by Peter Corris
“Put your hands on the wheel,” I said.
He did it.
“This is a rifle, feel the sight.” I slid the end of the gun round and rubbed the front sight into the back of his ear, not gently.
“Convinced?”
He didn’t answer, he was thinking and I didn’t want him to. I jabbed the sight into the ear hard, it made a ragged tear in the flesh and blood seeped out.
“OK,” he said, “it’s a rifle.”
The voice was still thin and lilting, there was no fear in it and I realised that I sounded shakier than he did and that I was afraid of him. I started gabbling even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“You hurt a lady I like and you hurt me. I wouldn’t mind killing you, so be careful.”
He let out a light, reedy laugh. “You’re talking too much, you’re scared shitless.”
His voice had a hypnotic quality and I felt a little mesmerised. He was right. I hadn’t done anything positive apart from putting the gun on him. His calmness was getting to me. If it went on like this he’d have me presenting him with the rifle and opening my mouth for him to shoot into. It was no time for subtlety and I was losing at badinage. I reached out my left hand and grabbed one of the lengths of pipe. He made his move — a grab into the door pocket on the right side. But before he got there I hit him left and right with the pipe and the barrel of the rifle. The rifle smacked into his ear and the pipe landed lower down and further back on his skull and he slumped forward and slammed his forehead into the stem of the steering wheel.
I climbed into the front seat and pushed him aside. He slumped against the cardboard box. The motor was still running and I crunched the vehicle into a gear of some sort and kangaroo hopped the thing around to the right of the gates. It stalled close enough up to the fence to be hidden from the house and not at such an unnatural angle to attract attention from the road. That just left me and him. I got some wire out of the back and trussed him up as tight as I could without paying too much attention to his circulation. The gun in the door pocket was a beautiful old Colt automatic. I pushed it into the waistband of my trousers and got out of the Land Rover. I took another look at the albino. He was tied up tight but he could still make a noise so I stuffed a piece of stinking oily rag into his mouth. I grabbed the rifle and set off along the fence to pick an entry point that would give me cover and easy access to the house.
I went over the fence at a point where a gum tree conveniently dripped some branches over it and approached the house from the rear through a few thickets of shrubs and one great maze of a privet hedge. By hopping between the outbuildings I was able to get up close to the back door without breaking cover for more than a few seconds. I sidled round the corner of the house and listened at the kitchen window. I could hear voices but it was hard to tell where they were coming from. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the two rear rooms on the ground floor so I decided to go in. I parked the rifle by the back door, checked the pistol and inched open the fly wire door. It came easily, the door handle turned smoothly and I moved into a glassed-in porch. The kitchen was well-gadgeted, but plain. It was about six o’clock and I thought nervously about the possibility of someone coming into the kitchen to get the drinks, then I remembered that you didn’t go to the kitchen to get the drinks in a house like this, the booze had a room of its own.
I went through a door into a dining room and through that into a hallway dominated by a carved staircase, painted white. From near the front of the place I could hear Bryn Gutteridge’s voice. I moved forward and flattened myself against the wall outside the room. This was the den or something such, ice was tinkling in glasses and I heard the soft hiss of the springs giving in an armchair when Bryn got up. I could hear every word spoken. Bryn sounded nervy, impatient.
“I just don’t believe you,” he was saying, “it doesn’t make sense, you have to know something.”
“If I do, I don’t know what it is.” It was his sister’s voice, fairly calm and even. “I know it sounds like nonsense,” she went on, “I almost believe that I do know what you want me to know. But I can’t remember…”
“That’s bullshit, Susan. Brave says you didn’t forget anything important, and this is important.”
“Brave! What would he know? He isn’t a doctor. He’s in jail now and serve him bloody right. God, how you two have put me through it. What the hell do you think you’re doing now?” There was strength in her voice. She hadn’t gone back to the vegetable kingdom where they’d been keeping her and she seemed to be standing up to Bryn nicely. That took some doing because, along with the edginess, there was a menacing quality in his voice which was pretty telling in combination with the usual authority.
“You know very well what I’m doing, Susan. I’m going to force you to tell me where those files are. It has to be you, no one else could have got them. You always were a sly bitch, Susan. You found out the combination to that safe somehow, you took the files when you found Mark dead.”
“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 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 G
iles, 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.
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 half-way 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.”