I got some money from the autobank at Railway Square and a surprised look at home from Hilde when I phone-booked a seat to Brisbane. She followed me as I ran around the house gathering things.
‘Now?’ she said. ‘It’s night time.’
‘We never sleep.’
‘That could be true’, she said. ‘You certainly didn’t sleep here last night.’ I made a face at her and she went on. ‘And from the look of you, maybe you didn’t sleep much anywhere. Mmmm?’
She was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers, prepared for one of her long, late night runs. I grinned at her and mimed running on the spot.
‘Sleep or not, I beat a pennant standard tennis player 9–7 in the tie-breaker today.’
‘Is that so? I’m sure Helen Broadway would love to hear all about it, point by point. How was your serve?’
I grabbed her arm. ‘I’ll break it, I swear, if you don’t tell me everything you know.’
She laughed and I let her go. ‘She rang a couple of times. Said she’d be out tonight but you could ring in the morning. Sexy voice.’
‘Great voice, yes. Thanks, Hilde. I’ll see you.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘Don’t know.’
I had my picture gallery, my gun, some clothes and books and a collection of burglary tools in an overnight bag. If they were scanning the hand luggage I’d have to put the gun and tools in a locker and go naked in the world. In my wallet I had my private enquiry agent’s licence which would mean about as much in Queensland as a Fantale wrapper. I had credit cards which everyone would like, and electric shaver and a toothbrush which no one could object to.
It was late and the airport was quiet; I parked, got seat-allocated and walked straight into the departure lounge-no scanner. My fellow passengers were a mixture of business folk and family folk. A couple of kids, up too late, were giving their mother hell, and the benign smiles of the two nuns opposite only made her more agitated. Me too.
We took off on time and I ordered a double scotch as soon as I could and settled down with Howard Hughes. The kids went into first class which was a relief; the nuns were back in second class, but they didn’t make any noise. I was reading about Hughes’s big-fish spending to corrupt the politicians in the little pool of Nevada and trying to tell myself it couldn’t happen here, when we landed in Brisbane.
I like Brisbane: I like the warm air and the houses up on stilts and the suburban gardens that are like small jungles. I hired a yellow Ford Laser at the airport, which was the least gaudy car they had. It had nothing on the clock but its springs were shot: it had a Brisbane street directory though, and at that time of night I was glad to be hiring that as well as the springs. I drove to the address I had for Chris Guthrie in the suburb of Paddington.
The same things have happened to Paddington, Brisbane, as have happened to Paddington, Sydney (and Paddington, London, for all I know): it’s an inner-city suburb, once intensely working class, now saved or ruined by a middle class invasion, depending on your point of view. Unlike a lot of Brisbane, it is hilly and I noticed an encouraging number of pubs while I got myself lost in the dark, leafy streets. There had been some rain and the gardens gave off a moist, lush smell that would have gone better with the growling of tigers than the barking of dogs, which was what I got as I stumbled around looking for numbers on fence posts.
It was after midnight when I found the house: it was set high up on stilts with a lot of discarded furniture and machinery quietly mouldering and rusting underneath it. The garden was overgrown and fragrant with the wet, night smell. No dog. I pushed through the undergrowth and went up a set of rickety steps to a wide verandah. I knocked, waited, knocked again. A light came on in the house and a frightened female voice asked from close behind the door who was on the other side.
‘I’m looking for Chris Guthrie’, I said.
‘He isn’t here.’
‘He does live here?’
‘Yes, sort of. But he’s not here now.’
‘Do we have to talk through the door?’
‘Go away. I’m sick of people coming around at all hours for him. I have to study and I have to sleep. Go away!’
‘Just a minute. What other people? When?’
‘There was a guy tonight who said he was his brother and all the others for the past couple of months-the ones who look like cops, and sound like you.’
‘Where is Chris? D’you know? It’s important.’
‘Will you go away if I tell you what I told the last guy?”
‘Yes.’
‘Okay. Ask at the railway freight yard at St Lucia. I think he works there. He pays his room rent here sometimes but he moves around a bit. That’s all I know. Please go away.’
‘He’s a student.’
‘He dropped out.’
‘Will you look at a photograph, please?’
‘No!’ The light went out and I was left standing at the door with a photograph in my hand. There was a low hum of insects from the gardens, but otherwise the night was graveyard quiet: there’d be a lot of noise if I tried to force an entry and I didn’t imagine the Brisbane cops would be amused at a Sydney private man pushing the citizens around in the wee small hours. I put the photograph away, said goodnight to the door, trying not to sound like a policeman, and left the house.
It was too late to do anything more. I stopped at the first open motel I came to, put crosses at random on the breakfast menu and fell into bed. I lay there with my mind buzzing. ‘Achieve one thing every day’, my Scots grandmother advised me when I was young. I wondered what she would count as an achievement. I wondered what she would call a day. It was about thirty years and ten thousand days too late to ask her. My mind was hopping, leaping about now: a lifetime could be about twenty-five thousand days. Grandma Kelly had lived to be eighty-odd; had she achieved thirty thousand things? Maybe she had. My one thing-locating Ray Guthrie-didn’t seem so much now, but it didn’t seem any easier, either. I went to sleep trying to count the things I’d achieved in forty-odd, God-fearing years.
At 5 a.m. it was getting light, and I was wide awake. I stuck my head out the door and sniffed the soft, sub-tropical air. I wrapped one of the motel towels around me and went down to the pool and swam a few laps in the nude. The water was cold and too heavily chlorinated. I stayed under a hot shower for fifteen minutes until I was warm and decontaminated. Then I had an hour to wait for breakfast; I spent some of the time thinking about the information conveyed by the disembodied voice of last night: other enquirers, moving about, drop-out, voices like cops. It sounded something like a Brisbane version of the events in Sydney, and wasn’t likely to be any more pleasant.
Then I did some thinking about Helen Broadway-time zones; were they any different? — daylight saving and a reasonable hour to call. I ate the soggy breakfast, drank the Lukewarm coffee and made the call. I tried to remember the layout of the flat. No phone by the bed, in the living room; she’d be wearing her silk gown. The phone didn’t have to ring for long.
‘Christ, long distance’, she said. ‘Where are you-New York?’
‘Brisbane. It’s twenty-six degrees already, and I’ve had a swim.’
‘I want to see you.’
‘Me too. Wish you were here.’
‘Why aren’t I?’
‘I’m mostly to be found behind the wheel of a car going to places where no one wants to know me. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. If you left now there’s a good chance our paths would cross in mid-air, if you see what I mean.’
‘I think so. Is your life always so hectic?’
‘No, mostly, I have lots of time for Bondi Beach, movies, cappuccino…’
‘That sounds better. Well, this is costing you something.’
‘Not me. My client.’
‘Same man?’
‘Yeah. The kid came up to look for his brother. Now we’re both looking for him.’
‘Are-you-in-danger? I say again: Are-you-in-danger?’
I laughed. ‘Only moderately. I’ll call you soon as I get back, Helen.”
‘Promise?’
I promised, and meant it. I got dressed and paid the bill. The manageress looked at me with disapproval; she almost looked at my credit card with disapproval. Maybe she thought I lowered the tone of the place by being in the pool in the raw.
St Lucia is a garden suburb and the parts that flank the river would have to be called verdant. Winding roads with smooth footpaths follow the river, and spawn joggers who seemed to outnumber the civilians this fine, crips morning. I objected to them less now that headbands appeared to be out of fashion. The number of zebra crossings along the river road, controlled by flashing lights, suggested that the joggers had an in with the local council.
The freight yard was a million psychological miles from the certainty and confidence of the big houses by the river and the clear signposts to the university. It was reached by a dusty road that turned off another road which had swung away from the well-heeled section of the district. The railway line here was what the Americans call a spur-an off-shoot, a by-way. There were low, broken-down fences around the goods yard and the road to an old brick office seemed to be marked by smashed wooden freight pallets. A small car park was defined by star stakes which were bent and askew and trailed their wires aimlessly.
I arrived at around 9.30 a.m. which seemed to be too early for commercial activity or civilised communication. The bearded youth in overalls who opened the office door looked at me with loathing.
‘What’s the matter?’ I said.
‘You’re too early. No one’s here.’
‘Don’t put yourself down.’ I said. ‘You’re here.’
He hitched at his overalls, which was unnecessary, because there was no way they could fall down. But he seemed to find it worth doing and he did it again. It dawned on me that he was stoned.
‘Let’s go inside and talk’, I said. He resisted-my second time at being refused entry in ten hours. ‘Okay, let’s stand our ground. Do you know Chris Guthrie?’
He shook his head and hitched the overalls again. It was too much. He’d started to shake his head before I’d spoken the name. He was bigger than me and younger, and if he was stoned and I was sober at 9.30 in the morning, that was his problem. I pushed him back against the wall, not gently.
‘Guthrie’, I barked. ‘Where?’
He pointed to the right, down the railway track. ‘He s… sometimes sleeps in the old freight car down there. I don’t know whether he’s there now or not.’
I let him come back from the wall and he slid down it into a squatting position. He smiled vacantly up at me.
‘I hope nothing important ever happens around here-you wouldn’t seem to be up to the job.’
‘It doesn’t’, he said.
I tramped down the derelict platform which was only raised a couple of inches above the rail. The whole place was an object lesson in how fast the bush would reclaim the city: the wood I saw was splintered and rotten, the metal was rusted and weeds were pushing up and growing aggressively through the cracked concrete.
The freight car was an old, immobilised ruin, blackened by fire and crumbling from disuse. The sliding door was half-open; it wouldn’t budge and I levered myself up and in. Light came in through chinks and gaps in the slatted sides- enough light to see the figure of a man slumped in a corner on a pile of hessian bags.
He was in a half-sitting position with his back against the fire-scorched wall. He was barefoot and wearing jeans and a tattered tee-shirt. A bag hung over one shoulder like half of a poncho. There were a couple of day’s worth of youthful fuzz on his face and his brown hair was long and matted: things moved in it. His eyes were closed and his mouth was puffy and blueish. He was Chris Guthrie. The disposable plastic needle hung in his arm like a caterpillar on a leaf. I jerked it out and a trickle of blood ran from the puncture mark which was one of a number, crusted and mottled, running up the inside of his thin, brown arm.
He was wasted and the grime was flaking off him, but there was a slight rise and fall to his chest. I bent forward to lift an eyelid when I heard a sound behind me and spun around. Ray Guthrie was climbing into the freight car; I was temporarily dazzled by the light and against it, Ray looked fuzzy in outline, shaggy like a gorilla. The noise he was making were scarcely more intelligible.
‘You bastard’, he roared. ‘Don’t touch him.’
‘Easy, Ray…’ I moved towards him to conciliate, but I could feel the grim set of my face and with the needle still in my hand I must have looked like the king of the pushers. He jumped at me, arms flailing. I dropped the needle and retreated, trying to keep from stumbling on the debris-strewn floor. He hit me with a long, looping punch that landed on the shoulder and didn’t have much sting; I hit back instinctively, catching him on the cheekbone. He went back and I shuffled back to the nearest wall.
‘Ray’, I gasped. ‘I’m a friend, your father hired…’ The word was enough to set him off again; he came in with both fists pumping and it was a matter of protecting myself from damage. I hooked him which brought him up short, then I pushed: he stumbled back and fell out of the car. I jumped after him and landed close, but a bit winded. He was game; he pulled himself up and threw another punch. I warded that one off, which takes less wind than throwing one yourself.
‘Stop it, Ray. I’m trying to help you.’
He bent and picked up a piece from a broken pallet, swung it like a club. I recoiled and that gave him a moment to look at me.
‘… bastard… followed us from the pub…’
‘Right. But…’
He threw the wood and I ducked. He ran down the platform, hopping over the uneven surface like a rabbit. I went after him-six paces and I caught my foot and fell. I sprawled on the ground, grazed my hand again and winded myself thoroughly. Lifting my head, I saw him running, jumping and skittering with terrific speed, down the platform, past the office and out of the freight yard.
I recovered my breath, picked the dirt out of my palms and went back to the freight car. Chris hadn’t moved; his bony chest was still fluttering and there was a thin, reedy sound coming from his throat. I made sure his tongue wasn’t going to go down it, and ran back to the office, where the kid with the beard and the personality problem was rolling himself a steadying joint.
‘Phone!’ I shouted.
He pointed to the floor: the telephone sat on a pile of tattered directories that went back to the Commonwealth Games year and beyond. I swore and fumbled with the mouldy, stuck-together pages. He got his joint going and looked at me with amusement.
‘Hospital?’ he said.
I nodded and he recited the number. I rang it and got a highly efficient-sounding Emergency service. I told it I needed an ambulance and that I’d better have the police as well while we were at it.
‘What’s going on, man?’
‘It’s visiting time’, I said. ‘You’ve had me and the young bloke who ran past. Now you’re going to get the police and an ambulance.’
‘Shit!’ He pinched out the butt and put the inch or so of stained stub in his mouth. ‘Well, shit. I think there’s a train due later this morning.’
‘That’ll make your day’, I said.
I ran the rusty water in a tap outside the office, cleaned my face and hands and waited for officialdom.
It came with sirens, flashing lights, starched uniforms and shiny buttons. The ambulance attendants seem to think that Chris would pull through. When the cops started on me I doubted if I would make it. They carted me down to a steel and glass tower in the centre of the city which was their headquarters; I wouldn’t say they were gentle about it, but at least no one slammed the car door on my fingers. They left me in a bare room ten storeys up, and let me look out over their city and think about my sins. The river ran a straight course through the city and then meandered away to the east. I imagined I could see its muddy banks, a malarial plain, a fringe of mangroves where it entered the sea. It put me in a mood to leave Queensland to the Queenslanders- maybe that was the idea.
An Inspector Jervis, who was terse but not overtly hostile, listened to my story after looking at my licence to enquire privately. I told him that I’d been hired to look for Chris Guthrie who’d been out of touch with his family for a worrying period of time. It was close enough to the truth for me to tell it without sweating. He didn’t like it much, particularly the reflection it cast on the organisation of which he was a proud member.
‘Didn’t this Guthrie think we could handle a missing persons case up here, eh?’
Good point, I thought, don’t press it. He didn’t; I took my cue from Jervis and talked as little as possible. I’d left my gun and burglary tools in the Laser; no one asked me how I was getting around and it seemed like a good thing to keep quiet about. They didn’t like me; the only thing they liked about me was my return ticket to Sydney and Jervis suggested I use it, soon.
A phone call to the hospital confirmed the paramedic’s impression-Chris was in what they called ‘shock’ from a heroin overdose combined with low physical vitality, but he wasn’t in danger. The hospital wanted to know who was going to pay the bills since it was an out-of-state matter. I gave them Paul Guthrie’s name and address, which I’d already given to the cops, because it would have been me in the hospital as well if I hadn’t.
By midday I was on the street again, and by five past in a pub. I had two quick drinks, jostling with counter-lunching policeman. I used the phone in the pub to book a flight back to Sydney and to call a cab to take me back to the freight yard. There was no sign that a train had arrived or ever would again. The hire car had been sitting in the sun for four hours and its vinyl coverings threatened to revert to the original composition of the material. I wound all the windows down and sweltered my way back to Paddington.
The insects were shrill in the overgrown garden and I had to knock very loudly to be heard over the blasting rock music coming from inside the house. Not like the other night-I could kick the door in now and no one would hear. I felt like doing it just on principle; kowtowing to cops isn’t my favourite sport. But the noise level dropped and I got the same female voice quavering through the door.
‘Yes?’
‘Federal police’, I shouted.
‘What do you want?’
‘Open the door, madam, or we’ll force it.’ I thought the ‘we’ was a good touch.
The door opened and a young woman with strained-back hair and a worried mouth looked at me through thick-lensed glasses.
‘There’s only one of you. I want to see your ID.’
I stuck my foot inside the door and gripped its edge. ‘I’m not a policeman, young lady, although you said I sounded like one the other night.’
Her hand flew up to her mouth. ‘Oh!’
‘Yeah, oh. Now I found Chris Guthrie where you suggested-down at the goods yard. He had a needle hanging out of his arm and now he’s in the hospital. His father hired me to find him and I’m going to look in his room.’
‘I’m going to call the police.’
‘I’ve just come from them and they wouldn’t want to see me again. You can’t call from here because there’s no phone. By the time you call from outside I’ll be gone. Now, why don’t you just let me in, and save yourself a lot of bother? You can be back at the books in ten minutes. You call the police and you can forget about studying for today.’
She moved aside and let me in.
‘Chris’s room’s through here.’ I followed her down the passage to a bedroom near the back of the house. The rock music was soft now and the place smelled of incense and coffee. They were good sounds and smells and I let up on the authoritarian manner.
‘Nice place’, I said. ‘What’re you studying?’
‘Politics.’
‘Always study with the music so loud?’
‘Yes, it drowns out the real world.’
‘Ah. In here?’
She nodded and left me to it. The room was small but well lit from a big window. There was a mattress on the floor with bedding neatly folded on it. A student’s desk had books and papers on it and a pen-it looked as if it had been got up from abruptly and never returned to. That was the neat half of the room: on the other side there was a big armchair covered with dirty clothes; there were food scraps balanced on the arms, empty glasses and cans on the floor beside it. There were wadded-up tissues and a bloodstained handkerchief. Between the cushion and the side of the chair I found the plastic cap of a disposable syringe. The room looked as if it had been inhabited by two different people.
I went out, and located the student sitting with a pile of books and notes at the kitchen table. The rock was still soft. She looked up, exasperated.
‘I thought you said you’d go?’
‘In a minute. What happened to Chris?’
She shrugged. ‘He went on to drugs.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You must know something.’
‘He went away for a while, a week maybe. When he came back he looked very bad, sick. That’s when he started on the stuff. He was only here from time to time-he’d paid some rent in advance.’
‘He didn’t say anything about it?’
‘He once said it wasn’t his fault, and another time he said he was ashamed of it. But they all say that.’
Sympathy wasn’t her big thing. I took out the photo of the dark man and held it out for her. ‘Have you ever seen him?’
‘Yes, he was here. I think he’s the one who brought Chris in the first time he was sick. He was around a couple of times after that.’
‘Hear his name?’
‘No.’ She reached out her hand for the knob of the ghetto-blaster and I left her to impair her hearing.