Whispering Death

56

Grace had to run now.

But first she had to go home. Retrieve the icon, then run.

Home. She caught herself. The word aroused complicated feelings of achievement and loss, impermanence and security. She’d attached it to too many houses over the years. An orphanage and several foster homes, every one of them run by strangers; some cruel, none warm. They’d been where she lived, and so she’d used the word home.

But the Breamlea home she’d bought fair and square-admittedly from the proceeds of crime, but she alone had selected it. She alone had decorated, managed and lived in it.

Yet the moment she drove her Golf onto the ferry at Sorrento, that Tuesday afternoon, she knew that the Breamlea house was just that, a house, a shell, like all the others back along the short, tumultuous years of her life. All she’d have when she left Breamlea, ninety minutes from now, would be the Golf, a pocketful of cash and the icon. Not the lovely little Klee painting. Not her fake ID, her coins, her stamps, her photos of the houses she’d intended to burgle again, the Harbin photograph.

She queued to buy coffee on board, and there was her face, front page of the Age and the Herald Sun, heaped beside the cash register. Grace went cold and her skin prickled.

The man behind the counter saw the direction of her gaze and performed a kind of flirting, comical double-take. ‘Gorgeous, if I didn’t know different, I’d say that was you.’

Managing a light laugh, Grace said doubtfully, ‘You think I look like her?’

Together they examined the photograph of the woman held hostage by a man with a shotgun. ‘Yeah, a bit.’

‘I guess so,’ Grace said, knowing better than to deny it vehemently. She could feel the gunman’s meaty forearm at her throat, almost smell him. And her jaw ached, bruised by the twin barrels. ‘Poor woman,’ she said. ‘Must have been scary.’

‘I’ll say,’ the man said. He shook his head. ‘And it’s not going to end good, is it?’

‘No.’

‘No.’

Grace bought coffee and a copy of the Age and, trembling a little, took them to a table under a starboard window. She felt scrutinised, trapped, no way out of this steel box until it reached its destination. Galt would see the photograph. He would come.

In fact, she thought bitterly, I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise for two years; I’ve been living on borrowed time.

Think how easily he’d found her that first day.

Grace forced herself to sip her coffee and read her newspaper. She lingered over a sidebar story on the front page, about the senior cop at the siege. His name was Challis. Apparently highly regarded, currently in hot water for speaking out publicly against a lack of police resources, incurring the wrath of force command and the police minister. He looked hunted to Grace, a man casting repressive, vigilant looks at the probing cameras on High Street last night.

On page two was a grainy snap of the escape to the car, captioned Gunman outwits police.

No, I did, thought Grace. The blanket idea was mine.

She turned the pages.

Steve Finch was at the bottom of page three. Gunned down outside his home, known to police, no apparent motive.

Grace stared out at the choppy waters of the bay. The Niekirks? Looked like. Thieves and murderers.

She climbed the stairs to the upper deck and stood where she’d not be heard over the booming of the exhausts. Taking her iPhone from her bum bag, she looked up the phone number for CIU in Waterloo.

‘Inspector Challis’s phone, Constable Sutton speaking.’

‘I’d like to speak to the inspector, please.’

‘I’m sorry, he’s out. Can I take a message?’

‘Could I have his mobile number?’

A pause. Sutton said, ‘I’m afraid not. What’s this about?’

‘I have information that will interest him.’

‘About what?’

‘What happened at the bank.’

‘You can tell me.’

‘Could I have his e-mail address? I want to send him some photos.’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not prepared to do that. Why don’t you-’ She cut the connection and sat for a while. What she wanted to do was tell the sad-faced policeman named Challis about the gunman, the contents of her safe-deposit box, the connection between Steve Finch and the Niekirks. She wanted to e-mail him her photos of the Klee and the icon in situ, the close-ups of the Niekirks’ dodgy invoices, deeds and provenance papers…

It could wait. Right now they were calling drivers to their cars. She headed down to the Golf and waited for the ferry to dock and unload.

Finally to Breamlea. Slowing at the outskirts, she crawled along the little main street, eyeing the houses in a mental goodbye. The place probably wouldn’t have remained a haven anyway. Lifestyle writers had discovered it and that always brought doom.

She stepped inside her front door and into the sitting room and Ian Galt said, ‘Hello, Neet.’