Whispering Death

46

By 3 p.m. on Monday, Grace was back on the ferry, wearing one of her going-to-the-bank outfits, a slim-line black skirt, charcoal tights, cream silk shirt, bright red waisted jacket. The glasses with the purple rims, hair in a French coil, and carrying a cheap red leather satchel on a shoulder strap, large enough to hold the Paul Klee painting and everything else. Flat shoes; she never wore heels. You can’t run in heels.

Leaving the Golf near the Rosebud police station, she rented a Commodore and by 4.30 was parked behind the K-Mart in Waterloo. The Safeway car park was closer to the VineTrust, but a corner of her mind said: Don’t park too close to the bank.

Then she was in the foyer. Monday, close to closing time, so she was expecting a busy, distracting atmosphere, but the bank was quiet, two tellers finalising the day’s figures, the financial planner closing the venetian blinds, and one customer, a young guy in painter’s overalls, paint dotting his boots and the toolbox at his feet.

Suddenly Rowan Ely was crossing the grey carpet, wearing his I’m-so-glad-you-bank-with-us and I-wish-I-could-peel-your-clothes-off smile. ‘Mrs Grace! Always a pleasure.’

‘Mr Ely.’

‘Please, please, it’s Rowan. Now, what can we do for you today?’

Grace had thought about this. She’d had a similar encounter with the manager on Friday, when she’d stowed the Klee in her safe-deposit box. Today it was her intention to clean out the box, never to return. She’d be missed eventually; Ely and his staff would scratch their heads over her-but that would be later, maybe weeks later, when it didn’t matter. Arousing their curiosity today was quite different. So she said she wondered if they could sit in his office and discuss some of the VineTrust’s business banking opportunities.

‘Certainly. Follow me.’

Grace followed. Behind her the housepainter was saying, ‘…open a business account for, you know, me painting business.’

The words faded to nothing as Ely shut his door. Grace sat erect on the chair facing Ely’s desk. She was never coquettish. She never flirted or signalled, consciously or unconsciously, but men always responded to her as if she did these things. Rowan Ely beamed at her as if his assistance to this beautiful woman had been special, and especially noted by her. It gave him a peculiar glow.

They talked for a while. He showed her brochures, swung his computer monitor around to show graphs full of brightly coloured lines. They settled on one of his ‘products’ and then he was escorting her out to the foyer, chatting away, saying she should come earlier next time, they were about to close, and if she came earlier they could have a cup of tea and a chat, even a proper drink, his eyes on her chest the whole time.

That’s why she noticed the shotgun before he did.

She shifted her gaze to the man holding it, and recalled that the housepainter had been wearing dark glasses, a black beanie and a bristly moustache earlier, when she’d entered the bank. The beanie was over his face now, but the point was, she’d stuffed up. After all, she was the hiding-in-plain-sight expert, and should have been able to tell when someone else was doing it. Instead, like an idiot, she’d been concerned for the bank’s carpet, hoping the guy didn’t have paint on the bottoms of his boots. And now he was waving some kind of sawn-off shotgun in her face.