Whispering Death (33 page)

‘Me? Dunno. I been all over the place.'

‘Have you ever made a delivery to 2012 Coolart Road?'

‘Pardon me, Constable Murphy, but what or where is 2012 Coolart Road?'

‘It's a big house with a stone gateway, situated near Hunts Road.'

‘And?'

‘It's where we found the body of Delia Rice concealed in the boot of a car driven by your client.'

‘Do you have evidence that my client was driving the car?'

‘No.'

‘Was it his car?'

‘No.'

‘Then I fail to see—'

‘He was seen running from the scene.'

‘A foolproof identification was made by an eyewitness, I take it? She or he will pick my client out from a line-up or photo array?'

Ikin was enjoying himself.

‘Your client was wearing a distinctive T-shirt that day.'

‘Distinctive in what way?'

‘On the back were the immortal words, “If you can read this, the bitch has fallen off”.'

She was lying and Schiff knew it, giving her impatient sidelong glances. The search team had found such a T-shirt in Muschamp's bedroom, but it had nothing to do with the case. He would have burnt every scrap of clothing he wore that day. She wanted to see him relax, that's all, before she slipped the knife in.

‘You found pollen on this T-shirt, is that what you're saying?'

‘Still to be tested.'

Muschamp was grinning at her, Schiff frowning.

Ikin said, ‘As we have established, my client's job takes him all over the Peninsula. He might well have made a delivery to that house or one nearby, a delivery on a windy day.'

‘Yeah. I remember now, I stopped for a leak near there about two months ago.'

‘Urinate in public a lot, do you, Darren? For the record, the only time you were in the vicinity of that house was two months ago?'

‘Yeah.'

Pam referred to her notes. ‘There is an unusual combination of pollen producing plants at that address.'

Ikin said nothing. Muschamp remained cocky.

‘
Echium plantagineum
, commonly known as Paterson's Curse.
Sumex
acetosella
, or sorrel, and Golden Cypress and Silver Birch. All growing close to each other and all releasing pollen at this time of the year— precisely at this time of the year,' Pam said, ‘not two months ago.'

Ikin looked worried but Muschamp grinned. ‘So, I got the date wrong.'

Pam said, ‘Unfortunately we didn't find that combination of pollen on any of your clothing, Darren.'

‘In other words, you got nothing.'

‘But we did find it on
other
items, and each one links uniquely to you.'

He paled. ‘Like what?'

‘You like to clean the wax out of your ears with a cotton bud, right, Darren?'

He knew. He looked sick. Ikin glanced at the ceiling. Schiff was shooting her looks that said,
Did you search his place again without
telling me?

‘The lab tested cotton buds and tissues found at your flat, Darren, and found not only traces of pollen from the four plants I just mentioned—pollen spores in a unique combination, and linked by DNA to trees growing at 2012 Coolart Road—but also
your
DNA, and yours alone. Not some friend who dropped by to visit you, in other words. How do you account for that?'

Pam wasn't expecting a confession, but got one. It came suddenly, Muschamp's eyes filling with tears, his mouth releasing a howl of frustration: ‘All the stupid bitch had to do was shut up.' He looked at the women opposite him and the lawyer beside him. ‘She just went on and on…'

53

Denise Rodda was tired.

The crime-scene officer had dusted the whole bank for prints, and now the local CIU inspector wanted her to dust the contents of a safe-deposit box.

She'd already dusted the exterior, e-mailed the prints to the Fingerprint Branch in Seaford to be compared to those of the bank's staff, wasn't that enough? ‘Sir,' she pointed out, ‘I've been here half the night already.'

‘Won't take long,' he said.

And then the man smiled, a transformative smile, the air of fatigue and prohibition vanishing from his face. A thin face, she noticed, a little too sharp-edged for her taste, but warm and quite attractive when he smiled. Overworked and underpaid, she thought. Like the rest of us.

Except the rest of us don't have the guts to complain to the media about being overworked and underpaid.

So she returned his smile, said, ‘Just as well I adore my job,' and watched as the manager opened the box.

Challis watched, too. It was a sizeable box, deep, broad, long. ‘Heavy,' Rowan Ely had said, as he'd slid it out of the wall. Utilitarian grey metal. Challis glanced at the battery of similar boxes and wondered what secrets and wealth they contained.

‘Voilà!' Ely said.

Challis stepped forward and peered in. Immediately under the lid was a flat object wrapped in white tissue paper. With one gloved hand, he folded back the paper to reveal a small painting. Splashes of vivid colour, random shapes. On closer examination the shapes resolved into rocks and he recognised the signature.

‘Paul Klee.'

Ely said dubiously, ‘Who?'

‘European artist of the first half of last century. If this is an original it's very valuable.'

Challis lifted out the painting and turned to Rodda. ‘I need you to dust this, please.'

He returned to the box. The next item was a small aquatint signed ‘Sydney Long' with a Hobart gallery label on the back. He made a mental note to contact the gallery and see who had bought it.

Under the Long were many smaller items: gold coins, individually wrapped in a small drawstring chamois bag; a matchbox containing a 1930 penny wrapped in tissue paper, another an old gold coin dated 1620; a small gold ingot; rare stamps and banknotes in individual plastic sleeves; a paperback history of the Kelly gang; and three sets of ID: passports, licences, credit cards, Medicare cards. Lying on the bottom were an old photograph, a tiny digital camera and a memory card encased in clear plastic.

Challis placed each item on the table for Rodda to test, and examined the sets of ID. The same face appeared in each, the woman known to Rowan Ely and his staff as Mrs Grace. Are you still alive? he wondered. Her face was young but her gaze old, as if she'd seen and felt a lot in her short life.

‘Quite a collection of keepsakes,' Ely said.

Challis nodded absently. He didn't think he was looking at keepsakes but at stolen goods. He peered at the photograph. It was small, washed out, reminding him of the family snaps he'd seen as a child, long-dead aunts and grandparents caught awkwardly by Kodak box cameras. A room in a cottage, a white-washed wall, a man and a woman in the bulky, stiffly formal clothing of an earlier era. Stolid-looking people, barely smiling. A respectable peasant couple, maybe. Slavic appearance. He was pretty sure the setting wasn't Australia.

Then he peered more closely, straightened his back. An icon. Valuable? Also stolen? But the photo seemed to be a family keepsake. Would it help him find the woman known as Mrs Grace?

Rodda's phone rang. She turned away from the table, phone to one ear, hand to the other, as though the little room was full of discordant sounds. ‘Yep. Uh huh. Thanks. Did you get the batch I just sent? Yeah, chop chop. Bye.'

She finished the call and said, ‘The prints on the outside of the box belong to bank staff only.'

The federal cop had worn gloves. ‘And this stuff?' Challis asked, gesturing at the items arranged across the surface of the table.

‘So far all I've been able to lift are two partials, one on the memory card case, the other on the battery of the camera. I've asked the lab to put a rush on them, but there could be more partials that aren't so evident. You want a thorough job, I'll need to take everything to the lab.'

Challis nodded. ‘Do what you can for now,' he said, knowing that even if they found Mrs Grace's prints, it meant nothing if they weren't on record.

Ely pointed at the memory card. ‘We should plug it in and see what she's been photographing.'

‘Soon enough,' Challis said.

Some time later, Rodda's phone rang again and she took the call and he watched her. And then she was casting him a complicated look, handing him the phone.

‘Challis.'

‘Sir,' a voice said, ‘those two partials: they're both in the system, both flagged.'

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.

55

An early afternoon briefing, Challis too wired to sit, or prop up a wall. He paced the room, waiting for the other detectives to assemble. Scobie Sutton had wheeled in the AV unit. Pam Murphy was already seated. She looked lit with achievement and energy, no longer curiously lost and perplexed, and he raised an eyebrow at her inquiringly.

‘Result?'