Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

“Who did you squeeze?” Tickener asked.

“Who’re you?” said Haines.

“Keep quiet, Harry,” I said. “It’s all right, Haines, this is all between us, it doesn’t go any further. My job is to protect Ailsa and your mother, that’s what I’m interested in. I’m not playing God.”

“You know.” His head jerked up. “How could you?”

“I put it together. You tell me if I’m right. You were hung up on the idea of your family background, you couldn’t accept that you were a pleb. You read all the papers and the magazines, you saw pictures of Mark Gutteridge and saw the resemblance. You found out that Gutteridge had a daughter and that she was in Adelaide when you were born, I don’t know how you did that, but you concluded that she was your mother and you decided to destroy the Gutteridges.”

“That’s pretty close,” Haines said softly. “I got a picture of her and showed it around the hospitals. I didn’t get a positive identification but a few people were pretty sure.”

“You got something out of the orphanage file then?”

He looked surprised. “You know a lot don’t you? Yes, I worked out that I was born at a hospital, I cracked that code, the rest was easy. You’re wrong when you say I wanted to destroy them though. Not at first, I wanted them to, to…”

“Accept you?”

“Yes. I tried, he refused to listen. I found out things about his son. I told him.”

“Did you kill him?”

“No, I didn’t! He killed himself I think, I don’t know. I still don’t know why he treated me like that. He beat me up.” He lifted his hands to the fine scars on his face and fingered his off-centre nose. “I found him dead. I got the files though.”

“I don’t like to interrupt,” Tickener said nervously, “but I don’t understand any of this, and there’s a dead man outside.”

“That’s all right, Harry,” I said. “You should stick around and learn something and he’s not going anywhere.”

“I suppose not.” Tickener dropped into a saucer chair and I sat on the bed beside Haines. “Is there anything to drink?” he asked. I looked at Haines who nodded at a cupboard over the sink. Tickener went across, opened it and pulled down a bottle of Cutty Sark. He took four glasses from the draining rack on the sink and poured solid slugs into them. He brought them over, I accepted one, so did Haines and in one smooth, snakey movement Pali knocked the one he held out to her to the floor. Tickener shrugged.

“Your loss, Miss,” he said.

I took a pull at the whisky. It was good but it burned my dry throat and didn’t help a slight headache that was ticking away inside my skull. It was a bad way to feel when there were some sharp distinctions to be made. I rolled a cigarette and accepted a light from Tickener who lit up one of his stinking tailormades. Haines refused his offer of a cigarette and Pali didn’t even acknowledge it. She was starting to take an interest in proceedings again though. I drew a breath and started in again.

“What happened after Mark Gutteridge died?”

“I hid the files.” Haines took a sip of the whisky and nearly choked on it. He coughed and snorted into a tissue. Pali gave him a look of contempt and reached out her hand to Tickener.

“Cigarette please.”

Her voice startled him but he obliged her fairly smoothly. She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs, the pink denim stretched tight over her thighs and her breasts lifted under the cloak as she lifted the cigarette to her lips.

“Go on, boy,” she said, “this is damn interesting.”

Haines made a better job of his next go at the Scotch. “I sat it out for a while. I hid the files, I could see what they were worth. I did some night classes, I got a job at Sleeman’s. I formed a relationship with Ailsa. I thought I could bankrupt her without any trouble. I used to watch Susan Gutteridge, I hated her and I wanted her dead. She looked very ill most of the time anyway.”

“Yeah, that was Bryn’s work, Brave’s too maybe. You remember Brave, from Adelaide?”

“No.”

“You should. He was the psychologist you spilled the beans to in the orphanage. He’s been working the other side of the street.”

He got that genuine puzzled look again. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind, go on.”

“I got some money from the politicians and lawyers, and a couple of policemen; I bought this place. I kept on at Susan Gutteridge, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do anymore.”

“I was!” Pali’s voice was like snakeskin rippling through your fingers, beautiful and repellent.

“Shut up you!” I snapped. “You’ll get your turn.” I looked at Haines. “Do you see it?” I said. “You told Ian Brave about your suspicions that you were a Gutteridge. You did some work on it and squeezed Mark Gutteridge. Brave also had something else on him that concerns you. He had information from Ailsa as well. Maybe he killed Gutteridge, maybe not, we’ll never know. That is, if you’re telling the truth and you didn’t kill him.”

“I didn’t,” said Haines, “I wanted to but I didn’t.”

“I believe you, well, anyway, Brave misses out on the files. He doesn’t know you’re around, you’ve got a beard and keep a low profile. Ailsa he can’t approach because he’s lost an old hold he had on her but she doesn’t seem to fit the bill. He suspects Susan, so does Bryn and they go to work on her. Brave turns up with this one.” I nodded at Pali. “She’s got political axes to grind, Ailsa and Susan have business interests in her country and Australia didn’t do much about the French atom tests. Right?”

Pali sneered at me and blew smoke at the ceiling.

“OK,” I went on, “I put it together this way: Bryn didn’t know about you Pali, and you started going it alone, making the heavy phone calls and so on. You fell out with Brave and he fell out with Bryn. Bryn panicked a bit, people Haines was squeezing started putting pressure on him. He called me in. Brave went right off, he killed Bryn’s boyfriend. Pali blows the whistle on Brave when she finds out he’s into mad sidelines like sheltering escaped crims. We raid Brave and he’s out of the picture for a while. Bryn goes on the rampage and finishes up dead. Then Brave gets a real line on Haines and the files and he and Pali get back again for one last fling. That brings us all here folks.”

“What was all that stuff about bombing?” asked Tickener.

“Ailsa Sleeman’s car got bombed and Susan Gutteridge was run down,” I replied. “At first I thought it had to be someone working in with Haines or Brave, now it looks as if it was his bird on her own hook. That right?”

There was no getting under her skin. She turned to look at me, her face was beautifully boned and every fold and curve of her skin added up to the sort of beauty you don’t often see. She knew it too and her cool smile infuriated me.

“Listen you savage,” I said violently, “you might think you’re Angela Davis, but you’re just another homicidal mess to me.” I ticked off the points with a forefinger across the palm of my hand. “One, I’ve got a gun with your fingerprints on it, that gun killed a man here tonight; two, your car will have signs on it of your running down Susan Gutteridge; three, I’ve traced where you got the materials for the bomb. You’re gone a million girlie, you’re in prison or deported if I tell what I know. You might leave Australia under your own steam if you co-operate now.”

It didn’t touch her, she was a fanatic. She blew more smoke.

“Since this is all so civilised among you nice white people,” she said evenly, “could I have that drink now?”

Tickener picked up the glass and poured a generous dose, at a gesture from me he passed the bottle over and we had a little more all round. The girl tossed the whisky off and held out her glass for more, Tickener poured and she sipped a toothful. She looked at me and her mouth split open in a wide, bitter grin.