In the Frame

16

We flew Air New Zealand back to Melbourne, tended by angels in sea-green. Sarah looked fresh, Jik definitely shop-worn, and I apparently like a mixture (Jik said) of yellow ochre, Payne’s grey, and white, which I didn’t think was possible.

Our passage had been oiled by telexes from above. When we arrived at the airport after collecting Sarah’s belongings in their carrier bags from the Townhouse, we found ourselves whisked into a private room, plied with strong drink, and subsequently taken by car straight out across the tarmac to the aeroplane.

A thousand miles across the Tasman Sea and an afternoon tea later we were driven straight from the aircraft’s steps to another small airport room, which contained no strong drink but only a large hard Australian plain-clothes policeman.

‘Porter,’ he said, introducing himself and squeezing our bones in a blacksmith’s grip. ‘Which of you is Charles Todd?’

‘I am.’

‘Right on, Mr Todd.’ He looked at me without favour. ‘Are you ill, or something?’ He had a strong rough voice and a strong rough manner, natural aids to putting the fear of God into chummy and bringing on breakdowns in the nervous. To me, I gradually gathered, he was grudgingly offering the status of temporary inferior colleague.

‘No,’ I said, sighing slightly. Time and airline schedules waited for no man. If I’d spent time on first aid we’d have missed the only possible flight.

‘His clothes are sticking to him,’ Jik observed, giving the familiar phrase the usual meaning of being hot. It was cool in Melbourne. Porter looked at him uncertainly.

I grinned. ‘Did you manage what you planned?’ I asked him. He decided Jik was nuts and switched his gaze back to me.

‘We decided not to go ahead until you had arrived,’ he said, shrugging. ‘There’s a car waiting outside.’ He wheeled out of the door without holding it for Sarah and marched briskly off.

The car had a chauffeur. Porter sat in front, talking on a radio, saying in stiltedly guarded sentences that the party had arrived and the proposals should be implemented.

‘Where are we going?’ Sarah said.

‘To reunite you with your clothes,’ I said.

Her face lit up. ‘Are we really?’

‘And what for?’ Jik asked.

‘To bring the mouse to the cheese.’ And the bull to the sword, I thought: and the moment of truth to the conjuror.

‘We got your things back, Todd,’ Porter said with satisfaction. ‘Wexford, Greene and Snell were turned over on entry, and they copped them with the lot. The locks on your suitcase were scratched and dented but they hadn’t burst open. Everything inside should be O.K. You can collect everything in the morning.’

‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Did they still have any of the lists of customers?’

‘Yeah. Damp but readable. Names of guys in Canada.’

‘Good.’

‘We’re turning over that Yarra gallery right this minute, and Wexford is there helping. We’ve let him overhear what we wanted him to, and as soon as I give the go-ahead we’ll let him take action.’

‘Do you think he will?’ I said.

‘Look, mister, wouldn’t you?’

I thought I might be wary of gifts from the Greeks, but then I wasn’t Wexford, and I didn’t have a jail sentence breathing down my neck.

We pulled up at the side door of the Hilton. Porter raised himself agilely to the pavement and stood like a solid pillar, watching with half-concealed impatience while Jik, Sarah, and I eased ourselves slowly out. We all went across the familiar red-and-blue opulence of the great entrance hall, and from there through a gate in the reception desk, and into the hotel manager’s office at the rear.

A tall dark-suited member of the hotel staff there offered us chairs, coffee, and sandwiches. Porter looked at his watch and offered us an indeterminate wait.

It was six o’clock. After ten minutes a man in shirt and necktie brought a two-way personal radio for Porter, who slipped the ear-plug into place and began listening to disembodied voices.

The office was a working room, lit by neon strips and furnished functionally, with a wall-papering of charts and duty rosters. There were no outside windows: nothing to show the fade of day to night.

We sat, and drank coffee, and waited. Porter ate three of the sandwiches simultaneously. Time passed.

Seven o’clock.

Sarah was looking pale in the artificial light, and tired also. So was Jik, his beard on his chest. I sat and thought about life and death and polka dots.

At seven eleven Porter clutched his ear and concentrated intently on the ceiling. When he relaxed, he passed to us the galvanic message.

‘Wexford did just what we reckoned he would, and the engine’s turning over.’

‘What engine?’ Sarah said.

Porter stared at her blankly. ‘What we planned,’ he said painstakingly, ‘is happening.’

‘Oh.’

Porter listened again to his private ear and spoke directly to me. ‘He’s taken the bait.’

‘He’s a fool,’ I said.

Porter came as near to a smile as he could. ‘All crooks are fools, one way or another.’

Seven-thirty came and went. I raised my eyebrows at Porter. He shook his head.

‘We can’t say too much on the radio,’ he said. ‘Because you get all sorts of ears listening in.’

Just like England, I thought. The Press could turn up at a crime before the police; and the mouse might hear of the trap.

We waited. The time dragged. Jik yawned and Sarah’s eyes were dark with fatigue. Outside, in the lobby, the busy rich life of the hotel chattered on unruffled, with guests’ spirits rising towards the next day’s race meeting, the last of the carnival.

The Derby on Saturday, the Cup on Tuesday, the Oaks (which we’d missed) on Thursday, and the International on Saturday. No serious racegoers went home before the end of things, if they could help it.

Porter clutched his ear again, and stiffened.

‘He’s here,’ he said.

My heart, for some unaccountable reason, began beating overtime. We were in no danger that I could see, yet there it was, thumping away like a steam organ.

Porter disconnected himself from the radio, put it on the manager’s desk, and went out into the foyer.

‘What do we do?’ Sarah said.

‘Nothing much except listen.’

We all three went over to the door and held it six inches open. We listened to people asking for their room keys, asking for letters and messages, asking for Mr and Mrs So-and-So, and which way to Toorak, and how did you get to Fanny’s.

Then suddenly, the familiar voice, sending electric fizzes to my finger tips. Confident: not expecting trouble. ‘I’ve come to collect a package left here last Tuesday by a Mr Charles Todd. He says he checked it into the baggage room. I have a letter here from him, authorising you to release it to me.’

There was a crackle of paper as the letter was handed over. Sarah’s eyes were round and startled.

‘Did you write it?’ she whispered.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

The desk clerk outside said, ‘Thank you, sir. If you’ll just wait a moment I’ll fetch the package.’

There was a long pause. My heart made a lot of noise, but nothing much else happened.

The desk clerk came back. ‘Here you are, sir. Paintings, sir.’

‘That’s right.’

There were vague sounds of the bundle of paintings and the print-folder being carried along outside the door.

‘I’ll bring them round for you,’ said the clerk, suddenly closer to us. ‘Here we are, sir.’ He went past the office, through the door in the desk, and round to the front. ‘Can you manage them, sir?’

‘Yes. Yes. Thank you.’ There was haste in his voice, now that he’d got his hands on the goods. ‘Thank you. Goodbye.’

Sarah had begun to say ‘Is that all?’ in disappointment when Porter’s loud voice chopped into the Hilton velvet like a hatchet.

‘I guess we’ll take care of those paintings, if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘Porter, Melbourne city police.’

I opened the door a little, and looked out. Porter stood four square in the lobby, large and rough, holding out a demanding hand.

At his elbows, two plain-clothes policemen. At the front door, two more, in uniform. There would be others, I supposed, at the other exits. They weren’t taking any chances.

‘Why... er... Inspector... I’m only on an errand... er... for my young friend, Charles Todd.’

‘And these paintings?’

‘I’ve no idea what they are. He asked me to fetch them for him.’

I walked quietly out of the office, through the gate and round to the front. I leaned a little wearily against the reception desk. He was only six feet away, in front of me to my right. I could have stretched forward and touched him. I hoped Porter would think it near enough, as requested.

A certain amount of unease had pervaded the Hilton guests. They stood around in an uneven semi-circle, eyeing the proceedings sideways.

‘Mr Charles Todd asked you to fetch them?’ Porter said loudly.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

Porter’s gaze switched abruptly to my face.

‘Did you ask him?’

‘No,’ I said.

The explosive effect was all that the Melbourne police could have asked, and a good deal more than I expected. There was no polite quiet identification followed by a polite quiet arrest. I should have remembered all my own theories about the basic brutality of the directing mind.

I found myself staring straight into the eyes of the bull. He realised that he’d been tricked. Had convicted himself out of his own mouth and by his own presence on such an errand. The fury rose in him like a geyser and his hands reached out to grab my neck.

‘You’re dead,’ he yelled. ‘You’re fucking dead.’

His plunging weight took me off balance and down on to one knee, smothering under his choking grip and two hundred pounds of city suiting; trying to beat him off with my fists and not succeeding. His anger poured over me like lava. Heaven knows what he intended, but Porter’s men pulled him off before he did bloody murder on the plushy carpet. As I got creakily to my feet, I heard the handcuffs click.

He was standing there, close to me, quivering in the restraining hands, breathing heavily, dishevelled and bitter-eyed. Civilised exterior all stripped away by one instant of ungovernable rage. The violent core plain to see.

‘Hello, Hudson,’ I said.

‘Sorry,’ Porter said perfunctorily. ‘Didn’t reckon he’d turn wild.’

‘Revert,’ I said.

‘Uh?’

‘He always was wild,’ I said, ‘Underneath.’

‘You’d know,’ he said. ‘I never saw the guy before.’ He nodded to Jik and Sarah and finally to me, and hurried away after his departing prisoner.

We looked at each other a little blankly. The hotel guests stared at us curiously and began to drift away. We sat down weakly on the nearest blue velvet seat, Sarah in the middle.

Jik took her hand and squeezed it. She put her fingers over mine.

It had taken nine days.

It had been a long haul.

‘Don’t know about you,’ Jik said. ‘But I could do with a beer.’

Todd,’ said Sarah, ‘Start talking.’

We were upstairs in a bedroom (mine) with both of them in a relaxed mood, and me in Jik’s dressing gown, and he and I in a cloud of Dettol.

I yawned. ‘About Hudson?’

‘Who else? And don’t go to sleep before you’ve told us.’

‘Well... I was looking for him, or someone like him, before I ever met him.’

‘But why?’

‘Because of the wine,’ I said. ‘Because of the wine which was stolen from Donald’s cellar. Whoever stole it not only knew it was there, down some stairs behind an inconspicuous cupboard-like door... and I’d stayed several times in the house and never knew the cellar existed... but according to Donald they would have had to come prepared with proper cases to pack it in. Wine is usually packed twelve bottles in a case... and Donald had two thousand or more bottles stolen. In bulk alone it would have taken a lot of shifting. A lot of time, too, and time for house-breakers is risky. But also it was special wine. A small fortune, Donald said. The sort of wine that’s bought and sold as an asset and ends up at a week’s wage a bottle, if it’s ever drunk at all. Anyway, it was the sort of wine that needed expert handling and marketing if it was to be worth the difficulty of stealing it in the first place... and as Donald’s business is wine, and the reason for his journey to Australia was wine, I started looking right away for someone who knew Donald, knew he’d bought a Munnings, and knew about good wine and how to sell it. And there, straightaway, was Hudson Taylor, who matched like a glove. But it seemed too easy... because he didn’t look right.’

‘Smooth and friendly,’ said Sarah, nodding.

‘And rich,’ Jik added.

‘Probably a moneyholic,’ I said, pulling open the bed and looking longingly at the cool white sheets.

‘A what?’

‘Moneyholic. A word I’ve just made up to describe someone with an uncontrollable addiction to money.’

‘The world’s full of them,’ Jik said, laughing.

I shook my head. ‘The world is full of drinkers, but alcoholics are obsessive. Moneyholics are obsessive. They never have enough. They cannot have enough. However much they have, they want more. And I’m not talking about the average hard-up man, but about real screwballs. Money, money, money. Like a drug. Moneyholics will do anything to get it... Kidnap, murder, cook the computer, rob banks, sell their grandmothers... You name it.’

I sat on the bed with my feet up, feeling less than fit. Sore from too many bruises, on fire from too many cuts. Jik too, I guessed. They had been wicked rocks.

‘Moneyholism,’ Jik said, like a lecturer to a dimmish class, ‘is a widespread disease easily understood by everyone who has ever felt a twinge of greed, which is everyone.’

‘Go on about Hudson,’ Sarah said.

‘Hudson had the organising ability... I didn’t know when I came that the organisation was so huge, but I did know it was organised, if you see what I mean. It was an overseas operation. It took some doing. Knowhow.’

Jik tugged the ring off a can of beer and passed it to me, wincing as he stretched.

‘But he convinced me I was wrong about him,’ I said, drinking through the triangular hole. ‘Because he was so careful. He pretended he had to look up the name of the gallery where Donald bought his picture. He didn’t think of me as a threat, of course, but just as Donald’s cousin. Not until he talked to Wexford down on the lawn.’

‘I remember,’ Sarah said. ‘When you said it had ripped the whole works apart.’

‘Mm... I thought it was only that he had told Wexford I was Donald’s cousin, but of course Wexford also told him that I’d met Greene in Maisie’s ruins in Sussex and then turned up in the gallery looking at the original of Maisie’s burnt painting.’

‘Jesus Almighty,’ Jik said. ‘No wonder we beat it to Alice Springs.’

‘Yes, but by then I didn’t think it could be Hudson I was looking for. I was looking for someone brutal, who passed on his violence through his employees. Hudson didn’t look or act brutal.’ I paused. ‘The only slightest crack was when his gamble went down the drain at the races. He gripped his binoculars so hard that his knuckles showed white. But you can’t think a man is a big-time thug just because he gets upset over losing a bet.’

Jik grinned. ‘I’d qualify.’

‘In spades, redoubled,’ Sarah said.

‘I was thinking about it in the Alice Springs hospital... There hadn’t been time for the musclemen to get to Alice from Melbourne between us buying Renbo’s picture and me diving off the balcony, but there had been time for them to come from Adelaide, and Hudson’s base was at Adelaide... but it was much too flimsy.’

‘They might have been in Alice to start with,’ Jik said reasonably.

‘They might, but what for?’ I yawned. ‘Then on the night of the Cup you said Hudson had made a point of asking you about me... and I wondered how he knew you.’

‘Do you know,’ Sarah said, ‘I did wonder too at the time, but it didn’t seem important. I mean, we’d seen him from the top of the stands, so it didn’t seem impossible that somewhere he’d seen you with us.’

‘The boy knew you,’ I said. ‘And he was at the races, because he followed you, with Greene, to the Hilton. The boy must have pointed you out to Greene.’

‘And Greene to Wexford, and Wexford to Hudson?’ Jik asked.

‘Quite likely.’

‘And by then,’ he said, ‘They all knew they wanted to silence you pretty badly, and they’d had a chance and muffed it... I’d love to have heard what happened when they found we’d robbed the gallery.’ He chuckled, tipping up his beer can to catch the last few drops.

‘On the morning after,’ I said, ‘a letter from Hudson was delivered by hand to the Hilton. How did he know we were there?’

They stared. ‘Greene must have told him,’ Jik said. ‘We certainly didn’t. We didn’t tell anybody. We were careful about it.’

‘So was I,’ I said. ‘That letter offered to show me round a vineyard. Well... if I hadn’t been so doubtful of him, I might have gone. He was a friend of Donald’s... and a vineyard would be interesting. From his point of view, anyway, it was worth a try.’

‘Jesus!’

‘On the night of the Cup, when we were in that motel near Box Hill, I telephoned the police in England and spoke to the man in charge of Donald’s case, Inspector Frost. I asked him to ask Donald some questions... and this morning outside Wellington I got the answers.’

‘This morning seems several light years away,’ Sarah said.

‘Mm...’

‘What questions and what answers?’ Jik said.

‘The questions were, did Donald tell Hudson all about the wine in his cellar, and did Donald tell Wexford about the wine in the cellar, and was it Hudson who had suggested to Donald that he and Regina should go and look at the Munnings in the Arts Centre. And the answers were “Yes, of course”, and “No, whyever should I?”, and “Yes”.’

They thought about it in silence. Jik fiddled with the dispenser in the room’s in-built refrigerator and liberated another can of Fosters.

‘So what then?’ Sarah said.

‘So the Melbourne police said it was too insubstantial, but if they could tie Hudson in definitely with the gallery they might believe it. So they dangled in front of Hudson the pictures and stuff we stole from the gallery, and along he came to collect them.’

‘How? How did they dangle them?’

‘They let Wexford accidentally overhear snippets from a fake report from several hotels about odd deposits in their baggage rooms, including the paintings at the Hilton. Then after we got here they gave him an opportunity to use the telephone when he thought no one was listening, and he rang Hudson at the house he’s been staying in here for the races, and told him. So Hudson wrote himself a letter to the Hilton from me, and zoomed along to remove the incriminating evidence.’

‘He must have been crazy.’

‘Stupid. But he thought I was dead... and he’d no idea anyone suspected him. He should have had the sense to know that Wexford’s call to him would be bugged by the police... but Frost told me that Wexford would think he was using a public ‘phone booth.’

‘Sneaky,’ Sarah said.

I yawned. ‘It takes a sneak to catch a sneak.’

‘You’d never have thought Hudson would blaze up like that,’ she said. ‘He looked so... so dangerous.’ She shivered. ‘You wouldn’t think people could hide such really frightening violence under a friendly public face.’

‘The nice Irish bloke next door,’ Jik said, standing up, ‘can leave a bomb to blow the legs off children.’

He pulled Sarah to her feet. ‘What do you think I paint?’ he said. ‘Vases of flowers?’ He looked down at me. ‘Horses?’

We parted the next morning at Melbourne airport, where we seemed to have spent a good deal of our lives.

‘It seems strange, saying goodbye,’ Sarah said.

‘I’ll be coming back,’ I said.

They nodded.

‘Well...’ We looked at watches.

It was like all partings. There wasn’t much to say. I saw in their eyes, as they must have seen in mine, that the past ten days would quickly become a nostalgic memory. Something we did in our crazy youth. Distant.

‘Would you do it all again?’ Jik said.

I thought inconsequentially of surviving wartime pilots looking back from forty years on. Had their achievements been worth the blood and sweat and risk of death: did they regret?.

I smiled. Forty years on didn’t matter. What the future made of the past was its own tragedy. What we ourselves did on the day was all that counted.

‘I guess I would.’

I leaned forward and kissed Sarah, my oldest friend’s wife.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Find one of your own.’