Playing for time, she said, ‘It is a beautiful painting.’
The relief was palpable. ‘It is, it really is.’
It was as if he needed to act now, before his luck slipped away. ‘Twenty thousand?’ she asked.
He leaned forward until their knees touched and she wanted to gag. ‘Look on it as good-will money, Mara.’
‘You get the money only when we get the painting.’
Steven Finch held his arms wide. ‘Not a problem. I can get it to you after work on Monday.’
When evening deepened into night, Mara sought out the nanny. ‘We’ll be gone tomorrow and Monday.’
Feeling super responsible, she added: ‘I don’t want Natalia to wake up in the morning and wonder where we are.’
Tayla, reading in bed after an exhausting day, blinked at Mara, who was a forbidding shape backlit by the hallway light. ‘But tomorrow’s my day off.’
‘All right, all right,’ Mara snarled. ‘Triple pay. Satisfied?’
‘I mean, what about Natalia?’
‘What about her?’
Tayla tried and failed to find a common moral, ethical and commonsensical ground with her boss. ‘She was looking forward to Mummy and Daddy taking her to the pirate ship playground tomorrow.’
‘ She’ll… have… you,’ said Mara, and Tayla saw the warning signs: rapidly blinking eyes, heightened colour and clenched jaw and fists.
She thought hard about the triple pay, and swallowed. ‘I guess I could take her.’
‘What a good idea,’ said Mara, hugely bored already, heading back down the hallway to her husband’s room. ‘Aren’t you ready yet?’
‘Almost.’
But he wasn’t, and she told him what she thought about that for a while. That had him shoving clothing and toiletries into an overnight bag, until, at long last, Mara was able to drive the Mercedes van out onto Goddard Road.
‘I didn’t say goodbye to Natalia.’
‘I said it for you,’ Mara said, wondering why on earth he wanted to say goodbye to a sleeping child. What was the point?
They set off in the moonlight. After a while she relaxed, and, with almost sleepy nonchalance and sensual grace, steered the big van up through Frankston and on to Eastlink. What they were about to do, use Finch to find the woman who’d robbed them, gave her a peculiarly sexual tug deep inside. She fondled the bulge in Warren’s trousers for a while, until he gasped and folded over his lap and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome.’
The road unwound all the way up to the tunnel and across to the city’s northern exits and finally into downtown Melbourne and out the other side to Williamstown.
45
Only one person had responded to Challis’s advertisements, a man in Albury named Hopgood. He’d e-mailed Challis to expect him late on Sunday morning, and now it was 11.30 and Challis was reading the Sunday Age at his kitchen table, waiting for a knock on his door. Would long-service leave be like this, a lot of sitting around, waiting?
When the knock came, he found a grey haired man on the veranda, a restored Mk II Jaguar in the driveway-British Racing Green, wire wheels, a lovely car.
‘Coffee?’
‘Mate, I’m in a bit of a hurry.’
So Challis took him around to the rear of the house, and the first thing Hopgood said was an incredulous, ‘Twenty-five grand?’
‘There’s one in Canberra going for thirty -five grand,’ said Challis mildly.
‘Bud, I’ve seen that car. Overpriced, and in a lot better nick than this one.’
Challis glanced at the sky. Warmish, a slight threat of rain by nightfall, and when it came it would bucket down. Typical spring weather, in fact, and he wanted the sale to go through before it rained. It had to go through, didn’t it? The guy had driven a long distance to be here, and owned an outfit named Brands Hatch Classic Cars.
He gave Hopgood a quick once-over. About sixty, wiry, weather-beaten, inclined to be impatient and self-important. Challis saw a man who bullied his male employees, fondled the female, and over-charged his clients.
His mind drifted. It often occurred to him that criminality was closely bound up in motor vehicles. Transport, getaway, an expression of personality, a weapon, a tomb. A payoff. Cars could be tied to everything he’d ever investigated, yet were taken for granted. They deserved their own science.
‘Rust, bottom of both doors.’
Challis knew that. You could see it with the naked eye and he’d said as much in the ads.
‘Yes.’
Hopgood took a fridge magnet from his pocket and, with a no-flies-on-me air, tested every square inch of the car. It seemed to cringe under so much scrutiny: ‘Sorry, getting old, got a few flaws…’
Then the guy was poking around in the engine bay. ‘New hoses.’
And new spark plug leads, thought Challis, new coil leads, new everything that had been chewed by the rats. ‘Yes.’
After that, Hopgood took the car for a test run. He was gone for twenty minutes, and when he returned he stood in Challis’s driveway with his hands on his hips and fired a summary:
‘She’s burning oil, so she’ll need a new set of rings. Rides the bumps rough, so new suspension. I’ll need to replace the windscreen and offside turning light, both import items. Goodish tyres. Seat fabric’s okay but stretched. New soft top needed, get one of these made up in Sydney, bloke who does a lot of work for me.’
So, are you making me an offer? thought Challis. He glanced at his watch and said nothing. He’d told Hopgood that another buyer was coming, which was an outright lie.
‘Fifteen grand.’
‘Twenty-two fifty,’ Challis replied.
‘Come on, you must be joking. Sixteen.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Don’t arse me about. Look, I’ll give you eighteen.’
‘Sorry,’ said Challis with his heart in his mouth, ‘twenty.’
And after the restoration you’ll sell for thirty, thirty-five.
‘Eighteen. Take it or leave it.’
Challis sighed and said he’d take it. Hopgood fished a thousand dollars in hundreds from his wallet and promised the rest when he picked up the car. ‘I’ll come back with a flatbed truck this evening.’
‘Sure.’
And Hopgood left, the Jag purring down Challis’s driveway. Just before reaching the gate it braked suddenly for a sickly-green Hyundai which sped in from the road, saw Hopgood and swerved onto the grass. A moment later, the Jaguar slid unfussily out onto the road and Larrayne Destry jerked back onto the driveway and in erratic surges towards Challis.
She got out, looking jittery yet annoyed. ‘Who was that? He gave me this really strange look, kind of smug.’
‘He thought you’d come to buy my car,’ Challis said, explaining what had happened. ‘You should have come a few minutes earlier, he might have offered more money.’
Larrayne looked doubtfully at the Triumph. ‘If you say so.’
Challis laughed. ‘I’m glad to get rid of the thing, frankly.’ He toed the gravel with the tip of his shoe. ‘Everything all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘The boyfriend?’
‘Dumped. Kind of.’
Challis nodded. The boyfriend hadn’t seemed too bad; just an idiot. ‘Have you heard from your mother?’
‘She e-mails me like every day.’
Challis, too. A phone call, a text message or a Skype conversation every two or three days.
Larrayne Destry blurted, ‘I was wrong about you.’
Challis opened and closed his mouth warily.
‘I mean, I didn’t like what was happening with Mum and Dad and I took it out on you.’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, well.’
She said fiercely, as though she were a fierce small child, ‘You’re not my father.’
‘I know that.’ Challis didn’t even want to be her friend, really. Just civilised with her, that’s all.
‘Are you the real deal? As far as Mum is concerned?’
‘I’ll try to be.’
‘You’re supposed to reassure me.’