Peter Corris: The Dying Trade

“Would you like another drink?”

“After you tell me some more about your sister’s problem. When it began and your ideas on it.”

“About a month ago Susan got a phone call. It was from a woman with a foreign accent — French possibly. She talked to Susan about her underwear, what brands she bought and how much it cost.”

“No heavy breathing?” I asked.

“Nothing like that at all. She said things that upset Susan very much. Mostly about the money Susan spends on clothes and things. It’s rather a lot I suppose. Susan likes nice things, nice things cost money.”

His silver spoon was shining; some nice things don’t cost money and some things that cost money aren’t nice.

“It doesn’t sound particularly sinister to me,” I said. “It could almost be funny. Why was your sister so upset?” I could guess at what was coming next, but I wanted to hear how he put it.

“Susan has a strong social conscience. She’s involved on Community Aid Abroad, Amnesty International, Freedom from Hunger. She’s very busy and devoted to these causes.”

I could just bet she was. The sweat from all that devotion and business was probably running down into her crepe-de-chine knickers so fast that she had to change them three times a day. I was having trouble getting interested in Susan Gutteridge’s troubles and beginning to suspect that this investigation wasn’t going to bring out the best in me.

“There was more than one phone call? And you mentioned letters?”

“Yes, calls have come at all hours of the day and night. The Voice — that’s what Susan calls it — goes on and on about her private life, tells her how useless and parasitic she is, how meaningless her life is. It… she… refers to our father and tells Susan to do the same thing, tells her that she’s cursed and her suicide is ordained.”

I felt more interested and asked again about the letters.

“I only have one to show you,” he said. “Susan tore up another five or six, she’s not sure how many.” He stood up, six feet of bony, moribund elegance and took a folded sheet of paper from his hip pocket. He handed it to me and reached down for his air pistol.

“Please don’t do that,” I said.

He sneered at me. “You mentioned your fee and your terms on the telephone. You didn’t say anything about your sensibilities.” He slid back a lever on the pistol and checked a pencil-thin magazine of lead pellets. “Have another drink, Mr Hardy, and turn your attention to what you’ll be paid for.” He rammed home the lever. “Or piss off!”

I shrugged. Big men were raping little girls, fanatics were torturing each other and people were going mad in cells all over the world. A protest here and now seemed a vain and futile thing.

“I’ll take the drink,” I said.

“I thought you might.” He moved along the deck to where it took a right-angle bend into what I supposed was the south balcony. His hand came up sharply and he squeezed the trigger six times. Fifty yards away the pellets rattled like hailstones against metal and glass.

“The drink’s on its way.” He weighed the pistol in his hand.

“This is the most fun I have,” he said. He waved the thing at me like a conductor’s baton, signalling me on. “Get on with it!”

I got on. The paper could have been hand-rolled or beaten out with steam hammers for all I knew. It was a bit smaller all round than quarto and the words on it were in red ballpoint ink, printed in capitals like things of this kind usually are:

SUSAN GUTTERIDGE YOU DESERVE TO DIE

Gutteridge hadn’t fired his pistol while I was studying the note. He moved back to where I was sitting. He was tense, stretched tight.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I wish she’d kept the other notes. Did any of them mention money?”

He put the pistol down on the deck again and slumped down into the canvas chair. He was about to speak when the rower came out onto the deck carrying a tray with the drinks aboard. Gutteridge nodded at him in the first friendly gesture I’d seen him produce. He took one of the glasses and sipped it. “Just right, Giles,” he said. Giles looked pleased in a well bred way and extended the tray to me. I took the glass and put it down beside me. I thought Giles was all right but Gutteridge seemed to think he was something more than that. He picked up the threads.

“Money, no I don’t think so. Susan didn’t say and I think she would have. I think the other notes were in the same vein as this, getting more savage.”

“In what way more savage?”

He spread his hands and took a deep, tired breath. “I didn’t see them all. One I did see said that Susan was sick. Another one said she was rotten. That’s what I meant, sickness, rottenness, death.”

“I see, yes. I still think this could be connected with your father’s death in some way. But I suppose you’ve thought of that too?”

“No, I hadn’t, but you’ve had experience of this sort of thing I presume, and I can see why the thought suggests itself. I don’t think it’s likely though.”

This was better. He was beginning to afford me some field of expertise and it looked as if I might get enough cooperation from him to allow me to do the job. The sister was an unknown quantity at this point and my prejudiced snap judgment about her on the basis of the little I’d been told might be inaccurate.

“What do you think is likely then?” I asked.

“A crank I suppose, someone who gets kicks from baiting the rich.”

“Maybe. Any political angle?”

“I shouldn’t think so, we’re not at all politically-minded, Susan and I.”

Of course not, with their money you don’t have to be. You win with heads and you win with tails, one way or another. But it would be easy enough to check whether or not Susan’s actions had offended some part of the lunatic fringe.

“I have to know more about your sister, obviously,” I said, “I’ll have to talk to her. Where is she now?”

“She’s in a clinic at Longueville. I suppose I could arrange for you to see her if you think it’s essential.”

“I do. She took all this so badly that she had to go into a clinic?”

“Partly this business,” he said slowly. “Partly that, but there are other things involved. My sister is a diabetic and as I said she keeps very busy. She neglects her diet and regimen and her health suffers. She spends a week or so in Dr Brave’s clinic a few times a year to recover her balance.”

I nodded. I was thinking that my mother was a diabetic and she often went off the rails, but she didn’t go into clinics, just ate apples and drank milk instead of beer for a while. But then, she died at forty-five. Money helps. “A diabetic clinic doesn’t sound too formidable,” I said. “No reason why I shouldn’t see her if they had some notice.”

He looked uneasy. “Dr Brave’s clinic isn’t exclusively for diabetics. It’s for people who need care in different ways. Some of them need mental care. I’m not wholly in favour of the place but Susan won’t hear a word against the doctor. She always seems rested and secure when she comes out so I go along with it.”

He didn’t like going along with anything that wasn’t his idea, but his sister was his weak spot apparently. She was responsible for my being here talking to him and he didn’t altogether like it. He seemed anxious for our talk to end.

“I’ll give you the address of the clinic and telephone to let them know you’re coming. When will I say?”

“This evening, about seven or eight.”

“Why not this afternoon? What will you be doing then?”

They’re all the same, rich or not rich, when they’re paying for your time they want to see you running. Perhaps he thought I’d spend the day knocking down his retainer in a pub and doctoring the odometer on my car. I had a feeling that there was more to learn from him, perhaps just a point or two but they could be important. To get them I had to sting him.