Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

She shook her head. I’d put it that way to see if the Pali girl was part of her world, or maybe I was just being nastily suspicious all down the line. There was no value in it anyway. I started to make a cigarette.

“Have you ever been to New Caledonia?” I asked abruptly.

“No, are you going to take me?”

“You’d have to take me, I can hardly afford the Manly ferry.”

“New Caledonia is part of it?”

“Could be.”

“You’re not going to start pacing again?”

“No, I’m going to act, take control, be masterful.”

“You can’t be masterful with me for a few weeks, nothing to stop you taking control with someone else of course.”

“I might just store it up a bit. I think Hemingway advises it somewhere. No, you’re right about needing more information. I want to dig for it. I want to set up a session between you and Susan and sift through the circumstances of Mark Gutteridge’s death down to the last grain. Will you be in it?”

She pulled a sour face and plucked at the sheet. “If you say so. I detest her, you know.”

“That’s no way to talk about someone who’s in traction no more than fifty yards away.”

“Say traction again.”

“You’re a bitch.”

“You’re so right. OK Cliff, I’ll be in it. When?”

“I’ll need your doctor’s permission and hers, the sooner the better.”

“You’ve got my man’s permission as of now.”

“I think it’ll be much the same with her. Could be Monday then.”

Bells starting ringing and we did a little gentle kissing. I promised her that I wouldn’t go chasing off to New Caledonia and that I’d be in over the weekend. I joined the exodus of the sound in wind and limb.

For a day that had started in jail it hadn’t turned out too badly. I bought a flagon of riesling and a few bottles of soda water on the drive home, put the car away with consummate ease and went cautiously into the house. I was pretty sure I hadn’t been followed at any time in the day, but if I was wrong and O’Brien had observed my illegal entering then I was in the shit. It would be like him to pounce just as I got the top off the first bottle. But the house was empty. I took a quick look at the mail — bills and invitations to spend money I didn’t have on things I didn’t need. I was getting the proportions of ice, wine and soda just right when the phone rang. I jumped a mile and spilled the wine. The sudden, movement put a shaft of pain through my kidneys and reminded me what a rough twenty-four hours I’d had. I sloshed a drink together and took a big gulp of it before moving creakily to the phone.

“Is that Cliff Hardy?”

“Yeah. Tickener?”

“Right. Did you see my stuff today?”

I grunted.

“What’s wrong, you don’t sound too good.”

I grunted again and drank some more wine.

“Look, I was wondering if you had any ideas about where Brave might hide out.”

“Sorry, no idea. I’m still on the same case though and I’ll let you know if I turn up on Brave.”

“Fair enough.”

“What do you hear about the constabulary?”

“I hear that some very high people are very edgy. A retirement is foreshadowed and two guys have gone on their holidays. No sign of Jackson, he could be a lead to Brave. What do you think?”

“I think it’s terrible that such a fine band of men should be subject to such morale-lowering pressures, but don’t splash it all over the front page.”

Tickener’s sigh came whispering across the wire. “I suppose that’s the price of fame, I get a private eye to wisecrack with over the phone.”

“That’s right, are they talking A grade yet?”

“Can’t be long.”

We agreed to stay in touch and rang off simultaneously. I made another drink and put some eggs on to boil. I wandered up into the room where I kept my books and looked through the four volumes of the Naval Intelligence series on the Pacific Islands. I’d once met one of the professors who’d had a hand in writing them in a bar in Canberra. He was a tall, gaunt-faced character who told a good story and liked a drink. He’d told me about his work in intelligence when I told him what I did for a living and he told me where to get the books second-hand in Sydney. I bought them out of curiosity and I’d never been disappointed. The professor was dead now and I often regretted I’d never seen him again and got him to autograph the books. There was a long section on New Caledonia in volume III.

I mashed up the eggs, sprinkled curry powder on them and made them into a couple of bulging sandwiches. I took the food and another drink to the table and read about the islands while I was eating. New Caledonia had been something of a political football between France and the Australian colonies for a time, but it had come firmly under French military rule about the middle of the nineteenth century and had stayed that way for over fifty years. There’d been a couple of native rebellions but they’d been put down firmly in good French colonial fashion. In the end the French had managed to convince the majority of the islanders that the smart thing to do was to become black Frenchmen. The place had settled down, had a fair tourist trade, some extractive industry and was receptive to development capital. The Palis were chiefs in one of the settled areas close to Noumea. They’d seen the light in religion and politics pretty early and had done quite nicely all through. The information was very much out of date and I browsed around looking for something more current. I turned up a two year old copy of Pacific Islands Monthly that mentioned concern among New Caledonians at the behaviour of some Australian mining engineers who’d blundered in on a ceremony they shouldn’t have seen. There was also a letter from a New Caledonian about the French nuclear tests in the Pacific.

I tidied up the kitchen and worked through a bit more of the wine and soda. Things didn’t become any clearer and an hour of television didn’t help, and a re-read of two chapters of Louis Golding’s The Bare Knuckle Breed only reminded me of Cyn who’d bought it for me and made me wish I had someone to spend the night with. I wandered up to the dartboard, pulled out the darts and went round the board in twenty throws. Like hell I did. I went to bed.

There was nothing useful to be done on Saturday or Sunday. I paid Bryn’s cheque into my TAB account and drew out some money, half of which I lost on the horses within the next four hours. I bought some flowers and went in to see Ailsa in the afternoon. We agreed not to talk about the Gutteridge case and tried to get by on books and other subjects but it didn’t work very well. I drank too much wine that night and stayed in bed with my head aching until late the next morning. At two o’clock, as I was thinking of getting up, the phone rang and the hospital informed me that Miss Sleeman wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want any visitors. Great. I got up and went for a long walk through Annandale and down into Balmain. The sky was low and grey and the discarded race tickets blowing along the pavement increased my bad temper. The water at the end of the peninsula looked like a dark, bottle green swamp, barely rising and falling, and the boats riding on it looked like they were stuck in the ooze. I tramped home, took the dead albino’s Colt apart and oiled it. It was a little worn but a fine gun despite its owner. Guns are like that. I assumed it was untraceable, the serial number was filed away; a useful gun.

At 9 a.m. on Monday, wearing my best suit, the grey one again, I was in Dr Pincus’ office being told that he wasn’t in and that I couldn’t see him when he did come in. Mrs Steiner was doing the telling and it was a pleasure to watch her at work. She was wearing a brightly printed kaftan and her hair was tied back in a glossy bun. With the slope of that forehead and nose she could have just stepped off a Phoenician oarship. I stood in front of her desk thinking that if Pincus was keeping his hands off her he must have a wonderful marriage.