will be filed for my private holding company. At nine o’clock tomorrow morning, I’ll be in Europe. A liquidator will be sitting at my desk. And the dogs will be fighting over Karlcraft’s carcass.’
Fiona Lambert couldn’t give a damn about Karlin’s misfortunes. Breaking the band on one of the wads of cash, she licked her thumb and started counting. Her lips moved silently like a devotee telling her rosary beads. Karlin came out of the kitchen and when he spoke the sound was so close it startled me. ‘Don’t bank it all at once. Large cash deposits get reported. And don’t start spending it either, not unless you want Lloyd suspecting something.’
‘You think I’m stupid?’ said Fiona rancorously. ‘You think I don’t know that?’ He’d made her lose count and she had to start again. ‘And leave Lloyd to me. I know how to handle Lloyd Eastlake.’
Karlin was standing immediately in front of my hiding place, blocking my view. ‘Tch tch. Greedy girl, tch tch.’ His shape moved towards the front door. ‘Goodbye, Fiona.’
Lambert got up from the table. I leaned backwards and held my breath. The front door opened. ‘Bon voyage, Max.’ Fiona was caustic to the last. ‘And thanks for nothing.’ Karlin’s footsteps rapidly receded down the stairs. The door was pulled shut and Fiona spoke under her breath. ‘You miserable little Shylock.’
Charming.
My big moment, I decided, had arrived. Throw open the cupboard door, jump out and spring Ms Director of the Centre for Modern Art with her hands sunk elbow-deep in ill-gotten loot. Bang her up, dead to rights, with the evidence of her sins piled on the Baltic pine dining table of her over-geared pied-a-terre.
Lambert’s silhouette passed the louvred door. I pressed my eye to the crack, waiting for exactly the right moment to make my move.
Her mood had improved remarkably. She kicked off her shoes, sashayed her hips, pumped her arms at her side and sidled across the living room. ‘Let me look at you,’ she cooed throatily. ‘You beautiful, beautiful money.’
She picked up one of the packets of bills and fanned it with her thumb. She kissed it. She slowly ran it over her bare arms, luxuriating in its feel. She squirmed sinuous. ‘Money, money, money,’ she sang. The tune from Cabaret.
Tearing the band off with her teeth, she smeared a fistful of bills across her neck and torso. The loose notes cascaded past her swaying hips and settled on the floor around her feet. She reached for another wad and danced a slow silent rhumba with it, pressing the cash to her belly with one hand and describing a slow circle in the air above her head with the other. She was in a trance.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Turned on by a wad of cash. It was a mesmerising sight. And sexy as all hell. She slid the wad of bills slowly down her body, moaning a low guttural tune in the back of her throat. She moved out of sight. Glassware clinked. She segued back into sight, drink in one hand, money in the other. I’d seen enough. Time to spring.
Bang. Bang. A sharp metallic rapping came from the flat door. I nearly jumped out of my skin. I cringed backwards and my line of sight narrowed.
Startled out of her reverie, Fiona dropped her bundle. She went down on her knees, scrabbling for the bills strewn about the floor. Rap, rap, came the knock at the door. ‘Just a moment,’ she called, scooping up an armful of loose money, dumping it on the table and going down for more. ‘Who is it?’
‘Me.’ A male. Not Karlin.
‘Coming.’ She disappeared from my sight briefly, then darted back with a piece of cloth, some sort of throw- sheet off the couch. It billowed above the table and fell loosely over the money. She composed herself, smoothing down her clothes and hair. She came towards me, scooping up her shoes on the way. When she reached my hiding place, she paused to slip on her shoes. She leaned against the louvred door. It clicked shut.
My heart shot backwards in my chest, hit my spine and bounced off. My legs requested a transfer to other duties. I braced myself for exposure. Fiona, oblivious to the pulsating tom-tom of my heartbeat, stepped to the front door and opened it. All I could see was a section of carpet, visible through the downward-raked slats of the closet’s louvred door.
‘Hi.’ Fiona was purring, butter not melting in her mouth. ‘What brings you here?’ Like this was the nicest surprise she’d had all day.
‘Just a chance visit.’ The voice sounded familiar. When I heard it again, I had no trouble putting a face to it. ‘I called in across the road to see if the picture had arrived safe and sound. Janelle said you’d come home for lunch, so I thought I’d join you.’ It was Lloyd Eastlake.
Things were getting more interesting by the moment. I hung on Lambert’s response. She said nothing.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’
A moment’s silence. ‘Um. I’m just on my way back to work, actually.’ And not really in a position to do any entertaining, what with the flat all cluttered up with hundred-dollar bills.
Eastlake was undeterred. ‘Let’s have a little drink first. Celebrate your success. The Centre for Modern Art’s first major acquisition. Our Home, ours at last.’ His tone was more than just chairmanly. ‘You look a bit flushed. You haven’t been having one all by yourself, have you? You naughty little girl.’
She played along. ‘Okay, I admit it. You caught me at it. But I really must be getting back. The picture has to be stored away properly. You know what Janelle’s like.’
‘What’s the hurry? Janelle will be fine.’ The tone was playfully wheedling, but there was a possessive edge to it. ‘You haven’t got someone in there with you, have you?’
‘Like who?’ She laughed the idea away, resenting the inference.
‘An attractive woman like you,’ he said, turning it into a compliment. ‘Could be any one of a million men.’
This all had an air of easy intimacy to it. I began to suspect I knew what Fiona had meant when she said she knew how to handle Lloyd Eastlake. ‘I just love it when you get jealous.’ Playful sarcasm. ‘Married man and all.’
‘C’mon. How about that drink.’ Eastlake didn’t want to stand in the door. He was coming inside. Like it or not.
I was breathing through my skin, willing myself invisible. Eastlake’s shoes appeared in the louvre-framed square of carpet in front of the closet. Suddenly, the outline of Fiona’s red dress pressed back against the door. The louvres bulged inwards and the whole door creaked on its hinges. Fabric rustled against fabric. Fiona had grabbed Eastlake and pulled him against her. Another sound came-part moist sucking, part sibilant inhalation, part low moan. They were going the smooch, the full mutual tonsillectomy by the sound of it.
The vixen! ‘Hmm,’ she murmured appreciatively. ‘I do find it exciting, I must admit. Getting Our Home at last.’
Lloyd Eastlake wasn’t a man to pass up an opportunity. ‘Hmm,’ he agreed. Now that she’d started him up, there was no stopping him. The cupboard door bowed inwards. All I could see was the bare backs of Fiona’s calves, her ankles, her fire-engine red shoes. Eastlake’s shoe slid between hers, the light grey check of his trousered leg rubbing against her bare flesh.
Movement traced the silhouette outline of Fiona’s body. Something slid behind her, cradling the small of her back. Through the slats of the louvre, I could clearly see the individual hairs on the back of Eastlake’s hand. My mouth turned to a desert. It seemed inconceivable that they couldn’t hear my heart beating. I could hear every breath they took, distinguish their individual rhythms. I might as well have been in bed with them.
They might as well have been in bed with each other. The pace of their breathing quickened, the volume of their slurping noises. Eastlake’s hand was tugging up the hem of Lambert’s dress. Her knickers were pale lilac. His hand slid into them, down into the valley of her buttocks. Her feet eased wider. ‘Hmm,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll have to buy you an expensive painting more often.’
She moaned encouragement. Eastlake’s hand was out of her knickers. He was down on his knees, tugging at them. Her legs closed. A flash of lilac slid past her white knees. Through the inverted V of her thighs, I saw him shake free of his suit jacket. He reached down and opened his trousers.
All the blood in my body had converged in my groin. I could have got a job as a coat hook. The pulse in my ears was beating a rhythm like the time-keeper on a slave galley. Faster. Faster. Ramming speed. I screwed my eyes shut and tried to think of something else. Anything else. Humpity, humpity, went the door, threatening to burst in. Bang, bang, bang.
I peeked, knowing already what I would see. Fiona’s feet had vanished, raised off the floor. Little ridges of
