Garry Disher - Whispering Death

So Grace sloshed back the way she’d come, welcoming the shadows but wishing she had a pond to hide in. A treacherous marsh, that’s all she had here. She scrambled up to the tree line again, thinking she could be living in happy, witness-protected anonymity instead of fleeing a madman in the mud.

No. Who was she kidding? Galt would have found her somehow; he’d have found a way to get hold of her file. It had made sense to run-run with all of the Galt money and valuables she could scrape together-and create her own new identity.

She would never have tolerated witness protection anyway, even if they could have guaranteed her safety. She needed this; she needed to steal. To climb, bend, flex, balance and coordinate; to visualise spaces, the arrangement of objects, traps and escape routes. She couldn’t have given any of that up.

And now she’d made a stupid mistake and allowed Galt to find her.

As Grace darted across the road again, heading for the houses huddled where the dunes shielded them from the swamping sea, a man shouted at Galt: ‘I’m armed and I’ve called the police.’

Grace hugged the grass, her shoulder blade on fire, her clothing wet with blood.

‘Fuck you,’ Galt said, barely interested, his gaze on Grace and a flat smile showing.

He was standing in the middle of the road again, taking aim, and didn’t care at all about citizens who cried out in fearful, wavering voices that they were armed, citizens who were badly frightened but trying to be brave, who simply wanted the bad guy to go away and not come back. Didn’t care at all, and Grace huddled to make herself smaller on the ground.

‘I mean it,’ the voice wobbled. ‘I have a shotgun.’

When the shot didn’t come, Grace lifted her head. Galt had turned away from her. He’d been challenged, and it irritated him. He stood and faced the man who’d made the challenge and said, ‘Really, really mean it?’

‘Leave us in peace,’ the man said, and Grace recognised him, Kim…Tim? An engineering lecturer who lived most of the week in Melbourne but had evidently decided to stay on for a few days. A duck shooter, she recalled, seeing him kitted out for a trip to the wetlands one day.

She stood. ‘Get back,’ she urged him, ‘go inside, he’ll hurt you.’

‘Damn right,’ Galt said, grinning at the lecturer, grinning at her.

Grace didn’t know how to fire a gun. She’d never tried it. But there was a sudden calmness, a needle-like appreciation of sound, light, colour and texture as she lifted and aimed her little pistol.

She fired as Tim fired.

Romona Ludowyk told Challis that she was a jack of all trades.

‘Curator of the University’s permanent collection, but also chief conservator if any item we own or buy is damaged in any way. And sometimes,’ she said, ‘I even lecture.’

She smiled. They were on an upper floor of the Arts Faculty building at Monash University’s Clayton campus. The unlovely outer suburbs complemented the unlovely university buildings and stretched as far as Challis could see, through the window behind Ludowyk. The sun beat against the glass and the room was stuffy. The wind howled around the building, too, shaking it minutely.

‘You get used to it,’ the academic said with a smile, seeing his body register the movement.

She was short, slight as a bird, her greying dark hair in a roll at the back of her head. Half-lenses perched on the end of her nose, and she glanced down through them now, at the Paul Klee and the little Sydney Long aquatint resting side by side on a long bench.

She tugged at a powerful light on a counter-balanced arm, positioning it above the art works. The air around her was scented with oils and cleaning agents, and the available surfaces were littered with cloths, brushes, bottled chemicals. Challis had also noted plenty of books, a couple of grubby computers, a colour laser printer, lab coats on wall hooks, packets of latex gloves, microscopes, a large contraption that he supposed might be a dehumidifier.

Ludowyk screwed a jeweller’s lens into her eye socket, leaned over and began to examine the Klee and the Long more closely, angling them to the light, peering at the frames and backing. She straightened, removing the lens. ‘We’d need to run chemical tests to be sure, but I’m confident that both are genuine.’

A knock on the door and a young man entered, as ravaged as a crack addict, dressed in torn jeans and a T-shirt. He said immediately, ‘Any chance of an extension on the essay, Romona?’

She waved her hand at him. ‘Friday at the latest.’

‘You’re a doll,’ he said and disappeared.

Ludowyk eyed Challis with amusement. ‘The dope-head look is an affectation. I doubt he takes anything stronger than aspirin. Clever, too.’

‘You like teaching?’

Another smile. ‘Frankly, I’d rather work with the art than those who profess to study it.’

Challis wondered where he stood. He’d rather work with the evidence than the people who left it? ‘I’m glad you’re not teaching this afternoon.’

She snorted. ‘Not that universities teach anymore. Revenue farming mostly.’

Challis nodded. ‘I can see a day when the police force is less about solving crimes than running workshops.’

Ludowyk bent her head over the Klee again, and murmured, ‘This was stolen.’

‘You can tell by looking?’

She straightened her back. ‘See here in the corner, flecks of-at a guess-watercolour paint.’

‘Meaning?’

‘I’ll check the stolen art register in a moment, but my guess is this was stolen from a regional gallery somewhere in Europe. Little or no security. The thief snatched it off the wall and walked out with it, and smuggled it out of the country by posing as a tourist on a painting holiday. He or she painted an inept watercolour over the Klee and concealed it among an armful of other inept watercolours.’

‘It’s not Nazi loot?’

‘I doubt it. A bit too modern for Nazi tastes. Anyway they went in for wholesale removal from galleries and private homes, looting by the truckload. They didn’t need to conceal individual items with a layer of watercolour paint. But let’s check.’

She went to one of the computers and logged on to a site that asked for a password. Challis watched briefly as she flashed through the links, then he idled around the room for a while, flipping through the pages of the art histories on the shelves. Five minutes later, Ludowyk pushed her chair away from the computer and said, ‘Eureka.’

Challis read the account. The little painting had disappeared from a regional gallery in Switzerland in 1995. ‘Pity it doesn’t say who stole it and brought it to Australia.’

‘That’s assuming it’s the same person,’ Ludowyk said. She opened her arms as if to encompass all possibilities. ‘The thief might never have been to Australia. The painting might have passed through many hands. Was it stolen with the Sydney Long?’

‘We don’t know,’ Challis said. ‘They were stored with coins and stamps, but-’

Ludowyk smiled. ‘But if your thief stole from a thief, then you’ll hit a brick wall.’

Challis felt weary to be reminded of it. ‘True.’

‘We know the Klee is stolen, but there’s no indication on-line that the Long is. Someone might have bought both items in good faith, or the Klee knowing it was stolen and the other knowing it was legit… There are many variables.’

‘Great.’

‘If you do find someone who admits to being the legitimate owner, check if they also own drawings and paintings by local artists such as Whiteley, Nolan and Blackman. Artists with a big, undocumented output. Fakes are turning up all the time. Some are recognised in time and quietly destroyed, others disappear after the alarm is raised, only to be offered for sale again years and years later.’ She paused. ‘Indigenous art, too. As much as twenty per cent of it is fake.’