She continued to wait and listen. If she’d breached an infrared beam outside the house, stepped on a pressure pad, made an unwelcome sound, then there should have been a police car or security patrol by now, flashing lights, a caterwauling alarm sounding under the eaves. Not for the first time, Grace reflected that people like the Niekirks had a misplaced faith in their seclusion.
Finally she walked around the veranda to the Messer alarm box. According to the security installer she’d spoken to yesterday afternoon, in the event of a break-in, a power cut or the box being tampered with, the alarm would sound at both the house and Messer HQ.
‘What if someone found a way to freeze the little switch thingies inside the box?’ Grace had asked the installation tech, wrinkling her brow prettily.
The guy scoffed. ‘How? Can’t happen.’
Grace moved a small, paint-chipped wooden bench into position, stepped onto it carefully, distributing her weight, and sprayed insulation foam into the heat and moisture vents of the alarm box. She waited, still watching and listening. She was sure that she could hear the foam expanding and solidifying, ultimately paralysing the relay switches and circuits.
Definitely something. Audrey chewed on it for a while. Fox? Too big for a fox. Someone’s dog? People were careless about their pets. Bought huge Dobermans and what have you, too lazy to feed, train or exercise them, let them roam free.
But the bent-over shape had been wrong for a dog.
She hadn’t heard or seen a vehicle.
Perhaps someone from the farmhouse, sneaking across the road for some shenanigans with one or both of the Niekirks?
But the Niekirks were in Sydney, as Audrey knew full well. Standoffish, more money than sense, and seemed to think she didn’t mind being asked to feed their blessed canaries whenever they went away.
Audrey chewed on the matter for ages. Would she be able to hear the hiss of a spraycan from here? Eventually she rose from the camping stool and walked towards the heavy gates set in the cypress hedge. Her shoes made a shocking racket on the gravel.
Grace moved through the house, testing the shadows, a routine as familiar to her as breathing. Satisfied that she was alone, she switched on her torch, all but a square centimetre of the lens blocked with insulation tape, and made a more thorough search. Her main aim was to steal the icon on the wall of the glassed-in walkway, but if the Niekirks had that, they probably had other treasures.
First photographing the icon where it hung, she removed it, secured it in bubble wrap and placed it in one of the bags. Then she made a quick pass of the main rooms. Given that the Niekirks dealt in art, Grace didn’t think much of their taste. The living areas groaned with overdone oils of beaches and bushland, and western desert and dot paintings of no significance or originality, and she suspected the Howard Arkley near the piano was a fake.
Not a single one was worth stealing. Yet in an office filing cabinet she found catalogues and provenance papers for paintings by Brett Whiteley, Sidney Nolan, Grace Cossington Smith and Robert Dickerson. She photographed every one, then took a closer look at the house.
The nursery was two spaces in an open plan arrangement, one a small child’s bedroom-a short, narrow bed under a mobile of moons and stars, cute wallpaper and a handful of stuffed toys-and, through an archway, a more chaotic space where the babysitter slept, overlooked by a huge teddy bear on a mantelpiece and posters from a vampire movie. Grace had no memories of her own early years, and none that she cared to recall from her later ones.
There were three other bedrooms. One, sterile and stale, was probably for guests. A second, neat and masculine, was the husband’s. The third, untidy, indulgent, stinking of perfume, was Mara Niekirk’s.
And here she struck gold.
It took the police long enough to answer Audrey’s call. What if she were being raped or murdered? She said as much to the fat man driving the patrol car.
‘The Peninsula’s a big area to cover,’ he said. Tankard, his name was. A younger constable sat in the passenger seat.
Audrey told them what she’d seen, a mysterious figure crossing the road and ducking through the hedge. The flicker of what might have been a torch inside the house itself.
‘No worries, we’ll check it out,’ the fat constable said, his tone barely civil.
It wasn’t the kind of house, nor were the Niekirks the kind of people, to boast a tiny Paul Klee. Grace couldn’t figure it out. But it hung above the wife’s bed and clearly mattered. After photographing it in situ, she removed it for closer inspection. Signed and dated 1932, titled Felsen in der Blumenbeet, it showed pastelly grey-blue shapes choked by exuberant blue, yellow, red and green shapes: cones, triangles, crosses, rhomboids, all skewed in some way. It was similar in size to the icon, about 25cm x 30 cm. She hardly dared fall in love with it, but it was stunning. She wrapped it, tucked it into her bag.
But the icon was personal and the painting might be hard to shift, so she went looking for iPods, laptops…And had barely re-entered the main living areas when she saw a flicker of lights outside. At once she ran down the hallway, out through the door.
She was heading back through the shadowy garden beds when a spotlight lit her up.
‘Oi.’ The policeman’s voice was hesitant, as if he didn’t quite believe his eyes. ‘Excuse me.’
Grace swivelled neatly and ducked into the shadows.
Now he believed it. ‘Stop! Police!’
One glimpse was enough, a patrol car and two constables, one standing beside his open door, training the spotlight, the other peering straight at her. Grace slipped deeper into the dark region between the house and the road. The spotlight tracked her, throwing up shadows and flares of light in her path. Then she heard a door slam, the gunning of a motor, a spray of gravel. Headlights swept over her spine and now feet were thudding. They’ve split up, Grace thought, the car to cut her off at the road, the guy on foot to box her in.
She reached the hedge and crawled into a hollow, scratched by twigs and stubby little branches. Crouching now, she watched the play of the lights. The police car tore onto the road, fishtailed, overcorrected; finally the tyres gripped and it came towards her purposefully, keeping to the centre of the road, lights on high beam. If she darted out of the hedge now, she’d be spotted. The other cop was still behind her, jerking his torch beam at the base of the hedge. He did it badly, rapid sweeps betraying excitement or nerves. But he’d spot her sooner or later, pin her with his probing light.
The patrol car drew adjacent. It idled a while, then began to creep past. The driver was trying to steer, watch and manipulate the spotlight. His swivelnecking was inefficient and too regular. Timing it carefully, Grace darted across the road and slithered into the ditch on the other side. A rough-edged stone smacked her knee bone. Mosquitoes whined. She recovered and, at a half crouch, crept along the ditch, keeping pace with the car.
Soon she reached one of the culverts: concrete drain pipe, heaped sand and storm wrack, water-flattened dead grass. Careful not to trample the grass or leave footprints in the sand and grit, she parted the stalks at the entrance to the pipe, releasing stale air, musty-smelling rather than damp. The gap yawned, too small for her body but not her tools or the paintings. She opened the camera and pocketed the memory card, then stowed the camera in a waterproof bag with the icon and the Klee. She shoved the bag deep inside the drain; kept the pocketknife and change of clothing.
Meanwhile the police had called in backup. She could hear a siren, see headlights. As she slipped into the grounds of the farmhouse opposite the cypress hedge, a second patrol car arrived, followed by a divisional van. About six cops, she thought, scouting around for the best cover. The closest was a trampoline that had been tipped onto its side. After that, garden beds and the house, sheds to one side. If she could reach the fruit trees and the dam she…