announced my presence by rapping on the wall. There was no answer. I went through to the next room which was pleasantly furnished with a good timber table, a serviceable divan and some built-in cupboards. A man was lying on his back on the divan, snoring quietly. There was a two-thirds empty brandy bottle and a sticky glass on the floor beside the couch. The sleeping man was short and spare, beak-nosed like a jockey, with thin, sandy hair and bad teeth. His mouth was open and he smelled like the Rose and Crown on a Saturday night. There was a rinsed glass on the kitchen sink indicating that someone had helped him on his way to oblivion.
I went out fast and took the steps to the back of the house three at a time. The back door was locked, it looked solid but wasn’t, it sprung open at my third kick. The house was an exercise in total comfort, total push button luxury, total soullessness. It was intended to be clean and tidy at all times but it wasn’t now; the bed in one of the large bedrooms was a tangled mess, the mattress was slewed off the base and there were clothes, books and make-up strewn about. A sleeve ripped out of a satin nightgown lay on the floor in a passageway and objects had been knocked and spilled from tables through the house. Susan Gutteridge had given whoever had carried her off quite a fight, but it appeared to have been a fight with rules because I didn’t see any blood.
I went back into the bedroom and began a search of Susan’s belongings. One thing was clear — whoever had taken her wasn’t interested in her papers or possible hiding places. Nothing was disturbed in the dressing table drawers, there were no edges lifted, no seams ripped, no books disembowelled. It wasn’t money either. Susan’s purse was on a sideboard in the living room; it had all her personal tickets in it as well as four hundred dollars in cash. It also had what I was looking for — an address book. There were four addresses for Bryn listed along with telephone numbers — one in the city, Vaucluse, one near Cooma in the snow country and one at Cooper Beach on the Central Coast. I slipped the book into my pocket and wandered across to a window. There was a harbour view of course. The early rain had cleared and the day had turned into the sort of Sydney special that persuades Melburnians to give up their football and settle. I saw in a series of mind-made movie stills images of Bryn Gutteridge sitting on his sun deck potting at sea birds with his air pistol. His skin was saddlebag brown and he was a heliophile if ever I’ve seen one. He’d be at Cooper Beach. The scene around me screamed for a telephone call to the police, but I’d had enough of desks and blotters and forms in triplicate for a while. The guy in the flat should wake up in a few hours and would probably call the cops. That left me with a fairly clear conscience and about as much of a start as I needed.
I was congratulating myself on having thought this out when a slight sound made me turn. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman. There were flared purple slacks and a flowered shirt, shoes with metal buckles and a stiff brimmed black hat on top of a head as pale and fair as a lily in a snow field. I decided that it all belonged to a man, and that the man was holding a gun. He was almost albino, slightly pink around the eyes and he spoke with a high voice, lisping a bit.
“Hold your hands out like this.” He fluttered a hand at full arm stretch. “If I do, can we be friends?” I said. He didn’t move a muscle in his face and the gun was steady on my navel.
“Just do it!”
I did it.
“Now turn around.”
“Oh, don’t take advantage of me.”
He’d heard it all before and it didn’t touch him. I felt as if I was digging my grave with my teeth. I knew I should stop riding him, but the words seemed to come out wrong.
“I might have what you want,” I said.
Still no reaction.
“Just turn, I’ll let you know when to stop.”
I had nothing to lose. He looked as if he’d enjoy killing me and his only problem would be where to put the bullet for maximum enjoyment. I reached into my pocket. He did none of the things an amateur would do. He didn’t clutch at the trigger or move back; he knew he had me cold and maybe he just wanted to see what sort of gun he was up against. I flicked the address book out of my pocket and threw it at him with a jerky movement as I dived for his legs. The book missed him by a mile. He sidestepped a fraction and swept the side of his gun down onto my perfect target of a skull. The blow hit the same spot as before and the blood must have flowed like Texas oil. I blacked out for a second and when I came to I couldn’t breathe and my heart seemed to be missing three beats for every one it caught. I heard the paleface say, “Shit, he’s dead.” I thought for a minute that I was but that was quickly replaced by fear. If he thought I was dead that was fine with me, even an animal like him wouldn’t want to kill me twice. Through half-shut eyes I saw him pick up the address book and go off towards the back of the house. I tried to pull myself up but my arms and shoulders couldn’t take the strain. I went down hard and blacked out again.
17
I was out for about ten minutes. I was rubbery legged like an unfit businessman pushed through a three mile run when I came to. I had flickering vision and the hemispheres of my brain seemed to be competing for the space. I propped myself up against the nearest wall, wiped blood out of my eyes and debated whether to look for whisky or die. I opted for the whisky and found some in a small room got up like a cocktail lounge. I had a choice of nearly full bottles of four different brands and decided on Teachers. I took a long, breath-cutting swig of it. The liquor fused my double-sided headache into one which was slightly less painful overall. My hair was matted with blood and an external clean-up seemed to be the next thing indicated after the internal treatment. I staggered off to find a bathroom, dimly aware of what sort of figure I’d cut before a policeman, a judge and twelve citizens good and true.
I lapped water up into my face and eyes and waited for the snowstorm vision and morse code heartbeats to stop. I lowered myself gently down onto the edge of the bath, soaked a face towel in water, and mopped carefully at my scalp. After a few painful minutes of this and a close look in the mirror I decided that the experience hadn’t aged me much more than ten years and that I was up to doing some thinking. It didn’t take much — the albino was Bryn’s offsider, the torturer; Bryn had sent him back for something, probably the address book. He was going to catch Bryn up somewhere or maybe Bryn was waiting for him. It didn’t matter because he thought I was dead. I closed my eyes and brought the writing on the page of Susan’s notebook back and up into focus. I got it — 24 Seaspray Drive. I dried my face and ten minutes later I was in my car heading for Cooper Beach.
I stopped in North Sydney for petrol and water for the car and tobacco for me. I pelted through the north shore suburbs up to where the Pacific Highway joins the Newcastle tollway. The old road holds close to the hills. Driving it you call in at a couple of pleasant little towns. It’s nice but slow and Bryn wouldn’t have taken it. The tollway rips through the country defiantly, it sits on huge concrete pylons over valleys and it passes through thirty- metre-high rock cuttings that look as if they’ve been carved by the hand of God. You get a different picture of the country from this route. The Hawkesbury looks a mile wide, and little beach towns look like pretty fishing villages instead of the take-away horrors they are.
The car coughed a little on the hills and I felt a bit unsteady on the bends, but I used some more of Susan’s whisky which I’d brought with me and that helped. It took three hours from the Harbour Bridge to the rickety wooden affair that crossed Cooper Creek. Seaspray Drive was on the beachfront at the northern end of the town. Bryn’s house was a modest two-storey timber and brick hideaway that probably had solar heating and an indoor pool. The Fiat I’d seen before and a Land Rover were parked in die driveway, the gates were shut and there was no air of imminent departure. I drove past quickly. It was after three o’clock and I felt light-headed from the beating, the whisky and the lack of food. I went into one of the town’s two pubs and persuaded die stringy, faded barman to get me a toasted sandwich although the food went off at 3.00. I got a beer from him first, breaking my promise of the morning, and he went grumbling off to the kitchen.
He came back with two great steaming chunks of toasted bread, meat and tomato that had been prepared by an artist. He accepted my offer of a beer.
“Wife made’ em,” he said, pointing to the food.
“They’re great.” I couldn’t see why he was so woebegone. The beer seemed to lift his spirits a bit though, and I thought he might be good for a few questions.
“Do you know a Mr Gutteridge, Seaspray Drive?”
