Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

On the ride I tried to work out how to play the cards I had, or thought I had, but I found myself spending more time admiring the driving of the young detective at the wheel. He whipped the big Holden Kingswood through impossible gaps and caught every light from Watson’s Bay to East Sydney. He didn’t say a word on the journey.

“Great driving,” I said as I got out in front of the central police building. He looked at me and jerked his head at the steps. A specialist.

I went into the building and gave my name to the desk sergeant. He lifted a phone and spoke briefly to someone in Grant’s inner sanctum. The sergeant lifted old, tired cocker spaniel eyes to me.

“You know the way?”

“Yeah. OK to go up now?”

He nodded wearily and turned his attention back to the stolen car sheet. He read it like a form guide maybe hoping that if he spotted a few on the way home he could get out from behind the desk. Then again, maybe it was just a stunt the police PR boys put him up to as something that would impress the public. I went up three flights in the creaking lift. The view from the corridor windows was dull, out across the commercial buildings of East Sydney. The park on the other side was a better eyeful. Grant was still on the dull side but I knew he hoped to go up a floor and cross over. I might be able to help him if I could persuade him at this point with nothing. I pushed open the door and went into the office he shared with two other senior men.

Grant was alone. He was sitting at a desk which was untidy with papers, coffee cups and full ashtrays. He pushed himself back from the desk and waved me into a chair. He took hold of his spare tyre and pinched it.

“I’m getting fat, Cliff, not enough action. Are you going to give me some?”

I sat down. “Could be Grant, could be. I’d better fill you in.”

I told him the tale, an edited version which left some things out and under-played others — especially the events at Brave’s clinic. Grant listened closely, making occasional notes. He ran his hand ruefully across the thinning dark hair on his skull. He was one of those men who took the disintegration of his body hard. His wife still appeared to think of him as the twenty-five-year-old paratrooper she’d married and his three daughters thought the sun shone out of him, but he bemoaned each lost hair and extra ounce. He’d been a superb fighting machine in Malaya and he’d killed three men on active duty as a cop, three hard men. He’d saved my life once in the jungle and kept me out of jail a few times since then. I usually played court jester to his gloomy king.

“Well, you seem to have yourself a nice case,” he said when I’d finished talking.”Well-heeled client, real Lew Archer stuff. What do you want from me?”

“Can you sit on the bombing for a while, keep it quiet?”

“Yeah, I think so. No one really wants to know about car bombings. Everyone assumes they’re about crims and punters welshing on debts. Mostly they’re right. No reporters there?”

“No, not that I saw. The management won’t talk, that’s for sure.”

“Naturally. All right, quiet it is. What’s in it for me?”

I rolled a cigarette and offered him the makings. He hesitated then took them and expertly made a cigarette. We both blew smoke at the stained, cracked ceiling.

“I want to know something about the Gutteridge case. Four years ago, remember it?”

“Yep, I was on it for a while.”

“Did it get sat on? I hear there were some loose ends — an open safe for one.”

“That’s right. He killed himself though. I was the first to see him and it looked real to me. I’ve seen a lot of dead men who got dead in different ways. I’d say this was an auto.”

“Or set up by an expert.”

“Maybe. Unlikely.”

“What about the safe?”

“Puzzling.”

“Look, was it a bloody cover-up?”

He stubbed the cigarette out and dusted his hands. It looked as if he was trying to stop smoking again. He’d tried it a dozen times to my knowledge and it always made him mean. His face set in one of its tough, bloody-minded official masks.

“You’re asking everything and giving nothing. If you want to offer me something juicy out of the Gutteridge case forget it. I don’t want to know.”

“No, it’s not that. I’m working on something connected with the Gutteridge case and I want to know all there is to know about it. It might give me some leverage. I’m pretty confident I can put your name in lights over something which has nothing to do with Mark Gutteridge’s death.”

“Give me a clue.”

“I can’t. You wouldn’t buy it at this stage.”

Grant sighed. He reached into his pockets, pulled the hands out empty and did an isometric exercise against the edge of the desk.

“You weren’t in Sydney when this thing came up?”

“No, I was on a country job, Broken Hill and Melbourne after that. I had a holiday in Fiji on the proceeds, I must have missed it all.”

Grant looked sour, I shouldn’t have mentioned the holiday, but he went on: “OK, well it made a fair splash in the papers. The open safe was hinted at in one of the papers, but that was as far as it went.”

“Who called you?”

“Servant, an old one, she’d been with the Gutteridge guy for years, nothing there. Nothing much for her in the will.”

“Who else was around?”

“The lot, from memory, a driver, two gardeners as well as the old housekeeper — that’s the underlings. Then there was the wife and a son and daughter. Probably ran out of places to spend their money in and had to stay home.”

“Now Grant, don’t be bitter. They have their troubles just like you and I. The fix came in, did it?”

“Yeah, the photographer arrived fast and fired off a few but the support squad had some heavies in it and they took over — OK Cliff, you’ve got the inside dope. Make me feel good about it within twenty-four hours,” he said, “or I’ll call it all square, all round.”

The pressure of his job was getting to him, or maybe it was some other trouble. Whatever the case, now wasn’t the time to sketch out my suspicions. Just now he’d rather fight than think.

“I think I can promise you that,” I said.

“Lovely,” he gave me a tired smile. “Now, I got something off my chest and I’ve got your promise, my day is made. Shoot through Cliff. I’ll be expecting to hear from you.” I got up and patted him on the shoulder. He faked a collapse into his chair and picked up the top file in his IN tray.

I walked down the corridor and took the lift again. From the noise it made I might just have caught it on its last journey. The desk sergeant called me over and handed me the phone. It was Grant.

“I forgot to tell you to take care of yourself,” he said.

“Why do you say it now?”

“I keep up with what’s going on. Bryn Gutteridge’s chum was shot once, close in but very neat. Whoever did it had done it before.”

“I’ll sniff every hand I shake and watch for bulges under jackets.”

“If you meet him you probably won’t have time for one wisecrack.” The phone went dead. I hung on to it for a second listening to nothing.

I realised how beat up I looked when I hit the street and how ill-equipped I was for the weather. The storm that had been brewing broke when I was in the police building. Rain sheeted down bringing clouds of steam up from the pavements. The water soaked into my torn pants and dirty shirt which was pinkish from diluted blood. I had a change of clothes back in my office and I decided to complete the picture of ruin by taking the short walk there despite the rain.

I started out and caught sight in an oddly angled shop window of a red Volkswagen. It was well back and crawling along in the thick traffic. I took a turn and walked slowly down the street. A look in a parked car’s side mirror showed that the VW had stopped at the top of the street after making the turn. I still couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.