Whispering Death

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 decor 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?’

Audrey had thought about that. ‘Write down their number plate, plus time, date and location. Collect empty spray cans so the police can take fingerprints.’

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.

The patrol car drew adjacent. It idled a while, then began to creep past. The driver was trying to steer, watch and manipulate the spotlight. His swivelnecking was inefficient and too regular. Timing it carefully, Grace darted across the road and slithered into the ditch on the other side. A rough-edged stone smacked her knee bone. Mosquitoes whined. She recovered and, at a half crouch, crept along the ditch, keeping pace with the car.

Soon she reached one of the culverts: concrete drain pipe, heaped sand and storm wrack, water-flattened dead grass. Careful not to trample the grass or leave footprints in the sand and grit, she parted the stalks at the entrance to the pipe, releasing stale air, musty-smelling rather than damp. The gap yawned, too small for her body but not her tools or the paintings. She opened the camera and pocketed the memory card, then stowed the camera in a waterproof bag with the icon and the Klee. She shoved the bag deep inside the drain; kept the pocketknife and change of clothing.

Meanwhile the police had called in backup. She could hear a siren, see headlights. As she slipped into the grounds of the farmhouse opposite the cypress hedge, a second patrol car arrived, followed by a divisional van. About six cops, she thought, scouting around for the best cover. The closest was a trampoline that had been tipped onto its side. After that, garden beds and the house, sheds to one side. If she could reach the fruit trees and the dam she…

A shout. She’d been spotted.

Grace darted behind the trampoline. It was rectangular, black mesh mounted to thick galvanised legs and frame. In daytime it would offer no concealment at all. Grace was relying on the confounding shadows it would throw if a torch swept over it at night.

As she crouched there, a farmhouse porch light came on, the front door opened and a man and a woman stepped out. They wore pyjamas and the man, clutching at his drooping waistband, said, ‘What’s going on?’

‘And you are?’ said one of the cops, a heavy man, bristling with belligerence.

‘We live here. What’s going on? Who are you?’

‘My name is Constable Tankard and I’d like you to step back inside please,’ the cop said.

‘But what’s going on?’

‘An intruder. Have you seen anyone running past here anytime in the last few minutes?’

‘We’ve been asleep.’

‘Please, both of you, go back inside. This person could be dangerous.’

‘Dangerous?’

‘Please, go inside, lock all your doors and windows.’

‘But what if he’s in there?’

Grace heard rather than sensed the frustration, and watched the man named Tankard approach the house. He banged heavily past the occupants, into the house. Then he came out again. ‘All clear.’

‘You sure?’ said the husband.

Tankard ignored the couple. He began to shout and eventually some order settled on the milling uniforms. Grace heard them call reassurances to each other as they began to split up. She started to back away.

An elderly woman came wheezing in from the road by torchlight. A constable who’d been left with the cars shouted, ‘Police. Stop right there.’

The old woman jumped. Her torch jerked, the light finding the trampoline. Grace ran.

‘Oi!’

Grace zigzagged, darting feints left and right, into the lee of a pump shed, then a garden shed, a fowl house, a farm ute, a thicket of oleander bushes. She reached the fruit trees and then the dam as the police converged on the officer who had spotted her. Still carrying her bag of spare clothing, she slipped into the water and submerged herself among the reeds at the water’s edge. She waited.

Before long, her teeth rattled, her limbs shook, iciness reaching deep into her core. She felt for the pocketknife and clamped the plastic handle between her jaws and continued to shake. The police were shouting, five men and one woman. They were excited, jumpy. One remained standing near the trampoline, the others split up to circle the dam. Grace peeked: they were keeping hard to the edge, shining their torches into the tangled reeds. Scooping mud from beneath her, she pasted it over the paleness of her face and hands. Now she was a black shape among a mess of shapes-indistinguishable, surely.

It was Grace’s experience that humans possess a kind of sixth sense, a residue of instinct for one another’s proximity, and so she averted her gaze and emptied herself of thoughts, or personality. She was nothing, a featureless blob of matter. She didn’t gasp or move when a heavy black shoe stood on her leg, squelching it deeper into the muddy reed bed. The torchlight fingered the reeds and then the pressure let up and the man moved a short distance away, to step into the mud again and poke around with his torchlight.

‘Waste of time,’ said the woman cop some time later.

‘Yeah.’

Grace stayed where she was through the long hours. It was possible that the police had packed it in and gone home, equally possible that they’d left a couple of officers to watch for her.

At dawn on Thursday there was stirring in the farmhouse. A woman’s voice called, ‘You two must be miserable, how about a cooked breakfast?’

‘Coffee would be good,’ the man named Tankard said.

‘Yeah, coffee.’

‘Don’t be silly, you need more than that,’ the woman said.

‘Catch the guy?’ her husband asked.

‘He’s long gone,’ Tankard said, disgust and resignation in his voice.

Grace waited. The woman brought coffee, toast, eggs and bacon to the sentry cops, and now the air was filled with cheery commiserations and bragging. Grace slithered out of the dam. She crawled on her belly and through a fence into a paddock of unmown spring grass. Still she crawled. Later, the vines. Here she got to her feet. She ran.

The running warmed and loosened her, even as the water sloshed in her shoes and the wet clothing chafed her skin. After three kilometres she came to the township, and, crouching behind a line of bushes, watched her car for several minutes. Nothing, and no action at the house, only a kind of poleaxed stillness that said no one would rise before noon.

Checking that she was unobserved, Grace stripped off her wet clothes. She used the shirt and knickers to wipe off the bulk of the mud, then washed the rest away with her drinking water. Then she dressed in the clothes from the waterproof bag-underwear, a white satin blouse, tailored black pants and strappy sandals, finally finger combing her short hair. There was still mud in the roots of her hair, her fingernails, even her ears, but at a distance she’d pass for a brisk young woman off to her office job. She got into the Camry and drove away.

Thursday was rubbish collection day in Waterloo, bins waiting outside every front gate. Grace dumped the soiled clothes into a side street bin. Then she drove to the motel in Berwick, checked out, checked into another in Dandenong. Here she showered and slept fitfully, still shivering a little, a residual chill from the muddy water in which she’d spent the night.

Late afternoon she bought a small digital camera powered by AAA batteries and replaced its memory card with the one she’d pocketed after the break-in at the Niekirks’. She scrolled through her photographs. They were sharp and clear.

She collapsed on the thin bed cover and stared at the marks on the ceiling. The icon was a part of her heart and her bones, and now she was falling in love with the Klee. Otherwise she’d walk away this minute, leave them both to rot in the culvert.

Unless there was a flash flood, they’d be safe until the morning.