Peter Corris - Make Me Rich

‘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.