Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

The Alfa was looking racey and the boat toey when I arrived at Ailsa’s place. I parked the Falcon next to the boat and took the steps two at a time to test my wind. It seemed to take ten minutes to reach the top and I wondered how Ailsa made out on fifty smokes a day. The door was made of Oregon pine with glass panels. The curtains inside drew across what looked like a hundred yards of glass on each side. I gave the handle an experimental turn. It was locked, as befitted the front door of a lady whose car has been booby trapped with gelignite. I pressed the bell and waited. Ailsa’s voice came from inside, back a bit and to one side. Good.

“Who is it?”

“Cliff Hardy.”

To judge from the sound she was drawing a bolt and undoing a chain. She said “Come in”, and I opened the door and pushed aside a section of the heavy curtains. Ailsa was standing well inside the room, with one hand up to the electric light switch and the other full of a big, black gun pointing at my navel. We looked at each other for a full quarter minute.

“That’s good security,” I said. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” She lowered the gun to her side and took a step towards me. I took three or four and put my arms around her. She pressed in close and we kissed expertly and carefully. She pushed me away gently and handed me the gun.

“Put it down please, I hate it.”

I thumbed forward the safety catch and put the big automatic down on a chair.

“You looked like business.”

“I’ve never fired it, I don’t think I could.”

We circled around each other for a while in the kitchen and living room while she made me a drink and tea for herself. She’d spent the afternoon in bed and had taken it quietly in the evening, fixing herself a meal and watching TV. She was wearing a silk chinese-looking robe, all red and black with wide sleeves. It suited her, she looked rested and good. We sat side by side on the floor of her den which was book-lined and comfortable. The wind whipped some branches against the window. The soft, warm rain pattered down and I sipped my drink while telling her about my comings and goings in her service. Some kissing spun the story out and after two drinks, with her head on my shoulder and my hand on her breast inside her robe, I was feeling miles away from coffee coloured girls in red Volkswagens and rainy vigils outside hospitals. She brought me back to it with the big question, or one of them.

“Who do you think the woman with the French accent could be?” I stroked her breast drowsily, it seemed the right thing to do when considering French-accented women and was very nice for its own sake too.

“Brave has Canadian connections you tell me. Maybe that’s the answer, some French Canadian woman. But since talking to Tickener I’m not so sure. She put him on to Brave. They could have fallen out I suppose, but I’m not wild about the whole theory.”

“Why not?”

“Brave and bombing don’t go together, he’s more subtle. Still, there’s Giles’ death to consider. Can’t rule Brave out on that and therefore he could be involved in the bombing.”

“It’s getting very complicated, isn’t it?”

“It is, that’s why you need a specialist in complicated criminal cases.”

“Like you?”

“Like me.”

Her breast was warm under my hand and her fingers on my thigh reminded me that it had been a long, long time. I pulled her to her feet and we did some more kissing and eye gazing. She broke away and led me off by the hand — it felt like the fifth or sixth time, when you know enough to take it slowly and be touched by it. We undressed each other in her timber-beamed, white-bricked bedroom and closed like tired but healthy and experienced animals. She finished before me and opened up warmly beneath me. I went down and around and moaned out my gratitude.

She seemed to feel the same thing — a gratitude and release and we each smoked a cigarette and made mildly dirty remarks in each other’s ears. It was an exchange of needs, strengths and weaknesses and both of us knew that was all it was for now. She rolled away from me and slipped her hand between my legs.

“Go to sleep.” Her hand soothed me beyond the power of food, drink or money. “I might catch you again before morning.”

We woke soon after first light and moved in on each other urgently and hard. It was a different event, less tender, more athletic and she got out of bed almost as soon as we’d finished.

“Tea or coffee?”

She wrapped a cheesecloth cloak around her and ran her hand over her hair. I wanted to pull her back into the bed but the look on her face told me she wouldn’t be playing. She looked preoccupied, withdrawn and anxious to get on with some task to divert her from the reality of a man in her bed.

“Coffee, black please.”

“Do you want anything to eat?”

I pulled the sheet up over my head. She snorted and went out. I unsheeted and looked around the room. It was austere with built-in wardrobes, a low camphorwood chest with a lamp on it and some paperbacks, and a full length mirror. The outlines were muzzy in the early half-light, softening down the lines of the neat, not self-indulgent decor. It was a fine room to wake up in. I got up and pulled back a little of the curtain. The pool was immediately outside — you could dive into it from the decking if you were good enough or drunk enough. I wandered around the room and into the compact ensuite bathroom. There was a man’s shirt, several sizes too big for Ailsa, hanging on the back of the door. It was slightly soiled and monogrammed RH on the breast pocket. It was silk, very expensive. I took my empty bladder and the little puzzle back into the bedroom.

Ailsa came in with the coffee on a tray as I was riffling through one of her books — The Day of the Jackal, good stuff by a guy who wrote passably and had something good to write about. She kept the cloak on and sat down on the bed away from me. She handed me the coffee which was strong and hot.

“I suppose you want brandy in it?”

“It has been known. What is the H in RH for?”

She put down her cup and looked away from me, at the mirror.

“That’s it,” she said, “I was waiting for the thing you’d say that would be all wrong, and you come out with that.”

She reached for her cigarettes but I checked the movement and pulled her down beside me. She didn’t resist, didn’t comply. I stroked her hair.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “That was a question to ask a suspect at midnight. I’m sorry love, I’m off on this case again. I didn’t think.”

“It’s all right, you don’t have to soothe me. I’m not going to cry or anything like that. But you’re not being completely truthful. You saw Ross’ shirt, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, what does it mean to you?”

“Jesus! Not a ‘what does it mean session’ this early.”

She pushed herself up and away from me angrily.

“You’re a ripe bastard this morning, aren’t you? Is this your usual style? Do you fuck your clients and piss them off in the morning and keep the retainer? Nice work.”

She got the cigarettes this time and lit one shakily. I recovered my coffee and drank some trying to work out how to calm the storm. Maybe she was right, I’d woken up with clients before and worked my way out by the shortest route. But I wasn’t feeling like that this time.

“Ailsa, it isn’t like that. There’s loose threads hanging everywhere in this case. I saw your fight with this guy Ross. I just want to fit him into the picture a bit more clearly. If he’s in the picture.”

She tapped ash off her cigarette and drank some coffee, not looking at me.

“Very well,” she said tightly. “Yes I suppose Ross is in the picture, or was. He’s been my occasional lover for a year or so. Mostly we fight, sometimes it’s nice…was nice. I don’t expect it to be any good again. That fight was beyond the limit.”