‘Maybe, but I’d feel better… ‘
‘There it is! You’d feel better. I’d feel worse. I’m staying.’
In the morning we drove to a house in Austinmer and loaded up with Barnes Todd’s paintings and photographs. They filled the boot and the back seat. There were also several boxes and thick folders full of sketches and photographs. Felicia’s friend Deborah was a big, overall-wearing woman, who had built her own house and earned her living by landscape gardening and doing building jobs for others. Her hobby was sculpture and, from the way she strode about carrying pictures and boxes, I had the feeling that she’d do big ones. I would have felt happier if Deborah could have taken up temporary residence with Felicia in Thirroul, or vice versa, but it was worth more than my life to say so.
Deborah’s voice rumbled like a coal loader. ‘I’ll run her back in the truck.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring you tonight, Fel.’
Felicia bent down to the driver’s window. She kissed me and touched my bristled chin. ‘Why don’t you grow a beard? Might suit you.’
I took the freeway back to the Princes Highway and was unloading the masterpieces at Piers Lang’s gallery in Riley Street, Surry Hills, not much more than an hour after leaving Austinmer. For long stretches of the drive I had forgotten that I was carrying items that could be worth millions of dollars. I don’t think I believed it anyhow, not on the word of Leon Willowsmith. The gallery assistant who was helping me unload missed his footing and dropped one of the folders of photographs. The string around it snapped and the contents spilled across the floor. I collected the pictures together and saw enough to note the sharp clarity of the shots-you could see the veins of the leaves on the trees, or convince yourself you could.
The assistant relieved me of the folder and dusted the glossy black and white surfaces with his handkerchief.
‘Marvellous,’ he said. He held up one of the framed photographs and looked at it as if he had been waiting for it all his life.
I got a detailed receipt from Lang, a rolypoly little man who seemed wildly enthusiastic about everything. The atmosphere at Lang’s place was completely different from Willowsmith’s. Here there was a stronger smell of paint than of money.
‘Leon Willowsmith’s not going to be too keen on this,’ I said. ‘Maybe you should beef up your security.’
‘Good idea,’ Lang said. ‘Are you in that business?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Would you be interested? God, those photographs.’
I was folding the receipt, ready to leave, but something in his voice stopped me. ‘What about the paintings? I thought…’
‘The paintings are good, too.’
I tried to look as if I knew what he was talking about. He beckoned me into his office-a small room cluttered with paintings, photographs and objects that could have been pieces of sculpture or plastic bottles that had been left in a hot oven. ‘This is sensational stuff,’ Lang said. ‘Potentially.’
I nodded.
‘I think Felicia and I have an understanding. Are you in her confidence, Mr Hardy?’
‘Up to a point.’
‘Tell her everything will be all right and that I’ll make sure the catalogue appears exactly as she wants it to. Now, as to the matter of security…’
‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more about your understanding with Mrs Todd. She’s a subtle woman. If I’m going to be involved at the security end I’ll need to know any… angles.’
Lang passed his hand over the thin dark hair on his rather pointy head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘maybe I should protect myself. I’m not going into this thing with my eyes shut, you know.’
‘What thing, Mr Lang?’
‘Did you know Todd? Like him?’
‘I knew him slightly. He was okay.’
‘Do you think he was honest?’
‘More or less.’
‘Exactly. He was certainly smart. You don’t think the photographs are his work, do you?’
I tried to remember whether Felicia had actually said so. I couldn’t recall. ‘I assumed it.’
‘Exactly. So will everyone else, and the catalogue will confirm it.’
‘Are you saying he didn’t take the photographs?’
Lang gave me a level look. ‘Did I say that?’
‘Whose work are they?’
‘Who do you think? I’ve said enough. This is all very delicate. What about the security?’
I told him I wouldn’t handle it, but I gave him the name of a firm I occasionally deal with. I didn’t think it would hurt to stay in some kind of touch with the snaps and daubings.
O’Fear eased himself gently into the car. He was wearing a grey suit that was slightly too big for him. He had lost weight in gaol. I put his bag in the back, but I didn’t open any doors for him or offer other help. He would probably have broken my arm.
‘How bad is it?’ I said.
‘Could be worse. Glanced off a rib. A dozen stitches and no ballet dancing for a while.’
‘Where d’you want to go?’
‘Where does anyone want to go after a period of durance vile? To a bloody pub, boyo. Have you got a shooter?’
I nodded and started, the car. We drove to a pub in Chifley near the Star drive-in theatre. It was showing a couple of the Harrison Ford Indiana Jones movies and I wondered who would want to go to drive-ins any more, now that we had videos and all-night TV. Unless it was for the same old reason.
The pub was undergoing a refit and only the saloon bar was open. There was no draught Guinness, so O’Fear accepted a bottle of Sheaf stout. He filled a schooner expertly and drank it down in a couple of long gulps. I had a middy of the same stuff in lieu of lunch.
O’Fear wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, refilled his glass and signalled tor another bottle. ‘Ah, that’s better.’
‘You’re not going to tell me you went all those months without a drink. I could smell it on you the other day.’
‘It’s not the same.’ We were sitting on bar stools. O’Fear pushed some of the change from my ten bucks across the bar and the barman replaced the empty bottle with a full one. He took some money and put back very little. The walls of the bar were covered with photographs and paintings of cars and horses. I didn’t think Felicia would approve too much of my spending her money in here.
The barman put a clean glass in front of him and O’Fear ignored it. ‘Bloody prat,’ he said, ‘I like to stick to the same glass.’ He drank deeply. ‘This has the breath of freedom in it. Well, Hardy, you almost got me killed, so when are we going to start talking money?’
‘Eh?’
‘This has got to be big. I’m inside there, cruisin’ along and mindin’ me own business. Me only worry is that I haven’t see me boy Danny for a bit. Come to think of it, I could’ve hired you to look about for him. Anyhow, one fine day I talk to you, and the bail’s up and some bastard sticks me. Now, it was worth somebody’s while to do that, so it has to be worth my while to put me life in hazard.’
‘Christ, what do you want? I got you out, didn’t I? That’s my own money I put up.’
‘So it is. And you’ll get it back when I stand trial. What would you say to a fifty-fifty split?’
‘I’d say no.’
‘If I go to Tasmania you’ll lose the lot. I hear the folk scene’s still very big down there.’
‘You wouldn’t be hard to find.’
‘But think of the expense. Come on, boy, you want to know what happened to Todd, don’t you?’
‘Do you know?’
