The Dying Trade (18 page)

The bottom drawer of the set between the two full length doors also put up a struggle. I jiggled it open with a long key and a lot of quiet swearing. Ross Haines couldn't have been more wrong about Chalmers; he was a homosexual alright, but about as repressed as Nero. The drawer was full of photographs, loose and glued into several albums. Many of the pictures were heavy stuff even in these permissive times. They showed a man whom I took to be Chalmers, in woman's clothing, making love, sometimes in pairs, sometimes in threes and fours. Several of the pictures had been taken in the room I was in, some were outdoor shots, others were taken in what looked like motel rooms. One album contained photos of Chalmers taken over about twenty years. He was a medium sized man with a thin face and hair that time was harvesting. One picture was arresting: Chalmers stood, dressed in a suit cut in the style of twenty years before, alongside a woman with a fresh pretty face and a neat figure. From their accessories and the background it was clearly a wedding picture—Chalmers' smile was a death mask grimace. There were a few blank leaves in the album following this picture and signs that others had been torn out. Later leaves held snapshots of men, sitting around tables, standing in streets or sprawling on grass or sand. Chalmers wore white, open-necked shirts in most of the pictures and he looked like the photographs you see of Kim Philby in Russia—not quite relaxed in front of the camera, but obviously having a good time.

I muttered “Good luck to you” under my breath and returned the photographs to their original places as carefully as I could. I looked around to make sure I hadn't disturbed the room and left the house by the front door. Clipboard under my arm I walked to the car. I rolled a cigarette and smoked it down while staring through the windscreen. Walter Chalmers had his own deep secrets and I judged that this made him unlikely to trade in those of other people.

CHAPTER 21

I was back in the hospital by five o'clock. The same crowd of visitors milled about in the lobby waiting to catch lifts up to the wards. There was a different receptionist at the desk but the same smell in the corridors. Ailsa was sitting up in her bed. She was wearing a little make-up and a different nightgown. This one had a loose tie around the neck, a sort of drawstring, and she was fiddling with the strings when I walked into the room. She looked outwardly better but inwardly worse. The hands she held out tentatively to me were trembling and cold. I held her hands for a minute and broke the silence clumsily.

“What's wrong love, cigarette withdrawal or morphine addiction?”

“Don't joke, Cliff,” she said, “just look at that.” She nodded down at the newspaper which was lying folded up on the bed. I picked it up and read the lead story. It said that Dr Ian Brave, who had been held in custody in connection with the sheltering of Rory Costello, had escaped from the hospital wing of the Long Bay jail. Tickener had the byline and he'd made the most of the meagre facts he'd had to work with. Brave had been taken ill with severe vomiting and internal pain and had been escorted to the hospital. He'd been sedated and an armed guard had been set up outside his room. The room was inspected hourly and Brave had vanished between eleven o'clock and noon. The guard denied leaving his post and said he'd heard nothing suspicious from inside the room. Tickener described Brave as a “consulting psychologist” and mentioned obliquely that he had an intimate knowledge of drugs and had used hypnotism in the treatment of his patients.

Ailsa was gnawing at her nails as I read and she dug a jagged one into my arm as I put the paper down.

“I heard about Bryn on the news this morning and now this. What's happening, Cliff? I'm scared, I don't understand it. I don't feel safe even in here with Brave out there somewhere.”

I poured her some water and tried to calm her down, but she was close to hysteria. She brushed the glass aside.

“I don't want water. How could he escape from prison? How could he?”

“Easy love, you're safe here. It could have been fixed for him. He's had one cop in his pocket, why not more? The story doesn't say whether it was a police guard or a prison guard. I don't really think he could have used hypnotism on the guard, but it's possible. It gives the guard an out anyway.”

“Jesus, it scares me,” she said.

“Me too,” I said, then mostly to myself, “I suppose he could have fixed it while he was inside.”

She jumped at it. “Fixed what?”

She was so edgy that it seemed better to give her something real to bite on rather than let her fantasise herself into nervous collapse. I told her about the attempt to kill Susan Gutteridge and worked back from that through her abduction and my part in Bryn's death. I didn't tell her that Susan wanted to hire me. She listened attentively and reached up to touch my face when I was finished. She seemed calmer. We went into one of our silent communings, looking at each other with foolish smiles on our faces.

I broke the mood by getting up to look at the chart clipped to the end of the bed. It didn't make much sense to me but she told me that it meant that the intervals between them interfering with her were getting longer and that she was gaining strength. I nodded and smiled inanely and began to pace up and down in the narrow room. She let me make a few turns then she reached out for a paperback from the bedside table. It hit me on the chest.

“Will you stop that pacing. It's making me as nervous as hell.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be sorry, be open, be frank. Talk to me about it.”

I sat down on the bed again. “It's hard to talk about,” I said, “there's loose ends all over the shop, there are hints of connections but I can't quite make them. Maybe I'm losing the touch.”

“Don't be silly and don't be pretentious,” she said, “and don't look at me as if you'd like to cosh me. You just need more information. For instance, what do you make of Ross and Chalmers?”

“Haines is Mr Anonymous, orphan. Got where he is by application and a ton of ability, night school and so on. Chalmers is as gay as a goose, do you want the details?”

“No, he does a terrific job for me, I don't care if he fucks sheep.”

I grinned. “He doesn't. Do you know anyone who drives a red Volkswagen beetle?”

She thought about it. “Don't think so. I know a girl who drives a red Audi.”

“No good, lower division.”

“No, why?”

“There was one around the day your car was bombed, one followed me after that and Susan says the car that ran her down was a red VW.”

She shook her head. I'd put it that way to see if the Pali girl was part of her world, or maybe I was just being nastily suspicious all down the line. There was no value in it anyway. I started to make a cigarette.

“Have you ever been to New Caledonia?” I asked abruptly.

“No, are you going to take me?”

“You'd have to take me, I can hardly afford the Manly ferry.”

“New Caledonia is part of it?”

“Could be.”

“You're not going to start pacing again?”

“No, I'm going to act, take control, be masterful.”

“You can't be masterful with me for a few weeks, nothing to stop you taking control with someone else of course.”

“I might just store it up a bit. I think Hemingway advises it somewhere. No, you're right about needing more information. I want to dig for it. I want to set up a session between you and Susan and sift through the circumstances of Mark Gutteridge's death down to the last grain. Will you be in it?”

She pulled a sour face and plucked at the sheet. “If you say so. I detest her, you know.”

“That's no way to talk about someone who's in traction no more than fifty yards away.”

“Say traction again.”

“You're a bitch.”

“You're so right. OK Cliff, I'll be in it. When?”

“I'll need your doctor's permission and hers, the sooner the better.”

“You've got my man's permission as of now.”

“I think it'll be much the same with her. Could be Monday then.”

Bells starting ringing and we did a little gentle kissing. I promised her that I wouldn't go chasing off to New Caledonia and that I'd be in over the weekend. I joined the exodus of the sound in wind and limb.

For a day that had started in jail it hadn't turned out too badly. I bought a flagon of riesling and a few bottles of soda water on the drive home, put the car away with consummate ease and went cautiously into the house. I was pretty sure I hadn't been followed at any time in the day, but if I was wrong and O'Brien had observed my illegal entering then I was in the shit. It would be like him to pounce just as I got the top off the first bottle. But the house was empty. I took a quick look at the mail—bills and invitations to spend money I didn't have on things I didn't need. I was getting the proportions of ice, wine and soda just right when the phone rang. I jumped a mile and spilled the wine. The sudden movement put a shaft of pain through my kidneys and reminded me what a rough twenty-four hours I'd had. I sloshed a drink together and took a big gulp of it before moving creakily to the phone.

“Is that Cliff Hardy?”

“Yeah. Tickener?”

“Right. Did you see my stuff today?”

I grunted.

“What's wrong, you don't sound too good.”

I grunted again and drank some more wine.

“Look, I was wondering if you had any ideas about where Brave might hide out.”

“Sorry, no idea. I'm still on the same case though and I'll let you know if I turn up on Brave.”

“Fair enough.”

“What do you hear about the constabulary?”

“I hear that some very high people are very edgy. A retirement is foreshadowed and two guys have gone on their holidays. No sign of Jackson, he could be a lead to Brave. What do you think?”

“I think it's terrible that such a fine band of men should be subject to such morale-lowering pressures, but don't splash it all over the front page.”

Tickener's sigh came whispering across the wire. “I suppose that's the price of fame, I get a private eye to wisecrack with over the phone.”

“That's right, are they talking A grade yet?”

“Can't be long.”

We agreed to stay in touch and rang off simultaneously. I made another drink and put some eggs on to boil. I wandered up into the room where I kept my books and looked through the four volumes of the Naval Intelligence series on the Pacific Islands. I'd once met one of the professors who'd had a hand in writing them in a bar in Canberra. He was a tall, gaunt-faced character who told a good story and liked a drink. He'd told me about his work in intelligence when I told him what I did for a living and he told me where to get the books second-hand in Sydney. I bought them out of curiosity and I'd never been disappointed. The professor was dead now and I often regretted I'd never seen him again and got him to autograph the books. There was a long section on New Caledonia in volume III.

I mashed up the eggs, sprinkled curry powder on them and made them into a couple of bulging sandwiches. I took the food and another drink to the table and read about the islands while I was eating. New Caledonia had been something of a political football between France and the Australian colonies for a time, but it had come firmly under French military rule about the middle of the nineteenth century and had stayed that way for over fifty years. There'd been a couple of native rebellions but they'd been put down firmly in good French colonial fashion. In the end the French had managed to convince the majority of the islanders that the smart thing to do was to become black Frenchmen. The place had settled down, had a fair tourist trade, some extractive industry and was receptive to development capital. The Palis were chiefs in one of the settled areas close to Noumea. They'd seen the light in religion and politics pretty early and had done quite nicely all through. The information was very much out of date and I browsed around looking for something more current. I turned up a two year old copy of
Pacific Islands Monthly
that mentioned concern among New Caledonians at the behaviour of some Australian mining engineers who'd blundered in on a ceremony they shouldn't have seen. There was also a letter from a New Caledonian about the French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

I tidied up the kitchen and worked through a bit more of the wine and soda. Things didn't become any clearer and an hour of television didn't help, and a re-read of two chapters of Louis Golding's
The Bare Knuckle Breed
only reminded me of Cyn who'd bought it for me and made me wish I had someone to spend the night with. I wandered up to the dartboard, pulled out the darts and went round the board in twenty throws. Like hell I did. I went to bed.

CHAPTER 22

There was nothing useful to be done on Saturday or Sunday. I paid Bryn's cheque into my TAB account and drew out some money, half of which I lost on the horses within the next four hours. I bought some flowers and went in to see Ailsa in the afternoon. We agreed not to talk about the Gutteridge case and tried to get by on books and other subjects but it didn't work very well. I drank too much wine that night and stayed in bed with my head aching until late the next morning. At two o'clock, as I was thinking of getting up, the phone rang and the hospital informed me that Miss Sleeman wasn't feeling well and didn't want any visitors. Great. I got up and went for a long walk through Annandale and down into Balmain. The sky was low and grey and the discarded race tickets blowing along the pavement increased my bad temper. The water at the end of the peninsula looked like a dark, bottle green swamp, barely rising and falling, and the boats riding on it looked like they were stuck in the ooze. I tramped home, took the dead albino's Colt apart and oiled it. It was a little worn but a fine gun despite its owner. Guns are like that. I assumed it was untraceable, the serial number was filed away; a useful gun.

At 9 a.m. on Monday, wearing my best suit, the grey one again, I was in Dr Pincus' office being told that he wasn't in and that I couldn't see him when he did come in. Mrs Steiner was doing the telling and it was a pleasure to watch her at work. She was wearing a brightly printed kaftan and her hair was tied back in a glossy bun. With the slope of that forehead and nose she could have just stepped off a Phoenician oarship. I stood in front of her desk thinking that if Pincus was keeping his hands off her he must have a wonderful marriage.

“You're just saying that,” I told her, “because you think you have to, and you do. But I know it isn't true. In the parking lot beside this building there's a space reserved for a car. The space is full of Rolls Royce and the guy who hoses down the lot and watches over the cars tells me it's Dr Pincus' car. He's in and my business is important.”

“He has a patient with him.”

“He hasn't. There's no talking going on in there,” I pointed to the heavy oak door, “and your appointment book shows he kicks off at 10 o'clock. Half an hour is all I need.”

Her eyebrows shot up and she bared her beautiful white teeth at me.

“Half an hour!”

“I know that's probably a couple of hundred dollars' worth of his time but I still need it. A quarter of an hour might do.”

Like most people connected with the medical profession, she took umbrage at the mention of money.

“It's not that, he's terribly busy today, he's seeing patients all morning and going to the hospital this afternoon.”

“Yeah,” I said, “so am I.”

That seemed to hold her for a minute and I walked past the desk and knocked on the door. She half rose from her chair but I had the door open and was part of the way through before she could do anything about it.

The television hadn't done him justice. He was of medium height and build and his smooth, olive-skinned face was alight with what you'd have to call piercing intelligence. His white coat was a thing of beauty and had certainly cost more than every stitch I had on. He was bald but he looked like he'd never given it a second's worry. He frowned when I came into the room.

“I'm sorry to intrude doctor, I know you're
busy but this is important. My name's Hardy, a patient of yours is a client of mine—Miss Gutteridge.”

That was stretching the facts but I wouldn't get time for the niceties.

“Ah yes,” he said, “the detective. She mentioned you. She seems to trust you. Please sit down.”

I sat. He had everything the top Macquarie Street man should have—voice, looks and a fitness and vitality to him that gave you something to aim for.

“I'll come straight to it, doctor,” I said. “I want to arrange a meeting between Miss Gutteridge and her father's widow, a Miss Ailsa Sleeman. She is only a few years older than Susan Gutteridge.”

“Why?” he said as I drew breath.

“To discuss the circumstances surrounding Mark Gutteridge's death four years ago. Both women have been threatened and assaulted, the reason why lies back at that point I believe. I think such a meeting would be productive and help me to pursue the case more effectively.”

“Can you give me some more details, briefly?”

He wasn't fidgeting or looking at his watch. I had his whole attention and had to make the most of it.

“Not many. The police investigation of the death was less than exhaustive. Some facts are unclear, some things went missing, unexplained. There's blackmail involved and intimidation. Susan Gutteridge's insulin was tampered with for example.”

He leaned back in his chair without taking his eyes off my face.

“Yes, she told me that. I find it intriguing, I must say.”

“You'll authorise the meeting?”

“Susan Gutteridge is an unstable person. I tell you this in professional confidence of course.”

I accepted the compliment.

“Her diabetes is in a mess from what she tells me, she needs a lot of rest and treatment. But a diabetic's condition is affected by the emotions to a great extent. Susan Gutteridge is very worried and frightened. Have you considered the possibility that she is guilty of some crime?”

I said I had and expressed the opinion that it might help if it all came out. He stroked his chin and let his eyes stray off to his bookshelf.

“So they say,” he murmured, “so they say.”

“There's an old enmity between Susan Gutteridge and Ailsa Sleeman, this meeting might resolve it. Ailsa is an intelligent woman and a strong one, she could become a friend to Susan.”

“That's probably better psychology,” he said. “Very well Mr Hardy, I'll authorise the meeting. Where and when? Susan Gutteridge is in hospital, you realise.”

“I do, so is Ailsa, same place.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What for?”

I told him and that seemed to clinch it. He said he was going to the hospital early in the afternoon and would leave messages supporting what I wanted to do. I had no doubt that those messages would be treated like the order of the day. I thanked him and asked if he'd like to be present at the session. He looked ruefully down at his desk calendar.

“I would like to be,” he said, “very much, but I simply haven't the time. You must let me know how it works out.”

I said I would, we shook hands and I went out. A fat woman in a coat much too warm for the day that was shaping up was sitting in the waiting room. I gave her my hard-boiled look and she squirmed a bit. Mrs Steiner was looking flustered and she pressed the wrong button on the intercom when Pincus buzzed her. She got it right on the second try.

“Mrs Hamersley-Smith is here doctor.”

Pincus said something inaudible to me and Mrs Steiner repressed a smile. She raised a finger which boasted a long, blood red fingernail. Mrs Hamersley-Smith waddled past me and reached the door just as Pincus opened it. Beautiful timing. I smiled at Mrs Steiner.

“Can you tell me when Dr Pincus is due at the hospital and how long he'll be there?”

The twenty minutes of the boss's time had done me a power of good in her eyes. She flicked at her desk calendar and ran the crimson nail down a page of the appointments book.

“He's there for an hour and a half,” she said, “from two o'clock until 3.30.”

I thanked her and left. I carried the image of her dark, bottomless eyes with me all the way back to the street.

I had a few hours to kill which isn't supposed to happen to a private detective busy on a case but sometimes does. I could have killed it by doing some banking and writing cheques for people who could legitimately expect them, or I could have gone to my dentist for a check-up or I could have put the car in for a service. I didn't. I walked across to the Public Library and ordered a batch of newspapers for the year 1972. They came on microfilm in fifteen minutes. I worked through the papers pretty fast looking at the business news mostly and checking the correspondence columns trying to get a feel for the shape of things as they were then.

Mark Gutteridge got a fair bit of coverage as a canny and successful land developer, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about it—no shady deals hinted at, no subsidiary companies collapsing and ruining shareholders. His death got a big spread and there were follow-up stories over the next few days. I read this stuff closely to brief myself for the meeting later in the day. The reporters were starved of facts from the start. The cops were close-mouthed about their investigations and the coverage soon tailed off into human interest material about Gutteridge and his family. There were a couple of good photos of Ailsa, an indifferent one of Bryn and one of Susan that was so poor that it took imagination to relate it to the person I knew. There was no mention of robbery, no details on the gun or the wound, and the coroner's verdict came in as smooth as silk stockings on shaved legs—“Death by his own hand while of unsound mind”. I made a few notes, tucked them away in my pocket and told the attendant that I'd finished with the papers.

I left the library looking for somewhere to have lunch. I approached a cafe in a new chrome, concrete and glass building and a name on a directory board jumped out at me. Sleeman Enterprises' office was on the fourth floor and I took the lift up just for the hell of it. The decor was all plastic, glass and middle-of-the-road wall to wall carpet. There were a few pot plants, not so many as to prevent the employees seeing each other, and a general air of work being done. A desk just outside the lift had a sign reading “Inquiries” hanging above it and a dark-haired girl looked up from her typing when she saw me peering keenly about. A good sign that, a receptionist who can type. She asked if she could help in a voice that suggested she was serious about the offer. I took out my wallet and extracted a card a little guy who'd come to my office a month ago had given me. He gave me the card but he knew I was a lost cause.

“My name is Riddout,” I said, “Claude Riddout, I'm from Simon's Office Furniture and Decor.”

“Yes Mr Riddout?”

“Well, I was just visiting a client on another floor and I thought I'd glance in on a few other establishments just to see if our services might be required.”

“I don't think . . .”

I waved both hands in the air. “No, no, I can see that everything is very nice here, very tasteful indeed, I compliment you, it must be very pleasant to work in such surroundings, very pleasant indeed. You wouldn't believe the drabness I see in some places.”

I'd succeeded in boring her silly in half a minute which is good going.

“Yes, it's fine, now uhmm . . . is there anything . . .?”

“No, no, if I could just look about a little, take a wander down a corridor or two? I promise I won't intrude on anyone. I'd hate to interrupt the workings of such a smooth running organisation. Just a peep, just a professional peep.”

She grabbed the out although she had to cover herself. “Well, I really shouldn't allow you to, but if you make it brief I suppose it'll be all right. The stairs are at the end of that corridor.”

She pointed, I ducked my head at her and set off down the passage. There were three offices off to the left along one passage, one on each side of a short connecting corridor and a further three or four on both sides of another passage. Some of the offices had names on the door, some didn't. Some were partitioned to permit a secretary to work away out of sight of her master but within beck and call. Along one wall was a large map of Australia and the Pacific islands. Little pins with red heads were stuck in at various points—all the mainland capital cities as well as places like Geelong and Wollongong, and here and there among the islands—Port Moresby, Suva, Noumea, Pago Pago.

The biggest office had Walter Chalmers' name on the door. The next biggest was occupied by Ross Haines, I opened the door to Haines' secretary's cubicle and said “Oh sorry” to a startled blonde. I did the same to Chalmers' secretary and got an ice cold look from a middle aged woman wearing violently dyed red hair and a Chanel suit. I went back to the lifts past the receptionist who saw me coming, put her head down and kept it there like Anne Boleyn on the block.

I grabbed some fruit from a street stand and made do with that for lunch.

At 3.45 I was at the hospital and as unpopular as a bikini in a nudist camp. I'd been shunted about from reception desk to waiting room and back again, but, given the size of the place, I'd made it fairly fast into the hospital director's office. He had a couple of medical degrees, Harvard business administration ticket, a hyphenated name and he didn't like me. He looked clean-cut like an American lawyer and he spoke in a clipped upper class voice like an English doctor.

“This is all extremely irregular, Mr Hardy. Hospital routines are delicate things, not to be tampered with lightly.”

I didn't say anything, the fact that I was there meant that I was going to get what I wanted and if I had to take a little crap from him along the way I would. He ran his hand over his greying crewcut and riffled through some papers on his desk.

“However, the two ladies are not dangerously ill, private patients of course so no one will be disturbed.”

What he meant was that the two ladies were rich and rich people who've been well treated in hospital sometimes remember that when they've got their chequebooks out. I nodded.

“Dr Pincus and Sir John concur in the matter,” he went on, “so I think it can be arranged.”

I don't know how hospital directors are fixed for status and prospects, but this one had elected to keep two medical heavies very firmly on side. That was fine with me. I grinned at him infuriatingly. He levelled up his papers and plonked a solid silver paperweight in the shape of a kidney on top of them. It was my day for making people glad to get me out of their sight. He flipped an intercom switch.