Whispering Death

39

It did take hours. When the Niekirks were alone again and Tayla was somewhere in the house, doing whatever it was that nannies did, Mara Niekirk slapped her husband’s face. ‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’

He screwed up his handsome features in concentration, but the question defeated him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Mister Lord of the Manor, antagonising the cops. Do you want them to suspect us of something?’

‘But you said yourself the Arkley might be a fake,’ said Warren, sulky and aggrieved, ‘and that inspector guy noticed straight off the Klee was missing. What, do you want them poking their noses in?’

Mara closed her eyes, rocking with pain. The Klee. A twenty-first birthday present from Grandfather Krasnov and her most treasured possession. She knuckled away the tears and fed the rage. ‘Wouldn’t normal people want the police to investigate if they’d been burgled? Moron.’

They were in the kitchen, the coffee pot bubbling. Mara had been dying for coffee all morning but no way was she going to make any while the cops were present, obliging her to offer them some. She especially hated the young detective, Murphy. She had that lithe, sporty look Warren liked. I bet she wears a jogging bra and white Bonds, thought Mara. I bet she drinks after-work beers with her male colleagues, and she calls them ‘mate’.

‘Something happened here,’ she continued. ‘There was a break-in. Witnesses, a formal report. The police have to investigate, it’s what they do. And what we do is play the role of victims. But no, you have to antagonise them.’

A gorgeous fuckwit, her husband. It always felt good giving him a tongue-lashing, and God knows she’d done it often enough over the years. Mara’s eyes filled with tears again, pain and rage. Late morning, and she wondered if coffee was going to do the trick. What she needed was a stiff drink.

Thinking about it further, she saw one central reason why the police had made a big deal of the break-in: Warren and his damn plane. He’d tried to play the big shot wheeler-dealer, and where had it got them? Unwelcome attention not only from the Federal Government but now also a local police inspector. Of course the man was going to prick up his ears when he heard the name ‘Niekirk’ again. Otherwise the break-in wouldn’t have attracted much police attention at all.

She scowled at her husband. Be careful what you wish for, she told herself, for the millionth time. She’d wished, five years earlier, for a good-looking hunk to hang on her arm, and that’s exactly what she’d got-but God, the brains of a gnat.

She paused. What had Warren wished for, back when he was courting her? Her family connections, a whiff of the arts? He should have stuck to real estate and sleeping with teenage girls. He had absolutely no eye for quality, only cheap effects. For example, she’d slaved to create a garden that would be visited by tourists, talked about, photographed for the glossy magazines, and did he know the name of a single plant?

‘Sorry, Mar,’ he said now, reading her face.

‘So you should be.’

That fucking plane. Well, the man who’d sold it to them was feeding the sharks off Sydney Heads now. Whispering death indeed- he hadn’t seen or heard a thing, before she conked him on the head.

‘Tell me, Warren, here and now, are there any more cock-ups on the horizon? Any more little surprises for me? Any more messes for me to clean up?’

He flushed. She realised he was standing close to a block of sharp knives, and moderated her tone and manner. ‘You can tell me, sweetheart. Forewarned is forearmed.’

‘Didn’t you notice? We lost more than the Klee.’

She was genuinely puzzled. ‘Like what?’

‘That icon in the walkway.’

She had to think for a moment. She had found it in her grandfather’s effects. Just an old relic, religious nonsense, worm-riddled timber, worth maybe a few hundred dollars, not the kind of thing that interested her one way or the other, but Warren had fallen in love with it. He said it was haunting, beautiful, peaceful-wank words like that.

So she’d hung it where she’d rarely have to see it. ‘No loss.’

A squeaky little voice came from the doorway:

‘Excuse me, Mrs Niekirk.’

‘Oh, what?’ she snarled.

Tayla blanched. ‘Excuse me, but I can’t find Natalia’s inhaler, I think we left it in Sydney.’

‘ We?’

‘ I. I did. She’s wheezing quite badly.’

Dripping acid, Mara said, ‘Well, why don’t you hunt out the prescription, and get into the car, and drive out onto the road, and point the car towards Waterloo, and go into the chemist, and get a new one? Think you can do that?’

‘Yes, Mrs Niekirk.’

Tayla seemed to evaporate from the doorway rather than scuttle or even walk away. Warren watched her go and Mara wanted to wipe the look off his face. ‘Put your eyes back in your head and your dick back in your pants,’ she said.

The look he shot her was a mix of guilt and triumph. Yes, she’d caught him ogling the nanny again, but why? Because Mara didn’t satisfy him. And never had.

A fly on the wall could watch all this and wonder how I got pregnant, Mara thought, with almost a pang.

Speaking of ogling the nanny…

‘Is the teddy bear cam working?’

He gave her a cruel, concupiscent look. ‘Why? Want to look at Tayla getting her gear off?’

‘I want to look at our burglar, you fool.’

His face cleared. Pennies dropped. ‘Oh, right.’

Horror stories from other married couples had persuaded them to install a teddy bear spy camera in the nursery. How do you know your nanny isn’t a drug addict? What if she’s got a temper and takes it out on the baby? What if she sneaks her boyfriend in to have sex while your baby smothers to death? Hence a pinhole lens concealed as one of the teddy bear’s bead eyes, a digital feed recorded on a hard drive.

The camera worked beautifully-but two things had become apparent to Mara: every nanny they hired was blameless; and her husband liked to watch them undressing on his laptop. Not that Mara minded too much, it kept him occupied. And now it might prove useful in other ways.

She glanced out of the kitchen window. Tayla was bundling Natalia into the car. ‘We’ve got maybe forty minutes.’

‘I’m on it.’

About the only thing he was.

Five minutes later, Mara was jabbing her forefinger at Warren’s laptop screen. ‘Freeze it there.’

Their thief was a young woman dressed in black. They’d watched her scouting around the nursery quickly, offering no clear image of her face, but then, for a brief second, she’d gazed straight at the teddy bear. ‘ She was here,’ said Mara, outraged. ‘I recognise her. She rolled up one day last week, wanting to look at the garden. It crossed my mind at the time she might be a cop.’ Warren was peering at the image, eyes a little glazed, probably hoping the burglar would start undressing for him. ‘Wakey, wakey.’

He jumped. ‘What?’

‘Can you clean the image up, print out a head-and-shoulders shot?’

‘No problem,’ said Warren, the go-to man when you wanted something practical done.

Mara chewed her lip. ‘How did she find us? Who knew about the Klee? Was it stolen to order?’

‘And the icon.’

‘Forget the icon. It’s got nothing to do with anything. The Klee is another matter. We need to put the word out.’

‘Where?’

‘Where do you think? Not that many places you can move high end art in these parts.’