The Brush-Off mw-1

by Shane Maloney

  Bang, bang. I closed my eyes and searched my mind for some distracting thought. I peeked again, then squeezed my eyes tight.

  Eastlake’s trousers were Prince of Wales check. This was the pattern favoured by the sharpies, part of the uniform. Wide Prince of Wales check trousers and skin-tight maroon knit tops. That’s what Geordie Fletcher wore.

  Geordie Fletcher and the horrible twins, Danny and Wayne. I was back at the Oulton Reserve. Round and round I was spinning, biffed and bashed at every turn. My life was in the hands of a gang of brain-dead sharpies. Spider, my supposed protector, was in league with the enemy. My hand was curled tight around the neck of a bottle. A potential weapon, but tangled in the folds of my coat.

  Suddenly, it came free. I brandished it like a club. Dizzy with vertigo, I staggered sideways and fell. The bottle hit the concrete path. Broken glass scattered in a pool of spilt alcohol. I was on my knees breathing in the acrid smell.

  ‘Fucking idiot. You wasted it.’ Geordie Fletcher had me by the collar, hauling me to my feet. This was it. The cat-and-mouse game was over. I was about to be beaten shitless. The twins had stopped their jeering and fallen silent. Big brother was going to show them how it was done.

  More fool him. The neck of the bottle was still in my hand, a hard knife-edged cylinder. Slashing sideways, I caught Geordie unawares. My blow sliced across his thigh, opening a gash in his pants. Blood sprayed into the air.

  Geordie jumped back. Amazement lit his face. My fear became exhilaration. I thrust the bottle neck in front of me, daring them to try anything. The Fletchers circled, Geordie’s surprise turning to rage. Spider Webb elbowed his way between the twins. ‘Put it down, Whelan,’ he said. ‘Don’t be a dickhead.’ Somewhere in the dusk beyond the tea-tree, car doors slammed and footsteps raced towards us. Every sharpie in town was about to descend on me. There was blood everywhere. ‘Come on, you little cunt,’ Geordie yelled. ‘Have a go.’

  I did. I rushed him. Spider grabbed my arm, twisting it. ‘Drop it. Drop it.’ Pain shot through my elbow. The bottle neck fell from my hand. Broken glass crunched underfoot. Geordie kicked me in the balls. The pain was searing. Spider’s face was in mine. ‘Fucking idiot.’ Bent double, eyes welling, I retched.

  The galloping feet arrived. Hands grabbed my hair, jerking my head back. I swung wildly, no longer caring what happened. An adult had me. A police uniform. A sergeant’s stripes. I recognised the face. I’d seen it in the hotel, drinking with my father after closing time. Open handed, he whacked the side of my head so hard that I saw stars and my teeth nearly fell out. ‘You’re coming with me, son.’

  ‘Come! Come!’ urged Fiona. ‘Yes. Yes.’ She said some other things, too. Things I won’t repeat here.

  The pace of Eastlake’s thrusting increased. The closet door quaked in its frame. An anchovy smell tinged the air. Rumpity, rumpity. Casanova let out a plaintive groan. Hissing like a braking steam train, he slowed to a halt. Suddenly, all was still.

  Eastlake disengaged with a suction-cup slurp. Fiona Lambert’s bare backside separated from the louvres and her feet found the floor. Her dress fell back into place. She let out a long breath. I wished I could do the same. ‘You tiger,’ she said. ‘That was wonderful.’

  With a dull thud, Tiger Eastlake slumped back against the wall opposite. He swallowed, caught his breath. ‘You came?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She might have fooled him, but she wasn’t fooling me.

  ‘You sure?’ His voice was post-coitally dreamy.

  ‘Would I lie to you?’ Her real love, I knew, was lying on the dining table. The knee-trembler had kept him out of the living room for a while. But what was she going to do now? Push him out the door? Her back was still pressed against the closet. ‘Now I really do need a drink. Be a darling. There’s an open bottle in the fridge.’

  Eastlake’s hands came down and his pants went up. A zipper zipped. He took a step closer. Nuzzling sounds. He was compliant. His shoes swivelled in the direction of the kitchen. As he moved away, Fiona’s back came off the door. I sensed, rather than heard, her flit across the living room.

  From the kitchen came the rattle of a refrigerator shelf. Bottles clinked. A cork was withdrawn. A cupboard opened. Glass nudged glass. I could have done with a drink myself. And a cigarette. I like one afterwards.

  ‘I don’t suppose Max Karlin personally delivered the painting, by any chance?’ called Eastlake. There was a well-practised familiarity at work here. The easy way the switches went on and off. This sex business between him and Fiona had been going on for some time. But the casualness of Eastlake’s question was a little too studied. He had something on his mind.

  ‘Max?’ Miss Innocence was relaxed. The dough must have been safely out of sight. ‘Haven’t seen him since Saturday. Why?’

  She came over, picked up her knickers, went back into the living room. ‘Where’s that drink?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to contact him all day.’ Eastlake came out of the kitchen. ‘He’s not returning my calls.’

  I remembered his anxious grab at the phone when I’d rung. Poor Lloyd. His timing was lousy. Thirty seconds earlier and he’d have run into Karlin on the stairs.

  ‘I really should be getting back to work,’ Fiona said. Not, of course, with any of her previous door-blocking urgency. They were like a married couple. He wanted her to listen while he complained about his hard day at the office.

  ‘Sorry to burden you with my worries,’ he said. ‘I know you hate shoptalk. But if you hear from Max, tell him to call me immediately. There’s a rumour going around that he’s getting cold feet. The Karlcraft Centre is at the don’t-lookdown stage. The whole thing is in danger of falling over if Max loses his nerve right now. Obelisk has sunk a lot of money into Max Karlin. More than I was authorised to lend him. I’ve staked Obelisk’s whole future, and my own, on Max’s success. If he goes belly-up, he’ll take me with him. The least he could do is return my calls.’

  ‘You worry too much.’ Fiona played the wifey part, smoothing his fevered brow. ‘He’s probably just in a meeting or something. It’ll be okay, you’ll see. If he rings to check that Our Home has arrived okay, I’ll tell him to call you straight away.’

  Eastlake was pacing about while Fiona made reassuring noises. I couldn’t quite make out what was being said. My whole body ached from the effort of standing to attention. Carefully, I moved my wrist into a position where I could read my watch. Thirty minutes I’d been standing there. It felt like years. I needed to urinate. Suddenly, something jolted my heart back into my mouth. I heard the sound of my own name.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Eastlake was saying. ‘You don’t have to worry about Giles Aubrey any more. That Whelan guy rang me, said he was dead. I knew I shouldn’t have told you what Whelan said Aubrey told him. You’ve probably been worrying about it.’

  ‘Dead?’ she said, only mildly curious. ‘How?’

  ‘Whelan didn’t say. All very enigmatic, he was. I’m meeting him later, so I’ll find out then, I suppose. Anyway, there’s one less problem.’

  ‘Oh, I was never really worried about Giles Aubrey.’

  Yet again, I couldn’t believe my ears. But the logic was overwhelming. The story Aubrey told me-whether true or not-had the potential to derail the CMA’s purchase of Our Home. Lambert had put a great deal of effort into making sure the sale went ahead. She had a lot riding on its successful conclusion. She could hardly just stand by and let Giles Aubrey ruin her plans. A woman as young, fit and ruthless as Fiona Lambert would have no trouble pushing a frail old man down a steep riverbank.

  ‘I’ll just try Max again.’ Eastlake came closer and I heard a distinct grunt as he bent to pick up his hastily shed suit jacket. Blip, blop, blip. Mobile phone dialling noises. Silence. Glasses tinkled. The kitchen tap ran again. Fiona, clearing up. Eastlake got through, asked for Karlin. ‘Still not back? Okay. Same message.’

  My bladder was full. If I didn’t get out of that fucking closet soon, I’d have to start paying rent
.

  They were at the door. ‘Remember, if Max calls…’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell him…’

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ Eastlake spoke in tones of unalloyed affection. Jesus. The schmuck was in love.

  The door closed. Lambert waited a beat, then let out a long sigh of relief. She moved down the hall. Seconds later, the pipes in the wall behind me started up. From the direction of the bathroom came the sound of running water, then of teeth being brushed. Brush, brush, brush. Then the shower started. Above the cascade of the water, I heard the screech of a curtain being tugged along a metallic rail.

  Leaning lightly on the cupboard door, I popped it open. Reassuring myself that no-one was coming up the stairs, I drew the flat door shut behind me. My shirt was drenched in sweat and draped with cobwebs. My hands were shaking. I gulped air. My breath came in short pants, dressed for the weather.

  I hurried downstairs, gripping the banister.

  Droplets of moisture flashed in the sunlight. Sprinklers played across the lawns of the Domain. Children ran between the trees squirting each other with water pistols. Senior citizens at picnic tables poured streams of steaming tea from thermos flasks. After what felt like an eternity trapped in that broom closet, my bladder was about to explode.

  Tilted forward at the waist like a particularly obsequious Japanese, I scuttled across Domain Road and cast about for a public convenience of some description. The only facility in sight was a shoulder-high bed of red and yellow canna lilies. Advancing into its leafy interior, I proceeded to irrigate its tuberous root structure.

  Below the waist, I sighed with relief. Above the neck, I struggled to make sense of all that I had just observed. Some things were crystal clear. Others were murky and obscure. I had a growing sense of dismay and responsibility.

  That Fiona Lambert was some piece of work. And she definitely had Lloyd Eastlake’s measure. Our Man in the Arts, puffed up with smug vanity, was a soft target. Particularly by the time Fiona Lambert had finished working her charms.

  Scam one was the CUSS set-up. Eastlake, doing his girlfriend a favour, had put the art investment business of the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme her way. This entailed a conflict of interest on his part, both as a director of the CUSS and as chairman of the Centre for Modern Art, but he had probably done no more than what a thousand other company directors did every day of the week. His hot-shot lover, however, had taken full advantage of the opportunity to slip the unsuspecting CUSS an entirely fabricated art collection. The sheer scale of her audacity was staggering.

  Scam two was the Szabo deal. Eastlake, persuaded that Our Home was an absolute must for the CMA collection, had exerted his influence with both the government and Obelisk to fund its purchase. Fiona, meanwhile, had forced Max Karlin to sell the picture and cut herself in for a piece of the action.

  My presence within the stand of lilies, I was suddenly aware, had not passed unnoticed. An amorous couple reclining on the lawn nearby were beginning to cast hostile glances towards where my head extended above the leaf line. I turned my back to them, lest they get the wrong idea.

  Was it really possible that Lambert could have got away with her CUSS fraud if not for the accidental depredations of a pair of skylarking ten-year-olds? Would Taylor’s forgeries have remained undetected in the face of public scrutiny? And why had Taylor been colluding with Lambert? According to Giles Aubrey, he hated her guts. Had the whole Szabo-Taylor story been a product of Aubrey’s notorious tendency to misrepresentation? Or had Marcus Taylor eventually become reconciled to his father’s ambitious young bit of cheesecake? Or had his broker, Salina Fleet, handled customer relations? Was it possible that he had no idea that Lambert was the buyer of his ‘appropriations’?

  Did canna lilies, I wondered, benefit from the occasional dose of concentrated uric acid? This slash was taking on the proportions of an Olympic event. Marcus Taylor. Perhaps he, too, tried to piss in somebody’s garden. Maybe he thought he’d found the perfect way to avenge himself on Fiona Lambert. Maybe she had unwittingly given him the opportunity to engineer her downfall. Maybe he had wanted his forgeries to be discovered, as evidenced by the stamp on the back of Dry Gully. But not for the reasons Claire had postulated-not out of a forger’s vanity-but to discredit and destroy Fiona Lambert.

  For months he had toiled in obscurity, producing an entire collection of fake art works in his ratty studio at the old YMCA. For months he had bided his time, waiting for just the right moment. For the moment when he could reveal that his perfectly innocent post-modern tributes had knowingly been passed off as the real thing by Fiona Lambert.

  But something even better had come along. The CMA’s acquisition of Our Home. An irresistible opportunity-not just to avenge himself on Lambert-but to strike a blow against his dead father as well. Frustrated by his inability to obtain anything but the most meagre recognition of his own achievements as an artist-a paltry grant can be even more insulting than none at all-Taylor had manufactured a carbon-copy of Our Home with the object of compromising the integrity of Victor Szabo’s entire artistic output. Oedipus meets Hamlet on the banks of the Yarra.

  At long last, the call of nature rang less stridently in my ears. Drained, I parted the broad green leaves of the cannae, stepped back out onto the lawn and gave the scandalised lovers a cheerful wave. Through the trees, I could see the white facade of the Centre for Modern Art. A scenario, part memory, part speculation, began to take shape.

  Poor little Marcus Taylor. He really was a fuck-up. He painted his duplicate Our Home, but then got pissed and cocky and tipped his hand at the CMA opening. That little performance of his must really have set the cat among the pigeons. No wonder Salina Fleet had looked so nervous when he got up on that table and started waving his arms about. She knew what he was going to say. He’d given her a sneak preview of the notes to his speech a few moments before, out in the back garden.

  Fiona Lambert was a cool customer, though. She didn’t betray herself, even though she was the one with most at stake. Later that night, while supposedly home in bed, she caught up with Taylor and sunk him and his troublesome plans in the National Gallery moat.

  The sky was blue. Birds were singing. The grass was green and cool underfoot. I walked back towards Hope Street, where the Charade was parked, through a beautiful summer afternoon. I wondered how she had done it. How she’d managed to get Marcus Taylor’s unconscious body up over the parapet and roll it into the water. Knocking him out would have been the easy part. He was practically legless the last time I’d seen him, staggering down the Domain Road footpath.

  His big moment had come to nothing. But he still hadn’t played his trump card. Our Home Mark 2 was still on its easel back at the YMCA. His day would come. Just you wait, he said. Just you wait.

  Through an intermittent stream of traffic, I could see the very spot where I’d heard him mumble those words. Pausing beside an enormous Moreton Bay fig, I leaned against the trunk and recalled the scene.

  Taylor coming one way. Me going the other. Up ahead of me, the Botanical Hotel. Ahead of Taylor, Lambert’s flat and, a fifteen-minute walk away, his own room in the YMCA. The disappearing tail-lights of Lloyd Eastlake’s Mercedes.

  Rewind further. Up in the flat. Fiona on the phone. Out the window, standing less than fifty metres from where I was currently standing, also on the phone, Spider Webb.

  The Missing Link. I’d been battling to put Spider into the picture. He and Fiona Lambert were, after all, far from a natural pair. But now that I began to put the pieces together, an alliance between the two of them made a certain sort of sense. Each was working Eastlake from a different direction- Spider looking for the main chance, Fiona needing help to work her gold mine.

  Spider. Warning me off. Tidying up the loose ends. Loose ends like the fact that Taylor had gone to the bottom of the moat with his keys in his pocket. So somebody had to go back the next morning and retrieve the duplicate Szabo and dispose of the eviden
ce of the Austral forgery factory. Loose ends like the fact that I’d got there first and had to be locked in the basement with Willy the Whale. Loose ends like Salina Fleet.

  I thought again of Salina’s reaction at the moat. Those frozen expressions on her face, caught by the flashing ambulance light. Shock, panic, fear. Did she guess what had happened? Was her insistence that Taylor had killed himself a hastily improvised way of protecting herself, of demonstrating that she could be trusted to keep silent? And her appearance at the YMCA? Was she acting on her own initiative, hastening to clear out all evidence of Taylor’s work? Or was everyone just after Taylor’s version of Our Home?

  Then I had come along, sticking my bib in. Not content to remain locked in the basement of the YMCA, I’d kicked up a racket. When Salina inadvertently released me, I put her on the spot. She was a fast thinker, but not entirely convincing in the clinches. And, by then, I’d seen the picture on the easel in Taylor’s studio. By then, I was starting to make a real nuisance of myself. I sought out Giles Aubrey, a man who could be relied on to grab the first opportunity that came his way to stir the pot, and gone running to Eastlake with what he told me. But Eastlake, in turn, told Lambert. So Aubrey had ended up at the bottom of the nearest riverbank with a compound fracture of the corpus delicti. At least Sal had the sense to make herself scarce.

  As I stood there, concealed by the grey folds of Moreton Bay fig, contemplating my responsibility for Giles Aubrey’s death, Fiona Lambert came out of the block of flats. Hands empty, teeth shining, looking exceptionally pleased with herself, she crossed Domain Road and walked towards the Centre for Modern Art.

  It was, I decided, time to blow the whistle on Ms Lambert. Get the cops on the case while she still had the hundred grand stashed in her flat. Detective Senior Constable Chris Micaelis would be hearing from me, I resolved, very soon. Just as soon as I’d made a couple of phone calls.