifteen grand.'

‘Twenty-two fifty,' Challis replied.

‘Come on, you must be joking. Sixteen.'

‘Twenty.'

‘Don't arse me about. Look, I'll give you eighteen.'

‘Sorry,' said Challis with his heart in his mouth, ‘twenty.'

And after the restoration you'll sell for thirty, thirty-five.

‘Eighteen. Take it or leave it.'

Challis sighed and said he'd take it. Hopgood fished a thousand dollars in hundreds from his wallet and promised the rest when he picked up the car. ‘I'll come back with a flatbed truck this evening.'

‘Sure.'

And Hopgood left, the Jag purring down Challis's driveway. Just before reaching the gate it braked suddenly for a sickly-green Hyundai which sped in from the road, saw Hopgood and swerved onto the grass. A moment later, the Jaguar slid unfussily out onto the road and Larrayne Destry jerked back onto the driveway and in erratic surges towards Challis.