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?’
‘He confessed.’
‘Fantastic. Terrific job.’
‘When he heard about the pollen evidence, he just gave it up.’
Challis smiled at her. ‘You trusted your instincts. They’re good instincts.’
She stretched like a cat under his gaze. Meanwhile Sutton had slipped a DVD into the machine and pressed the play button. The main stretch of High Street appeared on the screen.
Challis took over, pointing a remote at the AV unit.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is footage from the closed circuit TV system operated by Nerds-R-Us.’
An electronics store two doors south of the bank, one of its gimmicks was a hidden camera monitoring everyone who passed by the main window. Challis pressed the pause button, catching a pedestrian in mid-stride. Slight build, close cropped hair, narrow features, well dressed-almost dapper.
‘That man,’ Challis said, ‘entered the VineTrust bank this morning waving a warrant to search the safe-deposit box of the woman we know as Mrs Grace. He showed AFP identification in the name of Andrew Towne and was granted access to the box. Neither the warrant nor the ID was challenged by the VineTrust manager.’
‘Who is he?’ Pam asked.
‘We don’t know, but he left a partial print on a memory card for a digital camera.’
‘Not wearing gloves?’
‘He was, but I think he removed them because they hampered his movements. The card was in a tiny plastic case, which he’d have found difficult to open. He wiped the case but not the card.’
‘The partial matches someone in the system?’
Challis nodded. ‘Red flagged, so I doubt his real name is Towne and I doubt he’s a federal policeman.’
He pressed another button and the famous photograph of Mrs Grace filled the screen, her features clear despite the arm around her throat, the gun to her head.
‘This is the woman known to the bank staff as Mrs Grace. We believe she’s a professional thief. We found three sets of ID in her safe-deposit box and valuable coins, stamps and paintings. We need to track down who owns these items and who this woman is. It’s probable that she operates Australia-wide, so Scobie, I want you to confer with the various squads around the country, looking at high-end burglaries, especially where a woman was thought to be involved.’
‘Boss.’
‘And compile a list of anyone known to fence stolen artwork.’
‘Boss.’
‘Meanwhile, does the second flagged print belong to Mrs Grace? We don’t know, so Pam, I want you to spend the afternoon following up both sets of prints. Who do they belong to? Why are they flagged? Are they connected? How do they connect to this Corso character?’ He paused. ‘The guy walking past the electronics window: not Corso, by any chance?’
Pam gave him a deadpan look. ‘What we trained detectives call a long shot, boss.’
‘My specialty,’ Challis said.
He inserted a CD into the machine. The screen flickered, then a washed-out image appeared, two vases on a little table. Other images unfurled slowly as Challis set the machine to slide-show. ‘Scobie, these photos were stored on the memory card in the safe-deposit box. I imagine they’re a record of the houses that this woman has robbed, and may help you track down the owners of the various items in the box.’
‘Boss.’
‘Meanwhile we don’t know where our mystery Fed is. Did he take anything from the box? Does he know where the woman is? How did he know to come here?’
Pam sprawled in her chair and said, ‘Saw her on TV?’
‘Could be. Anyhow, I want you to find out who he is.’
She nodded gloomily. ‘What’s the betting I get stonewalled?’
‘Do your best. I’ll be out of the station for most of the afternoon seeing what the Monash fine arts department can tell me.’
‘Some people get the good jobs,’ Murphy said.
‘Some people,’ said Challis airily, ‘are bosses, others are drudges.’
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.