Whispering Death

44

Mara Niekirk was a good hater.

And she really hated Steven Finch.

Late Saturday afternoon: he’d driven down from Williamstown all excited, saying, ‘Guess what?’

Warren was somewhere in the house, her daughter and the nanny somewhere else in the house, so Mara was obliged to deal with the grubby little man. She wasn’t in the mood for games, merely stared at him.

‘That chick you showed me a picture of, she was in the shop this afternoon. Definitely her, and she definitely has the painting.’

‘Really,’ said Mara flatly.

‘I know,’ said Finch, shaking his head at the wonder of it. ‘Couldn’t believe it myself.’

‘It’s just as well we notified you,’ Mara said.

‘Exactly.’

Mara watched him wander around her sitting room as though he owned it, tilting a vase to read the maker’s mark on the bottom, peering into her china cabinet, cocking his head at her Howard Arkley.

He pointed his chin at it. ‘Original?’

‘Yes,’ said Mara, wondering what his game was. Had he bought the Klee from the thief? And she wasn’t entirely convinced that he hadn’t commissioned the theft in the first place.

Meanwhile the moron continued to examine her Arkley, his face dubious. ‘Easy to fake, that airbrushed-suburban-house-in-a-riot-of-fluorescent-colours schtick.’

Mara recalled the Dickerson. ‘You would know.’

‘Now, now.’

Mara said, ‘You want a finder’s fee? Is that it?’

‘The woman who stole it wants a fee. I’m happy to be the middleman.’

‘Expecting that we’ll be appropriately grateful.’

Finch shrugged, still looking at the Arkley painting. ‘Opportunity knocks, and all that.’

Mara watched him from her fat round armchair. If she sat there long enough, addressing his scrawny back, maybe it would dawn on him what a rude bastard he was. ‘Leaving aside the money for the moment, what if we said we’d changed our minds, didn’t want the painting returned? What then?’

Finch swung around on her with a sharkish smile. ‘You’d just give it up? A beautiful painting like that? Maybe worth millions?’

And, without invitation, he was sprawling in the chair opposite, his bony knees too close. Mara’s skin crawled. Somewhere in the depths of the house, delighted laughter broke out, and she glanced at the diamond encrusted Cartier on her wrist: Natalia’s bath time. She also heard the deeper note of adult laughter. Two adults, Warren and the tart who called herself a nanny.

‘I have things to do. Get to the point, then get out.’

A flash of something nasty in Finch’s face. ‘It’s not all about you, Mara. There are other people who might be interested.’

‘How much?’

Finch shifted on the expensive fabric of her armchair. ‘Twenty thousand,’ he said. ‘I managed to beat her down from fifty.’

‘That was big of you,’ Mara said.

The seconds ticked by and she watched him expressionlessly. Emanated a chill, perhaps, but that was normal. Shadows were gathering beyond the window, populating her garden with lumpish shapes. A young woman perhaps known to this awful man had stood out there one afternoon and chatted about the beauty of the landscape, the headiness of the perfumed air, blah, blah, blah. And then had come back and robbed her.

Playing for time, she said, ‘It is a beautiful painting.’

The relief was palpable. ‘It is, it really is.’

It was as if he needed to act now, before his luck slipped away. ‘Twenty thousand?’ she asked.

He leaned forward until their knees touched and she wanted to gag. ‘Look on it as good-will money, Mara.’

‘You get the money only when we get the painting.’

Steven Finch held his arms wide. ‘Not a problem. I can get it to you after work on Monday.’

When evening deepened into night, Mara sought out the nanny. ‘We’ll be gone tomorrow and Monday.’

Feeling super responsible, she added: ‘I don’t want Natalia to wake up in the morning and wonder where we are.’

Tayla, reading in bed after an exhausting day, blinked at Mara, who was a forbidding shape backlit by the hallway light. ‘But tomorrow’s my day off.’

‘All right, all right,’ Mara snarled. ‘Triple pay. Satisfied?’

‘I mean, what about Natalia?’

‘What about her?’

Tayla tried and failed to find a common moral, ethical and commonsensical ground with her boss. ‘She was looking forward to Mummy and Daddy taking her to the pirate ship playground tomorrow.’

‘ She’ll… have… you,’ said Mara, and Tayla saw the warning signs: rapidly blinking eyes, heightened colour and clenched jaw and fists.

She thought hard about the triple pay, and swallowed. ‘I guess I could take her.’

‘What a good idea,’ said Mara, hugely bored already, heading back down the hallway to her husband’s room. ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’

‘Almost.’

But he wasn’t, and she told him what she thought about that for a while. That had him shoving clothing and toiletries into an overnight bag, until, at long last, Mara was able to drive the Mercedes van out onto Goddard Road.

‘I didn’t say goodbye to Natalia.’

‘I said it for you,’ Mara said, wondering why on earth he wanted to say goodbye to a sleeping child. What was the point?

They set off in the moonlight. After a while she relaxed, and, with almost sleepy nonchalance and sensual grace, steered the big van up through Frankston and on to Eastlink. What they were about to do, use Finch to find the woman who’d robbed them, gave her a peculiarly sexual tug deep inside. She fondled the bulge in Warren’s trousers for a while, until he gasped and folded over his lap and said, ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

The road unwound all the way up to the tunnel and across to the city’s northern exits and finally into downtown Melbourne and out the other side to Williamstown.