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.”
“But he’s dead already?”
I nodded. “His car went over a cliff, it burned.”
We sat down in one of the den’s deep chairs, then she jumped out of it and moved across to another chair. I went to the bar and hunted for whiskey. I found an empty decanter and held it up to Susan inquiringly. She pointed to a long cupboard, like a broom cupboard, in the corner of the room. I opened it. A supersize bottle of Johnny Walker swung inside a teak frame; it looked like it held ten litres or more of the stuff and it was still half full. I filled the decanter and poured two stiff ones over ice. I sat down in the chair Susan had deserted and took a few restorative gulps. She did the same and in a strange way we seemed to be toasting her dead brother.
“Have you reported this to the police?” she asked.
“No.” She asked me why and I tried to explain stressing that I didn’t know how she wanted her kidnapping handled, but I also pointed out how deeply I was involved and how being held by the police would hamstring me. She saw it.
“Well it’s not going to matter to Bryn,” she said, “in a way it might please him, the end of it all. He had a sort of Byronic… no, satanic streak, he cultivated it. You might have noticed?”
Byronic was closer I thought. “Yes, I did.”
She was quiet for a minute, thinking God knows what. I let the good liquor work on me and sat being soothed by the sound of the waves on the beach and the feel of the deep piled carpet under my feet. There was a hell of a lot Bryn hadn’t been able to take with him. I wondered if Susan was his heir and what she’d do with all the loot if she was. I wondered about everything except the essential point — what to do next. Susan broke up the reverie by asking me exactly that. I had a few smaller questions of my own, like was Bryn telling the truth when he denied all knowledge of the bombing of Ailsa’s car, and did Susan really know nothing about the files? But I was too tired to pursue them or to come up with any plans for interstate flights, midnight meetings on lonely airstrips or hard drinking, incognito, in low-life taverns.
“Let’s get back to town,” I said, “we can talk a bit on the way.”
It was a mundane suggestion, but she sloshed down her drink and took a quick look around the place. A trifle proprietorial and precious, but who could blame her? I’d have been making an inventory and marking the levels in the bottles. We turned out the lights as we went through the house and I pulled the back door locked. I gave it a test tug but Susan waved me on.
“Don’t worry about the house, or the car. Someone from the town comes up to look after it.”
I hadn’t liked her when she had no personality at all and I wasn’t too keen on this one emerging. I snapped my fingers.
“Of course, silly of me,” I said.
Her head jerked sharply round to look at me. She grinned, then tossed her head back and laughed. “Fair enough Hardy,” she said when she finished laughing. “Don’t like rich bitches, eh?”
We were tramping down the drive now and it didn’t seem to occur to her to ask why. Maybe she trusted me, in any case her stocks with me were climbing a bit.
“Not much,” I said. “I feel awkward around large amounts of money, I don’t get enough myself to practise on.”
“That’s a pity, we must see to that.”
We went through the gate, she stopped and looked around.
“Where’s the car?” she said.
“What car?”
“Your car!”
“It’s parked back in town, I caught a ride with the albino. We’re walking.”
She shook her head. “No way, it’s too far.”
I was getting a bit tired of her and my voice wasn’t gentle.
“Look Susan, you have three choices, walk, wait here for me to drive back from town or go up to the house again and call a cab. It’s late but you might just get one to take you to Sydney, if you do he’ll ask why you’re not using the Fiat. You’ll have to lie, later you’ll have to explain to the cops why you lied. You can wait here if you want to, but who knows when things are going to break. I think you’d better walk.”
She nodded and we started out. It was dark, the road was rough and Susan’s thin-soled slippers weren’t ideal for the job but she didn’t complain for the whole forty-five minutes. She didn’t talk except to confirm the direction a couple of times. I tried to draw her out about the house and the family connection with Cooper Beach, since she obviously knew the area pretty well, but she wasn’t responsive.
Bryn had gone over the high side closer to the next town, Sussman’s Wharf, than to Cooper Beach, and I was hoping that the police and ambulance action would come from there when the wreck was discovered. That’s the way it happened; when we trudged into the little township the streets were as quiet as a Trappist prayer meeting. One milk bar cum eatery was open at the far end of the main street and the pubs were still serving a thin scattering of hard cases. My car was where I’d left it and the keys were where I’d left them. There was no obvious sign that anyone had taken any interest in it, but I prowled around it a bit just to be sure. Susan obviously thought I’d lost my mind, she sat on the grass looking beat but not downhearted until I was satisfied. She got in looking dismayed at the peeling vinyl and the general air of ruin. It was probably the oldest car she’d ever been in apart from vintage models in rallies with some of the chaps from her brother’s school.
“Why were you crawling about in the dark just then?” she asked after we’d got moving and she’d found that the passenger side seat belt didn’t fasten. I told her about the bombing of Ailsa’s car again and asked her if she’d forgotten.
“Stop trying to trip me up Hardy,” she snapped. “I’m not crazy.”
“You’re cool, I’ll say that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your twin brother’s dead and you’re here exchanging insults with me.”
We were on the winding road up to the tollway and I couldn’t get a look at her until we made the highway. When I got on it and could glance across I could see that she was gripping the sides of her seat and weeping silently.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “that was cruel, you’ve got the right to feel whatever you feel.”
“That’s the trouble,” she said, “I don’t think I feel anything. I think that’s why I’m crying.” She brushed her hand across her face and made an effort to steady her voice. “I’ve got some questions for you, Mr Hardy.”
“I have some for you,” I said.
“Well, let’s try a few as far as we’re each prepared to answer.”
“OK, you first.”
“Do you think Bryn and Dr Brave were behind everything that’s been happening, the bombing, Giles and so on?”
“No.”
“Who then?”
“Someone else, or others, plural.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, I have suspects, just that.”
“Are you going to try and find out for sure?”
“Yes.”
“Can I hire you to do that?”
That conflict of interest seemed infinite. “No,” I said, “afraid not. Thanks just the same for the compliment.”
“Why not?”
“I’m already retained on the job.”
“By Ailsa?”
“That’s right.”
“And just how do you feel about her?”
“You just reached the end of your questions, my turn.”
She rummaged about in the glove box among the odds and ends and spent Drum packets and slammed it all back in frustration.
“Haven’t you got anything to smoke except this vile tobacco?”
“No. Do you know anything about the files?”
“Not a thing, I wish I did.”
I let that pass to avoid side-tracking her. “What did Bryn mean when he said you would once have done anything for him? You reacted very strongly.” She jerked up in her seat. “Nothing, nothing at all,” she said quickly, “we were once very close that’s all.”
“I see. This may or may not be related. What did your father have on you and Bryn that kept you in line?”
“Who told you that he had something?”
“Never mind, what was it?”
“No.” She slumped down and ran her fingers through her hair, lifting and dropping the wings, her voice was old and thin as it had been back in the clinic. “No more questions.”
“One more, do you remember exactly who was around the night your father died?”
“I could, I have an excellent memory when conditions are right. I’d have to sit down and think about it.”
That brought it back to me, the reason I’d had a flash about bringing Ailsa and Susan together. The key to all this was somewhere back four years ago when Mark Gutteridge had killed himself. I needed to know all I could about that night. It didn’t seem like the right time to put this to Susan, so I let her answer stand and we drove on together in silence towards the smoggy lights of Sydney.
Susan gave me the address of a friend she could stay with for the night and I took her there. I stopped the car outside the place, a tizzed-up terrace in Paddington, got out and went around the car to open her door. She stepped out and put her hand on my arm.
“Thank you, I’m going to see Dr Pincus tomorrow,” she said.
“I know,” I said. Then an idea hit me. “Try for St Bede’s.”
“What?” She looked at me, puzzled and deeply tired.
“If he wants to put you in hospital, ask to go to St Bede’s.”
“Why?”
“I hear it’s the best anyway, so you’ll probably go there as a matter of course. But as well as that it might help me if you’re there.”
She was too tired to pursue it, she shrugged her shoulders, pushed open the stained wood and iron gate, and climbed the steps to the house. I saw light flood out from the open door and heard a woman’s voice say Susan’s name in startled but welcoming tones. The light went out.