‘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.
60
Pam Murphy had driven to the house on Goddard Road, musing on the statement made by the nanny.
Why, if the Niekirks knew they’d been robbed, had they persisted in claiming it was a failed break-in?
‘I’m invisible to them,’ Tayla had said. ‘They don’t know I’m there.’
Meaning she’d overheard them talk about a missing icon and a missing painting.
And now they were burning paintings?
Reaching the entrance, Pam braked. The words IF YOU THINK THIS IS TASTEFUL had been spray painted on one gate support; TAKE A GANDER AT OUR HOUSE on the other. She laughed, released the brake, let her Subaru roll through the gap.
And braked again. She was nose to nose with the flat white face of a Mercedes van, Warren Niekirk at the wheel. They stared at each other for a few long seconds and Murphy saw, even through both sets of glass, a flicker of panic, a search for a way out.
She decided not to reverse but slid the gear lever into park and switched off. She wanted answers. She had no intention of coming back later, at the Niekirks’ convenience.
As she stepped away from her Subaru she saw a four-wheel-drive rock to a halt behind the van, heard a door slam, and then Mara Niekirk was advancing on her, furious, erect, nose tilted like a woman born to rule, the driveway gravel complaining under her feet.
They’re both going somewhere? Separately? ‘Hello, Mrs Niekirk.’
‘Are you going to leave your car there like that? We have a business to run.’
At 5 p.m., when most people are heading for home, not away? ‘A couple of quick questions.’
‘Did you see what they did to my gate?’
They, the great unwashed, the faceless, the nameless. My gate, not our gate. ‘Shall I report it for you, Mrs Niekirk?’
‘What’s the point? You people…’ My people what?
And here was Warren, leaving the van and joining his wife, getting some courage and stature from that simple act. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No problem,’ Pam said. ‘As I told your wife, I-’
With his new found determination, Warren cut her off. ‘Have you found the woman who broke into our house?’
Woman? thought Pam. How did they know it was a woman? On her guard now, wondering what was in the van, she said, ‘Sometimes when people are burgled they don’t realise they’re missing certain items until days afterwards. Weeks.’
‘Nothing was taken,’ Mara said.
She was angular, powerful, her mouth a slash across the tight flesh of her face, her body a vibrating spring inside tapered black pants and a grey cotton top. Hair scraped back from her forehead, no makeup. One scary woman, Pam thought.
To see what would happen, she said, ‘Perhaps I could talk to the nanny. Is she up at the house with your daughter? Maybe she’s missing something, an iPod or a camera.’
‘Nothing was taken,’ snarled Mara. ‘Now, get out of the way, please.’
Behind Pam a ute rattled by, a yapping dog on the back. She hoped it might turn into the farm opposite the Niekirks’, hoped there would be a witness when everything went wrong, but it merely slowed for the corrugations in the road and faded away into the distance. The shadows lengthened around her.
‘I understand you had a Russian icon hanging in the glassed-in walkway.’
Warren turned a wondering look upon his wife and almost slapped his forehead in a pantomime of forgetfulness. ‘You know, she’s right? Mara, we did, remember that little thing?’
He turned to Pam, shone his salesman’s beam on her. ‘You know how it is, you put a trinket on a wall or a shelf and forget you had it?’
‘Trinket,’ Murphy said flatly.
‘Look,’ Warren said, ‘it’s just a piece of tourist junk, a keepsake. We won’t be lodging a claim or anything.’
He flashed her a good-guy smile, probably in exactly the same way he closed all his deals.
But Mara wasn’t in the business of making a sale. Her eyes narrowed at Pam. ‘Tayla told you.’
‘Tayla?’
Venom now. ‘The ungrateful little slut came running to you after all we’ve done for her. Where is she, by the way?’
‘Shouldn’t you be wondering where your daughter is?’
Mara’s dark eyes shifted and Pam felt a kind of dread. She backed away, feeling for the Subaru with her left hand, intending to put the driver’s door between herself and the witch. Swing behind the wheel, slam and lock the door, call for backup.
She was hit by a brain zap. It was like all of the others, the world yawing, her gaze briefly unfocussed, her body frozen, her jaw rictal. And when she recovered, Mara Niekirk had the hard barrel of a little handgun in her ribs.
‘They sent you out here alone?’
‘If I’m not back by-’
‘If you’re not back,’ Mara scoffed. She turned to Warren. ‘Get some rope.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ Mara said, prodding Murphy towards the rear of the van. ‘Tie her arms and legs.’
‘But she’s a policeman. Woman.’
Mara slapped her husband’s face. ‘Rope.’
Warren blinked and hurried away.
‘Are you running out?’ Pam asked, curious.
Ignoring her, Mara continued to prod with the little gun until they were invisible from the road. Warren had opened the van’s rear door. Stacked canvases, some hideous rugs and a couple of antique chairs and chests. ‘Tie her up, throw her in.’
‘Mara.’
‘Do it.’
‘Okay, okay.’
Mara’s husband relieved Pam of her handcuffs and manacled her wrists, then used too much rope and tape on her arms and legs. He said, apologetically, ‘We’ll put you where they’ll find you quickly.’
By his voice and manner, he didn’t believe a word of it. Nor did Murphy.
61
Early evening now, the sunlight no longer striping the Peninsula but retreating from the horizon, a yellow-white fireball at the end of the tunnel of dying gumtrees along Goddard Road. Challis was forced to squint as he drove, the visor down, a headache threatening, and he almost missed the Niekirks’ driveway.