‘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.’
Buchanan held up his hand and stopped him there. ‘Sergeant Webb sought instruction at that point,’ he told Worrall. ‘At that time, on the basis of information to hand, the cause of Taylor’s death was still unknown. Eastlake may have been involved, or he may just have been taking advantage of the situation to cover his tracks. So rather than jeopardise a successful ongoing undercover investigation, I instructed Sergeant Webb to carry on as normal.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Micaelis, ‘Salina Fleet had seen Taylor’s body being recovered. Her immediate assumption was that Eastlake was responsible.’
The penny dropped. ‘Bastard!’ I said. Everyone looked at me. ‘“Bastard!” That’s what Salina Fleet said when she saw Taylor’s body. She must have meant Eastlake. I thought she meant me.’ They all looked at me then like maybe I should explain why she might think such a thing. ‘Sorry,’ I said to Micaelis. ‘Please go on.’
‘Fleet panicked. She thought that if Eastlake was prepared to kill Taylor, then maybe she’d be next. She immediately started talking up the suicide scenario, hoping to send a signal to Eastlake that she was no threat to him.’
Noel Webb cleared his throat. ‘As instructed by Eastlake, I went to the YMCA and searched Taylor’s studio. I found a painting that fitted the description Eastlake had given me and put it, and a number of other sketches and paintings, in the boot of Eastlake’s Mercedes.’ As he said this, he fixed me in a steady gaze, inviting me not to contradict him or elaborate on his story. Discussions about people being locked in basements for their own well-being, I clearly understood, had no part in these proceedings.
Assistant Commissioner Worrall wasn’t interested in fake paintings. He had homicide on his mind. ‘How does any of this relate to the Taylor death?’ He looked at his watch like maybe somebody should get to the point. I checked mine, too. 8.07 p.m. It was beginning to look like I definitely wouldn’t be seeing Red again for some time.
Chief Superintendent Buchanan was all for getting back to the point, too. He wanted it made clear that his decision to keep Spider undercover hadn’t resulted in a killer being allowed to run loose. ‘At that time, the only evidence to connect Eastlake with Taylor’s death was purely circumstantial.’ He tapped his pencil on the table, punctuating his points. ‘The medical evidence suggested an accident. When we sought to question Fleet about inconsistencies in her original statement, the one suggesting suicide, she couldn’t be found.’ He gave me a meaningful look. I kept my trap shut. The coppers were too clever by half for the likes of me.
He tapped again. ‘It wasn’t until this afternoon that more substantial information came to hand. The scotch bottle found with Taylor’s body had two sets of prints on it. The second set didn’t match any we had on record. Sergeant Webb lifted a set of Eastlake’s dabs off his vehicle for comparison, but the match didn’t come back until late this afternoon. As you know, sir, they’re pretty under-resourced down there.’
Here Worrall looked at Ken Sproule to make sure he took the point.
‘Then Fleet turned up,’ Buchanan went on. ‘She’d spent the night at the Travelodge, she said, thinking things over. Apparently, she was under the misapprehension that Sergeant Webb, acting on Eastlake’s instructions, was planning to kill he
r. She brought her lawyer with her and gave us a fairly detailed statement. Also, as a result of enquiries among taxi drivers working that night, a driver…’
‘Stanislaw Korzelinski.’ Micaelis must have been hoping for an A-Plus in note taking.
‘…reported seeing two men fitting the general descriptions of Eastlake and Taylor on the moat parapet about the time of death. He says that one was lying down and the other appeared to be shaking him by the shoulders. Either that or banging his head on the stonework.’
Buchanan dropped his pencil and it rolled into the centre of the table. We all looked at it. We all saw the same thing. Eastlake, remonstrating with the drunken Taylor, knocking him unconscious and rolling him into the water.
Assistant Commissioner Worrall waited until the pencil came entirely to rest, studying it down his thin bony nose. ‘Very well,’ he said, at last. ‘Point taken. Now how does all this bear on the current situation, the shootings in Domain Road.’
Chief Superintendent Buchanan pressed his point home. ‘Whether Eastlake killed Taylor intentionally or not will probably never be known. What we do know is that the imminent financial collapse of Obelisk Trust was going to both ruin Eastlake personally and bring his fraud to light. So killing Taylor solved nothing. The pressure of this knowledge, and various other factors, drove him over the brink. As evidenced by his unprovoked attack on both Mr Whelan here and on Fiona Lambert, he was no longer in control of his mental faculties.’
‘These other factors,’ I said. ‘Would they include the murder of Giles Aubrey?’
Sproule kicked me under the table.
‘Who?’ said the Assistant Commissioner—Crime.
‘A retired art dealer,’ said Buchanan, quickly. He made a drooping movement with his wrist that might, arguably, have been a gesture of casual dismissal. ‘Marginal to the case. He died of a fall yesterday afternoon. We have no reason whatsoever to suspect foul play.’ The police, too, bury their mistakes.
‘As to the business in the Domain Road flat,’ said the Assistant Commissioner. ‘I have been given to understand that Eastlake, having shot Miss Lambert, turned the gun on himself.’
He looked at Sproule. The other three coppers looked at me. Nobody said anything. Me least of all.
‘That’s it then,’ said Worrall. ‘An open-and-shut case. Suicide brought on by pressure of business. Now it only remains to tie up the loose ends.’
Micaelis was still young. He hadn’t quite got the whole message. ‘We’d have to prove Fleet knowingly conspired to defraud, sir,’ he said. ‘Very difficult with her co-conspirators dead.’
‘And without a complainant,’ said Sproule good-naturedly, doing his best not to take the mickey. ‘I’ve already spoken to our friends at the Trades Hall. The board of the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme has no interest in further investigation of this matter. Its art collection no longer exists. It never did.’
The westering sun had turned the venetians to burnt sienna. There wasn’t anything left to say. Assistant Commissioner Worrall pulled his navy blue sleeve back and looked at his watch. I could have told him if he’d asked. 8.12 p.m.
Worrall stood up, nodded and briskly left the room. It must have been his turn to ride the goat at the Masonic Lodge. Buchanan reached across the table and picked up his pencil. Noel Webb pushed his chair back, blew out a long stream of air and took a packet of gum out of his pocket. Senior Constable Micaelis gathered his papers together and squared off the edges. Ken Sproule cracked his knuckles and looked exceedingly pleased with himself.
‘Ken,’ I said. ‘About that favour.’
The white Commodore V-8 with the chequerboard stripe down the side flashed its twin blue lights, whooped its siren and swung across the path of the metallic green Laser reversing away from the kerb. I jumped out and jerked open the Laser’s rear door. ‘Out of the car and spread ’em,’ I barked.
Tarquin cowered back. Red, faster off the mark, gave an ecstatic grin.
‘Tricked ya!’ I said.
Faye reached back from the driver’s seat and biffed me around the ear. ‘Scared the shit out of me,’ she said.
Ken Sproule, true to his grudging word, had managed to get a traffic division squad car placed at my disposal. ‘It’s only to save him the trouble of running his own red lights,’ he explained to the despatch officer. Even on a quiet Monday evening, running red lights was strictly the prerogative of the constabulary.
As we raced through the intersection outside the Trades Hall, the caretaker was removing the CUSS art exhibition sign. An unprecedented burst of efficiency from Bob Allroy. One less speech for me to write.
On my lap in the front seat was a black plastic bin-liner. ‘What’s in the bag?’ Ken said as I emerged from the toilet in the police garage, tucking my shirt into my pants. The hundred-dollar bills that had been pressed against my skin were as soft as suede and I had inky smudges like tread marks on my spare tyre. ‘Dirty laundry,’ I said.
Faye nosed her Laser back into the kerb. The boys got out and extended their attention to the figure in blue behind the wheel of the police car. His sunglasses were the same kind as Spider’s. I was beginning to think that the Police Cooperative Credit Union owned shares in Ray-Ban. ‘This officer is going to drive us to the airport,’ I told Red. ‘Hop in.’
Tarquin, green with envy, demanded to be allowed to come along for the ride. ‘Next time,’ I said. ‘But you can sit in the back seat for a minute while I talk to your mum.’
Prompted by my remark on the phone, Faye had successfully grilled the boys on the true reason for our flying visit to Artemis Prints. She’d followed up with a call to Claire. ‘She didn’t sound very impressed, Murray,’ she said. ‘She thinks you took advantage of her better nature. She was quite keen on you, you know. For a while. But I’m afraid you’ve blown it. So what’s all this about friends of yours with a forged Drysdale? And what’s that smell?’
A proper answer to those questions would take three days, a whiteboard, a flow chart and a breach of confidence. I gave Faye the thirty-second version. ‘Wow,’ she said, mentally reaching for her keyboard.
‘This is absolutely not for publication,’ I warned. ‘Within the life of this government.’ The money in the bag in my hot little hand, of course, I did not mention.
‘Look!’ called Tarquin. He’d pulled something out of a box on the back seat of the prowl car and was waving it out the window. It was a deep red stick of waxed paper about as long as my arm. ‘Extra-length dynamite!’
It wasn’t, but it might as well have been. It was an emergency flare. Two kilograms of compacted magnesium with a ring-pull activator cap. I reached over and deftly relieved Tarquin of its possession. ‘My wrist,’ he squealed. ‘You’ve broken my wrist.’
In what seemed like no time at all, we were barrelling down the Tullamarine freeway with the roof lights flashing, the siren wailing and Constable Speedy Gonzales of the Accident Appreciation Squad making the rest of the traffic look like it was standing still. ‘I’m sorry your visit was so boring,’ I told Red. ‘Next time, we’ll do something more interesting. Go fishing, maybe. And we’ll definitely have that pizza, I promise.’
Speedy dropped us at the terminal with ten minutes to flight time. ‘Told ya,’ I informed Red, although we were too late to get him a window seat. We embraced at the departure gate. ‘See you later, Dad,’ he said. ‘Sorry about busting the picture.’
‘Do something for me,’ I asked. ‘Tell your mother I’ve got a new girlfriend.’
‘You haven’t really?’ The kid squinted at me dubiously. ‘Have you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But you never know your luck. And don’t mention the dead body. Or the snake. Or the painting. Or the police car. Or the dynamite.’ I started to reach into the plastic garbage bag, thought better of it and fished a twenty out of my wallet. ‘In case you need a beer on the plane,’ I said. ‘And your teeth still look fine to me.’
We embraced again. Then he was gone.
&nbs
p; If anyone needed a beer it was me. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I found an airport eatery with a tray-race and a neon sign that read Altitude Zero. I got myself a tray and ate something they claimed was lasagne. Ate it all. Right down to the plate. That’s how hungry I was.
It was eleven before I’d got a cab back to the Arts Centre, picked up the Charade, put the black plastic bag under the seat and drove home. Home sweet lonesome home. I stepped inside the front door and reached for the light switch. Intuition stopped my hand stopped in mid-movement. I bent my head to the darkness of the hall and listened. The muted rustle of paper. An infinitely faint flush of light beneath the door into the living room. An electrical charge in the atmosphere. Someone was in the house. My hand went sweaty around the black bag.
Streetlight flowed through a gap in my bedroom curtains. Nothing out of order there. I flicked the money under the bed. The only thing in the room vaguely resembling a weapon was the bedside lamp. It was either that or a lumpy pillow. With the lamp cord wrapped around my wrist, I advanced noiselessly down the hall, put my shoulder to the door and pushed it open.
Claire was lying on the couch, her red hair lit by the feeble fluorescence emanating from the kitchen nook. She looked up over the top of an open book. ‘Pretty dense,’ she said. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
‘You’ll ruin your eyesight.’ I knelt on the floor and plugged in the lamp. ‘How did you get in?’ Not that I was complaining.
‘Your security is abysmal,’ she said. ‘But your friends are terrific. Faye gave me the key. She also told me what’s been going on. I thought I’d save you the price of a lunch.’
The face of Sister Mary Innocent flashed before me and dissolved. ‘Don’t go away,’ I said. ‘I’ve just got to take a quick shower.’
The Brush-Off Page 30
