I got home to Glebe around 2.30 a.m. I’ve given up tucking the car away in the backyard; the strain of the backing and filling is too much and the local vandals seem to have decided my car isn’t worth their attention. The street is narrow, with a dogleg; my place is just past the dogleg. I let the wheels drift up on to the kerb and slotted her in-slap-dab outside.
I glanced at a newspaper Hilde, my tenant, had left lying around while I got a few last dribbles from a wine cask. We had a commission of enquiry into the early release of prisoners scheme on the front page, and a commission of enquiry into the conduct of boxing on the back. Both dodgy was about all the reaction I could muster. I took the glass up to bed; there was light showing under Hilde’s door; I knocked softly and pushed the door open. She was sitting up in bed, reading. A long strand of her blonde hair was in her mouth, and she was chewing it rhythmically as she read. She lifted her blue, German eyes reluctantly from the page.
‘It’s 2.30’, I said.
‘I’m reading Gorky Park.’
‘That explains it. Goodnight.’
I slept late. By the time I got up, Hilde had gone off to do her dental research. She tells me that fluoride in the water has cut dental decay by 84 per cent, so that the emphasis in her trade these days is on preserving and presenting the dentition. When I asked her what that meant she said, ‘Capping and straightening’. I understood that.
She’d left a pot of coffee on a low flame, and I got to work on that while I ran a routine check on Paul Guthrie through the telephone book and The Company Index. He lived in North-bridge, between the golf course and Fig Tree Point. It sounded like a well-preserved and presented address for a client to have. Guthrie Marinas Pty Ltd was at Balgowlah, Double Bay and Newport. The ski lodge and dude ranch were probably called the Alpine this and the Western that. Guthrie Enterprises was listed as a private company; Paul Guthrie, principal.
I rang him at 10.30; he came across eager and energetic; he made sixty-two sound like something to look forward to.
‘Tell you what’, he said. ‘I have to go up to Newport to look a few things over. Like to come up? Go out on a boat?’
‘Is there any point?’
‘Yes, Ray kept a lot of his stuff on a boat up there. I suppose you could look through it. Must be a photo of him there- you’ll need that?’
‘Yes, I will. Anything else?’
He paused. ‘Yes. His girlfriend’s there. Girlfriend that was. She’s a nice kid. I talked to her, of course. Said she hadn’t heard from Ray, didn’t know anything. But it might be worth your while to talk to her.’
‘Okay. I’ll meet you there. I’ve got the address.’
He sounded nonplussed. ‘How’s that?’
‘I looked you up in the book and the commercial directory. You check out just fine, Mr Guthrie. You got my credentials, remember? And Roberta was a little past giving you a reference last night.’
He laughed. ‘That’s smart. I’ll give you some money. What time suits you?’
‘Let’s say at the marina at noon. Nothing’s happened to change your mind about this, has it?’
‘No. Why?’
‘It sometimes happens that way. You act, like by hiring me, and something else happens. Never mind. Noon.’
It was hot and Friday, which meant heavy traffic on the road and a slow, sweaty drive to Newport. I was passed by cool-looking people in air-conditioned cars and I wondered, not for the first time, whether I should get a soft top. I didn’t have a woman to ride in it with me-wearing a scarf and with her sunglasses pushed back on the top of her head-but maybe I could do something about that. Roberta Landy-Drake’s cheque would take care of the rent and the mortgage for a month; a couple of steady weeks work for Guthrie, and maybe then I could think about a soft top. I thought about it anyway as I drove sedately north, past the hamburger bars and surf shops, and eventually past the pub in Newport where we used to come in the bad old days with our genuine thirsts and phoney addresses, and pass ourselves off as bona fide travellers.
The approach to the marina was through a bumpy car park beside a pub that hadn’t existed back in the Sabbatarian days. I parked in a small patch of shade that would get smaller as the day wore on. The marina was an arrangement of boat sheds, office, workshops and jetties all connected on different levels by steps and walkways. I walked down to wards it, jiggling my keys and thinking ambivalent thoughts about boats.
Guthrie was waiting for me on a wooden walkway that led to the moorings. He was wearing jeans, a tee-shirt and canvas shoes. I was relieved to see that he didn’t affect the cap and scarf of the pseudo sailor, but I hadn’t expected he would. We shook hands and I realised that the hard ridges I’d felt the night before were from boat work. He might have sounded full of beans on the phone but he looked a little tired now, not at the peak of his form, and he was hiding his eyes behind sunglasses.
‘Going out to check some of the moorings’, he said. ‘Routine work in this game.’
‘Don’t you employ people to do that?’
‘Sure, but I like to keep my hand in. Along here, and watch your step.’
The planks and rails seemed to be in good condition-no splinters, no flaking paint. There must have been more than a hundred boats tied up there-big, swank things like overblown birds and neat, smaller craft with more interesting lines. The water was a deep green around the pylons and the boats were mostly white with blocks of red, blue and brown. The bright sun flashed on brass name plates- Pocohontas, Bundeena, Shangri-la.
Guthrie stepped over piles of rope and mooring lines like a mountain goat on a familiar path; I followed him carefully to where a handsome motor yacht was moored between high, rope-wrapped pylons. Satisfaction was painted in bold, white letters across the stern and at the bow on the side I could see. A flag was flying from a high mast and a couple of seagulls hopped along a polished rail on the side. As boats go, this was a beauty. Guthrie jumped down on to the deck from the jetty untroubled by the distance or the motion of the boat. I edged down the metal ladder a few steps, waited for the rise and stepped aboard carefully.
‘Not used to boats?’
‘Been a while.’
‘This is the one Ray used to knock about in mostly. Not in bad nick, is she?’
I nodded. Everything looked well cared-for without being fussy. Truth was, I was accustoming myself to the motion but, to show willingness, I went under the awning that covered the rear section of the deck and looked around. I noted the life jackets safely stowed. Guthrie noted me noting and grinned.
‘Don’t know why, but I feel a bit better about things when I’m on the boat. Hard to believe he could go bad, the old Ray. Help me to cast off, will you? Then you can go below and poke around-look at anything you like.’
We unlooped the ropes; Guthrie started and warmed the engines and then took the boat smoothly out into the channel. Although I grew up by the water, at Bronte and Maroubra, I wouldn’t say I had boating in the blood. The inner tubes from car tyres were the first craft I remembered, and I didn’t rate the inflatable rafts and boats we’d trained in as soldiers much higher. I spent a very tricky night and a day in one of those things up a river in Malaya, and being afloat wasn’t my favourite sensation. But at least I wasn’t a lunch-loser.
After doing some suitable appreciation of the scenery, I ducked my head and went into the saloon section and from there down a short set of steps to the cabin. The circumscribed space held a two-tiered bunk, built-in shelves and a cupboard. There were two portholes and between them a shaving mirror, a wineskin, a belt with a knife in a scabbard and a heavy oilskin were hanging on hooks. The books on the shelves were mostly paperback thrillers but there were also a few navigation manuals and an anthology of sea poems. There was a plastic coat, a work shirt, a sweater and a pair of very greasy and stained overalls in the cupboard. The bed was neatly made on the bottom bunk; the top bunk was covered with a single blanket.
Ray’s personal belongings were in a tin chest under the bunk. I pulled it out and teased open the cheap padlock with a pocket-knife blade. I turned the bits and pieces over thinking how alike we all are-how we all keep the same things, the bits of paper and objects that mark the staging posts of our lives. Ray had stored away a couple of not discreditable school reports, a learner-driver permit, a swimming proficiency certificate, a half-empty box of long rifle. 22 bullets and some photographs.
I stood up from my crouch with creaking muscles, and spread the snapshots out at eye level on the tight blanket on the top bunk. There were five: one showed a big-looking, blonde kid at the wheel of the Satisfaction; another was of the same boy with a younger and slightly smaller and darker version of himself, sitting in the yacht’s dinghy; there was one of a small, handsome woman in early-middle age standing with her hands on her hips and looking amused at the camera and a fourth snap showed a teenage girl with long legs and short shorts sitting on a low stone wall. She was smiling at the camera and displaying good teeth, shining mid-length hair and an optimistic glow. If Paul Guthrie had given me intimations of hope about getting old, she was a reminder of the joys of being young. She was the sort of girl song-writers used to write songs about before they discovered Freud and drugs.
The fifth photograph was the maverick in the bunch; it was old, not so old as to be sepia-tinted, but it looked as if it had just escaped that photographic era. It was also cracked and creased as if it had once had a less loving home. The picture showed a man in army uniform caught in the act of lighting a cigarette. He was bare-headed, short-back-and-sided and his face was half-hidden in his cupped hands. A sergeant’s chevrons were on his jacket sleeve; an expert might have been able to tell from the other insignia which unit he belonged to-I couldn’t. The interior shown in the photograph looked like a pub; there was a window with reversed lettering on it behind the military figure. It was impossible to tell anything about the man except in the most general terms-not old, not ugly, not fat.
I took the pictures up on deck to where Guthrie was standing with his legs slightly spread and his hands lightly on the wheel. He breathed a sigh when I spread the photographs in front of him on a flat surface in front of the wheel.
‘You sound relieved’, I said.
‘I am. I was dreading you coming up with something like drugs or
…’
‘Nothing like that. Can you give these your attention for a minute?’
He glanced at his course, decided all was well and looked down. He came barely up to my shoulder, but his easy command of the boat seemed to give him extra stature. ‘No problem’, he said. ‘What have you got there?’ He stabbed one picture. ‘That’s Ray.’
‘Thought so. His brother and your wife?’
He nodded.
‘This the girlfriend?’
Another nod.
I nudged the old picture. ‘What about this?’
He peered at it. ‘No idea.’ He flipped it over as I had already done, but there was no writing on the back. I made a stack of the pictures with the one of Ray on top.
‘Big lad’, I said.
‘Six two. No way he could’ve been mine-we used to make a joke of it. Chris’s a bit smaller.’
Six foot two, I thought, nineteen years of age and a boat worker-that meant ropes, oars and muscles. I hoped my usual verbal persuasive methods would be adequate for the task. I didn’t fancy trying to make him do anything he didn’t want to. Guthrie checked his course; I separated out the old photograph and the one of Ray at the wheel.
‘Can I hang on to these?’
‘Sure. Here we go, got to check this.’
He flicked the wheel, cut the motor and brought the yacht close up to a buoy that looked like a giant, floating truck wheel. A flipped switch sent the anchor rattling down through the clear, green water. Guthrie went to the stem, hauled in the dinghy, slipped down into it and skipped across to the mooring buoy with a few easy strokes. I felt useless, so I went back to the cabin and replaced the three photos. When I got back on deck I watched Guthrie circumnavigating the buoy, pulling and testing ropes, car tyre buffers and metal stanchions. When he was satisfied, he rowed back.
After a few more similar stops, Guthrie anchored in deep water and pulled two cans of light beer out of a cooler in the saloon. He had a plastic-wrapped package of sandwiches in there, too. We ate and drank under the awning.
‘Brought you out here because I wanted you to see what kind of a boy Ray is. You think I’m pretty good in a boat?’
I was chewing; I nodded.
‘He’s better. Faster and sharper, and he sticks at it. One time we got a mooring rope wrapped around the propeller shaft, just before we tied up. Getting on for winter it was, dark, cold. Ray stayed in the water, down under there, for as long as it took to work the rope free. Could have cut it but he wouldn’t. Bit of a perfectionist, likes to do things right. You don’t see that all that often.’
‘That’s right’, I said. ‘You don’t.’
‘Pig-stubborn, mind. But stubborn to a purpose.’
He sucked his can dry and put it down carefully on the deck. He went into the saloon and came out with a big cheque book and a gold pen.
‘I can’t bear to think of that boy ruining his life. I can’t do anything directly about it myself-too old. I don’t trust the police, not in this instance anyway. All I can do is write a bloody cheque and hope you’re as useful as you look and as they say you are.’
‘Before you write it’, I said, ‘you have to ask yourself a few questions you might not like the answers to. Why’s he hanging around with Catchpole and company? What’s his trouble? If you hire me, that’s what you’re going to find out, maybe. The picture of him I get comes from you-he’s stubborn; you won’t just be able to say ‘stop’ to him. I won’t, if I find him. You might not like what happens. Your wife mightn’t like it either.’
He looked at me as if he was sifting the whole of his life inside his head-the good and the bad bits, and wondering how much of each there was still to come. He made a weighing-up gesture with his hands.
‘I accept that’, he said. He opened the cheque book, scribbled, tore out the slip and handed it across.
‘That’s more than I asked for.’
‘You don’t ask enough. You’re not the only one who can check up on a bloke. I checked on you. They say you stick at things and that’s what I want. I want your full attention. You’ve got my resources behind you-if you need a thousand suddenly or whatever, you’ve got it. Understand?’
I nodded and put the cheque away. He seemed to regard money as something to help him get what he wanted rather than as something good in itself or something that conferred a virtue on him. That’s healthy; that’s how I’d regard money-if I had any.
‘I’ve got some nosey questions up front. How much money did you give the boys?’
‘Just usual pocket money. I paid them for work they did on the boats in the school holidays. Bought them both a car- nothing flash. I give Chris an allowance to top up his scholarship, nothing much. Ray worked up here before he took off. I paid him well; overtime, the works.’
‘How big was the row you had? What was it about- money, politics, the future-what?’
He was stowing away the remains of the lunch and carefully brushing off crumbs into his hand. ‘To tell you the truth, I really can’t remember. It wasn’t important, nothing out of the ordinary. We rowed mostly about his attitude. I’d say, “Don’t look so bloody miserable, Ray. What’s your problem?” And that’d set him off.’
‘Would his mother remember the particular row? Was she there?’
He thought about it for longer than seemed necessary. He look off his sunglasses and when he looked at me his eyes seemed troubled.
‘I think that was it’, he said. ‘The row was sparked off by something he said to his mother. He was just down in North-bridge for the night, stayed up here mostly… no, I can’t get it back. But something like that. You’ll have to ask Pat.’
‘Would that upset her?’
‘She’s upset already. She’ll take some more if she must-to get somewhere.’
He’d done enough talking. He scattered the crumbs on the water and went back to work. The anchor came up and he headed back to the marina. We swayed a bit as we crossed a bigger boat’s wake, but the engines had a beautiful easy sound, and the Satisfaction cruised smoothly.
‘Good motors’, I said.
‘Serviced by Ray. Exclusively.’
‘What can you tell me about your wife’s first husband?’
Nothing happened; no sudden stiffening, no sweating, no knuckle-whitening. ‘Not much. Pat didn’t talk much about him at all. Divorced way back. He’s dead now, I think.’
‘Have they got his name or yours?’
‘Mine.’
He was concentrating now, moving between the fairly tightly packed boats towards his mooring. I looked ahead and saw a tall figure standing by the pylons; she had a rope in her hands and was tugging at it nervously. Guthrie followed my gaze.
‘This’ll give you another idea of what Ray’s like’, he said. ‘That’s his girl, Jess. You never met a nicer kid.’
She was the young woman who’d been sitting on the wall, smiling into the lens. But now she was standing stiffly, she looked older and she wasn’t smiling anymore.