I woke with a headache that was partly due to the crack I’d taken the night before. I looked out of the window across the rusting roofs of Glebe. The sky had a dull, leaden look — the day was going to be hot. A Sahara wind was already whipping the ice-cream wrappers and other crap along the gutters. I made coffee but it was bitter and I swilled it down the sink. About the only good thing I’ve ever heard of Mick Jagger is that he likes scrambled eggs and white wine for breakfast. I made my version of scrambled eggs, piled a glass up with ice and topped it up with hock and soda. I put the drink down fast, made another, and took it, the food and The News out to the courtyard, feeling better every minute.
The paper headlined the hunt for Costello, the police expected a breakthrough hourly, and there were pictures of beefy guys in shirt sleeves heavying honest citizens. Giles’ departure from this vale of tears didn’t get a mention. I ran my eye hopelessly over the cryptic crossword and consoled myself with the meteorological report — hot, high winds ahead of a thunderstorm. I skimmed the paper again and was surprised to find an idea forming in my mind. I let it take shape for a few minutes and then gave it another drink in case it went away hurt.
I shaved, took a shower and put on my other suit which is said to be lightweight but always makes me sweat like a pig if I move at a pace above a royal stroll. I was already hot when I slipped into the car. The radio aerial had been broken off just above the mounting and was lying in three pieces across the bonnet in the shape of the mark of Zorro. I swore and swept the pieces into the gutter. Insurance was supposed to cover things like that, but how do you insure yourself against insurance premiums? The car started cheerfully and I moved off towards the city.
I reached my office, two floors up above St Peters Street, close to 9.00. The Cross, or what’s left of it after the developers had their way, is just a block north. The whores were already at work, not doing any business among the winos squatting on the pub steps, but keeping in practice. My office opens straight into the corridor, no ante-rooms for people to wait or die in. I inherited it from a clairvoyant who fell under a train. The desk was covered with astrological signs and cabbalistic symbols in inks of various colours — I never had the nerve to rub them out and confined my own doodling to the blotter.
The knock came at exactly 9 o’clock. I sang out that the door was open and she came in slowly and tentatively like a schoolboy coming into the head’s study. She wore a light blue mottled smock over tight flared white trousers. Her fine breasts complemented the tailoring of the smock and that length of lean thigh in white denim was something to see. Her low-heeled sandals vaguely matched her tooled leather shoulder bag and there wouldn’t have been much change out of three hundred dollars for the set. Yesterday she’d been wearing a scarf or something over her head. Now I could see that her dark, reddish hair was cut short, almost cropped. It lay on her sleek head like a burnished metal cap. She wore yesterday’s sunglasses, or maybe she had a few pairs the same. A cigarette came out of her bag almost before she hit the chair and she was one of the fastest people with a lighter I’ve seen.
She took a quick look around the office which in colour scheme and layout is more like a railway waiting room than anything else. She didn’t react to it one way or the other, which probably meant that she’d been in worse places, maybe much worse. She drew hard on the cigarette.
“It must have seemed strange to you,” she said, “telephoning like that last night.”
“It did, but when people need help they do strange things.”
“Can I take up some of your time, Mr Hardy? I have a long story to tell. I’ll pay you of course, starting from now.”
“Before you start spending money I’d like to know why you’ve changed your mind about me. I was a fly on the wall to you yesterday.”
“That’s a fair question. Yesterday I was having a bad time with the man you saw. I’m sorry, it made me testy. Today I need help and I’ve been thinking. I don’t like Bryn Gutteridge, but he’s a good judge of people. If you’re good enough for him you’re good enough for me.”
She acted on the “if you have to ask the price you can’t afford it” plan and that was all right with me. I nodded reassurance on the point, rolled a cigarette and settled back to listen.
“Today is close enough to fifteen years to the day since I gave up being a dancer. I wasn’t bad, I can still do a bit. I’m pretty fit.”
“Yes,” I said, “you look fine. Put 90 % of people to shame.”
“Well, I gave up dancing and that sort of life, theatre and so on to get married. I married a man named Bercer. I was twenty-four, he was fifty-nine, I was poor, he was rich. It’s an old story and there was nothing very different about it except that it worked out all right. He was nice to me. I liked him and for about three years I thought I’d done the right thing. I read a lot, went to plays I wouldn’t have given a thought to before. I improved myself.”
“You did a good job,” I said, “but then…?”
“But then I met a man more or less my own age. I fell for him and we had an affair, a pretty hot one. He was married and I handled it all very badly. I got upset when I couldn’t have it all my own way when things went wrong. James, my husband, didn’t suspect that I was being unfaithful but he was worried about me and sent me to see a doctor, a counsellor…”
“Brave.”
“Yes. He was helpful at first, encouraging. I’d lost track of the friends I’d had when I was dancing and they weren’t much anyway, pretty wild. I had no one to confide in. Brave was sympathetic and available day and night. I came to rely on him absolutely and I told him about my lover. That was a terrible mistake.”
“He blackmailed you?”
“No, not me. He blackmailed James. He told James that there were things about me that would ruin him financially and socially.”
“What was Bercer’s business?” I knew but I wanted to know whether or not she did and what she felt about it.
“Property development, building, and he did big stock exchange deals. It all hinged on the people he knew, politicians, lawyers, top public servants, even a few military men. We went to hundreds of parties, had dinner engagements six nights a week, sometimes seven. There were lots of smoke evenings, the gentlemen with their cigars and the ladies talking trivia.”
I looked down at the frayed end of my cigarette and teased it with my thumbnail. “It sounds terrible.”
“It was, a lot of the time. But there were some good holidays, good trips, and the men weren’t all oafs and the women weren’t all vacuous. It wasn’t so bad. I went to a good school, my accent’s all right and I could hold my own. But James had to be absolutely clean for his deals to come through, no dubious connections.”
“Your lover was a dubious connection.”
“He certainly was, the worst. If it got out that he was my lover those important people would drop James cold.”
“Why didn’t James drop you?”
“He loved me for one thing, but that wasn’t all. Brave’s line was that James mustn’t drop me or he’d spread word about Carl.”
“Carl who?”
“It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that Brave was bleeding James dry. I found out later that he got over a hundred thousand from him, maybe two hundred thousand, maybe more.”
I whistled. “That’s big. What does Brave do with the money?”
She set her teeth in a grimace like that of a firing squad commander who has to administer a coup de grace.
“He has expensive tastes in… erotica. He gambles like a madman But we’re talking about me, not him.”
“Sorry, he’s of interest. So are you of course.”
She looked impatient and ran a hand over that fine, glowing pelt.
“Right. I’m jumping ahead in telling it this way because at the time I didn’t know what Brave was doing. I just saw James getting more and more tense and felt more and more guilty myself.”
“Bercer didn’t front up to you with it?”
“Never. He just broke under the strain. He started taking bottles to bed and gorging himself on rich food. He blew up like a balloon and had a heart attack. He had two, actually in a few days and he died.”
“How did that leave you?”
She was so used to the idea that she didn’t even pause to knock the ash off her cigarette — the second since she’d started talking.
“Comfortable, if I’d been careful. I wasn’t.”
I raised an eyebrow, a stagey trick I’d learned from my drunken, diabetic mother who’d pounded a vampy piano in London pubs and queened it up on the Oronsay on the? 10 scheme.
“Brave dropped out of the picture when James died. I gave up my lover, unpleasantly, and went a bit wild. Not here — in the States and Europe. I worked through a lot of money and came home a good bit harder. I’d seen a lot, I was too old for dancing and too smart for whoring, so I thought I’d better have another try at what I’d succeeded at before.”
She’d gone through it in her mind a hundred times and had made her own role tougher with each run through, but she had intelligence, directness and an awareness of the reality of other people — something real gold-diggers don’t have. And her men hadn’t been soft-cocked sugar daddies: Bercer sounded like a shrewd operator in a high-powered world and Gutteridge had been smart and tough. But she was telling the story and this was the part she’d assigned herself. I wanted to hear more.
“You did all right again,” I said.
“No,” she shook her head, “I was getting nowhere for going on a year until I got help. Guess who?”
“Brave again.”
“Yes. I met him at a party. I think I’d tried to find him when I first got back but he’d vanished. Remember that I didn’t have anything against him except perhaps a bit of resentment that he’d gone off so soon after James died. He said he’d had to go back to Canada. OK, I was pleased to see him and pretty soon I was confiding in him again. He talked to me about needing an anchor in my life, a strong man. He introduced me to Mark Gutteridge.”
She was moving steadily through her packet of cigarettes and the room was smoky and heating up fast. My watch put the time at a little past ten which meant that the pubs would be open.
She agreed that it was hot and that a drink would be a good idea. We went down the stairs and I felt my stocks in the building go up several points in the eyes of a dentist with a quiet practice, a hairdresser with big blanks in her appointment book and a guitar teacher whose rooms were smoky and sweet smelling. They hovered about in their doorways as I followed Ailsa’s firm white-denimed buttocks down the corridors of their dreams.
The heat hit us like a jet engine blast when we reached the street. Ailsa had slipped the Porsche I’d seen the day before into an illegal but unobtrusive place behind the building. It was unlocked and she stepped in and reached into the glove compartment, also unlocked, for the keys. I wondered if she ignored security the same way in her house. As she pulled out from the kerb I noticed a red Volkswagen pull away half a block behind. I watched it in the rear vision mirror for a mile or so till it turned off or fell a long way behind. I couldn’t see the driver. The light wouldn’t fall right for me to get a look at him even when the car was close. I directed Ailsa out to Watson’s Bay where the big pub on the beach serves the best fish in Sydney. If Ailsa was only half-way through her story it looked as though we could string it out through lunch, and I was on expenses. She didn’t talk much. She drove fast and well using the Porsche’s power when it was needed and not for show. We reached the pub just before eleven and she slid the car into a patch of shade where a tree hung over the parking bay. She reached over to drop the keys into the glove box.
“Lock it,” I said.
She gave me a sharp, unfriendly look and shook her head.
“For me,” I said. “Your security’s lousy, it’s time to start improving it.”
She shrugged and locked the car putting the keys in her shoulder bag. We went through the cool lounge, up some stairs and into the dining room which has a view of the boats and the water that puts twenty-five per cent on the price of the food and drink.
“What will you drink?”
“Tonic and a slice of lemon. I hardly drink at all these days.”
I gave the waiter the order. I had the same with gin. Out came the cigarettes and she took up her story again without preamble.
“It was all different with Mark. We had a good sexual relationship at the start and he was a very different proposition to James.”
“No playing around?”
She shook her head. “Out of the question. It was all much more complicated. Brave can judge people. He’d picked me and Mark as a good fit and he was right. But the fit wasn’t all that comfortable.”
“The children?”
“Right. Mark doted on them and they were as suspicious as hell of me. He doted, but kept a tight rein on them. He seemed to have them scared. He scared me too at times.”
“Where was Brave in this scene?”
“I’m coming to it.”
The drinks arrived and I tried not to show an indecent interest in mine. She gave hers only the attention it deserved.
“Brave seemed to be a friend of Mark’s in a low-key way. Mark advised him in business matters and helped him to get the land the clinic’s built on. You’ve seen it?”
“Yeah, must have been quite a deal.”
“It was. Some old houses came down. Mark had people in his pocket as I told you. I was interested in Mark’s business. I thought I’d been wrong not to pay more attention to what James did, it might have kept me closer to him. Well, I talked business to Mark quite a bit. In bed mostly, and he gave me the gist of what it was all about. He was involved in land and property speculation. He got tips from people in high positions and he profited from them. He paid off the people who gave him information, in cash sometimes, more often in land and shares. Sometimes the payments came years after the deal, sometimes the kick-backs went to the wives, you understand?”
I did. If I’d got any kick-backs when I’d had a wife I’d definitely have seen that they went into her Swiss account. But the only kick-backs I’ve ever had have been of the in-the-teeth variety. I finished my drink and signalled for another. Ailsa’s had scarcely lost a drop.
She went on: “Sometimes he told me names, but not often. Sometimes it was obvious to me who he was talking about even if names weren’t mentioned. It became a bit of a game with us, a sort of Mata Hari thing, a bedroom game. I’d probe and he’d be indiscreet.”
“It sounds like a bloody dangerous game to me,” I said.
“It turned out to be. Mark roasted me a couple of times when I let a name slip in company, when I’d had a bit to drink. I watched myself after that. Mark would say that he had things on everyone, there was no one who had anything on him that he didn’t have something on in turn. When he was low he even told me that he had something on his children, he never said what, and something on me. I didn’t understand and I didn’t want to. I used to try to pass it off as a joke. That was hard because Mark didn’t have much of a sense of humour, like Susan. He had a dramatic sense, our bedroom spy games showed that, but that’s about it. Jokes for him were visible, practical things. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. “Yes. I’d say Bryn’s a bit that way too. Speaking of the practical-minded, did Gutteridge keep records of his deals?”
“I’m not certain but I think so. I’ll get to that.”
She drank down the tonic and lemon peel in a few gulps and refused another. I accepted the wine list, a little early perhaps, but busy people often eat early lunch I’m told. Ailsa sent the waiter for cigarettes and tore them open untidily as soon as they arrived. When she had one lit she went on.
“I used to see Ian Brave occasionally, have a drink with him. I didn’t need him as I had before, but he was a confidant of sorts and I still didn’t have any friends to speak of. I had problems with Mark’s children and occasional bouts of depression. I went to the theatre with Brave twice. The second time he doped me.” She sucked in her cigarette and blew the smoke out in a thin, vicious jet. “He took me back to his place — not the clinic, a house he has on the beach. He put needles into me, he questioned me for hours and hours. You can guess what about.”
“Yeah. Where was your husband then?”
“Away on business, interstate. He often was. When I came out of it, some time early the next morning, Brave told me what I’d told him. That is, he gave me some snippets, about big names. He thanked me and told me to forget what happened. He said he’d leave me alone.”
“I don’t follow.”
She stubbed the cigarette like it was her last and she was giving it up for life. Except that she lit another straight away.
“Oh shit. He had some pictures. Are you with me?”
“Photographs?”
“Right. He used them to keep me quiet and he used the information I’d given him to blackmail Mark to glory.”
“Did your husband suspect that you were the source of Brave’s information?”
She fiddled with the cigarette and lined up a napkin, an ashtray and her lighter on the table. “I’m not sure,” she said, “I suppose so. He became morose and withdrawn. I couldn’treach him, no one could. My feeling is that Brave had him so cold he didn’t care anymore.”
“His whole approach to things had been turned round on him?”
“Something like that.”
“Did he still see Brave? Socially I mean?”
“No, not to my knowledge. But they hadn’t met regularly anyway.”
I was interested but there were lots of loose ends. I played with the menu while I considered them. The story had a ring of truth but it was a bit too close to the first episode of husband and betrayal for comfort. Her innocence looked to be stretched a bit thin. I tried to keep the scepticism out of my voice as I asked the question. “How do you know all this happened? You said you weren’t aware of what Brave had done in the case of your first husband. Why are you so sure about all this now?”
The question was important. If she slid about on it the whole thing could be a pack of lies. Dancers can be actresses. Only another good serve of her directness would incline me to believe her. She was direct.
“Brave told me himself,” she said, “I went to him one day when Mark was black-minded and told him that I thought he was driving Mark crazy. I threatened to go to the police and accuse him of drugging and molesting me. I said I’d finish him professionally and in every other way.”
“What did he say?” It wasn’t hard to guess.
“He laughed at me. He said there were good reasons why I wouldn’t do what I’d said. He threatened to name me as an accomplice in the blackmailing of James. He said he had so much on Mark that he could play with him, just as he pleased and that he could ruin him and put me on the streets. He didn’t want to. Mark was making him rich and he was happy with things as they were. If I left him alone, he’d leave me alone. He said he’d ease up on Mark, but I guess he couldn’t. He’s a greedy bastard.”
“How’s that?”
“He pushed Mark past the limit, he must have done. Mark was dead about ten days after I had this talk with Brave.”
“Are you sure he killed himself?”
“No, I’m not. But he was in a tortured state in the last few days and a gun was found near his body. The coroner’s verdict was suicide but I’m sure such things can be arranged.”
She stopped when the waiter arrived to take the order. I called for half a dozen oysters naturelle and some grilled whiting. She said she’d have the same and took about half a glass of hock when that arrived. Waiters were hovering about and she smoked and made some small talk until we had privacy again. The golden brown fish fillets and potato chips hid among the salad like Dyaks in the jungle. We pushed them about and sipped the wine. I tried to fill her glass but she glared at me. I munched a few decent mouthfuls of fish and got on with it.
“You think the police didn’t pursue the matter satisfactorily?”
She mashed up some fish and salad and pushed the mess aside. She hadn’t eaten a single potato chip and I had to keep myself from reaching over and spearing them. I drained my glass instead and filled it from the bottle which was still healthy. She lit a cigarette and more smoke drifted into my face than seemed necessary.
“What are you so cautious about, Hardy?” she asked. “Your licence?”
I shrugged and took in a bit more wine. “You were talking about your husband’s death,” I said. She nodded and did her cigarette flicking act again. The ash sprayed into the plates and I pushed mine aside.
“Look, this gets back to your question about Mark’s records, if you’re still interested. Mark died at his desk, in his study. The police found a secret safe in the study, one I didn’t know about. It had been opened. It was empty. Maybe Mark kept the records there.”
I nodded. “That sounds like a lead for the police, didn’t they take it up?”
“No, they didn’t take anything up. They rushed on to the inquest and let it go at that. I don’t have to spell out what I think?”
“No, you think Brave has the records, maybe killed your husband to get them. Maybe not. In any case he was on the scene pretty quick I assume?”
She nodded, “Very quickly.”
“You think he used the records to bring the shutters down on the case?”
She spread her hands quizzically and drew a deep breath. The coffee arrived and she dropped as many grains of sugar into it as you could balance on the head of a nail. I took a gulp of wine and popped the question.
“Your husband’s been dead for four years and you’ve suspected Brave’s hand in it all along. Why are you frightened enough to want to do something? To hire me? Brave hasn’t threatened you directly has he?”
“Not yet,” she said, “But it’s only a matter of time. I’ve done something with the money Mark left me — invested it, got a couple of companies going. I told you this?”
I couldn’t remember, I looked non-committal. She went on: “I’m a worthy target for Brave now. He’s a leech. But it’s more than that.” She leaned forward. She had fine broad shoulders and her movements were athletic without being masculine. Her lips were a sculptured counterpoint to the vertical lines of her face. “I think Brave killed Giles. I think he’s insane and obsessed with the Gutteridges. I think he’s behind the threats to Susan and after Bryn now.”
“Bryn’s certainly afraid of something, or somebody. I think it connects back to his father’s death but I don’t know how.”
“He’s afraid of Brave I tell you. And if Bryn’s afraid of him I’m bloody terrified.” She slapped down the coffee spoon she’d been playing with and jerked off her sunglasses. There seemed to me to be as much resolution as fear in her face. Her voice was unemotional, businesslike. “You drink too much, but you’re intelligent and capable in your own field. I want you to do two things — investigate Brave’s affairs and put him out of business, for good. And protect me!”
“It’s tough doing two things at once.”
“They’re two sides of the same thing. I’m sure of it.” She smiled for the first or second time since I’d met her. It was a nice smile but under careful control. “I don’t know why you wanted to come out here. The food isn’t that good and the view is rather corny. I’ve been here before.”
“Why did you agree to come then?”
“To show anyone who might be interested that I’ve got protection.”
“I guess you hired me a couple of hours ago then.”
“Well, yes, I did in a sense. But are you interested in the complete job now you know what’s involved?”
I gave it about half a second’s thought. Handled right it would keep me clean of guard duty and the cheap rooms and caravan parks for weeks. I had too much good wine inside me to think of much else. I believed at least half of Ailsa’s story and that was enough. I told her my rates and conditions of work. She pulled a chequebook from her bag and wrote words and digits on it with a gold pen. I put it in my wallet, not too far from Bryn’s cheque so that the two of them could debate the ethics of it.
I had just enough cash to cover the bill and I was feeling clever and successful when we walked out into the parking lot. The sun was beating down hard and the shade had retreated from the Porsche leaving its rear bumper shimmering and reflecting like a white hot steel mirror. Ailsa stepped up to the driver’s door, pressed the button in and pulled the door free. She had it three inches open before my half-stewed brain got the message. I took two rabbity leaps across the melting asphalt and swept her off in a diving football tackle. Her bag came adrift from her shoulder and flicked the car door full open as we hit the ground. The Porsche burst into flame like a Molotov cocktail on impact, the bonnet lifted and the windows cracked in quick succession like rifle shots. Hellish heat surged towards us as I rolled Ailsa over three more times in the gravel and tar.
“You should always lock your car,” I ground into her ear as we came to rest twenty feet away from the inferno.