by Garry Disher
Small, black-and-white, creased, it revealed a dark-haired man wearing a loose-fitting 1930s shirt, trousers and suspenders, cradling a baby swaddled in white. Behind them was a stone hearth, a painting above a mantel with silver candlesticks at either end. Wyatt assessed the candlesticks—habit—and then he assessed the painting. Partly obscured by the man’s head and shoulders, it looked to be about a metre square and depicted peasants in a field.
Wyatt looked at Sten. She gave him a small smile. ‘Yes, that painting,’ she said. ‘David Teniers, seventeenth-century Flemish.’
Wyatt returned the smile. He was unused to smiling, but he liked her. He turned the photo over. Across the back were the words Max + Conrad Paris 1937. He glanced at the painting again, memorising it. Bent-backed peasants in a field, cane baskets hooked over their arms, a distant tree line, a sky full of blowsy clouds.
‘Max, my grandfather, owned businesses and property in Germany,’ Sten said. ‘When they were seized by the Nazis in the 1930s he moved his family to Paris. A couple of years after that photograph was taken, he sold the painting for a few Swiss francs to a dealer who specialised in obtaining artwork for Adolf Hitler. Hitler was planning a large museum for his home town of Linz.’
Her accent was slight, lilting, but there was no sense that she was using it to charm him. He waited, watching her.
Then Minto was there with the tray, dispensing glasses of water. He clearly did find Sten charming.
She touched Wyatt’s sleeve. ‘Sit with me.’
They moved to the sofa. Their knees bumped. She seemed unaware of it but slid away fractionally, the better to turn and observe him.
He said, ‘The painting survived the war in a salt mine in Austria?’
She shook her head. ‘It ended up in London.’
Wyatt said, ‘Go back a bit. How did your family obtain it?’
‘It was painted in the late 1600s so of course we don’t know the early history, but it surfaced in a London exhibition of Dutch and Flemish paintings in 1903, and was bought by my great-grandfather.’
‘Who passed it on to the man in the photograph, who sold it at the start of the Second World War.’
‘Yes, if you can call it a legitimate sale. There happens to be evidence in the form of an invoice and a receipt to say my grandfather in fact sold the painting, but we do not have proof that he sold of his own free will, or was even paid.’
‘An old story,’ Minto said, for something to say.
Sten darted him a look, then turned her attention to Wyatt again. ‘Those of our family who survived the war believe he sold under duress. In fact, all of his paintings disappeared. The Teniers is the only one we’ve found.’
‘It made its way to London?’
‘To an auction house named Bromley and Company. According to their records, they obtained the painting from a Parisian dealer named Ali Loebl in 1939.’
‘A known collaborator,’ Minto said. Clearly he’d been fed this story by Hannah Sten. He didn’t want to be left out, and now was helping to feed the story to Wyatt.
Sten’s face sharpened, but she gave the man a gracious nod. ‘Indeed, a known collaborator.’ She turned to Wyatt again. ‘Whether he was making a side deal or acting for the Nazis, I don’t know.’
‘After that?’
‘In 1945 it was sold to an English couple named Ormerod. They emigrated to Australia in the 1950s.’
Minto cut in. ‘They made a packet here on the Gold Coast. When they died, their son Thomas inherited, and now Thomas is living in Noosa.’
‘The painting is at his house?’
‘Yes,’ Sten said.
That was better than a bank vault. ‘How do you know all this?’
‘Like many people in my situation, I engaged the services of a New York law firm specialising in Holocaust restitution.’
Wyatt nodded. It was a business, but it also had justice on its side. Lawyers, archivists, curators and private detectives scouring war records, gallery sales, catalogues and auction house sales on behalf of Holocaust survivors and their families. ‘Is New York where you live?’
‘I live in Brussels. But the Americans are better at this. Better intelligence gathering; more decisive.’
‘The law firm traced the painting to Australia?’
Sten nodded. ‘They put one of their top people on it, Rafael Halperin. Raf engaged a private detective in Noosa to learn more about Thomas Ormerod and whether or not he owned the painting.’
‘Who?’
‘A guy I use from time to time, name of Alan Trask,’ Minto said.
Sten took up the story again. ‘He reported back to New York, and Mr Halperin flew out here to make a formal approach to Thomas Ormerod for the return of the painting.’
‘And Ormerod laughed in the guy’s face,’ Minto said.
Sten sharpened again. ‘Indeed. Ormerod’s lawyer told Mr Halperin that there is insufficient evidence the painting ever belonged to my family, despite the photograph. And that if my grandfather ever sold it, there was insufficient evidence to say he did so in distressed or coerced circumstances.’ She shrugged at Wyatt. ‘What to do? I considered approaching the Commission for the Compensation of Spoliation Victims in Paris, but they have limited means.’
‘And so we come to you, my old friend,’ Minto said. ‘Hannah’s lawyer had a kind of hypothetical conversation with my private-eye friend, did he know of anyone who could, ah, acquire the painting by other means, so on and so forth.’
‘We seem to have a lot of people in on this story,’ said Wyatt.
Sten touched his sleeve. ‘Mr Halperin has been paid for his trouble and has returned to New York.’
‘And my P.I. mate does as he’s told,’ Minto said.
Wyatt shrugged. He still didn’t like it.
‘So,’ said Hannah Sten, ‘many thousands of dollars later, you are my last hope.’
‘Have you made a personal approach? To Ormerod?’
‘No. He doesn’t know I’m here.’
‘Would he have your family’s other missing paintings?’
‘Who knows?’
‘What happened to your grandfather?’
‘He died in 1943. Auschwitz.’
‘Your father?’
‘My grandmother took him to New York in early 1939. She died when she was eighty. By then my father had settled on a kibbutz in Israel and married a local woman. That’s where I grew up. I went to university in New York and Paris. Now I work for the EU in Brussels.’
‘Was there anything left of your grandfather’s life in Europe? Houses, land, other belongings?’
‘Nothing,’ Hannah Sten said. She rubbed her palms down her thighs, her upper torso tense with emotion. ‘So you have it. A German Jew in exile in Paris, his property stolen by the Nazis, strange gaps in the history and movement of the Teniers painting, and the murky role later of an art dealer and known Nazi collaborator. It was a story repeated in many Jewish families.’
Wyatt watched her. On the surface, it was simple. She wanted to pay him to steal back a painting she believed to be rightfully her family’s. But there could be more to it. Maybe the Ormerod family had offered to sell it to her—an insult, an affront. Or the Sten family did not in fact own it, but wanted it anyway. Or Hannah Sten was acting as agent for the kind of collector who desires the unobtainable. Or the family had once owned the painting but sold it to clear a debt and had regretted the decision. Or one branch of the family was competing with another, or Hannah was not a family member but a bitter ex-business partner or employee of the rightful owner, seeking payback or to settle a grievance.
But he was inclined to believe her. And he needed the work. He said, ‘My fee.’
6
Hannah Sten handed Wyatt the briefcase. For a millisecond during the handover, he felt resistance, a faint tug on the handle as her face scanned his one last time, until she finally let go with a whisper of a nod. Wyatt returned the nod, opened the briefcase, and looked in: cash, five thick bundle
s. He glanced around at her. ‘Fifty now, fifty on completion?’
She nodded. ‘I have included a copy of the photograph. Mr Minto will give you information about Mr Ormerod and his house.’
‘Thank you.’
Wyatt thought about that sum properly for the first time. A hundred thousand dollars. A lot of money to pay a thief to steal a painting. It indicated several factors, not necessarily contradictory. She wanted the painting badly. She was wealthy. The painting was valuable.
Sten said, ‘That is a lot of money you are holding.’
‘Yes.’
‘Another man might want simply to disappear with it.’
Wyatt shrugged. He was not another man, and he felt no need to have a conversation about it. Then Sten thawed, gave him a brilliant smile. ‘I am staying at the Gold Coast Hilton.’
Wyatt nodded, but said, ‘I deal with Minto. I’ll contact him when it’s done.’
‘As you wish,’ she said.
She shook his hand, Minto’s hand, and was gone.
Wyatt said now, ‘All I have is a photo of the painting. I need anything you can give me on the man and his house.’
Minto crossed the room to a teak sideboard. The top drawer opened with a murmur of the rolling mechanism and he reached in, Wyatt tensing automatically: gun? But Minto turned back to him with a manila envelope and said, ‘It’s all in there.’
Wyatt took it, hearing documents shift inside. He looked around the room, rejected the coffee table and sideboard, and stalked through to the kitchen. Minto snorted behind him: ‘Go ahead, make yourself at home.’
Wyatt settled into a kitchen chair and spilled the contents of the envelope over the surface of the table. Photographs, a tourist map of Noosa and two typed A4 pages of notes. He arranged them with his fingernail, an old habit. Don’t leave prints.
Minto took the adjacent chair, a psychologically determined distance from Wyatt. He reached across once, tapping a manicured finger onto a photograph. ‘Ormerod’s house.’
Wyatt sifted and tapped at all of the photographs until he had a clearer idea of the house and its environs. The structure itself was bulky, two storeys, white. Vaguely Mediterranean. Canal water with a tiny floating dock in the foreground, a slope of lawn in the middle ground. Other shots gave a wide-angle view of the house in relation to its neighbours, all just as big and costly, all with lawns sloping down to the water and floating docks.
He shoved them to one side and examined the map. It showed the greater Noosa area—Noosa Heads, the Junction, Noosaville, Tewantin—and the stretches of water around it. The ocean to the east, Laguna Bay to the north, Noosa River and a network of creeks and waterways. Good. A working knowledge of the wider environs was important. If it all went wrong for him, Wyatt needed to know where to run, where to stand, where to hide. He noted the national park: hills, trees, tucked-away groves and beaches, all potential boltholes. Water everywhere: either a barrier, or offering him boats and a way out.
‘Iluka Islet.’ Minto leaned across and indicated a knob of land close to Noosa Parade and the bridge leading to the main beach and shopping precinct. ‘Ormerod’s place.’
‘Not exactly tucked away.’
Crammed in with others, in fact. Minto shrugged. Not his problem.
Wyatt examined the photographs again. He was guessing that some of the shots had been taken from the Noosa Parade bridge—the perspective was elevated—but others had clearly been taken from the water.
‘Who took these?’
‘My niece, Leah. Leah Quarrell.’
He handed Wyatt a business card embossed with the words RiverRun Realty. Quarrell’s name and a business address on Gympie Terrace in Noosaville.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Minto said. ‘Is she reliable? She’s my niece. I raised her. She learned at my knee. And among other things, she sells real estate. That means she can go wherever she likes and no one asks questions. See that?’
His finger stabbed a photograph that showed Ormerod’s house and the ones on either side. A house two doors to the right was for sale, a stake in the lawn with a sign. Wyatt peered at the words: RiverRun Realty.
‘Quoting two point five million, if you’re interested,’ Minto said.
Wyatt would never have been interested. He wasn’t ambitious in that way. Didn’t surround himself with the trappings of wealth. If he’d been asked why he broke into banks and payroll vans and rich men’s houses he’d have blinked and said, ‘The money.’ As if it were both self-evident and perfectly simple.
He picked up the typed notes and read them closely.
Ormerod. Born in a village south of London in 1955, migrated to Australia with his parents in 1956. His father died in 1987, his mother in 1995. He inherited ten million dollars when his father died, but was already wealthy from banking and investments. Married and divorced, estranged from his children, two adult sons.
‘I know some of this information is extraneous,’ Minto said, ‘but I asked my people to be thorough.’
‘So your niece didn’t write this.’
‘She did. Using her own research, and what my private detective dug up.’
The people who worked for Minto were probably like Wyatt himself. Accomplished within a narrow range of expertise, not given to talking about it. But Wyatt didn’t know them. He didn’t know the niece.
‘You’ve asked a lot of people to think about one man all at once,’ he said.
‘I’ve asked two people to look at Ormerod from different directions, that’s all. I’m a businessman. It’s not unusual for me to do my homework before a deal.’
Wyatt read on. Leah Quarrell had written, Ormerod has listed several minor works of art on his house and contents insurance. The Teniers painting is not listed. According to my contact at QBE, insurance was declined owing to doubts about the painting’s whereabouts before 1901 and between 1933 and 1945.
If Ormerod was in possession of a stolen painting, thought Wyatt, he’d hardly raise a public stink if it was stolen from him. But some wealthy thieves surrounded themselves with hard men. He returned to the notes. According to Minto’s niece, Ormerod was a football fanatic, a committee member and former president of the Brisbane Lions Football Club, and this year the Lions were within a game of making it to the grand final. But even if they didn’t, Ormerod would fly down to Melbourne for the big game. He hadn’t missed one in twenty years. His house would be unoccupied from Friday 27 to Monday 30 September. Eight days from now.
Wyatt’s only interest in sport was that he’d once lifted the gate takings at the MCG. He stared flatly at Minto. ‘You’re sure of his movements?’
‘Mate,’ said Minto, giving Wyatt a look.
Wyatt nodded. He understood: Minto had contacts in the police, in unions and on local councils, so why not in travel agencies and airlines?
He leaned forward to re-examine one of the grainy blow-ups. It showed a set of broad glass sliding doors, curtains open, enough sunlight penetrating to illuminate a slice of a sitting room. Minto, reaching across to tap with a clean, polished fingernail, said, ‘You can just glimpse the painting.’
Disliking Minto’s proximity, Wyatt concentrated on the photograph. Blurry, but clear enough: a smallish painting, peasants in a field, hanging above a fireplace. He gestured at the paintings on the adjacent wall. A small gumtree, a smaller drover and sheep. ‘And these?’
‘Art show crap.’
If they weren’t, Wyatt would take them for himself.
Minto leaned back in his chair. ‘So we know the painting’s definitely there.’
Wyatt stared at Minto, eyes flat and grey as stones. ‘You mean it was there when that photograph was taken. Have you or your niece ever met Thomas Ormerod?’
‘No,’ Minto said, shifting in his chair. ‘Look, tell me now, are you good for this?’
Wyatt was irritated by the question. ‘I won’t know until I check it out. I’d need to know more about Ormerod, and the house.’
‘Head up there, th
at’s all I ask,’ Minto said. ‘Make contact with Leah. She should have floor plans and more photographs for you, and she’ll be your backup.’
Wyatt would believe it when he saw it. He tapped the paperwork into a neat pile and slid it into the folder, his mind starting the tasks of sifting, ordering, planning.
‘Keep me informed of your progress anyway,’ Minto said.
Wyatt stared flatly at the man. ‘No.’
Minto shrugged. ‘Anything else?’
‘I need an untraceable smartphone. Sturdy; good-sized screen.’
‘Leah will have one for you. Is that all?’
‘I need a gun.’
Minto winced. ‘No can do. The guy I use went to the States on a buying trip and got himself arrested. But you won’t need a gun. Empty house, in and out in five minutes.’
Wyatt said nothing, just stared.
Minto faltered, then rallied. ‘Well, Leah’s up in Noosa, awaiting your call.’
7
Leah Quarrell was up in Noosa, plotting to kill a man.
Swivelling in her office chair, she held a pawnshop Nokia with a ten-dollar prepaid SIM to her ear, waiting for Gavin Wurlitzer to answer. His voice when it came was wary, hesitant, not recognising the number.
‘Gavin, it’s me,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’ Wurlitzer said.
‘I’ve got a good one for you.’
Wurlitzer was a burglar, always needy, and his voice quickened. ‘Yeah?’
‘Big house in Sunshine Beach overlooking the ocean. Belongs to a single woman, works as an underwear model. Semi-secluded, you don’t have to worry about the neighbours. High-end electrical gear, silverware, jewellery, maybe some cash…’
‘She got a dog?’
‘No.’
Then Wurlitzer asked the crucial question.
‘She’s an underwear model?’
Leah could picture the nasty little creep salivating there in his shithole. Pretending she didn’t know he’d raped one of her clients last week, she said, ‘Yeah, but you don’t have to worry. She won’t be there, she’s in the process of moving into her new place in Brisbane.’
But she’d sown the seed. Wurlitzer would picture a young woman alone in a house he intended to burgle. He’d hope to strike lucky again.
