Peter Corris - The dying trade

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The Dying Trade

[Cliff Hardy 01]

By Peter Corris

Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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I was feeling fresh as a rose that Mondayat 9.30 a.m. My booze supply had run out on Saturday night. I had no way ofreplenishing it on the Sabbath because we still had Sunday prohibition inSydney then. I didnt have a club; thatd gone a while before, along with myjob as an insurance investigator. I also didnt have a wife not any more orfriends with well-filled refrigerators. Unless I could be bothered drivingtwenty-five miles to become a bona fide traveller, Sunday could be as dry as aMormon meeting hall. I didnt travel. I spent the day on Bondi beach and theevening with tonic water and Le Carre, so I was clear-headed and clean-shaven, doodlingon the desk blotter, when the phone rang.

HardyInvestigations?

Yes, Cliff Hardyspeaking.

Good. Mr Hardy, Ineed your help. Youve been recommended.

I could think ofperhaps ten people whod mildly recommend me. None of them would know the ownerof this voice eight hundred dollars a term, plenty of ordering people aboutand international travel.

Yeah, who by?

He named a name andI heard a faint bell ring. An insurance area boss or something, a hundred yearsago. Still, it was a better start than the faded wives whose husbands had takena walk or the small businessmen with payroll panic.

Who am I talkingto?

My name isGutteridge, Bryn Gutteridge.

That didnt meananything to me. There are three million people in Sydney, maybe a hundred arenamed Gutteridge and I didnt know any of them.

What can I do foryou, Mr Gutteridge?

Mr Gutteridge didntwant to say too much on the phone. The matter was delicate, urgent and not forthe police. He said he wanted advice and possibly action and asked if I couldcome out to see him that morning. Maybe he wanted to see if I was the advisingor the active type. I felt active.

I ask for aretainer of two hundred dollars, my fees are sixty dollars a day and expenses.The retainers returnable if nothing works out, the daily rate starts now.

He spoke as if hehadnt heard me.

Im glad yourefree. The address is 10 Peninsula Road, Vaucluse. Ill expect you in an hour.

The moneys OKthen?

Oh yes, fine.

He hung up. Ileaned back in my chair and dropped the receiver onto the handset. I traced adollar sign with my little finger in the dust beside the dial. Money would beno object to that voice; it came from a world of Bible-fat cheque books andcredit cards that would get you anything, anytime.

I left the office,went down two flights of stairs and out into St Peters Street. It was hotalready, and a dry wind was pushing the exhaust fumes and chemical particlesdown the throats of the people in the street. I went round the corner, down alane and into the backyard behind the tattoo parlour. The tattooist lets mepark my car there for ten bucks a week. I backed the Falcon out into the laneand headed north.

Gutteridgesaddress fitted his voice. Vaucluse is several million tons of sandstonesticking out into Port Jackson. The sun always shines on it and the residentsthink it vulgar to talk about the view. I permitted myself a few vulgarthoughts as I pushed my old Falcon along the sculptured divided highway whichwound up to the tasteful mansions and shaven lawns. Mercs and Jags slipped outof driveways. The only other under-ten-thousand-dollar drivers I saw were in apolice Holden and they were probably there to see that the white lines on theroad werent getting dirty.

Bryn Gutteridgeshouse was a steel, glass and timber fantasy poised on the very point of aVaucluse headland. It stretched its sundeck out over the sandstone cliff as ifrebuking Nature for lack of imagination. The Falcon coughed its way through thetwenty-foot high iron gates which were standing open and I stopped in front ofthe house wondering what theyd think about the oil on the drive after Idgone.

I walked up a longwood-block path to the house. A gardener working on a rose bed looked at me asif I was spoiling the landscaping. I went up fifty or sixty Oregon timber stepsto the porch. You could have subdivided the porch for house lots and marchedsix wide-shouldered men abreast through the front door. I stabbed the bell witha finger and a wide-shouldered man opened the door while the soft chimes werestill echoing about in the house. He was about six feet two, which gave him aninch on me, and he looked like hed been the stroke of the first rowing eightmaybe ten years before when the school had won the Head of the River. His suithad cost five times as much as my lightweight grey model, but he still wasntthe real money.

Mr Gutteridge isexpecting me. I passed a card across into his perfectly manicured hand andwaited. He opened the door with a piece of body language which stamped him as aman of breeding but a servant nonetheless. His voice was a deep, musical throb,like a finely played bass.

Mr Gutteridge ison the east balcony. He handed the card back. If you wouldnt mind followingme?

Id never find iton my own.

He let go a smileas thin as a surgeons glove and we set off to discover the east balcony. Therich always have lots of mirrors in their houses because they like what theysee in them. We passed at least six full-length jobs on the trek which putexpensive frames around a thinnish man with dark wiry hair, scuffed suede shoesand an air of not much money being spent on upkeep.

The rowing Blue ledme into the library cum billiard room cum bar. He stepped behind the bar anddid neat, fast things with bottles, ice and glasses. He handed me two tallglasses filled with tinkling amber liquid and nodded towards a green tintedglass door. Mr Gutteridge is through there sir, he said. The door will openautomatically.

That was nice. PerhapsI could have both drinks and take the glasses home with me if I asked. Theoarsman shot his cuffs and went off somewhere, no doubt to fold up some untidymoney. The door slid apart and I went out into the harsh sun. The balcony wasgot up like the deck of a ship with railings and ropes and bits of canvasdraped about. I started to walk towards a man sitting by the railing in adeck-chair about twenty feet away. Abruptly I stopped. He was a picture ofconcentration, resting his arm on the railing and taking careful sight along itand the barrel of an air pistol. His target was a seagull, fat and white,sitting on a coil of rope ten yards from his chair. He squeezed the trigger,there was a sound like a knuckle cracking and the seagulls black-rimmed eyeexploded into a scarlet blotch. The bird flopped down onto the deck and the mangot up quickly from his chair. He took a dozen long, gliding strides and kickedthe corpse under the rail out into the bushes below.

I felt sick andnearly spilled the drinks as I moved forward.

Thats a shittything to do, I said. You Gutteridge?

Yes. Do you thinkso, why?

Despite myself Ihanded him the drink there didnt seem to be anything else to do with it.

Theyre harmless,attractive, too easy to hit. Theres no sport in it.

I dont do it forsport. I hate them. They all look the same and they intrude on me.

I had no answer tothat. I look like a lot of other people myself, and Ive been known to beintrusive. I took a pull on the drink Scotch, the best. Mr Gutteridge didntlook as if hed be nice to work for, but I felt sure I could reach anunderstanding with his money.

Gutteridge stabbeda block of ice in his glass with a long finder and sent it bubbling to thebottom. Sit down Mr Hardy and dont look so disapproving. He pointed to adeck-chair, folded up and propped against the railing. A seagull or two moreor less cant matter to a sensible man and Im told you are sensible.

I thought aboutthat while I set down my drink and unfolded the deck-chair. It could mean a lotof things, including dishonest. I tried to look at ease in a deck-chair, whichI wasnt, and intelligent.