Whispering Death

59

Romona Ludowyk told Challis that she was a jack of all trades.

‘Curator of the University’s permanent collection, but also chief conservator if any item we own or buy is damaged in any way. And sometimes,’ she said, ‘I even lecture.’

She smiled. They were on an upper floor of the Arts Faculty building at Monash University’s Clayton campus. The unlovely outer suburbs complemented the unlovely university buildings and stretched as far as Challis could see, through the window behind Ludowyk. The sun beat against the glass and the room was stuffy. The wind howled around the building, too, shaking it minutely.

‘You get used to it,’ the academic said with a smile, seeing his body register the movement.

She was short, slight as a bird, her greying dark hair in a roll at the back of her head. Half-lenses perched on the end of her nose, and she glanced down through them now, at the Paul Klee and the little Sydney Long aquatint resting side by side on a long bench.

She tugged at a powerful light on a counter-balanced arm, positioning it above the art works. The air around her was scented with oils and cleaning agents, and the available surfaces were littered with cloths, brushes, bottled chemicals. Challis had also noted plenty of books, a couple of grubby computers, a colour laser printer, lab coats on wall hooks, packets of latex gloves, microscopes, a large contraption that he supposed might be a dehumidifier.

Ludowyk screwed a jeweller’s lens into her eye socket, leaned over and began to examine the Klee and the Long more closely, angling them to the light, peering at the frames and backing. She straightened, removing the lens. ‘We’d need to run chemical tests to be sure, but I’m confident that both are genuine.’

A knock on the door and a young man entered, as ravaged as a crack addict, dressed in torn jeans and a T-shirt. He said immediately, ‘Any chance of an extension on the essay, Romona?’

She waved her hand at him. ‘Friday at the latest.’

‘You’re a doll,’ he said and disappeared.

Ludowyk eyed Challis with amusement. ‘The dope-head look is an affectation. I doubt he takes anything stronger than aspirin. Clever, too.’

‘You like teaching?’

Another smile. ‘Frankly, I’d rather work with the art than those who profess to study it.’

Challis wondered where he stood. He’d rather work with the evidence than the people who left it? ‘I’m glad you’re not teaching this afternoon.’

She snorted. ‘Not that universities teach anymore. Revenue farming mostly.’

Challis nodded. ‘I can see a day when the police force is less about solving crimes than running workshops.’

Ludowyk bent her head over the Klee again, and murmured, ‘This was stolen.’

‘You can tell by looking?’

She straightened her back. ‘See here in the corner, flecks of-at a guess-watercolour paint.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I’ll check the stolen art register in a moment, but my guess is this was stolen from a regional gallery somewhere in Europe. Little or no security. The thief snatched it off the wall and walked out with it, and smuggled it out of the country by posing as a tourist on a painting holiday. He or she painted an inept watercolour over the Klee and concealed it among an armful of other inept watercolours.’

‘It’s not Nazi loot?’

‘I doubt it. A bit too modern for Nazi tastes. Anyway they went in for wholesale removal from galleries and private homes, looting by the truckload. They didn’t need to conceal individual items with a layer of watercolour paint. But let’s check.’

She went to one of the computers and logged on to a site that asked for a password. Challis watched briefly as she flashed through the links, then he idled around the room for a while, flipping through the pages of the art histories on the shelves. Five minutes later, Ludowyk pushed her chair away from the computer and said, ‘Eureka.’

Challis read the account. The little painting had disappeared from a regional gallery in Switzerland in 1995. ‘Pity it doesn’t say who stole it and brought it to Australia.’

‘That’s assuming it’s the same person,’ Ludowyk said. She opened her arms as if to encompass all possibilities. ‘The thief might never have been to Australia. The painting might have passed through many hands. Was it stolen with the Sydney Long?’

‘We don’t know,’ Challis said. ‘They were stored with coins and stamps, but-’

Ludowyk smiled. ‘But if your thief stole from a thief, then you’ll hit a brick wall.’

Challis felt weary to be reminded of it. ‘True.’

‘We know the Klee is stolen, but there’s no indication on-line that the Long is. Someone might have bought both items in good faith, or the Klee knowing it was stolen and the other knowing it was legit… There are many variables.’

‘Great.’

‘If you do find someone who admits to being the legitimate owner, check if they also own drawings and paintings by local artists such as Whiteley, Nolan and Blackman. Artists with a big, undocumented output. Fakes are turning up all the time. Some are recognised in time and quietly destroyed, others disappear after the alarm is raised, only to be offered for sale again years and years later.’ She paused. ‘Indigenous art, too. As much as twenty per cent of it is fake.’

Challis closed his eyes. ‘I’m just a humble regional plodder.’

‘I’ll bet.’

Challis decided that he liked Ludowyk; he liked the practical, chemical smell of her room. It must be a good job, he thought, to work with your hands, recreating, solving puzzles. ‘Let’s say someone acquired the Klee knowing it was stolen…What’s your reading of that person? What makes him or her tick?’

Ludowyk cocked her head at him. ‘I’m not a profiler.’

‘Yeah, but-’

‘Okay. We might be looking at a collector who couldn’t afford to pay the market price. Or an art lover who liked to gloat over the painting in private. Or a crook who intended to wait a few years then put it up for auction with false provenance papers.’

‘But it was stolen in 1995.’

Another who-knows gesture. ‘Inspector, you don’t know where it’s been all these years. It might have financed several drug deals in the meantime, or been used as collateral for loans. Anything.’

Challis heaved his shoulders and said, ‘I’d like you to look at this photograph.’

He tapped the icon on the wall between the old couple. ‘Is that valuable?’

‘Nowhere near the value of the Klee. A family keepsake?’

‘Could be.’

‘It looks old, certainly. But icons were not produced to make an individual artistic statement in the way that the Klee probably was. There was no ego involved. A master artist and a handful of apprentices in some little Russian village would have made dozens of these to the glory of God.’

Challis stared gloomily at the man and the woman. Were they long-lost relatives of the woman who called herself Mrs Grace?

‘The place and date are significant,’ Ludowyk said, reading the back of the photograph. ‘After the 1917 revolution, thousands of White Russians fled to Harbin, joining an already established population. Then in the late 1940s and early 1950s many of them were allowed to settle in Australia. Very traditional and patriotic, some of them. The church, Mother Russia. This icon mattered to someone.’

Challis knew all that. He’d typed ‘Harbin’ into Google before making the drive up to Monash.

‘I have an officer checking burglaries here and interstate.’

‘A big job.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Want me to contact the gallery in Switzerland? I imagine they’ll want their Klee returned.’

‘Thank you-but tell them it could take a while.’

Challis was back at CIU by 4.30 that Tuesday. Murphy wasn’t there. Scobie Sutton was.

He unfolded his gangly legs as Challis walked in, got to his feet and said, ‘Sir, a ton of phone calls have come in, plus I have some odd bits and pieces to tell you.’

‘Okay.’

‘First, that list of fences you asked for, those specialising in coins and stamps and art.’ A pause; Sutton simply stopped talking. He often did this, waiting for encouragement to continue.

‘And?’

‘One of them was shot dead outside his house last night.’ Sutton glanced at the sheet of paper in his hands. ‘Steve Finch, second-hand dealer in Williamstown. His shop was torched fifteen minutes later.’

Challis stored the information. There wasn’t much else he could do with it yet. ‘What else?’

‘Pam had a few calls in to the AFP and the New South Wales police.’ Another pause.

‘Scobie…’

‘Oh, okay, well, the man calling himself Towne is not employed by the federal police. His name is Ian Galt and until a couple of years ago he was state police, sacked on suspicion of corruption.’

‘Do they know why he’s poking around down here?’

‘Pam had to go out, I didn’t get the full gist of it.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘Note on her desk,’ Sutton said. He walked around Challis to fetch it. ‘Says she’s doing a follow up with those Niekirk people.’

Challis didn’t know what that meant and he was mildly annoyed. There were more pressing cases she could be working on. ‘If she comes back or calls in, tell her I need to see her.’

‘Sir. Oh, and some woman called you.’

‘Who?’ said Challis.

Then his office phone rang and he turned away from Sutton to take the call. ‘Challis.’

A young, uninflected voice said, ‘The blankets over the head, that was my idea.’

Challis missed a beat, the slightest beat, then nudged the door shut. ‘I thought it might have been.’

‘Don’t try to trace this. It will only waste time and resources and get you nowhere anyway.’

‘Okay.’

‘I need your e-mail address.’

‘And what I need is to know the current location of the guy with the shotgun.’

‘I let him go.’

Challis laughed. ‘You let him go.’

‘He thought he was in control. He wasn’t. I got him out of the bank and told him to run. I don’t know where he is. But he’s not clever, just lucky.’

‘You staged the scene by the drain, the abandoned car?’

‘Did it mess with your head? Your e-mail address, please.’

Challis complied, nudging the mouse to awaken his computer. He logged on to his e-mail and said, ‘What are you sending me?’

‘Photos, if you can be patient.’

‘What’s your real name?’

‘Today? Today I’m Nina.’

‘Right. Russian?’

It was her turn to hesitate. ‘You’ve been doing some homework.’

‘A little. Care to tell me-’

‘Shut up. Sending now.’

Challis waited. Then a number of images arrived in his in-box: the icon and the Klee, photographed in situ, and close-ups of several documents. ‘It seems you’re keen on home interiors,’ he said. ‘We found a camera card loaded with snaps.’

‘I like to keep records,’ Nina said.

Challis was about to deliver another wry observation when his attention was caught. He peered at the icon and the painting again. ‘I know this house.’

‘It was broken into recently.’

‘The occupants claimed nothing was taken.’

‘Well, they would say that.’

‘Would they? Why? How did you know they owned the icon?’

‘I didn’t know. Chance encounter, and that’s the honest truth. The thing is, it’s not theirs. Mara Niekirk’s family took it from my family.’

Challis chewed on that. ‘You possess an old photograph that depicts a similar icon and you call that proof?’

‘Why don’t you do some digging into Mara’s family, hotshot? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as you’ll discover when you examine the other stuff I sent you.’

Challis shrugged, clicking on the documents one by one, adjusting the zoom until the text filled the screen. ‘Invoices, receipts, catalogue entries…So what?’

‘First, I think you’ll find they’re not kosher. The Niekirks have been faking histories for years.’

Challis couldn’t see much point in playing the policeman in this situation, but went through the motions anyhow. ‘I need you to go on record as saying that you found, photographed and-’

‘You need me to get killed, you mean.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve just sent you a copy of an e-mail sent to me by a man named Steve Finch. He was trying to get the Klee painting back on the Niekirks’ behalf.’

Challis went cold. ‘Someone shot him last night.’

‘Exactly.’

Challis got to his feet, thinking of Pam Murphy. Going around the desk, he opened his door and signalled wildly to Scobie Sutton, miming hands on a steering wheel, meanwhile saying, ‘By the way, a man named Galt is looking for you.’

‘Was,’ the woman named Nina said.