Tickener made a good job of it. His headline was lurid but his story was sharp and clear. Evans got a splash verbally and photographically and there were lots of adjectives scattered through the writing like “fearless” and “masterly”. I got a few mentions and anyone reading between the lines would come away with the knowledge that I had killed Costello, but who reads between the lines any more? The name Gutteridge didn’t figure in the story and it seemed that a combination of brilliant investigatory journalism and enterprising police work had delivered the goods. That suited me. The last thing I wanted was pictures of myself in the papers and my name a household word — it might feel good, but it would play hell with business if kids came up to ask you for your autograph while you were staking out a love nest.
I read most of this sitting on the lavatory while a warm, soft Sydney rain darkened the courtyard bricks. Back in the kitchen I made coffee and welsh rarebit. Ordinarily, I’d have been at least semi-relaxed. I was on a case, on expenses and earning them and hadn’t had any bones broken in the past twenty-four hours. But this one was different, my client was special and she was in hospital and I was partly to blame. The villain was in custody as they say, but villains were coming out of the woodwork and the past was sending out tentacles which were winding around the necks of people living and dying in the present. It’s a dying trade I’m in.
I called the hospital and was told that I could visit Miss Sleeman at 10 a.m., seeing that I was the one who’d admitted her. I took a long, hot then cold shower, which made me feel virtuous. I capitalised on this by taking the flagon and a glass out onto the bricks along with my electric razor and my razor sharp mind. I sipped the wine and ran the tiny, whirring blades over my face. The sun climbed up over the top of the biscuit factory and beamed heat down into the courtyard. The bricks started to steam and sweat began to roll off my chest down into the thin layers of fat around my waist. I resolved again to walk more and to cut out beer and that was as far as my thinking took me. I towelled off the sweat, dressed in cotton slacks, shirt and sandals and played inch by inch with the Falcon out onto the street. There was a sweet, malty biscuit smell in the air as I drove past the front of my house. Soames had just put on his first record of the day. Pretty soon he’d take a peek over the fence, shake his head at the empty flagon and roll his apres-muesli joint.
I don’t like hospitals. My mother and father and Uncle Ted died in them. They all smell and look the same, all polished glass and lino and reek of disinfectant. Ailsa was on the fourth floor in a ward past the maternity unit. It was crammed full of rosy cheeked mothers smothering babies, black, white and brindle, against their chests. It made me feel my childlessness like a burden and I wondered if Ailsa felt the same way. Perhaps she didn’t need to. She hadn’t mentioned any children, but then I had only got a pretty episodic biography of her, perhaps she had twins being finished in Switzerland. Dangerous thoughts for someone for whom marriage was a busted flush and kids were something not to shoot when out on business. I had wanted kids but Cyn hadn’t unless I was going to be home at six o’clock every night and I couldn’t give her that guarantee. I was in an intensely self-critical mood when I arrived at Ailsa’s ward. A roly-poly matron who hadn’t heard how dragon-like she should be showed me to the door and told me I could have an hour. I went in.
Ailsa was sitting up in bed wearing a white cheesecloth nightgown. She had no make-up on and had lost a lot of colour in her face, her eyes were shadowed and huge so that she looked pale and fragile like a French mime. The bronze hair was newly washed and a bit curly and she had a scrubbed clean look as if she was about to be delivered somewhere. Her face and lips were still puffy and bruised, but when she looked up from her book she managed to work her features into a smile.
“Hardy,” she said, “the great protector.”
I moved up, took the book away and grabbed her hands. She winced with pain and I swore and let her go. She reached out slowly and stiffly and put her hand on my forearm, it rested there light and feathery like a silk stocking across a chair.
“You’re hopeless,” she said, “no fruit, no magazines. How’ll we fill in the time?”
I gave her a leer and she smiled before shaking her head. “Not for weeks,” she said. “But when I can you’ll be the first man I call.”
I was relieved. We’d seemed to be plunging into something very heavy and I wasn’t sure I could handle it yet, or ever. Her version of the way we stood, even though it was determined by her injuries, accorded with my feelings and relaxed me. I patted her hand and we sat there quietly for a minute or two feeling something like trust and understanding flow between us. I eased back the loose sleeves of her nightdress and saw that her forearms were bandaged. I told her again that I was sorry I hadn’t been there.
“Don’t be silly, Cliff,” she said, “how could you have known what was going to happen. The whole thing has got out of control. I don’t understand it properly, do you?”
“No, I can’t make the connections. It’s all hooked up. Brave, Bryn, the files and the threats, but I don’t know how they’re linked exactly. That makes it hard to take the next step with any confidence.”
“What are you going to do then?”
I looked at her and ran my finger lightly across her high, sharp cheekbone. The skin was stretched thin and tight across it like a rubber membrane over a specimen bottle. “I haven’t finished checking all the possibilities I was working on yesterday. Brave is out of circulation of course.” I nodded at the newspapers lying on a bedside chair.
“Yes,” she said, “thank God for that.” She was looking tired already and spoke slowly. “But I want it seen through, you’ll stay with it won’t you? Bryn’s dangerous, he’s got to be put away, and the bomb…!”
“I’ll stay with it,” I said. “I was hoping you’d want me to.”
“You should have known.”
I nodded and we did some more quiet sitting. After a while her eyelids flickered and she said she was tired. It was partly that and partly the dope they were giving her. I got up from the bed but she motioned mc closer, she patted her chest with one hand.
“Touch me here, Cliff.”
I did, she felt warm and firm. She reached up with both hands, grabbed my hands and pressed them hard against her breasts, her face contorted.
“Cliff, the pale one, he was going to…to do something there next.”
I felt a rush of atavistic rage. I gently freed my hands, smoothed her hair and kissed her forehead.
“Don’t worry love,” I said harshly, “it’ll be all right, it’ll be over soon.”
I promised to call the hospital twice a day and to visit whenever I could. She smiled and nodded and slid down into a deep sleep that the dope was calling her to.
16
When I left the hospital I intended to finish yesterday’s job by checking on the residence of Mr Walter Chalmers, but sitting in the car with the engine running and the street directory beside me, I changed my mind. It suddenly seemed a hundred times more important to track down Bryn and his inquisitorial mate. Bryn was my starting point for this twisting, turning affair and it seemed like the right moment to check back to the beginning. And I was looking forward to a meeting with the man with the cigarette butts and the razor blades. I turned off the engine and reflected. Men like Bryn, with money like his, have houses scattered about the countryside — mood houses, hobby houses. I’d known one millionaire who kept a $50 000 hunting lodge on land which cost him $5000 a year to lease because he liked to go deer shooting about once every three years. He got shot to death up there on one of his rare visits but that’s another story. It was a sure bet that Bryn had hideouts on the sea and in the mountains, but they wouldn’t be public knowledge. How to find out about them? Easy. Susan Gutteridge, the lady on the mend. I tried to remember whether I’d mentioned a particular diabetes doctor or not and decided I hadn’t. But there was no doubt as to who was the best diabetes man in Australia, Dr Alfred Pincus. He charged like the six hundred, but there was more information about diabetes in that polished, clever dome of his than in a shelf of textbooks. I’d seen him on the subject on television and he was so interesting about it he almost made you wish you were a sufferer. Susan Gutteridge would contact him as sure as her bank balance was in the black.