He had stayed in one of the abandoned shacks for eleven days. He ate little. He sat quietly with several of the patients of Peel Island. Then he went away.
‘And the paintings?’ I asked, almost impatiently.
‘Ah, the paintings.’
‘Were there any?’
‘You may not believe this, but when he left the island I went to his shack. Out of curiosity, I suppose. A bit of a stickybeak I was. They were draughty, the huts. Shocking in winter, and in a storm. And he did what he had always done, or so I read. He had stuffed every crack in that place with canvasses.’
I had indeed been told about this habit of Fairweather’s by Igor the Russian taxi driver. Once a painting was done it meant little to the master. It was the act of creation that was important. The finished work was the detritus of that process.
‘Do you remember how many there were? What they were of? Can you
‘I retrieved them, of course. Some were not salvageable. There were twenty-two that I recovered.’
I swallowed loudly. ‘And ... you ... where are they now?’
‘I stored them in the hospital. I tried to get in touch with Ian but he seemed to have vanished. He had an assistant, a foreign gentleman. He told me he looked after all of Mr Fairweather’s business.’
‘An assistant?’
‘A large gentleman with a shaved head. I didn’t think much of him. He wore thongs and smelled of diesel. Then my work on the island ended. I went back to the mainland, got married and had children. I returned to civilian life, as they say.’
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it.’
‘Oh.’
‘They were horrible pictures. Beautiful, but horrible. I never saw them again. I never wanted to.’
I studied her across the table. Was I being conned? Did she know more than she was telling me? Did she have the Fairweathers stashed in an air-conditioned vault?
And who was the agitated young man who had come to visit? Was it the doomed James Fenton Browne? As for the thonged assistant, it appeared I had more to discuss with Igor the Terrible.
‘I hope that helps you,’ she said.
‘Yes, thank you.’ I sipped the dregs of my tea, which had gone stone cold.
~ * ~
13
It was time to go sailing.
But first I had to see my old friend Igor once more. He was holding back on me like the good retired KGB agent that he probably was. I planned to hold him down in his recliner rocker armed with his dusty bust of Lenin until he talked. Once upon a time I had ways of making people talk. Brandishing a plaster revolutionary had not been one of them.
I towed Pig Pen all the way up the highway, over the Gateway Bridge and on to Bribie Island. I could feel my little tin dinghy pulling at the tail of the Peugeot. I fully expected the steering column to smoke.
En route to Bribie I thought of Rosemary Pentimento, the Little Old Biddy by the Bay, and how there were so many people in every city in the world, sitting quietly in their homes, whiling away the years, with so much of the past in their heads. So many stories of life and loves, of great encounters and historical moments. All of this history, enough to fill countless volumes, but ebbing towards oblivion. Stories that were the invisible connecting tissue to recorded history. And who was collecting it? Nobody. It seemed to me we no longer cared about our stories. Our own heritage. Even our own antecedents. People had enough personal data in their own backyards to occupy and entertain them for a lifetime. And nobody seemed to care any more.
My son is an IT boffin. You can’t tell him anything because he always has those iPod earphones in his ears. You can’t show him anything because he’s already seen it on the internet. How quickly things have changed. I filled the cabin of the Peugeot with the gloomy clouds of my introspection all the way to Igor the Terrible’s house.
I pulled into the old man’s driveway. It was eerily quiet. As quiet as Red Square in the dead of winter. (Not that I’d been there, but a quick call to Jack and no doubt he could produce reams of paperwork on the subject.)
From the veranda I could hear someone sobbing. It was Manya — I could see her in the kitchen, her head in her hands. I tapped on the flyscreen door.
‘Manya?’ I said timidly. I tapped again. She looked up, startled.
‘Manya, it’s me.’
She put on her glasses and craned towards the door.
‘OHHH,’ she said, waving me in.
‘Manya. What’s happened?’
‘It’s IGOR,’ she said, her face red, her eyes puffy and tear-filled. ‘He have a HEART ATTACK.’ I walked her from the kitchen and into the lounge. I was about to lower her into the big brown rocker, then thought better of it, and steered her towards the couch.
‘POOR IGOR,’ she said.
‘Manya. Tell me what happened.’
It had been a heart attack all right, early that morning, but not your usual act of God. It took me an hour to extract the truth.
‘They come in here with GUN,’ she howled. ‘They put to IGOR’S HEAD and say, “TELL US, TELL US, or we PUT YOUR BRAINS ALL OVER WALL.’”
‘Calm down, Manya, it’s all right. Who was it?’
‘How do I know? MEN WITH GUN. They make him draw on piece of paper. Write down. I was in shock. I couldn’t SPEAK. They say, “Don’t move or we BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT TOO.” I see Igor go pale, and sweating, then when he finished drawing of island he GRAB HIS CHEST and the men go. I never forget their faces. NEVER. Ohhhhh, POOR IGOR.’
‘The island? He drew an island?’
‘WHAT?’
‘IGOR DREW AN ISLAND?’ I shouted back at her. I was getting a headache with all the shouting. Every time I was around these people I seemed to get a headache.
‘Yes, EE-arn’s island. He dead thirty year, EE-arn, and still he haunt us. I must get back to HOSP-EE-TAL.’
‘Manya, Manya, slow down. Have you called the police?’
‘I no call police.’
‘Why not?’
‘Igor don’t like no police. Every little tap on the door, Igor, he worried. He been worried about the tap on the door half his life. First in RUSSIA and now BRIBIE ISLAND. It all EE-ARN’S FAULT.’
‘Tell me about the men.’
‘How they do this to AN OLD MAN? One he dresses in a suit the colour of the banana. YELLOW LIKE BANANA. He have the gun. The other a hood, like a street kid. I never seen him. But I know the YELLOW MAN. I seen him before a long time ago. I could NEVER FORGET such a man.’
It had to be the Boltcutter, Dapper Dan himself, with one of his disposable, drugged-up street urchins as sidekick. Igor was lucky to be alive and with all his fingers and toes intact, let alone his brains. As was Manya.
‘What do you mean, you’d met him before? Manya? MANYA. Think clearly for me.’
‘Long time ago. We sell him EE-arn pictures. One every now and then. When we need the money.’
‘You did? When?’
‘Before EE-arn die.’
‘Before?’
‘BEFORE. Then after EE-arn die, too. Igor say NEVER TELL ANYONE. But now I tell. Igor not want to go to jail. He say EE-arn gave him pictures, but there were SO MANY. Ohhhh, IGOR. Then we go to island for the other pictures. The SECRET pictures of the LEPERS. And Igor, he think he get smart. He bring back one but the rest he bury on island. For the FUTURE Manya, he say. This EE-arn, he be BIG one day. We finally sell the one LEPER picture not long ago, see, to this man in the yellow suit. He pay us cash. Then I see this PICTURE, it go for ONE MILLION DOLLARS. They say this EE-arn’s MASTERPIECE. Can you believe? And Igor, he FURIOUS. He say we got ripped OFF by this man. So they talk on the phone and Igor say he got plenty more where that came from and he going to SELL TO SOMEONE ELSE, goodbye. Then we get tap on the door. Now Igor DYING.’
‘Manya, do you have relatives you could stay with for a while?’
‘Yes. In D’yakovskoye.’
‘In Russia.’
‘OF COURSE IN BLOODY RUSSI
A.’
‘Listen, Manya. Listen to me carefully. This is what we’re going to do.’
Which is how I found myself casting off from Cleveland in Pig Pen with an agitated, at times hysterical seventy-seven-year-old Russian immigrant with a shouting problem, and heading for Peel Island.
She had protested LOUDLY when I failed to take the off-ramp to the hospital where poor Igor lay, tubed up and semi-comatose. She’d threatened to jump from the car and we’d had a minor wrestling match in the front seat of the Peugeot for a few anxious moments, sending it drunkenly across three lanes of highway at the car’s top speed, with Pig Pen swaying and bobbing dangerously behind.
But eventually I calmed her down with direct threats of calls to the police and immigration officials — even to the estate of EE-arn.
I would find out later that for a long time the lives of these Russians of Bribie Island had been unwittingly intersecting with major Sydney, London and Paris gangsters and even a profoundly corrupt former New South Wales magistrate, and they had been, on more than one occasion, within a whisker of being deprived of their breezy Bribie idyll on Red Emperor Drive (where else would a former communist sympathiser live on Bribie Island?).
An industry had also grown around people like Igor and Manya — a shadow-cabinet world of price-jacking contemporary art, fake bidders, press manipulation, forgeries, bogus auctions and corrupt appraisers. I had no doubt James Fenton Browne and Anton Johns had been guilty of the same crime in the art world. They were both genuinely interested in the art itself. Silly, deluded souls.
I had very little experience with boats, both on the trailer and in the water. Especially in the water. What do you expect from a cop whose beat was the most heavily populated urbanised postcode in Australia? My job did not include membership of the CYC.
I ordered Manya into the bow and with great exertion pushed the dinghy from the ramp and struggled into the back of the boat. The motor started first go, thank goodness, filling me with the false music of hope, along with a generous burst of outboard fumes.
It was mid-afternoon. I knew nothing of the nautical logistics of Moreton Bay. And there were dark clouds on the horizon.
What could possibly go wrong?
~ * ~
14
DO YOU KNOW what it feels like when a bullet passes through your hair? Well, let me tell you, you don’t want to know. Especially if you sport a short-back-and-sides.
I had thrown out the anchor of Pig Pen just offshore at Peel Island. Manya was sobbing quietly at the front of the boat. We were bobbing in just a metre or so of water. It was twilight, my most loathed time of day.
‘You wait here,’ I said to her, making a pronounced ‘stop’ sign with my right palm. ‘Poor IGOR,’ she blubbered. I stepped into cold, slimy mud.
On the perilous trip from Cleveland she had told me where Igor had stashed his cache of Fairweather canvasses. Buried in an old meat safe Igor had lined himself with fibro sheeting and canvas. Behind the last hut in the row of female quarters.
I squelched through the mud with great difficulty and a measure of fear. Queenslanders may be used to wandering around barefooted and wading into wild water with nothing to protect their hooves, but not so a kid from South Sydney.
I wished Peg could see me. What am I doing? Well, darling, I’m retrieving millions of dollars’ worth of lost art from a former leper colony on an island in the gathering dark with nothing on my feet, no shovel to help recover the buried treasure, and with an old killer of my acquaintance brandishing a loaded weapon, and likely to pop out from behind a groundsel bush at any second. Oh yes, and it’s possible I’m being pursued by a French gallery director; a tall, Albino former Anglican priest impersonating a long-deceased art dealer; and our real-estate agent Geraldo for not returning his calls about a spectacular canal-front home with lap pool and jukebox.
Instead, someone shouted at me from the island’s shore. ‘You — stop!’ It was the voice of a jockey. Or an adolescent boy. ‘You — stop, now!’
‘What?’ I asked. I was pretty sure I didn’t know anyone on Peel Island. Then I saw the muzzle flash and felt the heat of a bullet singe the hairs on my right ear.
Before I even realised what was happening, I let out a feeble ‘Who?’ — like some stunned, ageing owl caught in unfamiliar surrounds. And that’s when another bullet went clean through the left side of my torso.
I stood in shock. I suddenly felt very heavy. The mud was rising up to my ankles. My mouth was open in a perfect black ‘O’, or at least that’s how I saw myself, for as the ferocious heat from the wound began slamming through my body, I did have what could only have been a nanosecond-long out-of-body experience. And the ‘O’ of my mouth was like a giant full stop. Perhaps that’s how life ended. With punctuation.
Then my assassin stepped forward onto the grey sand and for a moment I thought I recognised his outline. Where had I seen it? I knew that shape. At that second, the tall, ghostly figure of Anton Johns appeared from the row of old Lazaret buildings that were now just black geometric objects in the gloom.
Keep moving, I told myself. Keep stepping forward. I stopped just a few metres from land, for the whole area was suddenly lit up with gun flashes that were not directed at me. The bones of trees and the pale timbers of ancient buildings were X-rayed by the weapon flashes. Then everything turned black again.
At that point I did not feel any pain. Adrenalin lifted me out of the mud and onto dry land. Dead in the foliage — for a second time in his life — was the long, insect-like Anton Johns, his white hair askew and decorated with spots of his own blood. Not far away was the prostrate body of his little bodyguard, Robert, who was responsible for the hole through my person. I would have kicked him, hard, if it hadn’t disrespected the dear departed.
My legs crumpled and I dropped to the sand and spinifex. I could hear Manya’s ghostly wail from the dinghy.
I was trying to work out an exit strategy when I heard the gun click at my right ear. I was burning up, and when the muzzle touched my neck it was so cold it felt the opposite, like the branding iron from hell.
‘Daniel?’ I said.
‘How nice that we could meet again. I am having a profound feeling of déjà vu.’
‘Wanda Beach. 1969.’
‘Oh yes. When we were in our prime. Now look at us. Two old men at twilight.’
I could smell his expensive aftershave behind the mud and the brine of the bay. He had taste, I’ll give him that.
‘Your boyfriend, Anton. That’s no way to treat the ones you love, Daniel.’
‘He was just a fair-weather friend.’
‘Is that a joke?’
‘You like it? He served his purpose. I’d been planning this little project for thirty years. I’ve always had patience, you know.’
‘They call it delayed gratification.’
‘Do they? Delayed or not, Mr Fairweather will now underwrite my retirement.’
‘And poor James Fenton Browne? Fenton’s from Shakespeare, you know.’
‘Of course I know. What do you take me for, a philistine? The Merry Wives of Windsor. And you, my dear fellow, have become Falstaff since our days cavorting at Wanda Beach.’
‘Fenton could not resist the high life, could he?’
‘No, he couldn’t. And Fairweather is all the merry wives I could dream of. Are we finished with the gratuitous literary references? I told you I was patient. It’s now time to finish the Wanda job, albeit almost forty years later ...’
What had I expected to happen? In the movies, Manya may have quietly snuck out of the dinghy and clubbed the Boltcutter with the anchor. She may have been an ex-KGB agent and killed him with a sudden blow to the neck. But this was not a Hollywood flick.
I could feel the muzzle on my neck, then pressed against my forehead. I could hear crickets and the faint slap of water and the shift of crab claws in the primordial mud, or so I thought.
When the world went white it did not register to me that I wa
s dead at all. This isn’t so bad, I remember thinking. White is nicer than black, isn’t it?
When I opened my eyes I was lying on my side, holding my thigh. The world was tilted sideways. Lying next to me was the inimitable head of Dapper Dan the Antiques Man, a.k.a. the Boltcutter, his eyes wide open, his mouth agape. How small he looked with the top of his head blown off above the eyebrows.
I recall a lamp being lit and placed amongst the strands of sea grass. And seeing the youngish man sit on the sand, grasp his knees, and drop his revolver.
The Toe Tag Quintet Page 7