a thing?’
‘We don’t want to be involved,’ Jik said.
I grinned. Sarah heard the sardonic echo of what she’d said so passionately herself only three days ago. She flung out her arms in exasperated realisation.
‘You absolutely bloody beast,’ she said.
Jik smiled like a cream-fed cat. ‘We went round to the gallery,’ he said. ‘It’s still shut. We also found our way round into the back garden, and looked in through the glass door, and you can guess what we saw.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Dead right. No easel with imitation Millais. Everything dodgy carefully hidden out of sight. Everything else, respectable and normal.’
I shifted a bit to relieve one lot of aches, and set up protests from another. ‘Even if you’d got in, I doubt if you’d’ve found anything dodgy. I’ll bet everything the least bit incriminating disappeared yesterday afternoon.’
Jik nodded. ‘Sure to.’
Sarah said, ‘We asked the girl in the reception desk at the motel if anyone had been asking for us.’
‘And they had?’
She nodded. ‘A man telephoned. She thought it was soon after ten o’ clock. He asked if a Mr Charles Todd was staying there with two friends, and when she said yes, he asked for your room number. He said he had something to deliver to you.’
‘Christ.’ Some delivery. Express. Downwards.
‘She told him the room number but said if he left the package at the desk, she would see you got it.’
‘He must have laughed.’
‘He wouldn’t have that much sense of humour,’ Jik said.
‘Soon after ten?’ said, considering.
‘While we were out,’ Sarah said, nodding. ‘It must have been fairly soon after we’d left the gallery… and while we were buying the swimming things.’
‘Why didn’t the girl tell us someone had been enquiring for us?’
‘She went off for a coffee break, and didn’t see us when we came back. And after that, she forgot. She hadn’t anyway thought it of any importance.’
‘There aren’t all that many motels in Alice,’ Jik said. ‘It wouldn’t have taken long to find us, once they knew we were in the town. I suppose the Melbourne lot telephoned Renbo, and that set the bomb ticking.’
‘They must have been apoplectic when they heard you’d bought that picture.’
‘I wish I’d hidden it,’ I said. The words reminded me briefly of Maisie, who had hidden her picture, and had her house burnt.
Sarah sighed. ‘Well… what are we going to do?’
‘Last chance to go home,’ I said.
‘Are you going?’ she demanded.
I listened briefly to the fierce plea from my battered shell, and I thought too of Donald in his cold house. I didn’t actually answer her at all.
She listened to my silence. ‘Quite,’ she said. ‘So what do we do next?’
‘Well…’ I said. ‘First of all, tell the girl in the reception desk at the motel that I’m in a pretty poor state and likely to be in hospital for at least a week.’
‘No exaggeration,’ Jik murmured.
‘Tell her it’s O.K. to pass on that news, if anyone enquires. Tell her You’re leaving for Melbourne, pay all our bills, confirm your bookings on the afternoon flight, and cancel mine, and make a normal exit to the airport bus.’
‘But what about you?’ Sarah said. ‘When will you be fit to go?’
‘With you,’ I said. ‘If between you you can think of some unobtrusive way of getting a bandaged mummy on to an aeroplane without anyone noticing.’
‘Jesus,’ Jik said. He looked delighted. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘Telephone the airport and book a seat for me under a different name.’
‘Right.’
‘Buy me a shirt and some trousers. Mine are in the dustbin.’
‘It shall be done.’
‘And reckon all the time that you may be watched.’
‘Put on sad faces, do you mean?’ Sarah said.
I grinned. ‘I’d be honoured.’
‘And after we get to Melbourne, what then?’ Jik said.
I chewed my lip. ‘I think we’ll have to go back to the Hilton. All our clothes are there, not to mention my passport and money. We don’t know if Wexford and Greene ever knew we were staying there, so it may well be a hundred per cent safe. And anyway, where else in Melbourne are we likely to get beds on the night before the Melbourne Cup?’
‘If you get thrown out of the Hilton’s windows, you won’t be alive to tell the tale,’ he said cheerfully.
‘They don’t open far enough,’ I said. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘How reassuring.’
‘And tomorrow,’ Sarah said. ‘What about tomorrow?’
Hesitantly, with a pause or two, I outlined what I had in mind for Cup day. When I had finished, they were both silent.
‘So now,’ I said. ‘Do you want to go home?’
Sarah stood up.