Shane Maloney - The Brush-Off

The guy in the suit was introduced as Chief Inspector Brian Buchanan. He was all neck and looked like he’d gladly bust Santa Claus for driving an unregistered sleigh.

None of the cops were delirious with joy about me and Sproule being there and they didn’t go to a lot of trouble to conceal the fact. Having to share trade secrets with a couple of political flacks was bad enough, never mind that one of them had his shirt hanging out and smelt like he should have been in the care of the Salvation Army. I tried to take up as little space as possible and resist the urge to scratch.

Micaelis arrived just as we’d finished the introductions. Assistant Commissioner Worrall waved us into our seats. ‘This is strictly informal,’ he said. ‘And strictly confidential. The objective is to pool our information and determine a course of action. Agreed?’ Ken Sproule and I nodded. Worrall handed the running of the meeting to Buchanan.

‘Let’s get on with it,’ said Buchanan. He had a pencil in his hand and pointed at Micaelis with it. ‘What did the Lambert woman have to say?’

‘She’s on pain-killers, sir, but reasonably lucid.’ Micaelis’ hitherto pally demeanour was no longer in evidence. ‘She says she has no idea why Eastlake attacked her. Claims they’d been lovers for about a year but never quarrelled. She says she’d seen him earlier today and he was agitated about business matters, but otherwise normal towards her.’

Which meant, as I had hoped, that she had enough cunning not to mention the money. She probably wondered why Micaelis didn’t ask her about it.

‘What about the other one?’ said Buchanan. ‘Fleet.’

Micaelis had a sheaf of paper in front of him. ‘She contacted us this afternoon and came in with her solicitor while I was in attendance at the Lambert residence. She had a statement already prepared.’ He shuffled the papers around until he found what he wanted, referring to it as he spoke. ‘She and Eastlake were both on the committee that recommends arts grants. Last August, about the time that applications were being considered, she was having a relationship with Marcus Taylor. She recommended him for a grant and spoke highly of his technical skills and his’-Micaelis’ finger found the exact phrase-‘his post-modernist sensibility in relation to the validity of quotation and appropriation.’

‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ Buchanan pointed his pencil at me. He seemed to think I was an art expert.

‘It means he could do good fakes,’ I said.

‘You can get a grant for that?’ For a man who thought he was an orchestra conductor, Buchanan was harbouring some deep cultural insecurities.

‘Only a small one, sir,’ said Micaelis. ‘And Fleet thinks that was only to keep her happy. But, a few weeks later, Eastlake approached her wanting to know more about Taylor. In particular, he wanted to know if she thought Taylor could paint him some pictures in the manner of certain well-known artists. He even produced a list.’

Sproule spoke, addressing himself to the Assistant Commissioner. ‘The background here relates to the Combined Unions Superannuation Scheme. Eastlake had persuaded the CUSS to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in an art collection, using a front called Austral Fine Art. The collection was a fiction. It existed only on paper. He used the money to keep his Obelisk round-robin going. He probably had in mind that when the Karlcraft project eventually paid off, Austral could recommend liquidating the collection. He got away with it for nearly a year, pretending to buy and sell artworks. But then the CUSS board decided it wanted to have an exhibition. Got all excited about the idea. Eastlake had no option but to play along. Suddenly he needed real paintings.’

Micaelis resumed. ‘Fleet approached Taylor on Eastlake’s behalf. She claims she was never party to any deception he may have subsequently engaged in, but she clearly knew what was going on. Taylor began producing paintings of the kind Eastlake required. The pictures were painted in his studio at the old YMCA building. Fleet informed Eastlake when they were ready. They were then picked up by Senior Sergeant Webb.’

‘The sergeant was already working undercover as Eastlake’s driver,’ Buchanan explained to Worrall. ‘Part of a long-term fraud squad investigation of Eastlake’s activities in relation to the Obelisk Trust.’

Ken Sproule tipped me a quiet wink. A vision came to me of the Members’ carpark at Flemington, of Sproule convincing a well-tanked Eastlake to hand his car keys to Noel, the helpful man from the detailing company.

‘Eastlake assumed I had no interest in his business affairs,’ said Webb. ‘I had access to his home, his office, documents, telephone conversations and so on. We were well on the way to establishing a strong case against him in relation to Obelisk when this business with the paintings began. My instructions were to collect them from Taylor’s studio-as many as two or three a week for nearly three months-and store them in the garage of Eastlake’s house in Toorak.’

‘We suspected these paintings related to some illegal activity,’ said Buchanan. ‘But our main focus was on the Obelisk investigation and it was only after the events of last Friday night that we began to realise the significance of the art works.’

By then, I’d worked out that Buchanan was the fraud-squad head honcho. He and Webb were very concerned that Assistant Commissioner Worrall adopt a favourable view of their activities. ‘And exactly what happened last Friday?’ said the big chief.

Yeah, I thought. Exactly what did happen? I leaned forward in my seat and adjusted my underpants under the rim of the table. There was a slight rustling sound.

Noel Webb cleared his throat and worked his jaw as if he wished he hadn’t chucked his chewy away. ‘About 9.30 on Friday night, I was driving Eastlake along Domain Road when we passed Taylor staggering drunkenly down the footpath. We picked him up and Eastlake had me drive the two of them around while he talked to Taylor about some particular painting. Something special, by the sound of it, in the style of a painter called Szabo. First he tried to convince Taylor just to let him see the picture. Taylor said he had it hidden away somewhere and nobody was going to see it until the time was right. Eastlake had a bottle of scotch and plied Taylor with it, but he wasn’t getting much joy. Taylor wouldn’t say where he had the painting. Eastlake offered him money for it, sight unseen. Twenty grand. Taylor reckoned that Eastlake was just trying to find out where the picture was hidden. Taylor was maudlin drunk. He kept going on about Fiona Lambert, how he was going to settle the score with her. He had no idea that she was Eastlake’s bit on the side. Meanwhile, I was driving around in circles through the Domain.’

Police headquarters weren’t centrally air conditioned. The cooler in the window frame kicked in with a whirr like an asthmatic fridge compressor. Noel Webb had our undivided attention.

‘After a couple of hours of this, Eastlake told me to park the car and dismissed me for the night. This was across the road from the National Gallery. I hung around for a bit, watching, but all they were doing was sitting in the back seat talking and drinking. I left them to it and went home.’

He paused at this anti-climax, as if offering us the opportunity to ask questions. Assistant Commissioner Worrall had one. ‘Can somebody enlighten me on the significance of this conversation?’

Micaelis could. ‘According to Salina Fleet, sir, Taylor had a grudge against Lambert. She’d knocked him back for an exhibition of his real pictures, told him they weren’t up to scratch. Plus there was some sort of bad blood relating to a dead painter by the name of Victor Szabo. On Lambert’s recommendation, the Centre for Modern Art recently purchased a painting by this Victor Szabo. So Taylor got the idea of painting a copy of the Szabo and using it to discredit Lambert in some way. He was getting quite het up about it, apparently. Fleet realised this might cause problems for Eastlake and alerted him to the fact. She also tried to dissuade Taylor. But he got drunk and went off half-cocked at an exhibition at the Centre for Modern Art last Friday night, threatening to blow the whistle.’