The reception area at Chatswood Police Station was quiet. The duty sergeant was standing behind the desk, shuffling a pile of papers. Ted Mackie was by Calida’s side on a timber bench reading a brochure on keeping kids safe. He had dispensed with his usual Hawaiian shirt and was wearing a white linen collared shirt and a pair of fashionable denim jeans. When Rimis appeared, Ted put aside the brochure and got to his feet. Calida stood and walked over to him. ‘I’ve just come back from the morgue, Inspector.’
Rimis had been present enough times when relatives were making a formal identification to know what Calida had just been through. It was something nobody should ever have to experience.
‘Come upstairs to my office, we can talk better there.’
‘I know this is a difficult time for you Cal, especially with the story in the papers.’ Rimis massaged the back of his neck and avoided looking at her.
‘Why haven’t you found Freddie’s killer?’ The skin around her eyes crinkled into deep lines.
‘We're doing everything we can.’ Rimis was surprised by her abruptness and was angry because he had nothing to tell her. He flipped opened the file on his desk and picked out three photos. Kevin Taggart, Nicolae Vladu, Dorin Chisca.
‘Do you recognise any of these men?’ Rimis lined the photos up in front of her. ‘Take your time, have a good look.’
Calida slipped her hands into her bag and pulled out her reading glasses. She studied the photos, swallowed hard and handed them back to him.
‘I’ve never seen any of these men before.’
Rimis reached for another file. ‘What about this one?’ Rimis produced a photo of Paloma Browne at her year twelve formal.
‘Paloma Browne. She certainly was an attractive girl. Freddie hired her after I left the gallery. Her photo and details of her death were on the front page of all the papers. Do you think whoever killed Freddie, killed Paloma?’
‘We’re not sure at this stage,’ he said. ‘Tell me about Paloma and Freddie. What sort of relationship did they have? Did they get on?’
‘I think they did. At least as far as I know. Freddie was a hard taskmaster but she was always fair. Paloma was a wild girl; Freddie took pity on her and gave her a job. Freddie told me she was saving up to study at the Sorbonne.’
‘Did you know she painted Whiteleys for Freddie?’
‘Freddie never said, but I had my suspicions. She knew I didn’t like Whiteley’s work. I think it’s vulgar, so when she insisted I try my hand at them, I assumed Paloma had saved enough money for her airfare to Paris and Freddie wanted me to take over from her to fill the gap.’
‘We know from an email Paloma sent Freddie that she’d resigned from the gallery, so you could be right,’ Rimis said. ‘I want you to take a look at these. We have the originals downstairs in the lockup, but I thought you might be able to tell from the photos.’
Calida stared at the coloured photos and studied each one carefully. Some she held up to the light, others she picked up then placed to one side. She removed her glasses. ‘I painted all of them, except for the Whiteleys. Paloma would have painted them. She followed Brett’s style closely, much better than I could have.’ Calida looked at Rimis and frowned. ‘So, what’s all this got to do with Freddie’s murder?’
‘We found forged provenance certificates in the safe at the gallery. We believe Freddie was involved in a money laundering scheme, as well as art fraud.’
‘You’re crazy. Freddie? Art fraud perhaps, but money laundering?’
‘Art lends itself to it.’ Rimis knew money-laundering was simple. ‘When someone has illegal money they want to get rid of, it has to look like it came from legitimate sources. I know it must be hard for you to accept, but we’ve found receipts for art purchases that don’t match their true value. We believe Freddie may have been selling your innuendos and genuine works for cash as a way to launder money earned through illegal drug trafficking. She’d resell the paintings and —’
Calida got to her feet, visibly upset. ‘Freddie was my sister, Inspector. I won’t sit here and listen to her good name being bandied around like this.’
Ted drove back through the cross-city tunnel to the eastern suburbs and dropped Calida outside the gallery. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? I could stay with you, or come back in an hour and drive you to Freddie’s apartment.’
‘I’m okay, Ted, really. After I’ve finished here, I’ll get a taxi to Freddie’s. It’s not far.’
‘Well, if you’re sure.’
Calida watched Ted drive away. She unlocked the gallery’s front door and walked down the hall to Freddie’s office. She was surprised. Apart from the messy desk, the office had changed little since she was here last. She hadn’t stepped inside the gallery since before the fire. What would she would do with the gallery now Freddie was dead?
She sat down in the plush red chair behind the antique desk and looked at the blank computer screen. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for or what she expected to find. Inspector Rimis had told her the police had removed Freddie’s paper records and downloaded her computer files. She wondered if Freddie had changed the computer password and was about to enter sisters in the log in command box when she heard the click of the front door and the shifting of feet on the timber floorboards outside the office.
‘Ted, is that you?’ There was no answer. ‘Ted?’ She tried to remember if she had locked the front door when she came in.
‘It’s you,’ she said. She got to her feet.
‘Yes, it is me, Calida. It has been a long time.’
Vladu followed in behind Chisca and stood in one corner of the room.
‘I see you brought your shadow with you.’ She nodded towards Vladu. He showed no sign of emotion or acknowledgement. ‘How dare you come in here like this and frighten me half to death?’
Chisca sat down in a chair across the desk from her and removed a single cigarette from a silver case. He lit up.
‘Do you have to smoke? It’s such a filthy habit.’
Chisca drew in a lung-full of nicotine and crossed his legs. ‘Sit down Calida, no need to stand on my account.’ He blew a ring of smoke towards her.
‘What do you want?’ Calida sat down. ‘You’ve already taken everything that was important to me: my sister, my home, my career.’ She knew Dorin Chisca was a violent, unpredictable man, but whatever he wanted from her, she knew she wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. She would face him head on and not scamper away like she did the last time she came up against him.
‘Your sister was trying to double cross me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘She was trying to outsmart me. She had you paint an innuendo of North Coast Summers and then she substituted it for the original. She was going to resell it, take from me what was rightfully mine.’
‘Impossible. Freddie wouldn’t do such of thing. She asked me to paint her a copy because it had been sold. It was a painting she admired; she was disappointed she hadn’t bought it. And let’s get things quite clear from the start. I had no idea she’d taken up with you after the fire. The fire you started.’
‘That was just a little misunderstanding.’
‘It was a warning. And it worked, didn’t it? I signed over the business to Freddie and left Sydney for good. Far away from all your dirty secrets.’
Calida pulled open the top drawer of the desk. Vladu reached inside his coat pocket but dropped his hands to his side when she pulled out a tall bottle of whiskey and two glass tumblers. She thumped them down on the desk in front of her. Freddie always liked to keep the whiskey in her desk drawer in case of emergencies. Calida regarded this an emergency.
‘Want a drink?’
Chisca nodded and uncrossed his legs in a feminine way.
She poured out a generous amount of whiskey and handed him a glass. She poured a drink for herself, swirled the whiskey around, tossed her head back and gulped it down in one mouthful. She poured herself another and leant back and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again she stared at him.
‘So, when did you get Freddie involved? You said you would kill her if I ever told her what was going on between the two of us, or if I went to the police about the forgeries, the drugs, or the fire. I kept my side of the bargain. What about you, Dorin?’ She slammed her glass down on the desk. ‘Was it you? Did you kill her?’ Calida was on her feet now. Her head was spinning from the emotion and from the whiskey.
‘Of course not, it is not my style. You insult me by even accusing me of such a thing.’ Chisca leant forward and flicked cigarette ash onto the desk.
‘Well, who did then? Was it you?’ she said to Vladu.
Vladu took a step forward. Chisca waved him back.
‘No, it wasn’t Nicolae. I have no idea who killed Freddie.’
‘Why are you here then? What do you want from me? The police think Freddie was involved in money laundering. Is this what all this is about?’
‘No, I am here for the watercolour. I paid Kevin Taggart good money for North Coast Summers. I could have simply taken it, but it was meant as a gift for my parents. The gift would have been insincere if I had stolen it from him.’ Chisca drained his glass and helped himself to more whiskey. ‘Someone has cheated me, Calida. I cannot say who it was. Perhaps it was Freddie, or Kevin Taggart himself. The frame was filled with a kilo of cocaine. Someone took the original from the storeroom in my warehouse and replaced it with your innuendo.
‘I would like to compliment you, by the way. It was very good. It had me fooled until I picked it up and looked closely at the signature. It was not right. You really should take more care with your signatures.’ Chisca slammed his glass on the desk and the contents spilled. His face darkened.
‘Where is it? Where’s the original? I have had enough of playing these games.’
Calida sat rigid in her chair and avoided his wild, dark eyes. ‘I don’t know where it is. Freddie didn’t tell me anything about what happened to the innuendos after I painted them, and I never asked.’
Chisca glared at her. ‘I hope you are telling me the truth, Calida, because Vladu is going to pay a call on Mr Taggart. If he does not find the painting, he will come back here to tear this place apart and while he is at it, he might just do the same to you.’
The lock mechanism was simple. Vladu leaned up against the door, listened for the click and pushed it open with his shoulder. He stood in the middle of Kevin’s empty apartment and looked about him. The blood drained from his face. He wasn’t expecting this. He wasn’t used to this kind of evil. He was here to find the watercolour and return it to its rightful owner. The women’s faces were pinched, shrivelled, bloodless. Red, swollen eyes followed him around the room. He stopped to look at each individual painting. The same woman, with different feverish expressions. Every canvas had one thing in common: words painted across the face. For the wages of sin is death.
Vladu didn’t have much time, he knew the sooner he was out of here the better. In the bedroom he searched under the bed, ran his hand under the mattress. He found nothing. He opened the wardrobe and came face to face with its emptiness. The wire clothes hangers were all bare. In the bathroom, he pushed the shower curtain to one side. Nothing.
He dialled Chisca’s number. ‘There is nothing here, Sef,’ he said, using the Romanian word for boss.
‘What, no painting?’
‘I have bad feeling about this guy. I think he is one sick bastard. He is gone, taken everything with him. No clothes, nothing.’
‘Nothing at all?’
‘There are some paintings here, but they are not worth bothering with. What is it you want me to do?’