The Dying Trade ch-1

by Peter Corris

  Back in the house I began a systematic search of drawers and cupboards to see if I could turn up anything which might suggest involvement in Gutteridge affairs beyond what was normal for a loyal employee. Contrary to their image, accountants have a very high rate of criminality — their training and professional habits make them formidable schemers and planners. Chalmers, however, seemed as honest as Baden Powell. His kitchen drawers showed him to be a model of efficiency and tidiness. The household accounts were spiked and filed down to the last detail in the second bedroom which he used as a guest room and study. My keys got me into every drawer and cabinet and revealed a man pretty much as dull as Ailsa had portrayed him. He had plenty of money, from his salary and stock market investments which seemed to be cautious and consistently profitable. His income tax submissions were a joy to see. He practically deducted his shoe leather and they bought it every time.

  The main bedroom presented a contrast to the rest of the house where the fittings were austere, almost plain. This room had a softer, sensuous feel. The double bed was low slung and springy, the sheets and pillow cases were black satin under a knotty Peruvian woollen cover. There was a large cedar wardrobe with two full length mirrors and a chest of the same wood which stood five feet high — both thousand dollar antiques. The right hand door on the wardrobe offered the first resistance I’d met with in the house. It had a double lock with the second mechanism low down and concealed by a movable panel. I had to work on it with two keys and a piece of stiff plastic to get it open. The hanging space inside was crammed with full length and street length dresses and nightgowns, they ranged from frilly, frothy affairs to sleek streamlined jobs. A set of shelves in the cupboard was occupied by layers of silk and satin underwear — panties, bras, petticoats, stockings and suspenders. A box on the bottom shelf was full of make-up — lipsticks, false eyelashes, brushes and pencils, eye shadow and other pots and tubes beyond my experience.

  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.

  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.

  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 telli
ng 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.