Whispering Death

by Garry Disher

  Then he peered more closely, straightened his back. An icon. Valuable? Also stolen? But the photo seemed to be a family keepsake. Would it help him find the woman known as Mrs Grace?

  Rodda’s phone rang. She turned away from the table, phone to one ear, hand to the other, as though the little room was full of discordant sounds. ‘Yep. Uh huh. Thanks. Did you get the batch I just sent? Yeah, chop chop. Bye.’

  She finished the call and said, ‘The prints on the outside of the box belong to bank staff only.’

  The federal cop had worn gloves. ‘And this stuff?’ Challis asked, gesturing at the items arranged across the surface of the table.

  ‘So far all I’ve been able to lift are two partials, one on the memory card case, the other on the battery of the camera. I’ve asked the lab to put a rush on them, but there could be more partials that aren’t so evident. You want a thorough job, I’ll need to take everything to the lab.’

  Challis nodded. ‘Do what you can for now,’ he said, knowing that even if they found Mrs Grace’s prints, it meant nothing if they weren’t on record.

  Ely pointed at the memory card. ‘We should plug it in and see what she’s been photographing.’

  ‘Soon enough,’ Challis said.

  Some time later, Rodda’s phone rang again and she took the call and he watched her. And then she was casting him a complicated look, handing him the phone.

  ‘Challis.’

  ‘Sir,’ a voice said, ‘those two partials: they’re both in the system, both flagged.’

  54

  Almost noon now.

  As Mara Niekirk fed another set of forged provenance papers and fake catalogues through the shredder, a shape passed the window: Tayla, chasing Natalia around the bonfire, bouncy and smiling in a way that inflamed her. The unwarranted happiness, the baby talk, the bovine simplicity, and the perfect teeth, hair, nose, breasts and legs. Mara despised the nanny and often let it show. And why not? Tayla was too dumb to recognise the sarcasm.

  Stupid cow.

  Mara contemplated a perfect world, one in which she had no husband—or the one she had was the brains of the outfit, a man like her father or her grandfather. Or, she had an attractive lover, one who made her feel desired. One who found her arousing, not some spy-cam image.

  What is it with voyeurs? Mara wondered. What happens when they encounter actual flesh and blood? Does it all just vanish? Mara was exhausted from picking up after her husband’s screw-ups.

  ‘Get a move on.’

  ‘Stop rushing me,’ he said. He was flipping through paperwork going back years.

  Did she trust him to find everything that needed the shredder or the match? ‘Here, swap places.’

  And she was right not to trust him. Within a minute of taking over from him she’d found an unmounted Charles Blackman drawing that was in fact a fake, together with the ‘receipt’ that proved they’d bought it from an Adelaide gallery.

  She glanced across at the portable TV she’d mounted on the desk. The noon news update, the face of their burglar flashing across the screen again. Have you seen…? Police are concerned for the welfare of… And according to the Herald Sun, the bitch had rented a safe-deposit box at the bank.

  That’s what had tipped the balance for Mara: what’s the betting the Klee, with my prints all over it, is in that box? If that woman is found alive, Mara thought, she’ll want to bargain her way out of trouble. ‘I can give you a crooked art dealer.’ And, alive or dead, if she’s rented a safe-deposit box, the police will want to search it.

  Mara grunted. The house in Vanuatu was looking pretty good right now. She glanced across at her husband, intending to suggest they get an earlier flight, but the idiot was watching Tayla through the window. Showing more flesh than clothing, as usual. Mara was incandescent. ‘Keep your filthy mind on the job.’

  ‘I am.’

  She stewed. It made sense for the nanny to accompany them to Port Vila, but, good God almighty, could she stand it?

  ‘I’ve a good mind to sack the bitch.’

  Warren drew himself up and said, with great dignity, that a young child shouldn’t be uprooted and plonked down somewhere new without some consistency—in this case, Tayla.

  ‘What crap,’ Mara said and scowled out at the nanny, still dancing with their daughter. She shook her head. Did the little cow even know what was fuelling the bonfire? ‘Genuine’ Nolans and Boyds and Chippendales, that’s what.

  Meanwhile the shredder was shaking itself apart. Jammed probably, not that Warren had noticed. Mara closed her eyes briefly, drawing strength. The first thing to do in Vanuatu was disappear Warren and the nanny, preferably at sea, and then hire some native woman to raise the child.

  And later start again somewhere new. Thailand? Bali? No, Europe. A chance to get out of this primitive corner of the globe.

  ‘Warren? The shredder?’

  He jerked. ‘Right, sorry.’

  The wind changed direction. Smoke licked at the open window and drifted into the room. Her husband, too dumb to find his way out of a paper bag, failed to notice.

  ‘Shut the window,’ Mara said, barely able to squeeze the words out.

  A voice behind her said, ‘Excuse me, Mrs Niekirk.’

  ‘What now?’ shrieked Mara.

  Tayla and Natalia had somehow disappeared from the garden and materialised at the door to the study. With a cute little squirm, a cute ash smudge on her cheek, the nanny said, ‘Talia got smoke in her eyes, didn’t you, gorgeous? She wants her mummy.’

  Natalia flung up her arms. Mara backed away. ‘Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Niekirk.’

  ‘And her name is Natalia, not Talia, not Nat, not—’

  ‘Mummeee…’

  Mara turned a raptorial glint on to her daughter. ‘I have told you, darling, many, many times, that I cannot abide being called “mummy”.’

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘Well?’

  The child lost courage and Tayla stepped in with her air of practicality and capability. ‘A quick cuddle should do the trick, Mrs Niekirk, and we’ll be out of your hair.’

  Mara eyed the nanny. ‘What’s that you’re wearing? I can practically see that stupid butterfly tattoo.’

  A tattoo that Warren adored, the way it flexed inside the young woman’s groin, centimetres from her pubic hair, every time he replayed the footage of her undressing.

  Tayla went very still. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  Whoops, thought Mara, not really caring.

  55

  An early afternoon briefing, Challis too wired to sit, or prop up a wall. He paced the room, waiting for the other detectives to assemble. Scobie Sutton had wheeled in the AV unit. Pam Murphy was already seated. She looked lit with achievement and energy, no longer curiously lost and perplexed, and he raised an eyebrow at her inquiringly.

  ‘Result?’

  ‘He confessed.’

  ‘Fantastic. Terrific job.’

  ‘When he heard about the pollen evidence, he just gave it up.’

  Challis smiled at her. ‘You trusted your instincts. They’re good instincts.’

  She stretched like a cat under his gaze. Meanwhile Sutton had slipped a DVD into the machine and pressed the play button. The main stretch of High Street appeared on the screen.

  Challis took over, pointing a remote at the AV unit.

  ‘This,’ he said, ‘is footage from the closed circuit TV system operated by Nerds-R-Us.’

  An electronics store two doors south of the bank, one of its gimmicks was a hidden camera monitoring everyone who passed by the main window. Challis pressed the pause button, catching a pedestrian in mid-stride. Slight build, close cropped hair, narrow features, well dressed—almost dapper.

  ‘That man,’ Challis said, ‘entered the VineTrust bank this morning waving a warrant to search the safe-deposit box of the woman we know as Mrs Grace. He showed AFP identification in the name of Andrew Towne and was grante
d access to the box. Neither the warrant nor the ID was challenged by the VineTrust manager.’

  ‘Who is he?’ Pam asked.

  ‘We don’t know, but he left a partial print on a memory card for a digital camera.’

  ‘Not wearing gloves?’

  ‘He was, but I think he removed them because they hampered his movements. The card was in a tiny plastic case, which he’d have found difficult to open. He wiped the case but not the card.’

  ‘The partial matches someone in the system?’

  Challis nodded. ‘Red flagged, so I doubt his real name is Towne and I doubt he’s a federal policeman.’

  He pressed another button and the famous photograph of Mrs Grace filled the screen, her features clear despite the arm around her throat, the gun to her head.

  ‘This is the woman known to the bank staff as Mrs Grace. We believe she’s a professional thief. We found three sets of ID in her safe-deposit box and valuable coins, stamps and paintings. We need to track down who owns these items and who this woman is. It’s probable that she operates Australia-wide, so Scobie, I want you to confer with the various squads around the country, looking at high-end burglaries, especially where a woman was thought to be involved.’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘And compile a list of anyone known to fence stolen artwork.’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘Meanwhile, does the second flagged print belong to Mrs Grace? We don’t know, so Pam, I want you to spend the afternoon following up both sets of prints. Who do they belong to? Why are they flagged? Are they connected? How do they connect to this Corso character?’ He paused. ‘The guy walking past the electronics window: not Corso, by any chance?’

  Pam gave him a deadpan look. ‘What we trained detectives call a long shot, boss.’

  ‘My specialty,’ Challis said.

  He inserted a CD into the machine. The screen flickered, then a washed-out image appeared, two vases on a little table. Other images unfurled slowly as Challis set the machine to slide-show. ‘Scobie, these photos were stored on the memory card in the safe-deposit box. I imagine they’re a record of the houses that this woman has robbed, and may help you track down the owners of the various items in the box.’

  ‘Boss.’

  ‘Meanwhile we don’t know where our mystery Fed is. Did he take anything from the box? Does he know where the woman is? How did he know to come here?’

  Pam sprawled in her chair and said, ‘Saw her on TV?’

  ‘Could be. Anyhow, I want you to find out who he is.’

  She nodded gloomily. ‘What’s the betting I get stonewalled?’

  ‘Do your best. I’ll be out of the station for most of the afternoon seeing what the Monash fine arts department can tell me.’

  ‘Some people get the good jobs,’ Murphy said.

  ‘Some people,’ said Challis airily, ‘are bosses, others are drudges.’

  56

  Grace had to run now.

  But first she had to go home. Retrieve the icon, then run.

  Home. She caught herself. The word aroused complicated feelings of achievement and loss, impermanence and security. She’d attached it to too many houses over the years. An orphanage and several foster homes, every one of them run by strangers; some cruel, none warm. They’d been where she lived, and so she’d used the word home.

  But the Breamlea home she’d bought fair and square—admittedly from the proceeds of crime, but she alone had selected it. She alone had decorated, managed and lived in it.

  Yet the moment she drove her Golf onto the ferry at Sorrento, that Tuesday afternoon, she knew that the Breamlea house was just that, a house, a shell, like all the others back along the short, tumultuous years of her life. All she’d have when she left Breamlea, ninety minutes from now, would be the Golf, a pocketful of cash and the icon. Not the lovely little Klee painting. Not her fake ID, her coins, her stamps, her photos of the houses she’d intended to burgle again, the Harbin photograph.

  She queued to buy coffee on board, and there was her face, front page of the Age and the Herald Sun, heaped beside the cash register. Grace went cold and her skin prickled.

  The man behind the counter saw the direction of her gaze and performed a kind of flirting, comical double-take. ‘Gorgeous, if I didn’t know different, I’d say that was you.’

  Managing a light laugh, Grace said doubtfully, ‘You think I look like her?’

  Together they examined the photograph of the woman held hostage by a man with a shotgun. ‘Yeah, a bit.’

  ‘I guess so,’ Grace said, knowing better than to deny it vehemently. She could feel the gunman’s meaty forearm at her throat, almost smell him. And her jaw ached, bruised by the twin barrels. ‘Poor woman,’ she said. ‘Must have been scary.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ the man said. He shook his head. ‘And it’s not going to end good, is it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No.’

  Grace bought coffee and a copy of the Age and, trembling a little, took them to a table under a starboard window. She felt scrutinised, trapped, no way out of this steel box until it reached its destination. Galt would see the photograph. He would come.

  In fact, she thought bitterly, I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for two years; I’ve been living on borrowed time.

  Think how easily he’d found her that first day.

  Grace forced herself to sip her coffee and read her newspaper. She lingered over a sidebar story on the front page, about the senior cop at the siege. His name was Challis. Apparently highly regarded, currently in hot water for speaking out publicly against a lack of police resources, incurring the wrath of force command and the police minister. He looked hunted to Grace, a man casting repressive, vigilant looks at the probing cameras on High Street last night.

  On page two was a grainy snap of the escape to the car, captioned Gunman outwits police.

  No, I did, thought Grace. The blanket idea was mine.

  She turned the pages.

  Steve Finch was at the bottom of page three. Gunned down outside his home, known to police, no apparent motive.

  Grace stared out at the choppy waters of the bay. The Niekirks? Looked like. Thieves and murderers.

  She climbed the stairs to the upper deck and stood where she’d not be heard over the booming of the exhausts. Taking her iPhone from her bum bag, she looked up the phone number for CIU in Waterloo.

  ‘Inspector Challis’s phone, Constable Sutton speaking.’

  ‘I’d like to speak to the inspector, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, he’s out. Can I take a message?’

  ‘Could I have his mobile number?’

  A pause. Sutton said, ‘I’m afraid not. What’s this about?’

  ‘I have information that will interest him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘What happened at the bank.’

  ‘You can tell me.’

  ‘Could I have his e-mail address? I want to send him some photos.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to do that. Why don’t you—’ She cut the connection and sat for a while. What she wanted to do was tell the sad-faced policeman named Challis about the gunman, the contents of her safe-deposit box, the connection between Steve Finch and the Niekirks. She wanted to e-mail him her photos of the Klee and the icon in situ, the close-ups of the Niekirks’ dodgy invoices, deeds and provenance papers…

  It could wait. Right now they were calling drivers to their cars. She headed down to the Golf and waited for the ferry to dock and unload.

  Finally to Breamlea. Slowing at the outskirts, she crawled along the little main street, eyeing the houses in a mental goodbye. The place probably wouldn’t have remained a haven anyway. Lifestyle writers had discovered it and that always brought doom.

  She stepped inside her front door and into the sitting room and Ian Galt said, ‘Hello, Neet.’

  57

  Pam Murphy had been eating lunch at her desk when Scobie Sutton took the call meant for Challis.
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  A miserable-looking salad from the canteen. A canteen meal because she couldn’t afford to lunch at Café Laconic very often, and the High Street deli was now a Youth Initiative drop-in centre, serving cheap food prepared and sold by kids she’d arrested, questioned or reprimanded.

  Scobie had been eating at his desk, too, a sandwich from a plastic lunchbox. That’s all he ever ate, sandwiches lovingly prepared by his wife—except for that period when the wife had a meltdown. The sandwiches resembled the wife—small, neat, bland—and Scobie pecked and nibbled neatly, blandly, patting his rubbery lips with a paper serviette after every bite.

  As for Challis: who knew what Challis was eating, or where? She glanced at her watch: 1 p.m. He was meeting the Monash academic at 2 p.m., so maybe he would snatch a meal at a uni caf. Why was she thinking about any of this? Going off the anti-depressants had brought her some uncomfortable symptoms but also a crazy kind of clarity about random things, irrelevant to life and police work.

  She watched Scobie as he took the call in Challis’s office, listened to his stiff proprieties, watched him return to his desk.

  ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Crank call.’

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘A female wanting to speak to the inspector. I said he was out. She said could I give her his mobile number? No. Could I give her his e-mail address, she wanted to send him some photos? No.’

  ‘What kind of photos?’

  Scobie shrugged, his skinny arms emerging from the sleeves of his white shirt. ‘She said it had to do with the siege at the bank.’

  ‘Scobie!’

  ‘A crank call, Pam.’

  ‘How can you be sure? What if it’s the woman we’re looking for?’