The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

need a few more specifics, love.”
    She knows better than to broach a delivery schedule without the requisite three minutes of chitchat. But as they sit there the paintings are en route, she thinks, clearing customs or wending through traffic. She pictures her forgery like some embezzled diamond, sitting snug inside its vapor barrier, encased in layers of glassine and plywood.
    She says, “The ones from Leiden.”
    Chewing, Q says, “Yeah, Mandy and a few of the guards went to meet the Dutch chappie at the airport.” He says this with a casualness she finds infuriating. A Caravaggio could come into Mascot and he’d dunk his biscuits and prefer to talk about the weather, horse racing, the footy, really anything but the actual purpose of his job. He could be packing and unpacking plastic souvenirs for all his apparent curiosity. Early on, she’d made the mistake of transposing this apathy to the work itself and remembers her first time watching him build a custom packing case. It was a thing of beauty—every joint, batten, and corner pad perfectly made and aligned, his little wooden trolley of brass fixtures and trunk handles and his hot-melt glue gun at his side as he worked with a headlamp. He listened to the Goldberg Variations while he worked patiently for hours, his attendants fetching him certain chisels and fine-toothed files and cups of tea.
    It’s also clear to her from his lack of interest that he’s not in the loop about a potential forgery coming through his loading dock. Ellie has spent her life around museums and knows that the curatorial staff and packers are vaguely suspicious of each other. The curators and Max Culkins have kept the news from the men in dustcoats.
    She wants to ask him what the ETA is, but instead she asks, “How are the grandkids?”
    â€œYeah, good, took the whole tribe to Bondi on the weekend. We all ate fish and chips at the Icebergs and I even conned one of the boys into a swim.”
    â€œBit cold, isn’t it?”
    â€œRubbish. Gets the heart pumping.”
    This small talk goes on for a few excruciating minutes. Ellie notices that Q rarely asks about her weekends and plans, as if her island hermitage and childless, divorcée status makes her life inscrutable and a bit unsightly. After a while, the carpenter—a quiet man named Ed—comes into the office to report the arrival of the van from the airport. Q nods and picks up the telephone on his desk and calls upstairs to the head of conservation to announce the news. He says, “The cases are here with the Dutchman.” He hangs up the phone, drains his cup of tea, and stands behind his desk. He pats down his dustcoat, checking the pockets, then remembers the bifocals resting above his forehead. He lowers them into place, squinting into the lenses as they suddenly magnify his pale brown eyes. On the side of a filing cabinet hangs a clipboard with the receiving checklist and the signature pages. Q grabs it on the way out and Ellie follows along.
    The van has reversed and beeped into the loading bay and two guards get out to open up the rear cargo doors. Mandy, the registrar, is the next to get out, and then a scruffy, long-haired man with a goatee and a tattoo on one forearm emerges in jeans and a T-shirt, holding a small backpack and a bulging manila envelope. Ellie is standing beside the handlers and she hears Q say to his men, “Our courier looks like he’s out on parole from Long Bay.” The men laugh quietly. Ellie crosses behind the van to get a better look and sees two identical wooden cases, each with caution labels in multiple languages. Mandy and the courier come up the stairs and she introduces him as Hendrik Klapp. He shakes hands with everyone.
    â€œHow was the flight?” Ellie asks.
    â€œAbout six hours too long,” he says, opening his envelope of papers.
    Q steps forward to assert his domain. “Hendrik, what’s your affiliation