by Garry Disher
‘At this point, we need each other,’ she went on.
‘And then?’
‘We go our separate ways.’ She walked up to him. ‘But now we find Mr Halperin before he disappears.’
A windy mid-afternoon in Noosa, on the last day of the school holidays. No parking available anywhere near the apartment where Leah Quarrell had said Halperin was staying. They left the car in the underground garage of the Pacific Grand and walked to Noosa Heads. Wyatt had the pistol tucked into the small of his back. Clumps of teenage girls passed them, heading with towels for Tea Tree Bay or returning to the Hastings Street shops, alive with expectation, one hand to the wind-whipped scraps of cloth about their waists, the other hand to their hair, their bags, their shrieking mouths. Boys clumped by, looking younger, clumsier. Fighting gravity as they descended the hill. They all eyed Wyatt and felt a chill they couldn’t name.
The Flamingo Gate Apartments was halfway along Alderly Terrace, overlooking Little Cove. The hilltop buildings and trees seemed to screen all sounds but the murmur of traffic flowing between Hastings Street and the national park. Whitecaps flecked the distant reaches of the sea; swimmers dotted the shallows.
Wyatt and Sten halted opposite the Flamingo Gate in the shadows cast by mansion walls and sub-tropical trees. They saw four floors, two apartments per floor, curtains open in most of the rooms. And, in a lobby half the size of a tennis court, a doorman behind a high-fronted desk. Wyatt wondered, with mild irritation, why the residents thought they needed a doorman. Prestige? It was an obstacle.
‘We come at him from both sides and neutralise him,’ Sten said, indicating the doorman.
With visions of another local with a broken neck, Wyatt shook his head. ‘We split up,’ he said, and explained how that would work.
Wyatt loped, Sten ran, across the street and into the lobby. The lift and stairwell door were in the left-hand corner. Stairs up to all floors, guessed Wyatt, and down into the car park. The middle space was taken up by a pair of sofas facing one another across a coffee table heaped with the kinds of corporate PR magazines that are never read. Along the right-hand wall were the doorman’s desk and a set of tenants’ letterboxes. The doorman had little to do but flip through a newspaper and scan a CCTV monitor split into four frames. One camera on each floor, no cameras in the stairwell or the parking garage—or not being monitored just now. Otherwise there were a couple of fat white columns holding up the ceiling and interfering with the doorman’s view of the lift and stairwell door.
Which suited Wyatt. He strode across the lobby with Sten as if they owned the joint, waving to the doorman, calling, ‘Just popping in on Rafi Halperin.’
The doorman gaped, a spotty kid, possibly a student. ‘Let me call up and—’
‘A surprise,’ cried Wyatt, screwing his best shot at a grin onto his features. ‘It’s Rafi’s birthday. Do us a favour; don’t tell him we’re coming up.’
He knew the guy would. He reached the lift with Hannah Sten, noisily stabbed the button a few times, and saw, in the corner of his eye, the doorman turn his back and mutter into his phone. Then the guy’s tone altered, taking on an aggrieved whine as if he were telling the man on the other end that it wasn’t his fault.
Sten stepped into the lift, Wyatt into the stairwell. He ran noiselessly up to the second level, where he waited. If the doorman’s call had spooked Halperin he’d leave by the stairs, thinking his visitors were still in the lift. The air was stale, scented with cigarette smoke. Butts had collected in the corners. Nothing stirred.
Then a series of metallic clicks and creaks that Wyatt mapped in his head. A metal handle is turned on the fourth floor. Hinges creak as the heavy stairwell door is hauled open. The handle is released and the door closes with a pneumatic whisper behind Halperin. He clatters down to the first bend, the third landing, the next bend.
Stops.
‘Ah, hell.’
Wyatt saw flight in Halperin’s eyes, and aimed the Ruger. Halperin winced into the black mouth of the barrel and Wyatt saw acceptance begin to settle in his features.
But another part of him was still weighing options. Wyatt barked, ‘Don’t.’
Halperin curled his lip. ‘You’re going to shoot me here? A building full of people and your face on the lobby camera?’
‘Yes.’
Halperin thought about it. He shrugged. ‘You want to thrash it out here? What?’
‘I note you’re not asking who I am.’
‘I know who you are.’
Wyatt nodded. ‘Let’s go back up to your apartment.’
He wondered if the man was armed. Nothing showed at Halperin’s waist or in the pockets of his snug shirt and trousers, but there could be a knife, a pistol, in the small of his back. Not wanting to frisk and disarm Halperin here, in a narrow space, Halperin with a height advantage, standing one step above him on the stairs, Wyatt aimed his gun at the man’s trunk and said, ‘Lift your shirt.’
Halperin complied with a lazy grin. ‘Not armed, see?’
Wyatt gestured with the gun. ‘Turn around.’
Halperin turned full circle, his shirt tails bunched below his ribcage. ‘See?’
The man was claiming a pathetic victory. A small man, thought Wyatt. He gestured again. ‘Up the stairs.’
Hesitation, then Halperin began to retrace his steps to the top floor, Wyatt not too close but close enough to shoot him in the spine. Halperin seemed keenly aware of that. He kept glancing back, not at Wyatt but at the black snout of the pistol.
He said, ‘How’d you know about me?’
Wyatt said nothing.
‘Leah? Isn’t she under arrest?’
The point of greatest risk for Wyatt was the door into the hallway leading to Halperin’s apartment. People on the other side, the door as a weapon…
When they reached the top level he said, ‘I want you to drop your pants to the floor.’
‘Hey, I already lifted my shirt for you.’
‘If you want to survive this, leave your pants around your ankles, hobble through the door ahead of me and stop a few metres along the corridor. Then you can pull them up again.’
The trousers dropped to the floor, revealing slender legs, boxers and black socks. Halperin turned the doorhandle, pulled at it and shuffled through, Wyatt at a secure distance behind him.
‘Now we wait at the lift.’
‘The lift? Why?’
Wyatt didn’t take his eyes off Halperin. ‘We wait,’ he said.
The lift pinged, the doors slid open and Hannah Sten stepped out. ‘Hello, Raf.’
Halperin swallowed. ‘Hannah.’
Sten eyed his legs. ‘A good look for you.’
Halperin said desperately, ‘Is this necessary? Can I pull them up?’
Wyatt shrugged. ‘Sure.’
Halperin bent neatly, grabbed, pulled, zipped up, buckled his belt, smoothed down his shirt. ‘Now what?’
Wyatt said, ‘Hand your key to Ms Sten, then stay clear of the door while she opens it.’
He watched, and when the door was open, said, ‘I’ll go first.’ He halted in front of Halperin as he moved towards the door. ‘Don’t try anything. I just watched her break your girlfriend’s neck.’
Halperin paled. ‘Not my girlfriend.’
Wyatt ignored him and entered the apartment at a rapid crouch, down the short hallway, passing doors to a bedroom and a bathroom, and coming to an open-plan kitchen that gave onto a living area. Long and broad, a wall of glass looking out over Little Cove. It was a terrible place. Beige walls, vomit-yellow carpet over black tiles. Weird artwork on the walls, seashells painted a pastelly brown and glued onto particle board painted blue to suggest the sea. Displays of dried flowers drenched in an air-freshening chemical that seared Wyatt’s nostrils. Curtains like heavy sacking, costly leather, steel and glass-slab furniture, a massive plasma TV set and an exercise bike.
And there was the David Teniers painting, set up as it had been for the ransom photo: a framed canv
as on a wall, a chair, a newspaper.
He called the others to join him. Halperin entered first, flopping onto the sofa, watched by Sten.
‘Okay,’ Halperin said, ‘you got me, now what?’
Wyatt ignored him. He stared at the painting. Smaller than he’d envisaged, its muddy tones emitted a queer sheen. Frowning, he closed in and peered at it.
Behind him, Halperin said, ‘Take it, it’s yours, I’m done.’
Wyatt, alerted by a shift in the American’s voice, turned to see Halperin burrowing under a cushion and Hannah Sten aiming and firing. Gun smoke drifted and Wyatt’s ears rang. Halperin doubled over, dropping a little .32.
White-faced, he tried to straighten, craning his neck at Sten. ‘You gut shot me.’
‘What did you expect? You attempted to cheat me.’
Halperin clutched his side, where blood seeped between his fingers. ‘I need a doctor.’
‘You’ll live.’ She shrugged. ‘Or you may not.’
Wyatt trained his Ruger on them, watching the exchange. When Sten met his gaze, he said, ‘I thought you said you weren’t armed.’
A tiny two-shot derringer, which she waved at him negligently. ‘This? A pop gun.’
Wyatt gestured with the Ruger. ‘Put it away.’
‘He would have shot you.’
‘No,’ Wyatt said, ‘he wouldn’t have shot me.’
‘Eyes in the back of your head?’
‘Something like that.’
She tucked the tiny gun into her bag.
Halperin groaned. ‘I need a doctor.’
Wyatt closed in on him and scooped up the .32. ‘I want you to call downstairs and say everything’s sweet, we were expected.’
‘I don’t know if I have the strength.’
Wyatt ground his pistol against Halperin’s knee. ‘Find the strength.’
When the call was over, Halperin’s voice steady and clear, Wyatt crossed to the painting.
‘I did what you asked. I need a doctor.’
‘You need an art expert,’ Wyatt said.
He lifted the painting from the wall and angled it towards Hannah Sten.
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s as fresh as the day Teniers painted it.’
She frowned. ‘So? It’s been cleaned by a conservator.’
‘No.’
She peered at the canvas. ‘Look: his signature, fine cracks in the paint…’
‘If I live long enough,’ Halperin gasped, face clammy, ‘I might hear the end of the story.’
Wyatt took the painting to Halperin. ‘Sit up.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Sit up.’
When the painting was in Halperin’s lap, Wyatt said, ‘The man swinging the scythe.’
‘What about him?’ Halperin said.
‘He’s wearing Nikes.’
Halperin looked and he blinked and he closed his eyes and rocked in pain. ‘Oh, Christ.’
‘You and your girlfriend stole a fake.’
‘Let me see,’ Sten demanded, grabbing the painting and crossing to the window.
Wyatt meanwhile stared at Halperin. ‘This is the painting you took from Ormerod’s house?’
Halperin was glassy-eyed. ‘I didn’t take it, I wasn’t there. Leah brought it.’
Sten returned. ‘You were intending to sail into the sunset together?’
Halperin looked away. ‘That’s what she thought…’
‘A true gentleman. So she had no motive to keep the real painting and give you a fake?’
‘No.’
Sten glanced at Wyatt. ‘Either the Ormerod family bought a dud in 1945, or Thomas Ormerod was warned he’d be robbed.’
Wyatt gave her a bleak smile. ‘I don’t think Nike were big in 1945.’
‘You prick,’ Sten said, turning to Halperin.
‘Hannah,’ beseeched Halperin, ‘I had debts.’
She snorted. ‘Did you stop to wonder why I flew to Australia? I heard whispers, Mr Halperin. A man selling a David Teniers painting.’
Halperin began to sway. ‘Please, a doctor.’
‘What exactly did you say to Thomas Ormerod? You alerted him somehow. Why else would he hang a fake?’
But Halperin’s eyes rolled up and he toppled over. Wyatt took the painting from Sten and wiped it of their prints. He hadn’t touched anything else. Sten watched him amusedly. Then she stepped towards him, stood squarely in front of him, took his elbow. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘The original painting is still in Ormerod’s house.’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘Tomorrow. Things will still be tense there: extra security, police patrols, hyper-vigilant neighbours.’
She clasped his wrist. ‘Then we must find a place to hide and think.’
Wyatt felt the contact of her hand like an electric charge. It was ordinary human warmth, a pressing sensation from a pretty woman’s fingers and normally neither here nor there, but he felt something. Briefly.
38
The place to hide and think was her hotel room.
Wyatt strolled around it, assessing the bed, the furniture. ‘I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.’
Her expression was hard to read. ‘Is that your wish?’
He made no reply. He walked to the window. Iluka Islet was just across the water, a knob of land beyond the bridge. Ormerod’s house. The mid-afternoon sun was striking from glass and the shifting surface of the canals.
Sten joined him. She stood very close to his hip and there was a charge in the air. She pointed. ‘But a reconnaissance mission this afternoon, from a little boat?’
Wyatt thought about it. ‘Okay.’
Her elbow brushed his. And then he was tugging up on the hem of her shirt and her arms rose to assist him.
Afterwards she glided unselfconsciously across the room. Wyatt watched her, the flexing of her lithe muscles, the shape-shifting of the warm hollows. She was creased here and there from the sheets. He did not forget she was a killer.
She disappeared into the bathroom and as he waited Wyatt thought about the fake Teniers.
It was possible that Leah Quarrell had commissioned it to occupy everyone while she disappeared with the real painting, but Wyatt was betting that Ormerod had commissioned it. Alerted by Halperin’s initial approach on behalf of Sten, and fearing a successful court action or even a theft, he’d asked an artist to paint a copy to hang on his wall. Then, if he was obliged to relinquish ownership, or it was stolen, he’d have the last laugh.
He wouldn’t have commissioned the anachronistic Nikes, however. That was most likely the artist’s little joke.
Australian painters of fake masterworks weren’t thick on the ground, but Wyatt had met a couple over the years. He knew of one who specialised in artists with a large body of work not yet fully documented: Dickerson, Whiteley, Blackman, some of the Indigenous painters. Another created unsigned pastiches of nineteenth-century Australian landscapes, genuine examples of which were increasing in value. She was careful not to claim the paintings were genuine, with a clear provenance, but she didn’t say they weren’t, either. She relied on buyer greed and ignorance, which was boundless, and no one could prove intent to defraud.
Both of his acquaintances got away with it because the new owners were embarrassed to appear gullible or naive and the police didn’t have the expertise to investigate. Auctioneers and gallery directors kept their mouths shut, fearing a loss of consumer confidence, and legal action was slow and costly. Often, duped owners would move the painting on to another unsuspecting buyer rather than take a financial hit.
Wyatt thought about the artist hired by Ormerod to fake the Teniers painting. Highly skilled but unsuccessful professionally, he or she probably painted fakes and copies as a sideline, probably on a modest scale. They’d be careful not to reproduce anyone too famous—middle-rung painters only. None of that explained the Nike logo, though. A sense of humour? A whack at Ormerod, because he’d been a prick to deal with?
Wyatt joined S
ten under the shower and when they were dressed she drove them to Noosaville. They parked and walked downriver to T-Boat Hire. Past waterbirds imprinting the damp sand with webbed feet, past two children who poled and wobbled on a surfboard. Hannah Sten was Wyatt’s cover this time. They were lovers or honeymooners. No one would look at them and think of yesterday’s runaway gunman.
They rented a runabout for one hour and puttered back along the river, under the bridge, making a slow loop past Iluka and into the network of inlets between Lions Park and Wyuna Drive. They shared the steering and passed a pair of field glasses back and forth. At Wyatt’s insistence, they changed their appearance a little each time they passed Ormerod’s house. Wyatt alternated between a yellow sun hat and a broad-brimmed straw hat, a yellow T-shirt and black short-sleeved shirt. Hannah, pulling a T-shirt over her bikini top for the second pass, draping a scarf over her head, grumbled at him, ‘You always carry on like this?’
‘Yes.’
‘It comes naturally?’
Wyatt didn’t know how to answer that. He didn’t know if he worked from instinct or thought and preparation, and the question wasn’t worth considering. He raised the glasses and swept the lenses over Ormerod’s house and at last said, ‘He has a secret room.’
Hannah Sten stared at him. ‘You found it yesterday?’
‘No. But I remember thinking there was something odd about the area of the room behind the dormer window. It’s smaller than it looks from the outside. There’s a false wall.’
‘That is where the painting will be?’
‘Perhaps. If he still has it.’
‘Minto said he flew to Thailand. Now is our chance.’
Wyatt shook his head. ‘Tomorrow. I can see people in the house. Probably police.’
‘And if they find the room?’
‘Then we try something else.’
Hannah Sten took the glasses and focused as Wyatt steered in a slow arc away from Iluka and under the bridge and out onto the river. They returned the boat. They strolled hand in hand to the Corolla and drove to the hotel. The air was intense, everything unspoken.
