The Dying Trade (15 page)

“I didn't! You can talk till you're blue in the face. I didn't know there was a safe, let alone the combination.”

“You're lying, Susan. Brave knew you were lying but he was too gentle with you. You'll tell me here and now!”

“You're mad, Bryn. How do you know there were any files? I just don't know what you're talking about. You've got everything screwed up, you need help.”

“Know what I'll do sister dear, just to prove to you that I mean what I say? I'll tell you something. Someone's been using those files. Someone knows a hell of a lot they shouldn't know about some very big people. They wouldn't be able to put the pressure on they have unless they had Mark's own brain inside their heads. So it
has
to be his files. There are some very scared people about, some politicians, a judge, a couple of lawyers and developers. They're very scared and they're getting at me. They think I'm the one and I'm not. It has to be you or someone with you.”

“It isn't, I swear it isn't. I've been ill for so long . . .”

“Well, you would be,” said Bryn with a sneer in his voice.

“What do you mean?”

The springs creaked again. I guessed that Bryn was leaning forward trying to impose physical as well as emotional pressure on her. There was heavy silence in the room like when old lovers go over the ground and discover how hopeless it all was from the beginning. My scalp was crawling and I sneaked a look behind me, but it wasn't a threat from outside that had produced the sensation, it was some kind of inbuilt resistance to hearing people expressing their deepest hostilities and antagonisms with no holds barred.

“I've been doctoring your insulin for ages, Susan, or having it done. You've been eating yourself up, literally.”

“You bastard!” They were twins alright. Susan had exactly the same kind of venom in her voice now. “I wouldn't tell you anything even if I could. Christ, I've felt so rotten, so weak, and Brave nagging away at me, all that stuff about clearing my mind and starting afresh. Well your man Hardy put a rocket under him!”

“Hardy,” Bryn said slowly, “yes, that was a mistake.”

“Why did you hire him?”

“I thought he might stir Brave up, I didn't think he'd bust him. But let's get back to you.”

“Yes, let's. At least I understand it now, that's a relief. I was doing everything right, the shots, the diet, the exercise and it wouldn't come good. You're a sadistic bastard Bryn.”

“I had to do it, Susan, I . . .”

She cut him off. “Like hell you did. I thought I was mad in that place sometimes. Now I know I'm not. Thanks Bryn, thanks for telling me. I despised myself for being such a dishrag, I'd rather be normally dead than what I was. I don't know a damn thing about Mark's files and I don't give a damn what you think or do.”

Gutteridge was coming apart, I could hear him sloshing his drink about and fidgeting in his chair. When he spoke his voice was a low moan. “Susan, I'm about at the end. They killed Giles, God knows how many of them are after me. You must help me.”

“I can't, and I wouldn't anyway.”

“Don't say that, you'd have done anything for me at one time . . .”

Susan let out her breath in a long hiss and a glass crashed to the floor. Her voice was so different in tone and quality that it sounded as if a third person had materialised in the room.

“You rotten little queer,” she said, “I hope they kill you slowly.”

Chair springs, a slap and a scream and I was in the room with the Colt gripped tightly in my hand. Bryn had his sister by the hair and was reaching back for another slap. Susan's knees had buckled and she was falling, trying to cover her face and keep him back. I chopped him in the ribs with my left hand but he seemed bent on scalping her, so I slashed the sight of the pistol across his wrist. He yelled, freed the hair and collapsed on the floor. Susan twisted away and fell back into a chair sobbing and scrabbling her fingers in her tortured hair.

When she'd recovered a little she held out a hand to me. I fended her off. “He's still dangerous,” I said, “and he might have some help around.”

She pulled back and composed herself in the chair.

“I don't think so,” she said. “There was just Bryn and the albino man from the beginning.” A look of panic appeared in her face. “Where's he?” she said quickly. “I'm afraid of him, he's terrible.”

“I don't care for him much either,” I said, “but he's out of action for a while. I surprised him, he's tied up down at the gates.”

She breathed out noisily. “That's good. I hope you tied him tightly. I hope it hurts.”

“It does.”

Bryn was crouched on the floor listening and not moving. I couldn't tell how badly I'd hurt him but I guessed it wasn't much. He was strangely resilient.

“Into the chair, Mr Gutteridge,” I said, “you've got some talking to do.”

“Mr Gutteridge.” His voice was heavily ironic and he'd recovered his breath fast. “Are you always so polite to people you pistol whip, Mr Hardy?”

“Only to ex-employers and you never can tell when it'll stop in your case. Why did you bomb Ailsa's car?”

Confidence and control were flooding back into him. He looked bored and just slightly puzzled.

“I didn't.”

It was my turn to look puzzled, I believed him and my attention must have wavered for a split second because he came up out of the chair and launched a flying kick at my head. It isn't supposed to work against a well prepared man with a gun but it did. I took it on the shoulder and went down clumsily against a chair. I dropped the gun, scrambled for it and by the time I got it Bryn had rolled over neatly and was out the door moving fast. I got up and started after him. Susan moved in all the wrong directions and I cannoned into her. We both went down and I lost time extricating myself and apologising.

CHAPTER 18

Susan held me by the arm longer than seemed necessary—some instinct to protect such close flesh and blood I suppose—and by the time I'd shaken her free Bryn was out of the house. I craned my neck up over the foliage from the back step and thought I saw him moving through the shrubs, already halfway to the road, but I wasn't sure. I ran across to the Fiat, the keys were in it but I lost some time figuring out how to drive it. When I got the right buttons pressed it roared down the drive in great style. I lost more time opening the gate and when I got out I saw the tail end of the Land Rover disappearing behind a corner a hundred yards ahead. I followed fast, thinking that if he stuck to the roads he didn't have a chance and if he took to the bush I didn't have a chance—a nice even money bet. I also tried to remember whether the rifle had been still leaning against the house where I'd left it. I couldn't remember and it was important to the odds in a showdown between Bryn and me.

The road from Cooper Beach north is all ups and downs with a long drop to the sea on one side and high, densely timbered slopes on the other. It's a place for closely concentrated driving at the best of times. Bryn handled the four-wheel-drive job like an expert; it looked new and must have been in top condition because it touched seventy when the grade permitted and it whipped around the bends like it was on rails. The Fiat was almost too fast for me; it was so long since I'd driven a good car that I had trouble controlling it. Bryn couldn't get off the road and as I got the hang of driving the sports car I drew closer to him and I could see a shape swaying about in the front seat—the albino. Bryn wouldn't have had time to untie him, which was a point or two for me.

We screamed along in tandem, thirty feet apart for about five miles. The narrow, winding road was empty both ways and we burned down the middle towards the long, twisting descent to the salt-flat and lake country. If he reached the bottom first, Bryn could pull off into the salt pans and ti-tree and take all the points. I hadn't driven the road for fifteen years, but it hadn't changed much and I remembered the tight, cruel turns and bad cambering we were entering. Bryn was using all his power and all the road he needed to stay ahead and get a break on the flat. I lost a fraction of time and an inch of speed correcting a slide but I was in command of the car when a timber truck came lumbering up around a bend. The Land Rover swung desperately into the shoulder and missed the truck by the thickness of a coat of paint. I slid past easily and when I rounded the bend I saw Bryn's vehicle sliding and fish-tailing down the road fifty yards ahead. The road coiled into a wicked S bend and he didn't make it—the Land Rover shot over the edge and began scything down saplings. I hit the brakes; the Fiat stopped straight and true. I set the lights flashing and ran to where Bryn had gone over. A hundred feet down the vehicle was wrapped around a tree and before I could move an inch it exploded with a roar and a yellow and blue flash like an incendiary bomb.

I sat on the edge of the drop waiting for the truck driver to come back and compel me to become an honest citizen. There were going to be a few questions about this accident—a brand new Land Rover goes over a cliff with a healthy young man at the wheel, beside him is another man who was unhealthy before he got dead. The fire would do incredible damage to them both, but there was no mistaking baling wire and it wouldn't take long to trace the car to Gutteridge. A bomb, a murder, a raid, a torturing and a fatal crash all with the name Gutteridge included—Grant Evans wasn't going to sit on that too long.

The truckie didn't come back and no one else happened along. I was left to make my own moral decisions.

I scooted back to the Fiat, pressed my luck by making a three-point turn and drove back to Cooper Beach as fast as Italian engineering could take me. I sneaked a few looks in the rear vision mirror and from the high points on the road I could see an orange glow from Bryn's funeral pyre. The penalties for leaving an accident scene in this state were tough and my investigator's licence was forfeit from the second I'd got back into the car. But the truck driver, who must have heard the explosion, was the only one who could tie the Fiat to the Land Rover, and he wasn't playing. The odds on getting back to the house unspotted and gaining a breathing space seemed pretty good. I could use the breathing space to get Susan back to town, report to Ailsa and keep my credentials on the case good and tight. The thought occurred to me that there was a reason to bring Susan and Ailsa together at this point, but I couldn't quite clinch it. I was thinking about how to handle the bright lights and sleeplessness of a police interrogation when I swung the Fiat into the late Mr Gutteridge's immaculate concrete driveway.

I put the Fiat back where I found it, reluctantly. It would have done wonders for my professional and neighbourhood image, but I wouldn't have been able to afford to have its oil changed. I wiped it clean and gave its bonnet a pat reflecting that probate on it alone would be six months' earnings for me. Pity the rich. The rifle wasn't where I'd left it. I went through the porch and kitchen and was heading for the den when I froze like an ice-trapped mammoth—Susan Gutteridge was sitting on the staircase about ten steps up and she had the rifle trained directly on my middle shirt button. Her face was dead white and her mouth was set in a hard, concentrated line. She looked more determined than nervous and I wasn't sure that she recognised me.

“Miss Gutteridge.” It came out as half-croak, half-giggle. “It's Hardy, put the rifle down please.” Nothing moved in her face or hands. Some people say a .22 is a toy. Don't believe it—at that range and with a bit of luck it can be just as final for you as a .357 magnum. I drew a breath and tried again in a more confidence-inspiring tone.

“Put the rifle down, Susan. I'm here to help you, just put it down slowly.”

“I thought you were Bryn.” Her voice was calm and detached, as if it belonged to no one in particular.

“No..”

“Bryn or the other one. I was going to kill you.”

“There's no need. I'm a friend.”

She looked at me for the first time. I must have looked a pretty unlikely object for a friend in her circle, but she got the message. She stood the gun up, not inexpertly, and handed it to me with the muzzle pointing safely away. She'd had it cocked and the safety catch was off. I wouldn't have fancied Bryn's chances if he'd come into view. I worked the action and shook a shell out of the breech.

“Come and sit down.” I held out my hand to her. She took it and we moved towards the den.

“You said something strange just then,” she said.

I thought I'd been making good, solid sense, but she pressed it.

“It was odd I said I was going to kill Bryn and you said there was no need.”

“That's right. It was just an expression though.”

“But he's dead already?”

I nodded. “His car went over a cliff, it burned.”

We sat down in one of the den's deep chairs, then she jumped out of it and moved across to another chair. I went to the bar and hunted for whisky. I found an empty decanter and held it up to Susan inquiringly. She pointed to a long cupboard, like a broom cupboard, in the corner of the room. I opened it. A supersize bottle of Johnnie Walker swung inside a teak frame; it looked like it held ten litres or more of the stuff and it was still half full. I filled the decanter and poured two stiff ones over ice. I sat down in the chair Susan had deserted and took a few restorative gulps. She did the same and in a strange way we seemed to be toasting her dead brother.

“Have you reported this to the police?” she asked.

“No.” She asked me why and I tried to explain stressing that I didn't know how she wanted her kidnapping handled, but I also pointed out how deeply I was involved and how being held by the police would hamstring me. She saw it.

“Well it's not going to matter to Bryn,” she said, “in a way it might please him, the end of it all. He had a sort of Byronic . . . no, satanic streak, he cultivated it. You might have noticed?”

Byronic was closer I thought. “Yes, I did.”

She was quiet for a minute, thinking God knows what. I let the good liquor work on me and sat being soothed by the sound of the waves on the beach and the feel of the deep piled carpet under my feet. There was a hell of a lot Bryn hadn't been able to take with him. I wondered if Susan was his heir and what she'd do with all the loot if she was. I wondered about everything except the essential point—what to do next. Susan broke up the reverie by asking me exactly that. I had a few smaller questions of my own, like was Bryn telling the truth when he denied all knowledge of the bombing of Ailsa's car, and did Susan really know nothing about the files? But I was too tired to pursue them or to come up with any plans for interstate flights, midnight meetings on lonely airstrips or hard drinking, incognito, in low-life taverns.

“Let's get back to town,” I said, “we can talk a bit on the way.”

It was a mundane suggestion, but she sloshed down her drink and took a quick look around the place. A trifle proprietorial and previous, but who could blame her? I'd have been making an inventory and marking the levels in the bottles. We turned out the lights as we went through the house and I pulled the back door locked. I gave it a test tug but Susan waved me on.

“Don't worry about the house, or the car. Someone from the town comes up to look after it.”

I hadn't liked her when she had no personality at all and I wasn't too keen on this one emerging. I snapped my fingers.

“Of course, silly of me,” I said.

Her head jerked sharply round to look at me. She grinned, then tossed her head back and laughed. “Fair enough Hardy,” she said when she finished laughing. “Don't like rich bitches, eh?”

We were tramping down the drive now and it didn't seem to occur to her to ask why. Maybe she trusted me, in any case her stocks with me were climbing a bit.

“Not much,” I said. “I feel awkward around large amounts of money, I don't get enough myself to practise on.”

“That's a pity, we must see to that.”

We went through the gate, she stopped and looked around.

“Where's the car?” she said.

“What car?”

“Your car!”

“It's parked back in town, I caught a ride with the albino. We're walking.”

She shook her head. “No way, it's too far.”

I was getting a bit tired of her and my voice wasn't gentle.

“Look Susan, you have three choices, walk, wait here for me to drive back from town or go up to the house again and call a cab. It's late but you might just get one to take you to Sydney, if you do he'll ask why you're not using the Fiat. You'll have to lie, later you'll have to explain to the cops why you lied. You can wait here if you want to, but who knows when things are going to break. I think you'd better walk.”

She nodded and we started out. It was dark, the road was rough and Susan's thin-soled slippers weren't ideal for the job but she didn't complain for the whole forty-five minutes. She didn't talk except to confirm the direction a couple of times. I tried to draw her out about the house and the family connection with Cooper Beach, since she obviously knew the area pretty well, but she wasn't responsive.

Bryn had gone over the high side closer to the next town, Sussman's Wharf, than to Cooper Beach, and I was hoping that the police and ambulance action would come from there when the wreck was discovered. That's the way it happened; when we trudged into the little township the streets were as quiet as a Trappist prayer meeting. One milk bar cum eatery was open at the far end of the main street and the pubs were still serving a thin scattering of hard cases. My car was where I'd left it and the keys were where I'd left them. There was no obvious sign that anyone had taken any interest in it, but I prowled around it a bit just to be sure. Susan obviously thought I'd lost my mind, she sat on the grass looking beat but not downhearted until I was satisfied. She got in looking dismayed at the peeling vinyl and the general air of ruin. It was probably the oldest car she'd ever been in apart from vintage models in rallies with some of the chaps from her brother's school.

“Why were you crawling about in the dark just then?” she asked after we'd got moving and she'd found that the passenger side seat belt didn't fasten. I told her about the bombing of Ailsa's car again and asked her if she'd forgotten.

“Stop trying to trip me up Hardy,” she snapped. “I'm not crazy.”

“You're cool, I'll say that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your twin brother's dead and you're here exchanging insults with me.”

We were on the winding road up to the tollway and I couldn't get a look at her until we made the highway. When I got on it and could glance across I could see that she was gripping the sides of her seat and weeping silently.

“I'm sorry,” I said, “that was cruel, you've got the right to feel whatever you feel.”

“That's the trouble,” she said, “I don't think I feel anything. I think that's why I'm crying.” She brushed her hand across her face and made an effort to steady her voice. “I've got some questions for you, Mr Hardy.”

“I have some for you,” I said.

“Well, let's try a few as far as we're each prepared to answer.”

“OK, you first.”

“Do you think Bryn and Dr Brave were behind everything that's been happening, the bombing, Giles and so on?”

“No.”

“Who then?”

“Someone else, or others, plural.”

“Who?”

“I don't know, I have suspects, just that.”

“Are you going to try and find out for sure?”

“Yes.”

“Can I hire you to do that?”

That conflict of interest seemed infinite. “No,” I said, “afraid not. Thanks just the same for the compliment.”