In the Frame

12

When he’d gone I looked closely at the spoils.

The more I saw, the more certain it became that we had hit the absolute jackpot. I began to wish most insistently that we hadn’t wasted time in establishing that Jik and Sarah were at the races. It made me nervous, waiting for them in the Hilton with so much dynamite in my hands. Every instinct urged immediate departure.

The list of Overseas Customers would to any other eyes have seemed the most harmless of documents. Wexford would not have needed to keep it in better security than a locked filing-cabinet, for the chances of anyone seeing its significance in ordinary circumstances were millions to one against.

Donald Stuart, Wrenstone House, Shropshire.

Crossed out.

Each page had three columns, a narrow one at each side with a broad one in the centre. The narrow left-hand column was for dates and the centre for names and addresses. In the narrow right-hand column, against each name, was a short line of apparently random letters and numbers. Those against Donald’s entry, for instance, were MM3109T: and these figures had not been crossed out with his name. Maybe a sort of stock list, I thought, identifying the picture he’d bought.

I searched rapidly down all the other crossed-out names in the England sector. Maisie Matthews’ name was not among them.

Damn, I thought. Why wasn’t it?

I turned all the papers over rapidly. As far as I could see all the overseas customers came from basically English-speaking countries, and the proportion of crossed-out names was about one in three. If every crossing-out represented a robbery, there had been literally hundreds since the scheme began.

At the back of the file I found there was a second and separate section, again divided into pages for each country. The lists in this section were much shorter.

England.

Half way down. My eyes positively leapt at it.

Mrs M. Matthews, Treasure Holme, Worthing, Sussex.

Crossed out.

I almost trembled. The date in the left-hand column looked like the date on which Maisie had bought her picture. The uncrossed-out numbers in the right hand column were SMC29R.

I put down the file and sat for five minutes staring unseeingly at the wall, thinking.

My first and last conclusions were that I had a great deal to do before Jik and Sarah came back from the races, and that instincts were not always right.

The large print-folder, which had so excited Jik, lay on my bed. I opened it flat and inspected the contents.

I daresay I looked completely loony standing there with my mouth open. The folder contained a number of simplified line drawings like the one the boy-artist had been colouring in the Arts Centre. Full-sized outline drawings, on flat white canvas, as neat and accurate as tracings.

There were seven of them, all basically of horses. As they were only black and white line drawings I couldn’t be sure, but I guessed that three were Munnings, two Raoul Millais, and the other two... I stared at the old-fashioned shapes of the horses... They couldn’t be Stubbs, he was too well documented... How about Herring? Herring, I thought, nodding. The last two had a look of Herring.

Attached to one of these two canvases by an ordinary paper clip was a small handwritten memo on a piece of scrap paper.

‘Don’t forget to send the original. Also find out what palette he used, if different from usual.’

I looked again at the three identical finished paintings which we had also brought away. These canvases, tacked on to wooden stretchers, looked very much as if they might have started out themselves as the same sort of outlines. The canvas used was of the same weave and finish.

The technical standard of the work couldn’t be faulted. The paintings did look very much like Munnings’ own, and would do much more so after they had dried and been varnished. Different coloured paints dried at different speeds, and also the drying time of paints depended very much on the amount of oil or turps used to thin them, but at a rough guess all three pictures had been completed between three and six days earlier. The paint was at the same stage on all of them. They must, I thought, have all been painted at once, in a row, like a production line. Red hat, red hat, red hat... It would have saved time and paint.

The brushwork throughout was painstaking and controlled. Nothing slapdash. No time skimped. The quality of care was the same as in the Millais copy at Alice.

I was looking, I knew, at the true worth of Harley Renbo.

All three paintings were perfectly legal. It was never illegal to copy: only to attempt to sell the copy as real.

I thought it all over for a bit longer, and then set rapidly to work.

The Hilton, when I went downstairs an hour later, were most amiable and helpful.

Certainly, they could do what I asked. Certainly, I could use the photo-copying machine, come this way. Certainly, I could pay my bill now, and leave later.

I thanked them for their many excellent services.

‘Our pleasure,’ they said: and, incredibly, they meant it.

Upstairs again, waiting for Jik and Sarah, I packed all my things. That done, I took off my jacket and shirt and did my best at rigging the spare bandages and clips back into something like the Alice shape, with my hand inside across my chest. No use pretending that it wasn’t a good deal more comfortable that way than the dragging soreness of letting it all swing free. I buttoned my shirt over the top and calculated that if the traffic was bad Jik might still be struggling out of the racecourse.

A little anxiously, and still faintly feeling unwell, I settled to wait.

I waited precisely five minutes. Then the telephone by the bed rang, and I picked up the receiver.

Jik’s voice, sounding hard and dictatorial.

‘Charles, will you please come down to our room at once.’

‘Well...’ I said hesitantly. ‘Is it important?’

‘Bloody chromic oxide!’ he said explosively. ‘Can’t you do anything without arguing?’

Christ, I thought.

I took a breath. ‘Give me ten minutes,’ I said. ‘I need ten minutes. I’m... er... I’ve just had a shower. I’m in my underpants.’

‘Thank you, Charles,’ he said. The telephone clicked as he disconnected.

A lot of Jik’s great oaths galloped across my mind, wasting precious time. If ever we needed divine help, it was now.

Stifling a gut-twisting lurch of plain fear I picked up the telephone and made a series of internal calls.

‘Please could you send a porter up right away to room seventeen eighteen to collect Mr Cassavetes’ bags?’

‘Housekeeper..? Please will you send someone along urgently to seventeen eighteen to clean the room as Mr Cassavetes has been sick...’

‘Please will you send the nurse along to seventeen eighteen at once as Mr Cassavetes has a severe pain...’

‘Please will you send four bottles of your best champagne and ten glasses up to seventeen eighteen immediately...’

‘Please bring coffee for three to seventeen eighteen at once...’

‘Electrician? All the electrics have fused in room seventeen eighteen, please come at once.’

‘... the water is overflowing in the bathroom, please send the plumber urgently.’

Who else was there? I ran my eye down the list of possible services. One wouldn’t be able to summon chiropodists, masseuses, secretaries, barbers or clothes-pressers in a hurry... but television, why not?

‘... Please would you see to the television in room seventeen eighteen. There is smoke coming from the back and it smells like burning...’

That should do it, I thought. I made one final call for myself, asking for a porter to collect my bags. Right on, they said. Ten dollar tip I said if the bags could be down in the hall within five minutes. No sweat, an Australian voice assured me happily. Coming right that second.

I left my door ajar for the porter and rode down two storeys in the lift to floor seventeen. The corridor outside Jik and Sarah’s room was still a broad empty expanse of no one doing anything in a hurry.

The ten minutes had gone.

I fretted.

The first to arrive was the waiter with the champagne, and he came not with a tray but a trolley, complete with ice buckets and spotless white cloths. It couldn’t possibly have been better.

As he slowed to a stop outside Jik’s door, two other figures turned into the corridor, hurrying, and behind them, distantly, came a cleaner slowly pushing another trolley of linen and buckets and brooms.

I said to the waiter, ‘Thank you so much for coming so quickly.’ I gave him a ten dollar note, which surprised him. ‘Please go and serve the champagne straight away.’

He grinned, and knocked on Jik’s door.

After a pause, Jik opened it. He looked tense and strained.

‘Your champagne, sir,’ said the waiter.

‘But I didn’t...’ Jik began. He caught sight of me suddenly, where I stood a little back from his door. I made waving-in motions with my hand, and a faint grin appeared to lighten the anxiety.

Jik retreated into the room followed by trolley and waiter.

At a rush, after that, came the electrician, the plumber and the television man. I gave them each ten dollars and thanked them for coming so promptly. ‘I had a winner,’ I said. They took the money with more grins and Jik opened the door to their knock.

‘Electrics... plumbing... television...’ His eyebrows rose. He looked across to me in rising comprehension. He flung wide his door and invited them in with all his heart.

‘Give them some champagne,’ I said.

‘God Almighty.’

After that, in quick succession, came the porter, the man with the coffee, and the nurse. I gave them all ten dollars from my mythical winnings and invited them to join the party. Finally came the cleaner, pushing her top-heavy-looking load. She took the ten dollars, congratulated me on my good fortune, and entered the crowded and noisy fray.

It was up to Jik, I thought. I couldn’t do any more.

He and Sarah suddenly popped out like the corks from the gold-topped bottles, and stood undecided in the corridor. I gripped Sarah’s wrist and tugged her towards me.

‘Push the cleaning trolley through the door, and turn it over,’ I said to Jik.

He wasted no time deliberating. The brooms crashed to the carpet inside the room, and Jik pulled the door shut after him.

Sarah and I were already running on our way to the lifts. She looked extremely pale and wild-eyed, and I knew that whatever had happened in their room had been almost too much for her.

Jik sprinted along after us. There were six lifts from the seventeenth floor, and one never had to wait more than a few seconds for one to arrive. The seconds this time seemed like hours but were actually very few indeed. The welcoming doors slid open, and we leapt inside and pushed the ‘doors closed’ button like maniacs.

The doors closed.

The lift descended, smooth and fast.

‘Where’s the car?’ I said.

‘Car park.’

‘Get it and come round to the side door.’

‘Right.’

‘Sarah...’

She stared at me in fright.

‘My satchel will be in the hall. Will you carry it for me?’

She looked vaguely at my one-armed state, my jacket swinging loosely over my left shoulder.

‘Sarah!’

‘Yes... all right.’

We erupted into the hall, which had filled with people returning from the Cup. Talkative groups mixed and mingled, and it was impossible to see easily from one side to the other. All to the good, I thought.

My suitcase and satchel stood waiting near the front entrance, guarded by a young man in porter’s uniform.

I parted with the ten dollars. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said.

‘No sweat,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Can I get you a taxi?’

I shook my head. I picked up the suitcase and Sarah the satchel and we headed out of the door.

Turned right. Hurried. Turned right again, round to the side where I’d told Jik we’d meet him.

‘He’s not here,’ Sarah said with rising panic.

‘He’ll come,’ I said encouragingly. ‘We’ll just go on walking to meet him.’

We walked. I kept looking back nervously for signs of pursuit, but there were none. Jik came round the corner on two wheels and tore millimetres off the tyres stopping beside us. Sarah scrambled into the front and I and my suitcase filled the back. Jik made a hair-raising U turn and took us away from the Hilton at an illegal speed.

‘Wowee,’ he said, laughing with released tension. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

‘The Marx brothers.’

He nodded. ‘Pure crazy comedy.’

‘Where are we going?’ Sarah said.

‘Have you noticed,’ Jik said, ‘How my wife always brings us back to basics?’

The city of Melbourne covered a great deal of land.

We drove randomly north and east through seemingly endless suburban developments of houses, shops, garages and light industry, all looking prosperous, haphazard, and, to my eyes, American.

‘Where are we?’ Jik said.

‘Somewhere called Box Hill,’ I said, reading it on shopfronts.

‘As good as anywhere.’

We drove a few miles further and stopped at a modern middle-rank motel which had bright coloured strings of triangular flags fluttering across the forecourt. A far cry from the Hilton, though the rooms we presently took were cleaner than nature intended.

There were plain divans, a square of thin carpet nailed at the edges, and a table lamp screwed to an immovable table. The looking glass was stuck flat to the wall and the swivelling arm chair was bolted to the floor. Apart from that, the curtains were bright and the hot tap ran hot in the shower.

‘They don’t mean you to pinch much,’ Jik said. ‘Let’s paint them a mural.’

‘No!’ Sarah said, horrorstruck.

‘There’s a great Australian saying,’ Jik said. ‘If it moves, shoot it, and if it grows, chop it down.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ Sarah said.

‘Nothing. I just thought Todd might like to hear it.’

‘Give me strength.’

We were trying to, in our inconsequential way.

Jik sat in the arm chair in my room, swivelling. Sarah sat on one of the divans, I on the other. My suitcase and satchel stood side by side on the floor.

‘You do realise we skipped out of the Hilton without paying,’ Sarah said.

‘No we didn’t,’ Jik said. ‘According to our clothes, we are still resident. I’ll ring them up later.’

‘But Todd...’

‘I did pay,’ I said. ‘Before you got back.’

She looked slightly happier.

‘How did Greene find you?’ I said.

‘God knows,’ Jik said gloomily.

Sarah was astonished. ‘How did you know about Greene? How did you know there was anyone in our room besides Jik and me? How did you know we were in such awful trouble?’

‘Jik told me.’

‘But he couldn’t! He couldn’t risk warning you. He just had to tell you to come. He really did...’ Her voice quivered. The tears weren’t far from the surface. ‘They made him...’

‘Jik told me,’ I said matter-of-factly. ‘First, he called me Charles, which he never does, so I knew something was wrong. Second, he was rude to me, and I know you think he is most of the time, but he isn’t, not like that. And third, he told me the name of the man who I was to guess was in your room putting pressure on you both to get me to come down and walk into a nasty little hole. He told me it was chromic oxide, which is the pigment in green paint.’

‘Green paint!’ The tearful moment passed. ‘You really are both extraordinary,’ she said.

‘Long practice,’ Jik said cheerfully.

‘Tell me what happened,’ I said.

‘We left before the last race, to avoid the traffic, and we just came back normally to the Hilton. I parked the car, and we went up to our room. We’d only been there about a minute when there was this knock on the door, and when I opened it they just pushed in...’

‘They?’

‘Three of them. One was Greene. We both knew him straight away, from your drawing. Another was the boy from the Arts Centre. The third was all biceps and beetle brows, with his brains in his fists.’

He absentmindedly rubbed an area south of his heart.

‘He punched you?’ I said.

‘It was all so quick...’ he said apologetically. ‘They just crammed in... and biff bang... The next thing I knew they’d got hold of Sarah and were twisting her arm and saying that she wouldn’t just get turps in her eyes if I didn’t get you to come at once.’

‘Did they have a gun?’ I asked.

‘No... a cigarette lighter. Look, I’m sorry, mate. I guess it sounds pretty feeble, but Beetle-brows had her in a pretty rough grasp and the boy had this ruddy great cigarette lighter with a flame like a blow torch just a couple of inches from her cheek... and I was a bit groggy... and Greene said they’d burn her if I didn’t get you... and I couldn’t fight them all at once.’

‘Stop apologising,’ I said.

‘Yeah... well, so I rang you. I told Greene you’d be ten minutes because you were in your underpants, but I think he heard you anyway because he was standing right beside me, very wary and sharp. I didn’t know really whether you’d cottoned on, but I hoped to God... and you should have seen their faces when the waiter pushed the trolley in. Beetle-brows let go of Sarah and the boy just stood there with his mouth open and the cigarette lighter flaring up like an oil refinery...’

‘Greene said we didn’t want the champagne and to take it away,’ Sarah said. ‘But Jik and I said yes we did, and Jik asked the waiter to open it at once.’

‘Before he got the first cork out the others all began coming... and then they were all picking up glasses... and the room was filling up... and Greene and the boy and Beetle-brows were all on the window side of the room, sort of pinned in by the trolley and all those people... and I just grabbed Sarah and we ducked round the edge. The last I saw, Greene and the others were trying to push through, but our guests were pretty thick on the ground by then and keen to get their champagne... and I should think the cleaning trolley was just about enough to give us that start to the lift.’

‘I wonder how long the party lasted,’ I said.

‘Until the bubbles ran out.’

‘They must all have thought you mad,’ Sarah said.

‘Anything goes on Cup day,’ I said, ‘and the staff of the Hilton would be used to eccentric guests.’

‘What if Greene had had a gun?’ Sarah said.

I smiled at her twistedly. ‘He would have had to wave it around in front of a hell of a lot of witnesses.’

‘But he might have done.’

‘He might... but he was a long way from the front door.’ I bit my thumbnail. ‘Er... how did he know I was in the Hilton?’

There was a tangible silence.

‘I told him,’ Sarah said finally, in a small mixed outburst of shame and defiance. ‘Jik didn’t tell you it all, just now. At first they said... Greene said... they’d burn my face if Jik didn’t tell them where you were. He didn’t want to... but he had to... so I told them, so that it wouldn’t be him... I suppose that sounds stupid.’

I thought it sounded extraordinarily moving. Love of an exceptional order, and a depth of understanding.

I smiled at her. ‘So they didn’t know I was there, to begin with?’

Jik shook his head. ‘I don’t think they knew you were even in Melbourne. They seemed surprised when Sarah said you were upstairs. I think all they knew was that you weren’t still in hospital in Alice Springs.’

‘Did they know about our robbery?’

‘I’m sure they didn’t.’

I grinned. ‘They’ll be schizophrenic when they find out.’

Jik and I both carefully shied away from what would have happened if I’d gone straight down to their room, though I saw from his eyes that he knew. With Sarah held as a hostage I would have had to leave the Hilton with Greene and taken my chance. The uncomfortably slim chance that they would have let me off again with my life.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said.

Sarah smiled. ‘Whenever are you not?’

We ate in a small Bring Your Own restaurant nearby, with people at tables all around us talking about what they’d backed in the Cup.

‘Good heavens,’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘I’d forgotten about that.’

‘About what?’

‘Your winnings,’ she said. ‘On Ringwood.’

‘But...’ I began.

‘It was number eleven!’

‘I don’t believe it.’

She opened her handbag and produced a fat wad of notes. Somehow, in all the mêlée in the Hilton, she had managed to emerge from fiery danger with the cream leather pouch swinging from her arm. The strength of the instinct which kept women attached to their handbags had often astounded me, but never more than that day.

‘It was forty to one,’ she said. ‘I put twenty dollars on for you, so you’ve got eight hundred dollars, and I think it’s disgusting.’

‘Share it,’ I said, laughing.

She shook her head. ‘Not a cent... To be honest, I thought it had no chance at all, and I thought I’d teach you not to bet that way by losing you twenty dollars, otherwise I’d only have staked you ten.’

‘I owe most of it to Jik, anyway,’ I said.

‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘We’ll add and subtract later. Do you want me to cut your steak?’

‘Please.’

He sliced away neatly at my plate, and pushed it back with the fork placed ready.

‘What else happened at the races?’ I said, spearing the first succulent piece. ‘Who did you see?’ The steak tasted as good as it looked, and I realised that in spite of all the sore patches I had at last lost the overall feeling of unsettled shaky sickness. Things were on the mend, it seemed.

‘We didn’t see Greene,’ Jik said. ‘Or the boy, or Beetle-brows.’

‘I’d guess they saw you.’

‘Do you think so?’ Sarah said worriedly.

‘I’d guess,’ I said, ‘That they saw you at the races and simply followed you back to the Hilton.’

‘Jesus,’ Jik groaned. ‘We never spotted them. There was a whole mass of traffic.’

I nodded. ‘And all moving very slowly. If Greene was perhaps three cars behind you, you’d never have seen him, but he could have kept you in sight easily.’

‘I’m bloody sorry, Todd.’

‘Don’t be silly. And no harm done.’

‘Except for the fact,’ Sarah said, ‘That I’ve still got no clothes.’

‘You look fine,’ I said absently.

‘We saw a girl I know in Sydney,’ Sarah said. ‘We watched the first two races together and talked to her aunt. And Jik and I were talking to a photographer we both knew just after he got back... so it would be pretty easy to prove Jik was at the races all afternoon, like you wanted.’

‘No sign of Wexford?’

‘Not if he looked like your drawing,’ Sarah said. ‘Though of course he might have been there. It’s awfully difficult to recognise a complete stranger just from a drawing, in a huge crowd like that.’

‘We talked to a lot of people,’ Jik said. ‘To everyone Sarah knew even slightly. She used the excuse of introducing me as her newly-bagged husband.’

‘We even talked to that man you met on Saturday,’ Sarah agreed, nodding. ‘Or rather, he came over and talked to us.’

‘Hudson Taylor?’ I asked.

‘The one you saw talking to Wexford,’ Jik said.

‘He asked if you were at the Cup,’ Sarah said. ‘He said he’d been going to ask you along for another drink. We said we’d tell you he’d asked.’

‘His horse ran quite well, didn’t it?’ I said.

‘We saw him earlier than that. We wished him luck and he said he’d need it.’

‘He bets a bit,’ I said, remembering.

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘Another commission down the drain,’ I said. ‘He would have had Vinery painted if he’d won.’

‘You hire yourself out like a prostitute,’ Jik said. ‘It’s obscene.’

‘And anyway,’ added Sarah cheerfully, ‘You won more on Ringwood than you’d’ve got for the painting.’

I looked pained, and Jik laughed.

We drank coffee, went back to the motel, and divided to our separate rooms. Five minutes later Jik knocked on my door.

‘Come in,’ I said, opening it.

He grinned. ‘You were expecting me.’

‘Thought you might come.’

He sat in the armchair and swivelled. His gaze fell on my suitcase, which lay flat on one of the divans.

‘What did you do with all the stuff we took from the gallery?’

I told him.

He stopped swivelling and sat still.

‘You don’t mess about, do you?’ he said eventually.

‘A few days from now,’ I said, ‘I’m going home.’

‘And until then?’

‘Um... until then, I aim to stay one jump ahead of Wexford, Greene, Beetle-brows, the Arts Centre boy, and the tough who met me on the balcony at Alice.’

‘Not to mention our copy artist, Harley Renbo.’

I considered it. ‘Him too,’ I said.

‘Do you think we can?’

‘Not we. Not from here on. This is where you take Sarah home.’

He slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t reckon it would be any safer than staying with you. We’re too easy to find. For one thing, we’re in the Sydney ‘phone book. What’s to stop Wexford from marching on to the boat with a bigger threat than a cigarette lighter?’

‘You could tell him what I’ve just told you.’

‘And waste all your efforts.’

‘Retreat is sometimes necessary.’

He shook his head. ‘If we stay with you, retreat may never be necessary. It’s the better of two risks. And anyway...’ the old fire gleamed in his eye... ‘It will be a great game. Cat and mouse. With cats who don’t know they are mice chasing a mouse who knows he’s a cat.’

More like a bull fight, I thought, with myself waving the cape to invite the charge. Or a conjuror, attracting attention to one hand while he did the trick with the other. On the whole I preferred the notion of the conjuror. There seemed less likelihood of being gored.