Wet Graves (16 page)

“And kiss your arse goodbye,” I said aloud. I started the car and drove to Northbridge.

14

It had been some years since I'd been to Paul and Pat Guthrie's house, but I found it without difficulty. The big peppercorn tree in front was unmistakable. Guthrie's block was wide and long with a deep water frontage. Pretty flash, but after the place Louise Madden had been landscaping it looked modest. There were the usual couple of cars parked in the driveway, and the untidiness of the garden, giving the place a sort of weekender feel, was another thing I remembered and liked. A couple of dogs ran out and barked at me as I approached the house. Paul Guthrie wandered out onto the high deck that ran around three sides of the house to see what the dogs were barking at When he saw me he raised a hand in a vaguely naval salute and beckoned me forward.

I skirted the barbecue pit and the swimming pool, which had a heavy plastic cover over it. Guthrie came down a set of wooden steps from the deck. He must have been close to seventy but he moved like a man twenty years younger. His handshake was firm without being competitive. When you've pulled oars for as long and as hard as he had, you don't need to show off your strength. Guthrie had been an Olympic sculler, and the strength and springiness needed for that tough event were still in him.

“Cliff,” he said, “it's great to see you.”

“Same here, Paul.”

“What happened to your head?”

“The usual. How's life?”

Another man might have taken a quick look around his possessions before answering; not Guthrie. “Pat's in the pink,” he said. “The boys are fine. Two grandchildren, like I told you, and I can still row a boat. How would it be?”

“You're a lucky man, Paul.”

“I know. Come inside and have a drink and tell me what you're up to.”

We went into the house at ground level and down the wide passage to Guthrie's den, which housed his sporting trophies and family mementos—more of the latter than the former. He saw me settled in an armchair, went out whistling and came back with two cans of light beer.

“Cheers,” he said. “I suppose you got those head wounds on that gambling boat, the
Pavarotti
?”

“Right. Ray was a big help there.”

“Looks like you should've taken him along with you.”

“Maybe. I hope he can help me some more.” I touched the scratches. “But no rough stuff involved.”

Guthrie nodded and waited. He was a discreet, experienced, level-headed man, and there seemed no reason not to tell him about the Madden case. It sometimes helps to talk to an objective onlooker, anyway. I gave it to him chapter and verse, and he listened in silence, sipping on his beer.

“Interesting,” he said when I'd finished. “And you want to go and have a look in the water under the bridge?”

“Not me. Someone who knows how to handle himself in that situation. I thought Ray might know someone, be able to help with a boat and so on.”

“He will. And he'll do the dive himself. He's an expert, and he's always felt that he owes you a big favour.”

I waved that away, or tried to. “I don't want him to feel like that. I just want to hire him to do a job. Perhaps you can help me to get it on that sort of footing, Paul?”

“I'll try. When would you want to do this?”

“Tonight.”

He broke into harsh, deep-chested laughter. “Jesus, Hardy, you're the limit. I should've known. Pat did. I said something about having you stay over for a night and go out on the harbour and she said, ‘He'll be off chasing someone.'”

I was saved from having to reply by the simultaneous arrival of Ray Guthrie and his mother. There was just enough light outside for me to see the little Honda and the Holden Jackaroo pulling up side by side in the driveway.

Pat Guthrie was a small, dark woman with a trim figure and a worried look which gave way very attractively to merriment. She came across the grass and into the den, kissed her husband and pointed a mock finger-pistol at me. “Hullo, Cliff. You haven't changed much. A bit thinner, are you? Good to see you.”

“You too, Pat. You look well.”

She nodded in Guthrie's direction. “We are. Has he shown you the snaps of the grandchildren yet?”

“Pat,” Guthrie protested, “I'm not that doting, am I?”

“Just doting enough. Want another beer? Dinner'll be a while.”

Guthrie patted his taut waistline and refused. I accepted; Pat smiled and left, and it was Ray Guthrie who brought in the can. I hadn't seen Ray since he and his girlfriend, Jess Polansky, had left Helen Broadway's flat in Elizabeth Bay. This was after I'd helped to send Ray's real father to gaol and shown him that his stepfather was the best friend he had in the world. Ray had broadened a bit, but the bulk looked to be due to hard work more than self-indulgence. He was weatherbeaten but not careworn. He looked happy. He shoved the beer at me, and we shook hands.

“How's Jess?” I said.

“Just great. Sends her best. She couldn't come, one of the kids is crook …”

“What?” Paul Guthrie almost jumped from his chair.

“Take it easy, Paul,” Ray said. “It's nothing. She just needs her mum tonight.”

“All right, but keep an eye on her.”

Ray drank some beer and looked at his stepfather with affection. “You know, Cliff, he'd send to New York for the best fingernail man if one of them had something wrong with a fingernail.”

Too much fond family feeling embarrasses me after a while. I hid the discomfort behind my can and an interest in the view from the window. The last of the daylight flickered out over the water. The lights on the moored boats in Middle Harbour and the glow in the sky across the water above Seaforth began to provide the sort of nightscape that justifies the mortgages. Paul Guthrie and his stepson were on such good terms that their casual talk was easy to drop in and out of. Pat came in and sat with a dry sherry for a while, and then she and Paul went off to put the finishing touches on the dinner.

“So,” Ray said, “I told you how to get to the
Pavarotti
and you got bashed up?”

“Finished the job, though. It was useful information.” I looked at Ray's solid, jeans-and-windbreaker-covered figure. “I could've used you along at a couple of points, I admit.”

“Try me now. What're you after?”

“Did Paul give you a hint?”

Ray shook his head. “Mister Discretion, Paul. I've come to realise that a good stepfather is better than a real father in a way. He can move aside, let you grow up. Both Chris and me have benefited.”

I nodded. Chris was Ray's brother, who'd also struck trouble a few years back Now he was a graduate in something or other and employed in New Guinea. Their real father, who knew too many things, had been killed in what had been called an accident in the industrial section of Long Bay prison.

“Done any scuba diving, Ray?”

“Plenty. Love it.”

“What's the depth of the water under the harbour bridge?”

Ray fiddled with his empty can, crushing its sides. Unlike his brother, he was a practical man who liked to have something to see and handle in front of him. Theoretical questions, or those requiring information to be transferred from one track to another, made him uncomfortable. “I've got a Maritime Services Board chart on the boat that'd tell me,” he said. “At a guess, twenty metres. Certainly not more. That's average—high and low tide.”

“Is that a deep dive?”

“Are you kidding? Piece of piss. ‘Course, it'd be murky down there. Lot of crap in the harbour.”

“What about at night?”

He leaned forward in his chair. “
Very
murky. But you can take down a light that makes it okay.”

“What about a camera?”

“Christ, Cliff.” He leaned back and crushed the can vertically. When he'd reduced it to the size of a doughnut he looked at me and grinned. “Why not?”

“This isn't
Mission Impossible
, Ray. If it's too bloody hard to handle, I'll come at it another way.”

“I can dive around the bridge at night and take photos,” Ray said. “When d'you want it done?”

“Tonight,” I said.

That's when Paul Guthrie called us in to dinner.

Fish, naturally, in that company. All I know about fish is that when it's fresh and well cooked I like it, and when it's not I don't. This was great. The Guthries treated each other as a group of special friends might—quick to understand and sympathise, happy to chide and be chided. But I didn't feel excluded. I enjoyed the talk and the meal and the dry white. Ray, I noticed, drank mineral water and talked less than the rest of us. Ate less, too.

Almost as soon as he decently could, he wiped his mouth on the paper towel provided, collected his couple of plates and stood. “Excuse me. Great dinner …”

“You hardly touched it,” Pat Guthrie said. “Are you sure you're not sick too?”

“I'm fine. I just have to make a few phone calls.” His nod was more for me than his parents as he left the room.

“Sorry,” I said, “I've asked Ray for some help. He seems to have taken it very seriously.”

“It's an right, Cliff,” Paul said. “Ray's like that. He takes things seriously. I remember once when he …”

“Don't start, Paul,” his wife said. “And don't keep things from me. What are you asking Ray to do, Cliff?”

I told her as we cleared up the dishes and took them to the kitchen, where she stacked them in the washer. “Aren't there regulations about that?” she said. “I mean, can anyone just go diving around the bridge? I wouldn't have thought so.”

“Ray'll bow,” Paul Guthrie said from the doorway. “Or he'll know someone who will know. Don't worry.”

Pat turned on the machine. “It sounds dangerous. At night. No preparation. Why does it have to be like that?”

Paul Guthrie was spooning coffee into a glass beaker. He poured in the boiling water and set the plunger in place. “Is it dangerous, Cliff?”

“Ray doesn't seem to think so. But I'll call it off if it gets tricky. Don't worry, I'm too old for cowboy stuff.”

“So we've noticed,” Paul said. He touched his own forehead, which wasn't scratched and scraped like mine.

I grinned. “I was assisting the police. Pat, it has to be at night to avoid publicity. The woman I'm working for has a right to that. Anything to do with mysterious deaths brings headlines. Team that up with the bridge and you've got a tabloid reporter's dream.”

Guthrie pressed the plunger down. He set the pot, cups, sugar and milk on a tray. “Let's go through to the sitting room. I saw them building the bridge, you know. Went to the opening ceremony and everything.”

We got settled with the coffee. Paul took some artificial sweeteners from a shelf and dropped in two tablets. “I'm seventy this year,” he said. “Milk, Cliff?”

Pat laughed as she took a half spoon of sugar. “He'll take it black, Paul. He's a tough guy.” For a moment I thought that Pat Guthrie might be turning against me, protecting her young from the sort of disruption I represented. But she included me in the amusement. “And don't you come the smart-arse old-timer. Tell us about the bridge.”

“They say a million people went across it on the first day,” I said. “I never really believed that.”

“I do,” Paul said. “I can't tell you much about the ceremony. I was there, but way back in the crowd. I know I've never seen so many people in one place before. I didn't see de Groot. There was just a series of yells and shouts and screams. I think I fell asleep that afternoon, somewhere along the line.”

“I'm more interested in the industrial aspects,” I said.

Guthrie's thumb and third finger probed the grooves in his cheeks. “My father was captain of one of the tugboats that helped to build the bridge.”

“What did the tugboats do?” Pat asked.

“A lot of the superstructure was built on shore and taken out to where it was needed on barges. Then it was hoisted up into place. The tugs pulled the barges.”

“I've seen some photographs of that operation,” I said. “Must've been pretty tricky in bad weather.”

Guthrie nodded. “It was. The whole bloody thing was tricky. It's a wonder more people weren't killed.”

Pat was about to sip her coffee but she stopped the movement. “I didn't know people were killed.”

“Quite a few,” Guthrie said. “In the quarry at Moruya, in the workshop, on the bridge. I saw all of it. I was only a nipper but my Dad was interested and he took me around. He could go anywhere he liked, of course.”

Paul had forgotten his half-drunk coffee. He was settled back in his chair with his memories. Knowing the sharpness of his mind and the clarity of his perceptions, it was reasonable to hope that the memories would be distinct. “What were the working conditions like?” I said.

“By today's standards, terrible, and pretty bad even by the standards of the 1920s and 1930s. You have to remember that it was bloody hard to get work then. Men'd do amazing things for a couple of quid a week when they had mouths to feed.”

“I've never thought about it,” Pat said. “The bridge has always been sort of … there.”

“Well, it wasn't. It was the most amazing thing to see those two bloody great arches grow out on either side and finally join up. It seemed, I don't know, like something almost impossible for men to achieve. It made a very deep impression on me, even though I was so young. My Dad was a bit of a Bolshie, and he used to talk about the cost of the thing in human terms.”

“Deaths and injuries,” I said.

“Yes. There was nothing in the papers about the injuries, except the occasional bit of bullshit from the managers.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Guthrie made a derisive, snorting sound. “Oh, about how the workers were like soldiers going into battle, and casualties were inevitable. That sort of thing. My dad used to read stuff like that out from the papers. It made him angry. I saw things that make me angry to think about them, even now.”