by Amos, Gina
‘For Christ’s sake Brennan, what is it?’ Rimis slapped her hard between the shoulder blades. ‘You okay?’
She put her glass down on the bar and held up her hand to stop him from hitting her. She reached inside her shoulder bag.
‘What’ve you got?’ Rimis said.
She laid the computer-spread sheet on the bar. ‘Paloma Browne, under P. Her name is in Freddie’s contact list. She could be our blackmailer.’
Rimis stood beside her and looked at the spreadsheet.
Morrisey looked at them. ‘What’s this about blackmail?’
‘I’ll tell you about it later,’ Rimis said. ‘What else you got there?’
Jill looked at Rimis looking at the names. She dropped her shoulder bag to the floor and pulled back on her ponytail. She had both men’s attention now.
‘Okay. Let’s start with Freddie Winfred. She’s missing and we’re pretty sure she’s part of this art racket. But there’s someone else in the background. I think there’s a good chance it’s her sister.’ She took a sip of soda water. ‘When I was at Freddie’s gallery, I saw a Dickerson on the wall. I’m sure it was a fake. I checked the Gallery’s website. It was listed for sale at twenty-eight thousand dollars. Then there’s the note I found in Freddie’s office. If Paloma Browne wrote it, Freddie, or whoever was in this with her, might not have liked the idea of paying up. Maybe they decided to kill her to keep her quiet.’ Jill lifted her glass to her lips.
‘I can’t see Calida Winfred or Freddie having anything to do with murdering the girl,’ Rimis said. ‘For starters, I don’t think they’d have the strength to put her in an industrial bin liner and dump her in the Lane Cove River.’
Morrissey scratched his head. ‘It sounds like an open and shut case to me, whichever way you look at it.’
‘I think you’re being a bit premature, Col,’ Rimis said.
‘We’ve got a motive. A case of blackmail gone wrong. One or both of them knock her off, Calida Winfred is tucked away safe and sound in the Hunter Valley, and when Freddie realises we’re onto her, she scampers away.’
‘Hang on. With respect, Sarge,’ Jill said. She saw the look on Rimis’s face and wondered what it meant. ‘I spoke to the owner of the florist next door to Freddie’s gallery. She saw a black Bentley pick Freddie up last Sunday morning. We know Dorin Chisca owns a black Bentley. I can’t explain why, put it down to female intuition, but I don’t trust him. There’s something about him I don’t like. He looked nervous when Kevin introduced me as an ex-cop.’
Morrissey nodded at Rimis. ‘You want to watch your back with this one, Nick. She’ll have your job, if you’re not careful.’ Morrissey turned away from them and looked down the length of the bar at the two women who had just sat down. They were in their early twenties. One of the women returned Morrissey’s look and whispered something in her friend’s ear.
Rimis reminded Morrissey that he was married.
‘Doesn’t hurt to look, Nick.’
Rimis turned back to Jill. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yeah. William Phillips. He thinks some paintings his company bought from Freddie’s gallery are forgeries and he’s asked me to take a look at them. It’s all coming together, don’t you think, boss? I mean, Nick. All these separate bits of information.’
‘William Phillips? You mean, Rose Phillips’ son?’
‘He came to see me at the gallery.’
‘Look Brennan,’ Rimis said, ‘don’t let your imagination get too carried away. All we’ve got is a corpse and a missing person. I think we all agree Freddie Winfred is behind this art fraud business. What we need to do is find her, and quick smart. And go careful with Phillips. I remember the way he used to look at you. I don’t want the case compromised.’
Jill opened her mouth and was about to tell him that what she did in her private life was her business, when he looked down at her glass.
‘Want another one?’
She shook her head.
‘So, where’s our mate Taggart then? I don’t know if he’s got anything to do with Freddie’s disappearance, but he’s in the picture.’
Jill smiled at Rimis’s choice of words. ‘I’m meeting him at the gallery tomorrow,’ she said. ‘At least I think I am. You might want to know, he left a message on Freddie’s home answering machine. I checked with the service provider. He was the last person she phoned on the night she was murdered.’
Rimis picked up his glass. He took a mouthful and turned to Morrissey. ‘Col, I want you to see what you can find out about Paloma Browne. I want to know what her connection was to Freddie, her sister, Calida, and Dorin Chisca. And find out if she’s ever crossed tracks with Kevin Taggart.’
Jill and Morrissey looked at him.
‘Taggart?’ Morrissey asked.
‘Yeah, Taggart. You got a problem with that?’
Morrissey shrugged. ‘No, not if you don't.’
‘Brennan?’
She shook her head.
Morrissey walked down to the end of the bar. The two women made room for him and he ordered a round of drinks.
Rimis picked up his empty glass. ‘Hey, Jimmy, what do you have to do to get a drink around here?’ He pulled out a twenty-dollar note and placed it on the bar.
‘Time I was heading home,’ Jill said. ‘It’s been a long day. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’ She pushed her stool back.
‘We need a result on this one, Brennan. Sooner rather than later, before it blows up into something none of us bargained for.’
CHAPTER TEN
The brushed stainless steel doors closed and Jill stood back in one corner of the lift. She watched the buttons light up and waited for the doors to open onto the thirty-ninth floor, the offices of Stockland and Lewis. She was surprised to see William standing at the reception desk, conscious of his eyes on her. She walked the length of the carpeted corridor towards him.
‘Sorry I’m late, had a bit of trouble finding a parking space. I should have caught the bus instead.’
Jill was wearing a pair of skin-tight denim jeans and a V-neck sleeveless blouse, one shade darker than Sydney Harbour.
William led her into his corner office and closed the door. She looked around and remembered why she had been infatuated with him when she first met him – there was something about him and this office. There was energy here, order and power. Her attention shifted away from his broad shoulders and narrow hips to the wall behind his desk. ‘It’s an aquatint with Carborundum,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
She walked up to the etching and studied it. ‘It has an added technique. Carborundum grit is mixed into a paste and applied to the surface of an aluminium plate.’
‘Then what happens?’
‘The paste dries. The ink’s applied and trapped on the surface, then it’s wiped off and printed onto paper in an etching press. What you end up with is a print embossed into the paper.’
‘You lost me right after the part where the paste dries.’
Jill laughed. ‘Sorry, La Calebasse is one of Miró’s better examples of the technique.’ She pulled her phone out of her bag and read the notes she had made before leaving the gallery.
‘Miró sketched it in 1969. It’s numbered sixty-six of seventy-five and signed in pencil in the lower right hand corner.’ Jill looked at the etching again. ‘That stacks up.’ She produced a tape measure from her bag and measured the dimensions. 116.8 cm x 83.8 cm. She looked at her notes again.
“What do you think? Is it an original?’
‘I’m no expert, but I would say yes. You can usually tell when it comes to art; it’s either right or it’s wrong, and it looks and feels right to me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s so beautiful, I could stand here and look at it all day.’ Jill noticed the look William gave her and tried to ignore it.
‘Any idea how much it’s worth?’ he asked.
‘You wouldn’t get much change from eighty-thousand, I wouldn’t think.’
‘Well, that’s a rel
ief. The firm paid seventy-four thousand for it three years ago. I hope the Whiteleys and the Brack are genuine. Andy Brogan knows the curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery. He’s coming in to take a look at them later on today. This art fraud business has got everyone nervous.’
Jill turned away from the Miró. William kept a tidy workspace, every file and paper in its place. Dark leather furniture, a massive desk and framed degrees lined the panelled timber walls. She crossed the room to the bank of high windows overlooking Sydney Harbour and looked out. ‘Nice view.’ An inner Harbour ferry ducked beneath the Bridge and churned its way westward towards Drummoyne. William came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.
Her heart missed a beat. She turned around and looked up into his eyes. He pulled her closer to him and in an instant his lips were on hers. He cupped one of her breasts and breathed deeply.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she stepped away from him and took the call.
‘So where are you, Brennan? You found Freddie Winfred yet?’ Rimis asked.
She took a deep breath, looked at William, and mouthed the word sorry. ‘On my way back to the gallery now. I’ll call you when I get there.’
Jill slid her phone back into her pocket. ‘There’s someone I have to see this afternoon. I have to go.’
William put his hands on his hips. ‘Do you know what you do to me? It’s more than a man can stand.’
She laughed. Then blushed. ‘Sorry.’
‘How about dinner tomorrow night? I know a great Italian place on Campbell Parade.’
‘I’m not sure I can make it. I’ll call you, okay?’ She grabbed her bag and turned back to him.
‘Why do I get the feeling you’re trying to avoid me? You’re always running off somewhere.’
Jill looked at him. ‘Look, William. Maybe this is a mistake.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The age difference for starters, then there’s, well, all this.’ Jill looked around the room.
Jill turned her Golf into Queen Street and joined the queue of traffic backed up for almost fifty metres. Women’s fashion boutiques, expensive jewellery stores, coffee shops and restaurants lined the route. She turned on the radio, stared ahead at the traffic. Her thoughts were of William. She looked in the rear-view mirror and asked herself, ‘Are you, crazy? William is good-looking, educated, wealthy and,’ she smiled, ‘a great kisser. What sort of woman balks at the chance of going out with a man like that?’ A woman like me, she thought to herself.
The traffic began to move and five minutes later she turned the corner into the lane behind Freddie’s Gallery. Freddie’s van was still parked where it had been the last time she was here. With every day that passed, her disappearance was becoming more disturbing.
Jill had made the decision not to lock the door behind her the last time she was here in case Freddie returned and remembered she had forgotten to lock it. She pulled on her gloves, walked down the hall into Freddie’s office, and returned the SIM card to Freddie’s phone.
She slumped into the chair behind the desk and looked down at the bank of drawers beside her. She shook her head. Not going through the desk drawers the last time she was here, not wearing gloves in Freddie’s apartment – what other mistakes would she make before this case was solved? She ruffled through the drawers and found nothing of interest in them, apart from a half empty bottle of Highland Park and two glass tumblers.
She tried to push the drawer closed, but it wouldn’t go all the way. Something was stuck. She ran her fingers along the back of the drawer. A brass key was taped to the underside of the desk and had worked its way loose. She removed the piece of tape and tapped the key on the desk. It was a safe key.
She looked around the room. The wall opposite her was splashed with colour. The paintings on it were landscapes, except for one, Nude with Pink Gown. It was a John Brack and the nude female had her back to her, facing a wall. She stared at it. ‘I wonder?’ She closed the drawer, crossed the room and lifted the frame.
Yes. She inserted the key in the lock and the door swung open. She pulled out three plastic folders and flipped through the first one. It was all there – audit trails of the art Freddie had bought and sold over the past six months. There was also a list of names, dates, and traceable payments and accounts. A few photocopies of paintings, handwritten notes, yellow stickies. On a sheet of paper, a column headed Provenance was underlined. When her eyes flicked down the column, she saw the Miró and the other paintings William and Andy Brogan had been so concerned about. She sighed, relieved for William’s sake at least that Stockland and Lewis’ art appeared to be genuine.
She turned to the next file. Innuendos was scratched in the left hand corner of an A4 sheet of paper. Jill knew Calida Winfred painted innuendos on consignment for Freddie, but there were far too many here to have been painted by her alone. She remembered the conversation she had at Otto’s Bar with Rimis and wondered if Paloma Browne was an artist, and if, like Calida Winfred, she had also been painting innuendos for Freddie.
Palm Tree II, a Brett Whiteley screen print, had nine thousand dollars and a question mark next to it. There were also several typed pages of names, addresses, and phone numbers. She put the second file aside.
Inside the third file were neatly typed pages on the gallery’s letterhead. She picked up one of the provenance certificates and was surprised by the amount of detail on it. Freddie Winfred knew her stuff. She knew how the art market worked and had the knowledge and skill to create these false certificates. Was she acting alone or was she in partnership with someone? Her sister? Paloma Browne? Did Freddie have anything to do with Paloma’s murder and was she off somewhere, enjoying the high life as Morrissey seemed to think?
There was one thing Jill was sure of; Rimis wouldn’t stop asking questions until this case was solved. She wanted to find the answers before he did.
Jill scanned the documents with her phone and when she was satisfied that the room looked exactly as it had before, she returned the safe key to its place at the back of the drawer and rang Rimis.
Rimis walked into his office and sat at his desk. The phone call from Brennan telling him what she had found in Freddie Winfred’s gallery should have improved his mood, but he was in anything but good spirits this afternoon. Luke Rawlings and Jenny Choi had been in and out of his office all day with information, but none of it was encouraging. There had been no significant developments in the Browne case. And where was Freddie Winfred? He picked up his newspaper and looked at the crossword clue. Fifteen across: use some of your gentle ways to persuade them. He’d been struggling with the clue for the past week.
He gulped down the dregs of his sixth cup of coffee for the day and threw the crossword into the top drawer of his desk. He looked across at the scribbled notes he had jotted down on his writing pad. KEVIN TAGGART.
His obsession with Taggart had got him into more trouble with his superiors than he had expected, and he knew what his fellow officers were all saying about him behind his back. Perhaps, they were right. Had he pushed the case against Taggart too hard? At the time of the Blake sisters’ deaths, he had requested a twenty-four hour surveillance. When that had been refused, he’d carried out his own surveillance. At the end of his shifts, he would drive to Taggart’s house and sit outside in his parked car. Taggart complained to his superiors and Rimis was ordered to stop the harassment.
The findings of the Coroner's inquest into their deaths were that the elderly sisters had died from a combination of too much sherry and carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty gas heater. The Superintendent told Rimis to take a holiday, which he had flatly refused to do. Rimis knew he couldn’t help himself; he’d had a bad feeling about Taggart from the first time he met him.
Rimis read over the notes he had scrawled on the writing pad.
Fact: Kevin Taggart – with his mother when she died from a heart attack. Died on a Sunday.
Fact: Rose Phillips, Taggart’s elderly neig
hbour – murdered six months after Nora Taggart.
He thought about what he had written. Brennan had been right when she’d said that Taggart didn’t murder Rose Phillips, Tommy Dwyer did. But who was to say Dwyer didn’t beat Taggart to it.
Fact: A month after Rose Phillips’ murder – two more deaths in the street. Coroner’s report – Blake sisters – sherry, dementia and a faulty heater. Died – Sunday.
Fact: Taggart – financial gain from deaths.
Taggart had been a beneficiary to the estates of all four women and Rimis knew it should have been enough for his superiors to sit up and take notice, but after lengthy questioning, they hadn’t been able to break him. He was a devoted son and a model neighbour. He mowed Rose Phillips’ lawn for her, invited her in for tea, and had kept a watchful eye out on all his elderly neighbours. Even William Phillips had a few good words to say about him.
Rimis pushed his notes away. His office was on the top floor and faced west. He looked out of the window at the view. He was sure there was a connection between all three deaths. Money? Power? Revenge? Was it a co-incidence Freddie Winfred disappeared less than a week after she met Taggart? Rimis didn’t believe in co-incidence. He swung around in his chair, scrawled Freddie’s name across his writing pad and underlined it with a thick stroke.
The more he thought about Taggart, the more he was reminded of another case. John Wayne Glover, the Granny Killer.
Glover had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the serial murders of six elderly women on the North Shore of Sydney in 1990. His file was marked never to be released, but fifteen years after he entered Lithgow Gaol, Glover had found his own release by hanging himself.
Rimis’s memory rippled back to when he was a nineteen-year-old probationary constable stationed at Lane Cove. The case was his first experience of homicide. It was late afternoon. November, 1989. He and a fellow officer were called to a laneway after a schoolgirl had found an elderly woman’s body. The woman was Glover’s third victim. She had been struck on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. There were similarities between Taggart and Glover. Similarities that should never have been ignored. Both men were the same age; both had a troubled relationship with older women, in particular, their mother.