by Garry Disher
‘If you say so.’
‘Of course, you couldn’t risk driving around wearing a police uniform, not with a body on board. So you changed into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.’ She paused. ‘I hope you burned them afterwards, Darren.’
He gave her a level smile and Pam knew that’s what he’d done. The thought that they wouldn’t get him on the murder depressed her.
‘I’m finished talking,’ he said, and in a fair approximation of anguish added, ‘Look, I wasn’t myself last night, I’ve been depressed, you know, my judgment’s shot, maybe I’m suicidal, all these mitigating circumstances and I think maybe a lawyer can help me now.’
Schiff faltered then. Challis didn’t see it but Pam did. A short acquaintance, only a few days, but she knew what it meant when Jeannie pursed her lips and examined the ends of her hair. It meant doubt, and Pam wanted to say, Keep pushing him.
Unaccountably, then, she pictured Chloe Holst sitting on her hospital bed, sneezing. Why had she recalled that? Sympathy for the victim? No, it was something else…
It came to her in a rush. She walked down the corridor, scrolling through the numbers stored on her mobile phone. Craig, her favourite lab tech.
‘It’s Spud,’ she announced. He called her that. ‘I wonder if I could run an idea past you…’
36
Ian Galt had been trying since Monday to make sense of the CCTV images he’d scared out of Steve Finch. Anita had a child. Was it his? And elderly parents? Back when he’d known her, she’d had no apparent history at all.
But meanwhile he’d had to fly back to Sydney, word coming through on the grapevine about a body fished out of the harbour. He watched the investigation for a couple of days, standing well behind the scenes, the murdered man on the periphery of his old life.
And now it was Wednesday morning and he was back in Melbourne to begin the hunt.
He started at the childcare centre in Hurstbridge. Huddled under gumtrees on a minor road leading into the town, it looked threadbare, understaffed and underfunded. Meaning it was probably operated by a millionaire type peculiar to Australia, discredited, overextended and obscurely attracted to childcare centres and nursing homes. First flashing his fake Federal Police ID, he showed the administrator a still from Steven Finch’s security camera, a toddler and a young woman standing side by side outside the front gate of the centre. A photograph of a photograph, in fact, with a messy blur in the bottom right that was Anita’s hand in the act of displaying the photo to Finch.
The administrator, round and motherly, would only concede that the photograph had been taken in front of the centre.
‘But the kid did attend?’
‘I’m sorry, Inspector Towne, I’m not at liberty to say.’
‘Is she still here?’
‘Perhaps if you tell me what this is about?’
Galt cast around for a story that might tug at the heartstrings and involve the Australian Federal Police. ‘We fear that an attempt might be made by a family member to kidnap her.’
‘Really.’
Sensing that he was on thin ground, Galt said, ‘This is a routine inquiry. We have not been able to track down all members of her extended family and—’
‘This child did attend here, yes, but has since moved on.’
‘You mean she’s attending primary school now?’
There was a long pause. ‘No, I don’t mean that.’
‘Look, this is a preliminary inquiry,’ Galt said. ‘We were alerted anonymously that the child might be at risk.’
Another silence that lasted for a few centuries. ‘The family moved back to England, that’s all I know.’
‘Back to England?’
‘Both parents took her.’
The sun had passed the midpoint of the sky, and the light, filtered by the dense tree canopy, fell to the ground in a pattern of interlocking circles. But Galt was in no mood for spring or beauty of any kind. ‘Madam, are you sure you can’t tell me more about this child?’ He tapped the photo. ‘Or her mother?’
‘The thing is, that isn’t her mother. I don’t know who that is.’
‘They’re standing next to each other.’
‘And so are other children, and if I’m not mistaken, the photo has been cropped, that’s the arm and shoulder of another parent.’
The woman was correct, of course. Galt kicked himself. He said, ‘So a stranger insinuates herself into a group of parents and children.’
‘She could be anybody. An aunt. A friend.’
Or a red herring, Galt thought.
37
Every small community has its eyesores.
Lowther was a pretty collection of houses but here and there on the outer edges rundown dwellings stood on largish blocks, the kinds of places defined by unexplained traffic night and day. Car bodies and truck chassis melded with unmown grass, and newish cars, utilities and 4WDs crammed the driveways, the parched lawns, the kerb outside.
Inside, through the dope haze, the décor would be beer-can pyramids and pizza boxes, the detritus of the residents and assorted uncles, cousins, girlfriends, neighbours, temporary pub mates and hangers-on. Long periods of stunned calm would be punctuated by flaring violence around who swiped the last beer.
On Tuesday night Grace had picked out one such house on the outskirts of Lowther, and now, 10.30 on Wednesday evening, she parked the rented Camry outside it, squeezed between a hotted-up Holden panel van and a rustbucket Kombi. No one would look twice at the Camry; it could belong to anyone on that street.
She got out, carrying a nylon duffle bag. Inside it were two similar bags folded to the size of paperbacks, spare clothes in a waterproof compartment, a bottle of drinking water and the tools for this job: screwdriver, Swiss Army knife, wire cutters, a chisel, nail pullers, torch, duct tape, prepaid mobile phone, digital camera, a thin steel pry bar and the spray can of insulation foam. No size eleven shoes this time. She didn’t want the cops to link this break-in to any of her others.
It was a three-kilometre walk across country to Lindisfarne. First she skirted the little town, then climbed a fence and passed through wooded areas and across vineyards to Coolart Road. The vines hemmed her in, high on either side. The white netting that draped them was rendered a ghastly silver by the moonlight. Good cover, though.
She crossed Coolart Road, climbed through the fence on the other side and walked parallel to Goddard Road. When she reached the farmhouse opposite Lindisfarne’s cypress hedge, she stopped for a while, watching and listening. When she was satisfied, she crossed to the hedge and got down on her hands and knees to force a way through to the other side.
About one hundred metres further down Goddard Road, Audrey Tremaine slapped at a mosquito. The compensating twitch of her buttocks on the camping stool almost tipped her into the bracken. She lathered herself in Rid again and continued to fume.
Only one car since 10 p.m. It had raised a plume of dust, dust in her eyes and tiny grit missiles stinging her cheek. But sufficient moonlight for her to recognise the car and the husband and wife schoolteachers from the mud brick house further along the road. They hadn’t stopped to spray-paint a slogan on her new gate, and she’d have been most surprised if they had.
She continued to watch. Third night in a row. It wasn’t as if anyone else was willing to mount guard—not the shire’s environment protection officer, the police, or her don’t-want-to-get-involved neighbours.
‘Leave it, Audrey,’ they’d said, in the weary tones they used with her now, complete with a bit of eye-rolling if they thought she wasn’t looking and even when they knew she was.
‘It’s not right!’ she’d said, fists clenched.
‘Yes, but what can you do?’ A shrug in the voice.
‘Catch them red-handed.’
‘How? Wait behind a bush all night, being eaten alive by mosquitoes?’
‘If necessary,’ Audrey said stoutly.
‘Then what? Chase after them and make a citizens’ arrest?’
Like that’s going to happen, their looks said. But it wasn’t just the desecration of property that got to Audrey, it was the vicious boredom of the young people responsible. What made them like that? It was the puzzle element as much as the outrage that drove Audrey Tremaine, aged seventy-one, retired bookkeeper and owner of the lavender farm with a brand new set of gateposts a short distance further along Goddard Road.
She’d set up surveillance on the bend halfway between her farm and the cypress hedge at the front of the Niekirks’ big house. Perched on a camping tool among the bracken and roadside gums, she could see for long distances in each direction. Well set up, too: flask of coffee, pocketful of muesli bars, torch, notebook and pen, mobile phone. She was plugged into Radio National and had all night at her disposal. The only danger she could envisage was being conked on the head by a spray can.
The light was tricky, the shadows fluid. Audrey blinked: one shadow had detached from the others. It crossed the road and ducked into the cypresses.
First Grace watched the house from inside the hedge—but without focussing, as if she were daydreaming. The focussing would come next: right now a wide-eyed stare was the best way to detect movements in the foreground and at the periphery of her vision.
All was still. No dogs, sentries or insomniacs. Thirty minutes passed. At 11.30 a light came on in an upstairs room and ten minutes later in a downstairs room. She waited; eventually both went out, one some time after the other. She ignored the lights for now and eyed the house and grounds, restricting her focus to one narrow field of vision and then the next, from left to right. Tennis court, shrubs, bushes; an overturned wheelbarrow, then the veranda, doors and windows of the house itself, and finally more shrubbery and a garden shed.
Nothing. Only the lights, on the same cycle as last night, the ground floor light switching off and on at ten minute intervals, the other at fifteen. The Niekirks were still in Sydney.
All the while, she listened. She heard a couple of cars far away on Coolart Road, here and there a wind eddy in the trees, night creatures restless in the undergrowth. She windmilled her arms at one point, heart in her mouth, as a silent death dealer swooped at her head.
Some kind of bird. An owl, probably. She was a hindrance in its hunting field.
Time to move. Grace approached the house, keeping off the driveway and gravel paths, the crunch and rattle that might wake a light sleeper. On the veranda she paused to listen, then made her way to the front door, which was fitted with a fanlight and glass side panels. A faint gleam leaked out from somewhere inside the house. This light wasn’t on a timer. She took the mobile phone from a buttoned pocket of her jacket and dialled the Niekirks’ number. A moment later, a telephone chirped softly within the dim reaches of the house. After eight rings the answering machine cut in. Grace repeated the process several times, watching the glass around the door. There was no sudden increase in the light intensity, no angry householder turning on a bedroom or hallway light as he or she stumbled to silence the bell.
She continued to wait and listen. If she’d breached an infrared beam outside the house, stepped on a pressure pad, made an unwelcome sound, then there should have been a police car or security patrol by now, flashing lights, a caterwauling alarm sounding under the eaves. Not for the first time, Grace reflected that people like the Niekirks had a misplaced faith in their seclusion.
Finally she walked around the veranda to the Messer alarm box. According to the security installer she’d spoken to yesterday afternoon, in the event of a break-in, a power cut or the box being tampered with, the alarm would sound at both the house and Messer HQ.
‘What if someone found a way to freeze the little switch thingies inside the box?’ Grace had asked the installation tech, wrinkling her brow prettily.
The guy scoffed. ‘How? Can’t happen.’
Grace moved a small, paint-chipped wooden bench into position, stepped onto it carefully, distributing her weight, and sprayed insulation foam into the heat and moisture vents of the alarm box. She waited, still watching and listening. She was sure that she could hear the foam expanding and solidifying, ultimately paralysing the relay switches and circuits.
Definitely something. Audrey chewed on it for a while. Fox? Too big for a fox. Someone’s dog? People were careless about their pets. Bought huge Dobermans and what have you, too lazy to feed, train or exercise them, let them roam free.
But the bent-over shape had been wrong for a dog.
She hadn’t heard or seen a vehicle.
Perhaps someone from the farmhouse, sneaking across the road for some shenanigans with one or both of the Niekirks?
But the Niekirks were in Sydney, as Audrey knew full well. Standoffish, more money than sense, and seemed to think she didn’t mind being asked to feed their blessed canaries whenever they went away.
Audrey chewed on the matter for ages. Would she be able to hear the hiss of a spraycan from here? Eventually she rose from the camping stool and walked towards the heavy gates set in the cypress hedge. Her shoes made a shocking racket on the gravel.
Grace moved through the house, testing the shadows, a routine as familiar to her as breathing. Satisfied that she was alone, she switched on her torch, all but a square centimetre of the lens blocked with insulation tape, and made a more thorough search. Her main aim was to steal the icon on the wall of the glassed-in walkway, but if the Niekirks had that, they probably had other treasures.
First photographing the icon where it hung, she removed it, secured it in bubble wrap and placed it in one of the bags. Then she made a quick pass of the main rooms. Given that the Niekirks dealt in art, Grace didn’t think much of their taste. The living areas groaned with overdone oils of beaches and bushland, and western desert and dot paintings of no significance or originality, and she suspected the Howard Arkley near the piano was a fake.
Not a single one was worth stealing. Yet in an office filing cabinet she found catalogues and provenance papers for paintings by Brett Whiteley, Sidney Nolan, Grace Cossington Smith and Robert Dickerson. She photographed every one, then took a closer look at the house.
The nursery was two spaces in an open plan arrangement, one a small child’s bedroom—a short, narrow bed under a mobile of moons and stars, cute wallpaper and a handful of stuffed toys—and, through an archway, a more chaotic space where the babysitter slept, overlooked by a huge teddy bear on a mantelpiece and posters from a vampire movie. Grace had no memories of her own early years, and none that she cared to recall from her later ones.
There were three other bedrooms. One, sterile and stale, was probably for guests. A second, neat and masculine, was the husband’s. The third, untidy, indulgent, stinking of perfume, was Mara Niekirk’s.
And here she struck gold.
It took the police long enough to answer Audrey’s call. What if she were being raped or murdered? She said as much to the fat man driving the patrol car.
‘The Peninsula’s a big area to cover,’ he said. Tankard, his name was. A younger constable sat in the passenger seat.
Audrey told them what she’d seen, a mysterious figure crossing the road and ducking through the hedge. The flicker of what might have been a torch inside the house itself.
‘No worries, we’ll check it out,’ the fat constable said, his tone barely civil.
It wasn’t the kind of house, nor were the Niekirks the kind of people, to boast a tiny Paul Klee. Grace couldn’t figure it out. But it hung above the wife’s bed and clearly mattered. After photographing it in situ, she removed it for closer inspection. Signed and dated 1932, titled Felsen in der Blumenbeet, it showed pastelly grey-blue shapes choked by exuberant blue, yellow, red and green shapes: cones, triangles, crosses, rhomboids, all skewed in some way. It was similar in size to the icon, about 25cm x 30 cm. She hardly dared fall in love with it, but it was
stunning. She wrapped it, tucked it into her bag.
But the icon was personal and the painting might be hard to shift, so she went looking for iPods, laptops…And had barely re-entered the main living areas when she saw a flicker of lights outside. At once she ran down the hallway, out through the door.
She was heading back through the shadowy garden beds when a spotlight lit her up.
‘Oi.’ The policeman’s voice was hesitant, as if he didn’t quite believe his eyes. ‘Excuse me.’
Grace swivelled neatly and ducked into the shadows.
Now he believed it. ‘Stop! Police!’
One glimpse was enough, a patrol car and two constables, one standing beside his open door, training the spotlight, the other peering straight at her. Grace slipped deeper into the dark region between the house and the road. The spotlight tracked her, throwing up shadows and flares of light in her path. Then she heard a door slam, the gunning of a motor, a spray of gravel. Headlights swept over her spine and now feet were thudding. They’ve split up, Grace thought, the car to cut her off at the road, the guy on foot to box her in.
She reached the hedge and crawled into a hollow, scratched by twigs and stubby little branches. Crouching now, she watched the play of the lights. The police car tore onto the road, fishtailed, overcorrected; finally the tyres gripped and it came towards her purposefully, keeping to the centre of the road, lights on high beam. If she darted out of the hedge now, she’d be spotted. The other cop was still behind her, jerking his torch beam at the base of the hedge. He did it badly, rapid sweeps betraying excitement or nerves. But he’d spot her sooner or later, pin her with his probing light.