Garry Disher - Whispering Death

‘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.

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.

‘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.