Whispering Death

43

On Saturday, Grace nailed a hook to her sitting-room wall and positioned the icon and stepped back and tried to flow into it, as if it might tell her something about herself. Deep peace, she thought, losing herself in the gold leaf virgin and baby. Healing light.

But she didn’t have the patience for too much of that. She scrolled through her Niekirk photographs again. Perhaps the little Klee painting might tell her something about the Niekirks that would fill in the gaps.

She drove to Torquay, found an Internet cafe, and logged into a couple of stolen artworks sites: Art Loss, on which galleries and individuals listed stolen and lost works of art, and Trace It, which aimed to trap thieves offering stolen paintings to auction houses and dealers.

She ruminated as she searched. There’d been enough dodgy invoices and other documents in the Niekirks’ study to indicate they were crooked, so what was the story with the Klee? Stolen, presumably. From a collector? A gallery? Here? Europe or America? She knew that small galleries were notoriously under-protected. Even if they could afford first rate security systems, they couldn’t afford the staff to monitor them. Or they switched their systems on only at night. Meanwhile, art thieves were often well organised. They stole to order, or had buyers in mind, and were able to forge impressive pedigrees- provenance papers, sales and auction records, catalogue entries.

She froze.

She’d found the Klee.

Felsen in der Blumenbeet, stolen from a gallery in the Swiss town of Liestal, in 1995.

How had it found its way to Australia? Where had it been since 1995? Had the Niekirks commissioned the theft? Did Mara drool over it in private every night? Maybe the Niekirks were intermediaries. Or the Klee was a means to an end-collateral in a loan, for example, or finance for a drug deal. Or a ransom was being sought from the gallery or the insurance company. But so many years later? And would the Niekirks risk auctioning the painting in Australia? If it came with convincing papers, would anyone check? Maybe they had a Japanese collector in mind. Grace had sometimes sold small paintings and art deco jewellery to collectors in Japan, where it was possible to claim legal title to stolen works after only two years of possession.

It was pointless to speculate. The beautiful little Klee was hers now.

In a safe-deposit box on the other side of Port Phillip Bay.

Perhaps she could ransom it back to the Niekirks?

No. It was beautiful. She wanted it.

Out of curiosity, she Googled ‘theft of Russian icons’ and learned that customs officers at Sheremetyevo Airport seize 6000 icons each year-maybe only a tenth of those being smuggled out of Russia in suitcases, diplomatic bags and general cargo. The Russian Mafia was involved, too. In the upheavals of the 1990s it wasn’t only nuclear arms that were stolen but also icons and paintings from the country’s galleries.

But Grace knew that her icon had been stolen four or five decades earlier than that, from her family in Harbin.

Before returning to Breamlea, she checked her e-mail.

One message. Steve Finch.

‘ You hit the wrong people Wed night. Got you on camera. Flashing your pic around. No cops involved yet, but not nice people. Give us a call, urgent.’

She closed down immediately, left the cafe and walked along the beach, gnawing at the inside of her cheek. She needed to think about Finch and the Niekirks, but Galt was there in her head.

One day he’d got a phone call. She was with him on the sofa with the Harbour view, and he had one hand inside her pants-lovely slender fingers, really, for such a cruel man-and her head was resting against his, so she heard quite clearly the voice in his ear saying: ‘Woof, woof.’

Meaning dog, meaning the dogs of the police force, the Ethical Standards officers, were sniffing around.

Galt had said ‘Fuck,’ shoved her aside and simply walked out of the flat.

She’d tried to imagine what he’d do, where he’d go. They’d been after him before, he told her one night, both of them slick from lovemaking. ‘There was this sergeant, looking at me funny for a few weeks.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Put a bullet in his letterbox.’

The message plain: this has your name on it.

‘What happened?’

‘He transferred to a station in the bush, that’s what happened.’

‘To you, I mean.’

A raised eyebrow. ‘Nothing.’

But this time something had happened. The dogs had come for her a few days later, threatening serious jail time in order to get at him. Sweetening the deal with the offer of witness protection. Instead, she’d protected herself.

Her aloneness had been her chief advantage. No friends, family or work colleagues to tug at her heart, no one who might unwittingly or deliberately feed information to the wrong people. No habits, gym routine, favourite pub or hobby magazine subscription that might give her away. And rather than become someone with a definable character and lifestyle, she’d become a flibbertigibbet, a young woman who seemed to change her looks, job and car every few months. The fact that there wasn’t a job didn’t matter, it was all about appearances. She gave people a box to put her in. She didn’t do anything to attract the law-well, apart from being a career thief. No speeding tickets, no drink driving, no arguments with noisy neighbours. When the Breamlea house was burgled in her absence last year, she hadn’t reported it, not wanting a police investigation, a fingerprint search. And she’d told herself that she could walk away in an instant. If she were in bed and heard a noise, she wouldn’t think ‘It’s a burglar’, she’d think ‘It’s the man who has come to kill me.’

She hadn’t counted on a threat from another direction.

Grace returned to the main street and found a public phone. She didn’t give Finch a chance to talk. ‘You know who it is. There’s a payphone in the 7-Eleven around the corner from where you live. I’ll call you on it in five.’

‘How do you know the number of-’

She cut him off. She counted down the minutes, called the 7-Eleven payphone and demanded: ‘What exactly did they say?’

‘Hello to you, too.’

‘ Steve.’

‘Okay, okay. Look, I’ve done a bit of business with them over the years, so they know I handle the odd objet d’art, and they came into the shop yesterday, showed me your picture.’

‘They asked if you knew me?’

‘Yes. I said no.’

‘Then what did they say?’

‘They said if you, or anyone else, came in wanting to offload a little Klee oil painting, I had to let them know, pronto.’

Grace chewed on that.

‘You robbed the wrong people, Sue.’

‘Let me think about this.’

But she didn’t hang up.

‘Tell you what, we can make a few dollars out of this,’ Finch said.

‘How?’

‘I’ll tell them you did make contact, and it was quick because you were nervous, and you told me you’d heard about me on the grapevine as someone who deals in art from time to time, and I asked did you have something in particular you wanted me to handle, and you showed me a picture, and it was a Paul Klee oil painting, and I said I might be able to shift it for you.’ He paused. ‘That’s what I’ll tell them.’

‘In fewer words than that, I hope. Steve, get to the point.’

‘Okay, so I tell them I can get the painting back for them, only you want ten grand. Five each, Suze.’

Five grand was five grand. If she didn’t return the painting, they’d continue to hunt her down. Maybe even inform the police.

‘I can’t get at it until Monday.’

‘You’re doing the right thing, Suze,’ Steve Finch said.