‘There!’ Sutton shouted, his finger stabbing the side window of the car.
Challis made the turn, intent only on speeding to the house, but Sutton pointed at the defaced gate posts and groaned, ‘Not another one.’
Challis didn’t care about the gate posts, he hadn’t cared about any of them. He swung the CIU car along the blind driveway to the ugly house at the end.
It looked shut up.
‘Think they’ve done a runner, sir?’
Challis stared at him. ‘We’re not here to speculate. How about you check the grounds.’
‘Sorry boss,’ Sutton said, and disappeared.
Challis turned to the garage. Two of the three bays were empty, and it was a kind of permanent emptiness, unrelieved by the presence of a boat and trailer in the third bay. He’d checked with the Department of Motor Vehicles before leaving the station: the Niekirks owned a Mercedes van and a BMW four-wheel-drive.
He swept his gaze at the gravel, and where the gravel merged with the lawns and garden beds, but who knew what kind of tracks Pam’s Subaru might stamp there? He sniffed the air: smoke.
He walked to the glossy front door and rapped it with his knuckles. Was astonished when it opened on the nanny and the child, and wasn’t sure where to start. ‘Is Constable Murphy here?’
‘No.’
‘Has she been?’
The nanny screwed up her face in thought. ‘Don’t know. Maybe.’
‘She didn’t give you a lift after you’d been to see her?’
‘No.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘About a year. I-’
‘When did you get back after visiting Constable Murphy?’
‘A couple of minutes ago.’
‘Do you own a car? I didn’t see one outside.’
‘We took a taxi,’ Tayla said. ‘Mr and Mrs Niekirk have an account,’ she added proudly.
Behind her the house resounded hollowly. Challis could see a hall stand and a rug inside a distant doorway but there were gaps where other items had been and any vestiges of love and comfort had been stripped away.
‘Was anyone home when you got here?’
Tayla shook her head.
Challis contemplated the Niekirks’ daughter. Natalia stood like a lost child on the echoing floorboards, an almost sentimental pose; she looked like a painting in a community art show.
‘When did you last see Mr or Mrs Niekirk?’
‘Earlier this afternoon.’
‘Before you visited the police station?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they know you were going to Waterloo?’
‘No.’
‘They didn’t see you leave?’
‘They had something to do at the shop, so I waited till they’d left.’
‘What exactly did you tell Constable Murphy?’
Tayla’s face twisted in concentration. ‘I told her this, like, little religious painting was stolen.’
‘An icon.’
‘Whatever. She seemed interested.’
‘Did she say she was coming here?’
‘I had to take Natalia to the toilet.’
It was going to be one of those conversations. ‘Do you know where Mr and Mrs Niekirk are?’
‘I think they came home and went out again. Both the cars are gone.’
Tayla glanced uneasily at Natalia, who seemed to take fright at Challis and sprinted back into the emptiness of the other rooms. The nanny, torn, said, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ and stumbled after her charge.
Challis followed and found them in the vast sitting room, where the massive items of furniture remained and the walls were flat and empty. ‘I’m worried about Constable Murphy.’
The statement was difficult for Tayla to get her head around. ‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.’
‘Did something happen this afternoon, Tayla?’
In a rush, the nanny said, ‘They were like burning all this nice stuff, paintings and that, plus Mrs Niekirk was really mean to me.’ She blushed. ‘Plus I think she’s been spying on me with a hidden camera.’
So you got your own back, Challis thought. He reflected that it was a variation on the tail light phenomenon. Every year a criminal genius would pull some undetectable murder or robbery, only to be stopped for a vehicle check or failure to wear a seatbelt, whereupon the cops would find the body or the loot. Mara Niekirk had been dealing in stolen art with impunity for years, only to be let down by her own cruel mouth.
Scobie Sutton came in from one of the rear or side doors, calling, ‘Hello!’
‘In here.’
He appeared in the doorway, and Challis asked, ‘Find the car?’
‘What car?’
Challis said heavily, ‘Pam’s Subaru.’ If Scobie Sutton did become a crime scene investigator, he’d tear the arse out of identifying, cataloguing and collecting what was there, and never give a second’s thought to what wasn’t.
‘No car, boss. Signs of a bonfire.’
Challis nodded. Three vehicles unaccounted for. Three driversunless one of them had come back for the third vehicle?
He said, ‘The Niekirks have an antique shop in Tyabb and a shed at the airstrip. Call for backup and have a poke around.’
‘You’re staying here?’
‘Yes. And I want you to put out a general alert for Pam’s car and the Niekirks’ van and car.’
‘I don’t like it, boss. What if they come back, you know-’ he shielded his mouth with his hand ‘-for their daughter?’
‘I’ll deal with that if and when it happens.’
Scobie Sutton left in the CIU car and Challis glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. The roads of the Peninsula would be choked with wage earners, heading straight into the westering sun, some at speed, some running into trees or the car in front of them. A busy time for the uniforms, and no money in the budget to back up a CIU inspector who’d found himself alone with no one to watch his back. But he called anyway, the duty sergeant confirming his fears. ‘Can’t send you anyone for the next hour, Hal, sorry.’
So he’d wait. He pocketed his phone, smiled at the nanny. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
She nodded incuriously and he wandered down to the cypress hedge lining Goddard Road. He found the Subaru wedged in a dark, overgrown corner. He wandered back to the house.
The nanny and the child hadn’t moved. ‘Let’s go to the kitchen.’
A marginally nicer place to be, stools around an island bench, a huge window looking out onto the sloping lawns, coppery pots on wormy black hooks above the sinks and stovetops. And food, if the child got restive. Fruit in a bowl, ice-cream in the freezer.
‘You told Constable Murphy that an icon was stolen when the house was broken into.’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
‘I heard them arguing about a painting.’
‘Did a man named Steve Finch ever come to the house?’
Tayla frowned prettily. ‘Sometimes they spoke to a Steve on the phone. Who is he?’
Challis ignored the question and searched for the right way to ask his next. In the end, he simply put words in the nanny’s mouth. ‘Did your employers ever have business dealings, or visitors, or phone calls or mail or courier deliveries, which struck you as odd? Valuable items in the house one day, gone the next? Conversations that you walked in on? Paperwork you might have seen on a desk or a table?’
‘I’m here to look after Natalia, that’s all.’
‘Guns,’ said Challis gently. ‘Rifles. Is there a gun cabinet anywhere?’
Tayla gaped at him, badly frightened. ‘Guns?’
Challis probed and tweaked as the minutes passed, and got nowhere. His phone rang. Sutton.
‘I’m out at the airfield, boss.’
Challis waited and Sutton waited.
‘I’m not getting any younger, Scobie.’
‘The shop was empty, and so’s the shed on the airfield here.’
‘The van? The BMW?’
‘No sign.’
‘Did you question anyone? Mechanics, pilots?’
‘Everyone’s gone home, boss.’
‘Okay, come back here, eyes peeled.’
‘Boss.’
Suddenly Natalia was standing beside Challis’s knee. Her bewilderment had fled and she seemed to want comfort. Without thinking he hoisted her onto his lap, noting how heavy she was, for someone so slight and small-boned. Then she began to talk and didn’t stop.