By Garry Disher

‘I want you to steal a painting,’ Boyce said.

Wyatt nodded. This wouldn’t be the first time; it wouldn’t be the last. Stealing paintings was something he did when the big jobs fell through or got screwed up or failed to materialise in the first place. Like now.

‘Insurance?’

That was the way it generally worked. Either he’d initiate the job himself and negotiate a reward from the insurance company or the owner would set it up and pay him a cut of the claim money. That was the way it worked, and that was why he assumed Boyce had something like that in mind.

‘Not exactly,’ Boyce said.

They were in Boyce Fine Art, the man’s gallery on Greville Street in Prahran. The building had been a glove factory, a classically plain red-brick structure from the 1920s on the outside, all glass, marble and blackwood on the inside. There were vivid oils hanging on the walls, the work of a local artist who portrayed the streets and pubs and parks of Prahran as scenes from someone’s headache.

Wyatt waited for Boyce to explain. The man was edgy and angular, clean-looking with fine hair cropped short, wire-rimmed glasses and ironed designer jeans and shirt. He plucked at his watchstrap. ‘Boyce,’ Wyatt said, ‘I’m not getting any younger.’

Boyce stopped worrying his watchstrap and began to talk. ‘I’d better start with the background,’ he said, ‘so you can put the whole thing into perspective—and believe me, you’re going to have to put it into perspective. It might help if I tell you your cut is thirty-five thousand bucks.’

That made Wyatt sit up. He was broke. Also, when circumstances had forced him into this kind of work in the past, he’d never earned more than five or ten thousand dollars—five or ten thousand for Streetons and Dobells worth a quarter of a million. If Boyce was offering thirty-five, this painting had to be one hell of a valuable one.

But Wyatt didn’t say any of that, preferring to hear it from Boyce. He waited, half-tuning the other man out. Boyce had a messy mind. He’d never say in one sentence what he could say in fifteen, hanging a load of conditions and asides on the central point. Wyatt let him ramble on, saying ‘Sure’ and ‘Fine’ and ‘I see’ from time to time. There was no point in hurrying Boyce: he’d only get hurt or flustered and more time would get wasted.

It took ten minutes, but at the end of it Wyatt knew all he needed to know. He condensed each layer as Boyce ladled it on, and learned that there was a wealthy collector. Boyce was not prepared to give the man’s name but did say that he was an Australian, a high-flier now living in hiding somewhere in Europe. The collector was living in hiding because he’d salted away twenty million dollars in various tax havens over the years, money that the Tax Office, Westpac and a host of friends and colleagues wanted back again. They also wanted the collector back again to stand trial.

The collector was a vulgarian, everyone knew it, but he’d tried to buy some respectability as an art lover over the years. Before fleeing overseas he’d built up a big private collection, set up a scholarship, and donated money to regional and state galleries.

He’d also loaned paintings to the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road. Now he’d never get those paintings back again and his name had been removed as a trustee and patron of the Gallery. He wanted revenge, according to Boyce. But stealing his own paintings back again wasn’t going to do it: he wanted the Gallery’s 1.6-million-dollar Picasso, Weeping Woman.

‘You must be joking,’ Wyatt said.

Boyce shrugged. ‘That’s what the man wants. Willing to pay top dollar to get it.’

‘I don’t mean what he wants and what he doesn’t want,’ Wyatt said. ‘I mean you must be joking if you think I could walk out of the National Gallery of Victoria with a painting under my coat, let alone take it off the wall in the first place.’

There was an unnerving directness in Wyatt’s voice and Boyce wilted in the face of it. He looked away, plucked at his watchstrap, his tidy lips now screwed into a pout. Then Wyatt heard a massive sigh and the words, ‘I know. I told him the same thing.’

Wyatt waited. For the moment, he’d said all he needed to say. He knew Boyce hadn’t. Finally Boyce looked directly at him and Wyatt saw desperation on the man’s face.

‘Mate, I’m in a bind. I won’t bullshit you. The total fee is seventy-five grand, thirty-five to you, forty to me for finding the right man, getting the picture safely out of the country, etcetera, etcetera.’ He paused. ‘I need that money, Wyatt.’ He waved a slender hand around at the walls, the fittings, the paintings. ‘There’s some people I owe money to, I can’t move my stock, that little prick at the Age has ignored every exhibition I’ve held here. I’ve got some real talent on my books, but no-one’s interested . . . .’

Wyatt let him talk. People were always trying to explain things to him, justify themselves. What did he care? Other peoples’ problems were nothing to do with him.

‘So I really need this one,’ Boyce concluded, ‘and you’re the only bloke I can think of who’s capable of pulling it off.’

‘Boyce,’ Wyatt said, looking around at the ceiling, the windows, ‘you’ve got cameras here, alarms, security doors, and you’re just a suburban gallery. Think what the security is like at St Kilda Road. I’d be jumped on before I even peered at the signature.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’

Boyce grinned then and it transformed his face, taking away the tension. Wyatt stared at him. Evidently Boyce had a card up his sleeve, but it was more than that. Clearly Boyce was feeling encouraged—if Wyatt was still here and, more to the point, talking over the job, even if negatively, then he must be halfway interested in doing it.

Well, Wyatt was interested. He was interested in the thirty-five thousand dollars and he was interested in the challenge. There were times, like now, when he could admit to himself that he was addicted to risk and to the jobs that posed interesting problems.

But the cheesy grin on Boyce’s face irritated him. He was about to wipe it off when the man tipped back his smooth throat and called, ‘Janet, come here a minute.’

A door marked ‘office’ opened behind the sofa Boyce was sitting on and the woman who emerged was young, about twenty, wearing lycra tights under a tent-like T-shirt. Her hair was tousled, her face drowsy, heavy-lidded, as if she’d been sleeping. Wyatt watched as she walked around the end of the couch, climbed onto it next to Boyce, and curled her legs under her rump; then, apparently dissatisfied with that, she stretched out, putting her bare feet in Boyce’s lap. She was like a cat. Boyce stroked her feet, reinforcing the notion.

‘Wyatt, meet Janet.’

Wyatt didn’t want to meet her. If she was involved in this she was a weak link. He had to force the words out: ‘Hello, Janet.’

The woman said nothing, just nodded lazily at Wyatt, but underneath it all—the hair over her face, the slow warm bare limbs buried in the soft leather—she was watching him sharply, assessingly. There was paint on her fingers; paint flecked her thin forearms. He held her gaze for a time, revising his opinion a little. Something communicated itself between them, a recognition of ability and lawlessness in one another’s natures.

Boyce reached along her leg, buried his hand between her knees. ‘Janet helps out around the place,’ he said. He patted her. ‘She’s also a painter, a good one, very good. Up and coming. I’ve got some of her stuff out the back.’

There was a point to this and Wyatt waited for it. The world was full of people who never did anything but talk, and for Wyatt that meant playing a waiting game. He inclined his head at the woman politely, as if to say he was prepared to accept Boyce’s judgment.

‘She’s already been in four group shows,’ Boyce said. ‘Tasmania’s got one of her canvases, a couple of oil companies, there’s a buyer in Japan interested in her stuff.’

‘You’re waffling, Toby,’ the woman said. She said it quietly, not bothering to look at him.

Boyce flushed. ‘You’re right. Sorry. The thing is, Wyatt, Janet knows the Gallery inside and out. She thinks it can be done.’

* * * *

She was waiting for him in front of the water wall, wearing jeans this time, her hair pulled back from her face with a couple of plastic clips. She looked alert and young. Wyatt didn’t know what she saw in Boyce, but he didn’t think about it more than that. He was working and he was thinking about the work still to be done.

He stopped in front of her and nodded. A smile split her face. ‘Some art student,’ she said, looking him up and down.

Wyatt had done his best. He wore faded Levis, a white T-shirt, a Levi jacket, the latter bought from the thousand dollars Boyce had given him for expenses. But Wyatt was forty years old, a long, narrow, hard man who pulled bank and payroll heists, an occupation that gave his hooked features a dark and wary cast. He didn’t know what art students were supposed to look like. ‘Dress casually, a bit scruffy,’ she’d told him at Boyce’s yesterday, and he’d done his best.

It was 8.30 in the morning and the peak-hour traffic on St Kilda Road was sluggish, fuming, inching uselessly toward the city’s parking stations. There had been a gritty wind the night before. Leaves dotted the ponds; styrofoam containers and greasy paper had blown into the sheltered main entrance of the Gallery. Janet touched Wyatt’s arm briefly and led him to a side door at the northern end of the water wall.

The attendant on duty looked inquiringly at them. ‘Janet Vines and Robert Lake,’ Janet said.

The man checked his book, ticked the names, gave them each a clip-on visitor’s pass. ‘Through here,’ Janet said, and Wyatt felt her hand on his arm again.

She took him to the second floor, past costume, glassware and pottery displays, to the European Gallery. There were leather-topped benches at various parts of the vast room. She stopped at one of them, sat down, and he sat next to her. ‘Give me your case,’ she said.

It was a flat vinyl artist’s folio case, zippered along three sides, the size of an open newspaper, and it belonged to Boyce. Janet carried one like it. She had loaded both with artist’s paraphernalia the night before, and now she was taking out a charcoal stick and a sheet of cartridge paper. Apart from one other student and a cleaner, they were the only people in the European Gallery. That would all change at 10 o’clock, when tourists and busloads of school children would begin to pour through the place.

Wyatt asked quietly, ‘Who else can get in before opening time?’

‘Teachers, researchers, that’s about it.’

She sketched as she answered him, bold, rapid strokes at first, then shading strokes with the flat of the charcoal stick. She smoothed an area with her thumb. ‘Okay,’ she said, handing him the sketch and the charcoal stick, ‘this will cover you if anyone asks questions. As for the rest, that’s your department.’

Meaning he was there to look and listen until he could see a way to walk out of a major gallery with a 1.6-million-dollar Picasso under his arm. She moved away to another part of the room, taking her folio with her. Wyatt looked at the sketch then and realised two things: that it captured the nervous intensity of a small, bright green oil painting on the opposite wall and that the painting itself was the Picasso, Weeping Woman.

Wyatt sat there until opening time. Now and then he added minute scratches to the sketch if someone drifted near, but otherwise he made mental notes about the room, the position and dimensions of the painting, the timing, manner and appearance of the cleaners, attendants and curators. Only twice did he get up: once to prowl the perimeter of the room, looking for cameras, sensors and alarms, the second time to note the location of the toilets, storerooms and exits. He also made a note for his shopping list, a special security screwdriver.

Janet collected him at 10.15, just as the first teacher appeared with a crowd of surly fourteen-year-olds. ‘Get what you wanted?’

Wyatt looked up at her. She was half-amused, as if they were involved in a harmless stunt or as if she couldn’t take him seriously, this Wyatt that Boyce had been talking about. The other half of her expression he couldn’t read.

‘Yes,’ he said.

* * * *

It was time to establish a few things. Wyatt walked with her across Princes Bridge into the city centre. At Collins Street he stopped her from getting onto a Fitzroy tram and said, ‘In here,’ taking her into an arcade.

‘I’m going to my studio,’ she protested. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

‘Later,’ he said, guiding her through the doorway of a coffee shop. It was a place made for talking, privacy guaranteed by the crockery din and a radio tuned to a talkback show.

Wyatt ordered black coffee, Janet mineral water. On the radio they were talking about capital punishment. After the waitress had placed their drinks on the table, Wyatt said, his voice remote and factual, ‘What’s your role in this? Besides whatever Boyce has offered you.’

Janet shrugged, put down her glass. She was young. Like every young person Wyatt had ever met she expressed herself as much with body gestures as with speech, especially when pushed, like now. ‘To show you the Gallery.’

‘I’m not talking about that. I’m also not talking about how you just thought you’d do your boyfriend a favour.’

‘He’s not my boyfriend. We just, you know.’ She paused, wriggling her shoulders. ‘I feel I owe him something. He’s a patron, kind of thing.’

Wyatt said, cold and hard now, ‘I’m not interested in that. I’m only interested in the real reason you’re involved.’

His words had the effect of shutting her down, clearing away the fog she’d created about herself. After a while she answered him, speaking clearly, firmly: ‘The Gallery’s supposed to support local painters, right? My father was a painter, in the fifties. He died when I was twelve. Sure, they bought some of his stuff, but did they ever show it? Then when I was at college I did a project on him. I asked to see the paintings.’ She leaned across the table, putting her face close to his. ‘They’d lost them! She leaned back again, looked down, played with the spoon from his saucer. ‘Temporarily misplaced, they said. Permanently lost or sold, more like it.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘On top of that, I’ve been in three group shows where they’ve bought works by the other people involved. Didn’t buy anything by me though, did they.’

The look she threw him challenged him not to see this as some kind of conspiracy. Wyatt gathered sympathy onto his face but underneath it he was wondering if Janet’s wanting revenge would make her a liability on this job.

If he did it.

If what he had in mind would work.

Still, revenge was a good, clean, useful emotion, about the only one he would ever allow himself, so he put some warmth into his voice:

‘Did you learn a range of techniques at college?’

Her face grew wary and suspicious. ‘Like what?’

‘Like doing copies of originals?’

* * * *

Wyatt reasoned that if discovery of the theft could be delayed, he’d stand a better chance of getting the Picasso out of the Gallery in the first place and later of slipping away from the city with his fee intact. That’s why there had to be a fake Picasso, a good one, to leave in its place. Working from sketches, memory and two further visits to the European collection, Janet spent the early part of the week painting a substitute Weeping Woman. By Thursday night the paint was dry, the canvas tight on its stretcher, ready to hang. Also by then Wyatt had acquired the security screwdriver and he knew exactly how the switch would go.

He played art student again the next morning. He had the fake in his folio case, together with a pine board of the same dimensions, and when the cleaners were finished for the day he slipped into a storeroom, pushed aside a ceiling batten, stowed the painting and the board, replaced the batten. Then he left the Gallery. His name was ticked off.

He returned, an ordinary tourist in dress and manner this time, an hour before closing time. He did not leave the Gallery, however; he stayed on, in hiding, as the building emptied of people and the atmosphere-controlled air grew dark and still.

At 11.00 on the night of Friday, 1 August 1986, Wyatt took Weeping Woman from its frame and substituted the fake. No cameras recorded him; there were no pressure alarms under the painting; his movements cut no sensor beams. There was no-one there to see him take the original back to the cleaners’ storeroom, parcel it carefully with the pine board in brown paper and string, then again in the logoed paper used to wrap purchases in the Gallery’s bookshop on the ground floor. When he was finished there might have been a book inside, a heavy coffee table volume on Rembrandt or the Impressionists. No-one saw him curl up on the floor and sleep through the long night.

In the morning he slipped from gallery to gallery and in and out of corridors and men’s rooms, dodging cleaners and attendants until opening time. At 10.15 he met Janet in the Gallery’s coffee shop. When she left him fifteen minutes later she was carrying the parcel that appeared to be a bookshop purchase. For verisimilitude’s sake, she took the parcel to the cloakroom, showed the attendant a brass token for the shoulder bag she’d deposited there earlier, and asked him to stow the parcel with the bag, saying she still had a couple of exhibits to see. Wyatt himself could have done all this, but Wyatt’s was a new face and it didn’t quite belong and he didn’t want to push his luck.

At 10.50 she collected both items and left the Gallery. Wyatt was where he said he’d be, leaning on a bridge pillar, watching for signs of agitation in her wake.

* * * *

At the midpoint of the bridge, Flinders Street station ahead of them, Janet said, ‘Now what?’

‘We need somewhere to wait until this evening. You mentioned that Boyce has never been to your studio?’

‘I don’t like people to know where I live,’ she said, defiant, as though she expected him to laugh or accuse her of creating a mystery identity for herself.

‘I don’t count as people,’ Wyatt said. ‘We’re going to your studio.’

‘Why not your place, wherever it is?’

Wyatt had no permanent base and he hadn’t wanted to risk staying in a motel or a hotel for this job. If he’d been robbing a bank or snatching a payroll he would have risked one, for the hit would have been hard and fast and he’d have worn a mask and no-one would have seen his face. But on this job there was a chance his face had been seen, meaning sooner or later there’d be an identikit doing the rounds of registration desks. He was staying in a flat Boyce knew about. The owner was in Japan for the next month. Wyatt felt safe in the flat, but it was an expensive place, the kind that attracted burglars. Besides, it meant that Boyce knew where to find him. ‘Your studio,’ he repeated.

‘Why don’t we just take the picture to Boyce?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I want him to come to us.’

‘Why?’

‘Think about it. Maybe he can’t pay for it. Maybe we’ve been set up. I don’t know the people he’s working for, do you? And what if he’s being watched by the cops?’

‘But no-one even knows the painting’s been taken yet.’

‘Your friend’s not squeaky clean.’

‘I feel like I’m being disloyal to him,’ Janet said.

Wyatt stopped her, turned her around to face him. ‘You’ve done your part in this. Now let me keep doing my part. It’s what I do, it’s what I’m good at.’

She flushed, looked out across the river to a stained, chunky dredger in midstream. ‘I’m still involved, though. Keeping the painting at my place means I’m still involved.’

Wyatt nodded, a way of saying that he took her point. It was important that he keep her on-side in this. ‘True. Just till this evening, when we’ll meet him somewhere neutral.’

They continued across the river. On Collins Street they caught a tram to Fitzroy, alighting at the Brunswick Street, Johnston Street intersection. The Picasso was under Wyatt’s arm and he held on firmly as Janet led him across the street and through a chipped, sun-faded wooden door next to a window display of moccasins and cobwebs. They climbed three flights of broad wooden stairs to the top level. Wyatt hadn’t seen Janet’s name on the door or letterboxes downstairs; nor was it on the door she now opened. He followed her inside.

It was a studio flat the width of the building, light pouring in from three massive windows that faced the street. Wyatt could smell oil paint, turpentine, linseed oil. There were spots and streaks of paint on the floor; canvases were stacked against the walls on all sides. The sparse furniture had been pushed into the corners: a sink, two divan beds, a bookcase, an electric cooking ring. The wardrobe was a chrome rail hung from the ceiling by chains. Wyatt couldn’t tell anything from the jeans, shirts, coats and indefinable articles of clothing hanging from it. There seemed to be too much of it for one person, yet the room also didn’t seem to be anyone’s habitat.

Janet caught him looking. ‘All I need is somewhere to work and somewhere to crash at night; she said.

Wyatt continued his assessment of the room. There was nothing worth stealing here. No-one would even bother looking. If they had to spend time here, the Picasso would be safe. ‘Where’s your phone?’

She twisted the corner of her mouth at him. ‘Take a wild guess.’

He was irritated. ‘I’ll be right back.’

He went down the stairs again, out onto Brunswick Street. He remembered seeing a post office and public telephones opposite the tram stop. Two of the cubicles were occupied; the other two were streaked with faeces, puddled with urine. He waited, and something about him, an air of coldness and judgment, reached the punk-styled teenager in the first cubicle, for he looked around at Wyatt, muttered into the mouthpiece, hung up.

Wyatt fed coins into the box. ‘It’s done.’

Relief seemed to bubble up in Boyce’s voice. ‘Fantastic. Bring it over.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘What do you mean? You haven’t lost it?’

‘It’s fine, in a safe place.’

‘Well, when can I have it?’

‘We’ll meet you in the Pride of Erin on Brunswick Street at six. Lounge bar. You’ll come in, sit down, show us the colour of your money, and one of us will go and fetch the painting for you.’

Boyce had nothing to say to that. Wyatt, always at ease with silences, let this one lengthen. When the moment was right he said, ‘Goodbye, Boyce,’ and waited. Boyce spluttered, so Wyatt listened again.

‘Don’t hang up!’

‘I’m listening.’

‘I’ll be there, six o’clock.’

Wyatt and Janet were there at 5.30. Janet complained of hunger, and while she ordered wine and steak for them, Wyatt checked the bar, lounge and corridors, noting exits and potential traps, then claimed a table in the back corner of the lounge bar. He could see the room and doorways from there. He wasn’t worried about curious ears: a TV set was blaring above the bar and someone was playing Roy Orbison on the jukebox. When their meals arrived he ate slowly, fascinated by the girl with him. Janet seemed to shovel the food in, her head bent low over her plate. Colour seemed to come back into her pinched face. She had thin, angular arms, and Wyatt saw her jutting elbows, her sawing forearms. He wondered if a few meals like this one would put flesh on her bones. She finished, pushed her plate away. ‘They’ve got apple pie,’ Wyatt said.

She grinned. ‘I know.’

Boyce when he came in looked hunted and afraid. He passed among the tables as if they housed predators, sat hunched over in the third chair, and seemed to say from the corner of his mouth, ‘I’m here.’

‘We can see that,’ Janet said.

‘You brought it?’

Wyatt said, ‘You know the drill.’

Boyce looked at his hands, snapped his watchband, and at first Wyatt thought the man was going to dig in his heels, insist on seeing the painting first. He changed his mind when Boyce muttered, ‘Haven’t got it.’

Wyatt said nothing. Janet opened her mouth but he stopped her with a look. Finally, Boyce pulled his shirt free of his belt and said, ‘See this?’

They saw bruises and a raw welt on his stomach and rib cage, as if whoever had beaten him had switched from using fists to using a tyre iron. ‘I had to pay up or he would’ve killed me,’ Boyce said.

‘Who?’

Everything about Boyce’s manner said this was one of those things that happened every day, to everyone. ‘I owe money to this SP bookmaker. He came around during the week and I had to pay up or he would’ve killed me. I still owe him.’

Janet leaned forward. ‘You used our fee to pay off your debts?’

‘Listen, this bloke is bad news.’

Wyatt stood up. ‘So are we. Goodbye, Boyce.’

Janet joined him. Boyce said, expressing helplessness, ‘What could I do? I can pay you when I get the other half.’

‘When’s that?’

‘It gets paid into my account a few days after I deliver the painting.’

‘I don’t work that way,’ Wyatt said. ‘Look, beg, borrow or steal it, sell some of that crap on your walls, I don’t care how you do it. If you can’t pay me by lunch time tomorrow, I’m gone.’

‘But I sent a fax to Barcelona saying we had it. His contacts here are coming by tonight to collect it so it can be airfreighted out in the morning.’

‘Explain the situation, see if they’ll advance you the balance.’

All the bluster had gone out of Boyce. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Meet you here at midday?’

Wyatt shook his head. Now that others were involved he wasn’t about to operate in a contained space where he might find all his exits blocked and something final slicing between his ribs. ‘Whitlam Place. It’s a little park next to the Fitzroy Town Hall.’

Whitlam Place was a sorry patch of lawn, trees and benches bisected by a path. Open on two sides, it offered all the exits Wyatt needed. ‘Eleven in the morning,’ he said. Eleven, an early hour in Fitzroy, too early for winos, kids or anyone else wanting a bit of wintry sun.

‘I’ll be there,’ Boyce muttered, but Wyatt and Janet were already weaving their way between the tables and out the side door. On the footpath Janet stopped and folded her arms. ‘I’m not liking this.’

‘There’s no other way.’

She ignored him. ‘It’s as if the picture itself doesn’t matter to you people. All you care about is money and headthumping.’

‘You knew the score,’ Wyatt said. ‘You were keen enough at the start.’

He was moving along the street as he said it and she hurried to keep up with him. In silence they passed the Black Cat cafe, an Indian restaurant, anonymous doorways. Once or twice Wyatt stopped abruptly and turned, but they were not being followed. At Janet’s building he ducked in and began to climb the creaking wooden stairs.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m staying here tonight.’

‘You don’t trust me, I suppose. You think I’m going to steal the painting.’

Wyatt stopped. Anger built in him, a cold slow rage. ‘Janet, it’s Boyce I don’t trust.’

They were at her door. He waited for her to unlock it, then he pushed the door open and listened. The studio was dim and sleepy and undisturbed. They went in. Wyatt checked that the painting was still behind Janet’s canvases, then stretched out on the spare divan bed, lacing his hands behind his head. He looked beyond the pattern on the pressed-tin ceiling to the complications the job now offered him. After a while he became aware that Janet was standing nearby, staring at him. He stared back at her and it was a while before either of them moved.

* * * *

Wyatt slipped away before daybreak. He went to a house in Coburg and when he came back he had a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver in his pocket and was carrying a boxed pair of Motorola hand-held radios. He told Janet:

‘I don’t want you to show your face until I give the okay. When I see the money, I’ll call you by radio, and you bring the painting.’

‘Boys with their toys,’ she said. ‘Apart from last night, you and I might as well be living on different planets.’

That was true enough, but Wyatt was working and not interested in analysing anything. At 10 o’clock he left again and made his way to the park. He was early by one hour, thinking that if Boyce had a cross in mind, he might be early too.

The park was cheerless and deserted under a low, muttering sky. There had been a chemical fire in Yarraville the night before and the atmosphere over the city was still poisonous. Wyatt walked the perimeter a couple of times, looking into the rear seats of vehicles parked along the street. They were empty and there was no-one about who shouldn’t have been there, so he sat on a bench to wait.

The car that cruised around the park at four minutes after eleven o’clock was a black Mercedes, waxy and long. Wyatt could see four men: the driver in front, three others in the rear compartment on facing seats.

Boyce wasn’t among them but Wyatt wasn’t interested in Boyce. He was more interested in the three passengers, now getting out of the car and crossing the park toward him, widely spaced, moving quickly, swaggering a little. One man, dressed in a costly double-breasted suit, had the solid, thrusting air of a private-school bully who has inherited the family business. The other men wore jeans and nylon sports jackets and were built like hired muscle. They moved in on Wyatt as though they intended to snap him in two. If this was the work of Boyce’s collector in Spain, he had a long reach and plenty of clout.

The suit said, ‘Boyce’s description of you was spot-on.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Let’s just say he won’t be playing squash for a while. Where’s the painting?’

‘Where’s the money?’ Wyatt said.

‘We’ve paid all we’re going to pay at this stage. Your argument is with Boyce, not us. I’ll say it again, where’s the painting?’

The suit didn’t wait for a response but nodded to the muscle, who moved in on either side of Wyatt. What Wyatt did then was open and shocking and it knocked the fight out of them. He shot the man in the suit, a quick, careful shot to the fleshy part of the upper leg, then backed away, turned, and quickly left the park. Behind him he heard pain and confusion. Suit said, ‘Help me!’ and the hired muscle said, ‘You never said nothing about no gun.’ After that Wyatt heard car doors slam and the big car pulled away from the kerb. Later there would be sirens, but as Wyatt made his way through the back streets all he could hear was a tram rattling along Brunswick Street and the cries of children in a schoolyard. He checked the time: the confrontation and the shooting had taken less than a minute.

He put the radio to his mouth. ‘Janet?’

‘I’m here.’

‘It’s turned bad. I want you to stay where you are. I’ll be there shortly. Don’t answer the door to anyone but me.’

It took him ten minutes. He made a wide loop to put distance between himself and the park, and he took time out to watch outside Janet’s building for anything that smelt wrong. When he was satisfied, he climbed the stairs. He went carefully. He believed, and he’d been taught, that stairs are risky places, hemming a man in by wall and banister, making him an easy target from above and below.

He saw no-one, heard nothing, but when he got to the top, and opened Janet’s door, he saw that she was gone and the painting with her.

* * * *

Wyatt didn’t see her again. He supposed that they’d nabbed her, and the painting. He supposed it until the next day, Tuesday, 5 August 1986, when, at Sydney airport on his way to somewhere safer, he bought a copy of the Age and saw that he’d supposed wrong. There was a story splashed over the front page and it told him that she was alive and that she’d done something that would remove the threat to both their lives.

He worked it out. His warning on the radio must have spooked her into disappearing into the warren of converted stables and lofts and rented rooms of Fitzroy, where there were people like her to protect and shelter her. Then she’d gone into action.

First, she must have gone back to the Gallery, removed the fake, and left in its place a card bearing the words ‘removed for cleaning’. Then, calling herself the Australian Cultural Terrorists, she sent a letter to the Minister for the Arts, Race Mathews, saying that the Picasso had been stolen as a protest against the niggardly funding of fine arts in this hick state and against the clumsy, unimaginative stupidity of the administration and distribution of that funding’, and demanding a 10 per cent increase in arts funding and the establishment of an annual art prize to be called The Picasso Ransom. She called Mathews, also Police Minister, ‘the Minister for Plod’.

It was a huge story. Wyatt felt that he understood her. She loved the painting for its own sake; she could not accept that its value could be measured in money or blood or the good names of governments or public figures. In one single, inspired gesture she had warned off the gunmen and saved the painting from men of greed.

Meanwhile, Wyatt went to work again (there was a Labor minister rumoured to keep $100,000 in a satchel under his office desk) but he continued to follow the story in the national press. There were letters and demands. It all ended two weeks later, when Janet contacted the Age and directed them to locker 227 at Spencer Street station. Weeping Woman was there, undamaged, expertly wrapped in brown paper tied neatly with string. Later the Gallery’s director was photographed next to the weeping woman: a cheesy grin on his face, calculated formal disquiet on hers.

Some papers valued the painting at 1.6 million dollars, others two million, maybe six million at auction in New York. The director said they would never have been able to afford another like it. Wyatt valued the painting at two hundred dollars. After expenses—the screwdriver, the radios, the gun, a plane ticket out of there—that’s all he had left.

Enough for a set of lockpicks, though.