The Dying Trade (13 page)

“You can. Have to be very careful, Mr Hardy. One of the heavies who was with Costello is still loose, we got the other one.”

“Dead?”

“No, my partner winged him and he's talking a blue streak already.”

“Good,” I said. “What about the other two?”

“They got away. There's another way out around the back. We reckon they lay low while the shooting was going on, then hopped in one of the cars at the front and scooted out. They went over garden beds and all. We had other men coming and they reported a car moving fast on the road but they didn't know the score and let it go. Bad luck. Anyway, Inspector Evans is down there.”

He jerked his chin at the gate and went off to shut the stable door a bit tighter. I was thinking that it was partly my fault, I hadn't noticed another exit. I reached the gate where Evans was in a huddle with some cops in uniform and some men in plain clothes. Tickener was looking serious and about ten years older. Jones was photographing two white-overalled men sliding a long, white-wrapped bundle into the back of an ambulance. Bruno was lying on a stretcher which had little fold-out legs to keep it up off the ground. I jolted it a bit as I came up.

“Careful,” he groaned and turned his head to look at me. I grinned down at him. His elegant flared trousers had been slit to the crotch and there was a large dressing around his knee. He didn't look happy.

“How's it going Rocky?” I said. “I bet the police surgeon'll do a great job on that knee. You'll be back kicking old ladies to death in no time.”

“Get fucked,” he snarled.

I tut-tutted him and walked over to Evans.

“Back exit, Cliff,” he said, “it'd never have done for Malaya.”

“True,” I said. “What car did they take?”

“Fiat, sports model.”

“That'd be right,” I said wearily.

“How's that?”

“Never mind, Grant. What's the drill now? Headquarters, statements and such?” He nodded. “OK,” I said, “see you there.”

I trudged over to the Falcon, climbed in and turned the key. The engine leapt into life as if it had thrived on the action.

CHAPTER 15

I was at police HQ for over four hours. It would have been longer and tougher if Grant Evans hadn't been on side. I made statements about my earlier call on Brave. Evans allowed me to leave the Gutteridges with a very low profile in the whole thing. The Costello affair was what he was interested in and what Tickener's readers were interested in as well. They were both happy for me and my involvements to
take a back seat. I told Grant that I might have something soon on the Giles killing and he said that would be nice in an uninterested way. I read on a message sheet on his desk that “attempts to contact Senior Detective Charles Jackson and Dr William Clyde had been unsuccessful”. Bulletins were out on them. In a break from the recording and questioning, I got on a phone and called Bryn Gutteridge's number. There was no answer. The same ten cents bought me a call to St Bede's hospital and the information that Miss Sleeman had responded well to transfusions and a saline drip and was sleeping peacefully. When I gave my name the desk attendant said that the police were anxious to contact me in connection with Miss Gutteridge's injuries. I told her where I was calling from and she seemed satisfied. I hadn't heard anything about it at headquarters and I didn't want to if I wasn't going to be there until mid-day.

Brave, Bruno and the thug who'd been picked up in the grounds were securely booked. The third man had sung like a bird and there was a bulletin out on his mate, a long-time hood with an impressive record and a history of association with Rory Costello. Nobody put pressure on me to identify the two men who'd escaped in the Fiat and I kept quiet about it. Evans prepared a statement for the press and went into a huddle with Tickener and Jones about their respective rights to the glamour and gore of the evening. They sorted it out and the pressmen, looking pretty pleased with themselves, came over to shake my hand before leaving.

“Lucky I followed you, Hardy,” said Tickener. “Instinct, eh?”

We shook. “I guess so,” I said. He hadn't handled himself too badly and he'd be well clear of the sports page and Joe Barrett's errands now. Also, he now owed me something and it's handy in my game to have a pressman in your debt. Colin Jones looked like he needed some sleep, but if he was going to get his pictures into the morning editions he probably wouldn't get it. He let go my hand and slapped one of his cameras.

“Miles to go before I sleep,” he said.

“You're the only educated cameraman in the west, Colin.”

“Yeah, it gets in the way. Thanks for letting me in, Cliff, it made a change.” They wandered off to put the final touches on the thrills in store for their readers over the yoghurt and crispies.

I'd exhausted my packet of Drum and drunk all the autovend coffee I could stand. It was 2 a.m. and I felt like I needed a new skin, a new throat and quite a few other accessories. I had an Irish thirst and the image of the wine in my refrigerator beckoned me like the damasked arm of the lady in the lake. Evans started slipping papers into folders and his telephone had finally stopped ringing hot. I was sitting across from his self-satisfied look. He reached into a drawer of the scarred and battered pine desk and fished out two cigars in cellophane wrappers. He offered me one.

“Keeping 'em since Jenny was born. Thought it might be a son. This is the next best thing, have one?”

I shook my head. “Wouldn't have a cold beer would you?”

He smiled, lit his cigar and leaned back blowing a thin stream of the rich, creamy smoke at the ceiling. “Piss artist,” he said indulgently. “Case closed, Cliff?”

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine is like a fish's arsehole. I mean yours.”

“I don't know yet.” I was lying, I suspected it was just beginning and that there were many little corners of it still unexplored and a great highway of truth still to put through the lives of the people concerned.

“Well, anything I can do, just let me know.” He looked at his watch and I took the point. We shook hands and I trudged down the corridor and took yet another chance on the lift. We made a nice couple as we wheezed down to ground level and I closed its wire grille gently; with care and kind treatment we might both just last out the decade.

I picked up my car which was looking sheepish and barely roadworthy among the powder blues in the police parking lot, and drove home through the back streets and quietest roads. I tried to think of Ailsa battling with her pain in hospital, and Susan Gutteridge coming out of a long slide, and Bryn cruising and cruel like a harbour shark, but all the pictures blurred and the people receded far off into the distance. A truck backfired when I was within fifty yards of home, and as I sidled the Falcon into the yard my ears were ringing with the noise and I could smell the smoke and feel the shotgun heavy and deadly in my hands. I went into the house, drank a long glass of wine and made coffee, but I went to sleep in a chair while waiting for the cup I'd poured to cool. I swilled it down cold and went to bed.

Tickener made a good job of it. His headline was lurid but his story was sharp and clear. Evans got a splash verbally and photographically and there were lots of adjectives scattered through the writing like “fearless” and “masterly”. I got a few mentions and anyone reading between the lines would come away with the knowledge that I had killed Costello, but who reads between the lines any more? The name Gutteridge didn't figure in the
.
story and it seemed that a combination of brilliant investigatory journalism and enterprising police work had delivered the goods. That suited me. The last thing I wanted was pictures of myself in the papers and my name a household word—it might feel good, but it would play hell with business if kids came up to ask you for your autograph while you were staking out a love nest.

I read most of this sitting on the lavatory while a warm, soft Sydney rain darkened the courtyard bricks. Back in the kitchen I made coffee and welsh rarebit. Ordinarily, I'd have been at least semi-relaxed. I was on a case, on expenses and earning them and hadn't had any bones broken in the past twenty-four hours. But this one was different, my client was special and she was in hospital and I was partly to blame. The villain was in custody as they say, but villains were coming out of the woodwork and the past was sending out tentacles which were winding around the necks of people living and dying in the present. It's a dying trade I'm in.

I called the hospital and was told that I could visit Miss Sleeman at 10 a.m., seeing that I was the one who'd admitted her. I took a long, hot then cold shower, which made me feel virtuous. I capitalised on this by taking the flagon and a glass out onto the bricks along with my electric razor and my razor sharp mind. I sipped the wine and ran the tiny, whirring blades over my face. The sun climbed up over the top of the biscuit factory and beamed heat down into the courtyard. The bricks started to steam and sweat began to roll off my chest down into the thin layers of fat around my waist. I resolved again to walk more and to cut out beer and that was as far as my thinking took me. I towelled off the sweat, dressed in cotton slacks, shirt and sandals and played inch by inch with the Falcon out onto the street. There was a sweet, malty biscuit smell in the air as I drove past the front of my house. Soames had just put on his first record of the day. Pretty soon he'd take a peek over the fence, shake his head at the empty flagon and roll his apres-muesli joint.

I don't like hospitals. My mother and father and Uncle Ted died in them. They all smell and look the same, all polished glass and lino and reek of disinfectant. Ailsa was on the fourth floor in a ward past the maternity unit. It was crammed full of rosy cheeked mothers smothering babies, black, white and brindle, against their chests. It made me feel my childlessness like a burden and I wondered if Ailsa felt the same way. Perhaps she didn't need to. She hadn't mentioned any children, but then I had only got a pretty episodic biography of her, perhaps she had twins being finished in Switzerland. Dangerous thoughts for someone for whom marriage was a busted flush and kids were something not to shoot when out on business. I had wanted kids but Cyn hadn't unless I was going to be home at six o'clock every night and I couldn't give her that guarantee. I was in an intensely self-critical mood when I arrived at Ailsa's ward. A roly-poly matron who hadn't heard how dragon-like she should be showed me to the door and told me I could have an hour. I went in.

Ailsa was sitting up in bed wearing a white cheesecloth nightgown. She had no make-up on and had lost a lot of colour in her face, her eyes were shadowed and huge so that she looked pale and fragile like a French mime. The bronze hair was newly washed and a bit curly and she had a scrubbed clean look as if she was about to be delivered somewhere. Her face and lips were still puffy and bruised, but when she looked up from her book she managed to work her features into a smile.

“Hardy,” she said, “the great protector.”

I moved up, took the book away and grabbed her hands. She winced with pain and I swore and let her go. She reached out slowly and stiffly and put her hand on my forearm, it rested there light and feathery like a silk stocking across a chair.

“You're hopeless,” she said, “no fruit, no magazines. How'll we fill in the time?”

I gave her a leer and she smiled before shaking her head. “Not for weeks,” she said. “But when I can you'll be the first man I call.”

I was relieved. We'd seemed to be plunging into something very heavy and I wasn't sure I could handle it yet, or ever. Her version of the way we stood, even though it was determined by her injuries, accorded with my feelings and relaxed me. I patted her hand and we sat there quietly for a minute or two feeling something like trust and understanding flow between us. I eased back the loose sleeves of her nightdress and saw that her forearms were bandaged. I told her again that I was sorry I hadn't been there.

“Don't be silly, Cliff,” she said, “how could you have known what was going to happen. The whole thing has got out of control. I don't understand it properly, do you?”

“No, I can't make the connections. It's all hooked up. Brave, Bryn, the files and the threats, but I don't know how they're linked exactly. That makes it hard to take the next step with any confidence.”

“What are you going to do then?”

I looked at her and ran my finger lightly across her high, sharp cheekbone. The skin was stretched thin and tight across it like a rubber membrane over a specimen bottle. “I haven't finished checking all the possibilities I was working on yesterday. Brave is out of circulation of course.” I nodded at the newspapers lying on a bedside chair.

“Yes,” she said, “thank God for that.” She was looking tired already and spoke slowly. “But I want it seen through, you'll stay with it won't you? Bryn's dangerous, he's got to be put away, and the bomb . . . !”

“I'll stay with it,” I said. “I was hoping you'd want me to.”

“You should have known.”

I nodded and we did some more quiet sitting. After a while her eyelids flickered and she said she was tired. It was partly that and partly the dope they were giving her. I got up from the bed but she motioned me closer, she patted her chest with one hand.

“Touch me here, Cliff.”

I did, she felt warm and firm. She reached up with both hands, grabbed my hands and pressed them hard against her breasts, her face contorted.

“Cliff, the pale one, he was going to . . . to do something there next.”

I felt a rush of atavistic rage. I gently freed my hands, smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.

“Don't worry love,” I said harshly, “it'll be all right, it'll be over soon.”

I promised to call the hospital twice a day and to visit whenever I could. She smiled and nodded and slid down into a deep sleep that the dope was calling her to.