The documents, all but one, dated themselves. There was an extract of birth to the effect that Ross Haines had been born on 8 May 1953 in Adelaide, South Australia. It was only an extract so no parents’ names appeared. There were two references from employers dated October 1970 and November 1971, both letterheads were of plant nurseries and garden suppliers and landscapes in Adelaide. They established the solid credentials and serviceable talents of Ross Haines in this line of work. The other dated document was a diploma from a Sydney business college. It detailed the creditable performances of Haines at typing, shorthand and commercial principles and practice. A map of the Pacific Ocean completed the personal papers of Ross Haines. It folded four times, down to the size of a ladies’ handkerchief. I opened it out. There were no marks, no circles, no pin-pricks; at that scale most of the islands were dots or straggly shapes like ink-blots in a vast and trackless sea.
I couldn’t make much of this very selective preservation of the past. I studied the photographs of the building and the women closely so as to recognise the originals if I ever saw them and then put the whole lot back in the envelope and the drawer just as I’d found them.
This piece of illegality had taken longer than I’d expected, over half an hour, and I felt an itch at the back of my neck that told me it was high time to go. I went out onto the landing and pulled the door shut behind me. I froze as I heard a car engine being cut under the car port twenty feet away. A door slammed and leather-soled shoes started hitting the bricks. I risked a look down and saw a short, heavy-set man with a head as bald as an egg move briskly down the path and turn into the doorway of the front flat on the ground floor. I let out a stale, sour breath and went down the steps and out through the spaces in the car port. Flat 1’s space was taken up by a red MG sports model with wire wheels and kerb feelers. I sneered at it and walked through the lane and up the street to where the Falcon stood with its rust patches and bald tyres gleaming in the late afternoon light.
I had just enough time to try a long shot which would round off the day’s work. I drove against the flow of traffic, which was thick and moving as slow as a senile snail, across to the University. I arrived when the day students were pulling out and just before the evening sloggers took up all the space. I got a parking place near the east gates and strolled across the lawn to the main library. I had once done a little research into architecture when I was investigating an insurance fraud on a fire in a Victorian hotel and I remembered where the architecture section was in the library. I looked along the rows until I found Chiswick’s two volumes on The Public Buildings of South Australia. The book had been very expensive when it was published thirty years before and the quality of its photographs was excellent. It was meticulously indexed and it only took a few minutes to find out that the building of which Haines had kept a picture wasn’t a prison. Another few minutes showed that it wasn’t a school. Perhaps it was a combination of the two though: I found it on page 215 of the second volume, the picture was taken from a slightly different angle but it was undoubtedly the same forbidding edifice — St Christopher’s Boys Orphanage. The short history of the building wasn’t interesting but I read it through just the same. I put the books back and left the library.
12
The part-timers, looking tired already, were getting out of their cars as I got into mine. I decided to make for a pub and have a few drinks before calling Ailsa. I’d been hired to help a woman I found I cordially disliked and had ended up working for one about whom I had quite different feelings. It was a big changeabout in a short space of time and I wondered what effect it was having on my judgment. I wonder better over a glass of something, so I put off the effort until I had the conditions right. After a scotch in a place near the dog track, I picked the right money out of my change and put it into the red phone at the corner of the bar. The wall was scarred with a hundred telephone numbers and the names and numbers of innumerable horses and dogs. The directory was a tattered ruin. I read the record of losing favourites and one-leg doubles as I waited for Ailsa to answer her phone. It rang and rang hopelessly and I hung up, checked the number and rang again. The result was the same and the repeated buzz on the line chilled and sobered me like a bucket of ice water in the face.
I ran to the Falcon and unparked it regardless of duco and chrome. I ripped my way through the late afternoon traffic towards Mosman.
There were no cops about and I set records through the winding roads towards the Bridge. I hit the Harbour Bridge approach and pushed the Falcon to the limit cursing it for its sluggishness and refusal to steer straight.
I ran into Ailsa’s drive too fast and nearly spun the car around full circle in bringing it to a stop in front of the house. I unshipped my gun and went up the steps at a gallop. I hammered on the door and wrenched at the handle but it was locked so I kicked in the glass pane next to it. The thick glass shattered and splintered where my foot hit it and the rest of the pane came crashing down like a guillotine. I went in through the jagged hole and raced through the house, poking the gun into each room and calling Ailsa’s name. I found her in the bedroom. She was naked and her clothes had been torn in strips to truss her up and tie her to the frame of the bed. She was breathing harshly through puffed, split lips and her body was criss-crossed with long, heavily bleeding scratches. There were round, white-flaked burn marks on her forearms and the room smelled of singed hair and skin. I grabbed the bedroom phone and called for an ambulance, then I untied the strips of fabric and lifted her up onto the bed. I tucked a pillow under her head, her pulse was strong but she was rigid and sweating and there were now lines in her face that looked like they would stay there forever.
I got some water from the kitchen, went back to the bedroom and lifted her head a little to the rim of the glass. She opened her eyes and lapped at the water. Her eyes showed that her body was a package of pain. She looked at me reproachfully.
“Some protector,” she croaked through her battered lips.
“Ailsa, I’m sorry,” my voice sounded like grit in ball bearings. “Who did it love, why?”
“Bryn… and another man. I let them in. Other man slapped me and stripped me. Bryn just watched.”
The effort of speaking was doing her no good, she was in deep shock and her face was pale and waxy, but I had to know a little more.
“Listen love, just answer in one word or shake your head, understand?”
She nodded.
“What did Bryn want?”
“Files.”
“Gutteridge’s files?”
A nod.
“Did Bryn touch you?”
A shake, no.
“Just the other guy. Was Bryn there all the time?”