Whispering Death

54

Almost noon now.

As Mara Niekirk fed another set of forged provenance papers and fake catalogues through the shredder, a shape passed the window: Tayla, chasing Natalia around the bonfire, bouncy and smiling in a way that inflamed her. The unwarranted happiness, the baby talk, the bovine simplicity, and the perfect teeth, hair, nose, breasts and legs. Mara despised the nanny and often let it show. And why not? Tayla was too dumb to recognise the sarcasm.

Stupid cow.

Mara contemplated a perfect world, one in which she had no husband-or the one she had was the brains of the outfit, a man like her father or her grandfather. Or, she had an attractive lover, one who made her feel desired. One who found her arousing, not some spy-cam image.

What is it with voyeurs? Mara wondered. What happens when they encounter actual flesh and blood? Does it all just vanish? Mara was exhausted from picking up after her husband’s screw-ups.

‘Get a move on.’

‘Stop rushing me,’ he said. He was flipping through paperwork going back years.

Did she trust him to find everything that needed the shredder or the match? ‘Here, swap places.’

And she was right not to trust him. Within a minute of taking over from him she’d found an unmounted Charles Blackman drawing that was in fact a fake, together with the ‘receipt’ that proved they’d bought it from an Adelaide gallery.

She glanced across at the portable TV she’d mounted on the desk. The noon news update, the face of their burglar flashing across the screen again. Have you seen…? Police are concerned for the welfare of… And according to the Herald Sun, the bitch had rented a safe-deposit box at the bank.

That’s what had tipped the balance for Mara: what’s the betting the Klee, with my prints all over it, is in that box? If that woman is found alive, Mara thought, she’ll want to bargain her way out of trouble. ‘I can give you a crooked art dealer.’ And, alive or dead, if she’s rented a safe-deposit box, the police will want to search it.

Mara grunted. The house in Vanuatu was looking pretty good right now. She glanced across at her husband, intending to suggest they get an earlier flight, but the idiot was watching Tayla through the window. Showing more flesh than clothing, as usual. Mara was incandescent. ‘Keep your filthy mind on the job.’

‘I am.’

She stewed. It made sense for the nanny to accompany them to Port Vila, but, good God almighty, could she stand it?

‘I’ve a good mind to sack the bitch.’

Warren drew himself up and said, with great dignity, that a young child shouldn’t be uprooted and plonked down somewhere new without some consistency-in this case, Tayla.

‘What crap,’ Mara said and scowled out at the nanny, still dancing with their daughter. She shook her head. Did the little cow even know what was fuelling the bonfire? ‘Genuine’ Nolans and Boyds and Chippendales, that’s what.

Meanwhile the shredder was shaking itself apart. Jammed probably, not that Warren had noticed. Mara closed her eyes briefly, drawing strength. The first thing to do in Vanuatu was disappear Warren and the nanny, preferably at sea, and then hire some native woman to raise the child.

And later start again somewhere new. Thailand? Bali? No, Europe. A chance to get out of this primitive corner of the globe.

‘Warren? The shredder?’

He jerked. ‘Right, sorry.’

The wind changed direction. Smoke licked at the open window and drifted into the room. Her husband, too dumb to find his way out of a paper bag, failed to notice.

‘Shut the window,’ Mara said, barely able to squeeze the words out.

A voice behind her said, ‘Excuse me, Mrs Niekirk.’

‘What now?’ shrieked Mara.

Tayla and Natalia had somehow disappeared from the garden and materialised at the door to the study. With a cute little squirm, a cute ash smudge on her cheek, the nanny said, ‘Talia got smoke in her eyes, didn’t you, gorgeous? She wants her mummy.’

Natalia flung up her arms. Mara backed away. ‘Can’t you see we’re in the middle of something?’

‘Sorry, Mrs Niekirk.’

‘And her name is Natalia, not Talia, not Nat, not-’

‘Mummeee…’

Mara turned a raptorial glint on to her daughter. ‘I have told you, darling, many, many times, that I cannot abide being called “mummy”.’

‘ Mama.’

‘Well?’

The child lost courage and Tayla stepped in with her air of practicality and capability. ‘A quick cuddle should do the trick, Mrs Niekirk, and we’ll be out of your hair.’

Mara eyed the nanny. ‘What’s that you’re wearing? I can practically see that stupid butterfly tattoo.’

A tattoo that Warren adored, the way it flexed inside the young woman’s groin, centimetres from her pubic hair, every time he replayed the footage of her undressing.

Tayla went very still. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

Whoops, thought Mara, not really caring.