Peter Corris - The Dying Trade

“Why?”

“I’ve said all I’m going to say. I don’t care if I never see Mark’s children again and that goes double for Brave. I want to be rid of the whole bloody crew of them.” She stood up, tall and struggling for her natural composure which I’d somehow shattered. “Off you go, Mr Hardy. I’m going to try to have a sleep and forget you ever happened.”

I took out one of my cards and put it on the arm of my chair. She didn’t look at it and turned towards the house. I stood up, stiff and tense from the pressure exerted by her abrasive personality. I started to walk towards the garage, then I turned towards her.

“One last question, Miss Sleeman.” The distance between us was widening.

“Yes?”

“Why isn’t Dr Brave listed in the medical register?”

She turned her face towards me and howled, “Go away!” She jerked off her sunglasses and threw them blindly away from her. They sailed through the air, spiralling down like a disabled fighter plane and dropped into the pool.

“Why?” I shouted.

She clenched her fists by her sides and the face she lifted up was a mask of pain. She spoke harshly, grittily. “He’s not a medical doctor, he’s a psychologist from somewhere… Canada… somewhere. Now will you please go!”

She marched into the house and I went.

I drove across to The Rocks and bought a paper from a barefoot kid in the public bar of the Eight Bells. The pub is tucked away in a crevice of the sandstone and claims to be directly descended from the first inn built by the waterside in Sydney and maybe it is. Its other main claim to fame is that Griffo drank and fought there, and since Griffo drank and fought in every pub in The Rocks this is incontestable. Seekers after authenticity are starting to discover the pub and pose a threat to its integrity, but for the moment it’s holding its own against the pressure to become another unisex, unidrink playground. The counter tea, served early, was steak, salad and chips and I ordered it along with a litre carafe of the house plonk. This made me an eccentric in the saloon bar where workers in singlets were putting down beer with their food and a scattering of executives and trendies were drinking wine from bottles with theirs. They gave me a beer glass with the carafe which suited me fine.

The paper was full of the usual drivel — the Pope pronouncing on sex and politicians claiming to speak for the common man. The lead story was about Rory Costello — standover man and armed robbery expert, who’d been sentenced to twenty years in Long Bay. He’d escaped ten days ago and had been sighted simultaneously in Perth and Cairns. The steak was good and the wine fair. I ate and drank slowly and tried to make some sense of the information I had on the Gutteridge case so far.

I hadn’t established any clear connection between the threats to Susan Gutteridge and the suicide of her father, if it was suicide. Bryn Gutteridge hadn’t provided any connections out of his picture of his father — an honest, if forceful, businessman. Gutteridge’s ex-wife had a different picture of him — unscrupulous and dishonest, with a thousand enemies, any one of whom could be taking it out on the daughter. This view of the late Gutteridge appealed to me most, but that could have been my bank balance and prejudices speaking. Against Bryn’s story in general was that he had lied about his attitude to Dr Brave, or a lie was implied in what he’d told me. That is, if Ailsa Sleeman was telling the truth. She was a complex woman who’d seen two tycoon husbands off, but she had no obvious reason to lie on this point. It was easily checked, but that went for Bryn’s story too. He seemed to be in dubious control of his cool. Maybe he lied about everything. Maybe he was an eccentric millionaire who liked to send private detectives on wild goose chases. Suddenly, that seemed like a clean, uncomplicated thing to do — to chase wild geese in northern Canada. I ate, drank, smoked and thought until it was time to go and meet the stricken sister.

Leafy Longueville features trees and water glimpses. There’s some big money and a lot of middle-sized money around; the middling people are working to keep up with the big people who are looking across the Lane Cove river towards Hunters Hill, where everybody has big money, and wondering if they can afford the move. The people work outside the area, send their kids out of it to school and don’t talk to each other. They spend their time cultivating high, privacy-making hedges and looking the other way.

At 7.15 Longueville is quiet. Hoses sprinkle on lawns and the big cars are all sitting in their garages. Nobody and nothing moves in the front grounds of the houses. The terraces and swimming pools out back could be awash with gin and naked women, but you’d never know from the street. The clinic was a block from the suburb’s main road. That put it close to the river, and into the heart of the Hunters Hill envy zone. I didn’t lock the Falcon because there are no car thieves in Longueville and I didn’t take my gun because there are no muggings either. Longuevillians do their thieving in the city five days a week, nine to five, and they get away from it all at home. The Brave clinic was an assemblage of white brick buildings with tinted glass standing in an acre or two of lawn and trees. There were no fountains or benches of the kind that are supposed to soothe troubled minds. Rather the air was of tight security. There was a high cyclone fence with concrete-embedded posts and a glassed-in reception booth which looked a bit too well equipped electrically for the sort of place the clinic was supposed to be. Since my commando days I’ve always been tempted by cyclone fences — the sadistic instructors must have sent us over hundreds of the bastards at terrific risks to our virility — but not this one. It was wired up to blazes and looked as if sirens would wail if you touched it, while relaying TV pictures of your blackheads to the main block.

I walked up to the booth. Some distance from it a metallic voice bounced off my chest.

“Please state your business.”

The guy in the booth leaned forward to look at me through the glass. He wore a white shirt, grey jacket and black tie. Through the thick glass his face was a pale, distorted blob. No microphones were visible. He just spoke in my general direction and I heard him loud and clear. I had to assume he could hear me.

“I have an appointment to see one of Dr Brave’s patients at 7.30. My name is Hardy.”

He pressed a button, a pane of glass slid back. He put his right hand through and snapped fingers tightly gloved in black leather.

“Identification please.”

I fished in my pocket and pulled out the licence card. It looks like a student ID card and would get me into Robert Redford movies half-price if I looked twenty years younger and could stand Robert Redford. I handed the card over. More glass slid back and the guard looked me over critically like a Russian customs officer who can be satisfied as to your identification but is pretty unhappy that you exist at all. He nodded, handed back the card and pressed a button; a gate beside the booth swung open.

“Please walk up to the largest building ahead of you, Mr Hardy. Stay on the path all the way please.”

I went through. There were a few lights up on poles and some in hatches at ground level. They focused on the wide, intricately laid brick path. There was no excuse for slipping off it onto the velvet grass but I dawdled off to the left and took a couple of steps on the sward just for the hell of it. Closed circuit security TV is even more boring than the public kind, and I might just have made someone’s day.

Close up all the buildings had a severe practical look. The main block had heavyweight glass and timber doors at the top of a dozen steps. I went up, pushed them open with a featherlight touch and went into a cool, navy-carpeted lobby with a reception desk set at an artful angle. No blondes A tall burly guy who looked like an Italian eased himself off the desk and stepped towards me. He was wearing a denim suit with knife edge creases and white shoes. His white silk shirt was open far enough to show a gold medallion nestling in a thatch of thick, black hair. His waist was slim, there was no fat on him and only a slight thickening of his features betrayed how many fights he’d been in. He looked as if he’d won most of them.