He took a deep pull on the middy. “Yeah, rich bloke.”
“That’s him, see much of him?”
“Not much. Now ‘n’ then. Doesn’t come in here but, sends for some grog occasionally. Why’d’y wanna know?”
“I’ve got some business with him, just want to get him sized up a bit. What do you make of him?”
“Well, I don’t know him properly like, just talked to him on the phone a coupla times and seen him up the house when I’ve been delivering the grog. He’s a homo.”
I nodded. He finished the beer and I fished out the money for two more. He pulled them, looking closely at what he was doing. He put mine in front of me and lifted his own.
“Thanks, cheers. Well, we get plenty of them up here, their business I suppose. Gutteridge himself seems all right to me, but there’s some funny jokers up there with him sometimes.”
I finished the second sandwich, terrible for the waistline and for getting shot on, but good for morale.
“Have you ever seen a very pale man up there, white hair, just about albino?”
“Yeah, he’s the one I had in mind. Something off about him.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Partly just the weird bloody look of him, but I seen him shoot a seagull once, pointblank with a. 22. Bloody cruel. I reckon he’s not the full quid.”
I left the pub with the brisk step of a man on business although I was very unsure of my next move. The beer had fuzzed me up a bit so I decided to take a walk along the beach to clear my head. I took off my sandals, rolled up my pants and walked along in the shallows for a mile or so until the rocks running down in sharp spines to the beach turned me back. The beach was clean and white with a light scattering of driftwood on the squeaky, powdery sand above the tideline. Like everyone who lives in the city and draws their bread and butter and stimulation from it, I indulged in some dreams of a seaside hideaway where I could cut down on my drinking and be free of pollution, mortgages and everything else. But mortgage was the native tongue in the hills above this beach and on the walk back I consoled myself with the thought that many of the residents of Cooper Beach were deeper in debt than I was.
It was five o’clock. I sat on the sea wall while a little of the daytime warmth seeped out of the air, but not much. I put on my sandals, glanced over towards the pub and saw a man in white denims and a pale blue shirt going into the bottle shop. His hair was silver white and among the expensive sun tans and liquor complexions on the street he stood out like a bishop in a brothel. The Land Rover I’d seen in Bryn’s driveway was parked across the street from the hotel. Getting the grog in was a good sign, it meant they didn’t intend going anywhere in a great hurry. You don’t send your minions down to the inn for Campari if your next move is a dash to the airport and a plane to Paris. My car was parked under trees around the corner from the Land Rover and it was unlikely that Pinkey would see it. I was congratulating myself on this when he came out of the pub. The barman I’d been talking to was with him, carrying a carton and nattering away. Pinkey was nodding his head and looking up and down the street like a circling hawk watching for chickens. He pointed across to the Land Rover and went back into the pub, maybe for a drink, maybe to phone, no way to tell. In any case it seemed like London to a brick that my presence in Cooper Beach was soon going to be known about in all the wrong quarters. I’d been careless and slow and the thought came to me, not for the first time, that I might be getting too old for this line of work.
I ran across the street and came up on the Land Rover from the other side. I got in the driver’s door and climbed over into the back. There was the usual mess of tools, rope and groundsheets that every four wheel drive freak collects, and I huddled down in a corner behind the passenger seat and pulled a light tarpaulin over me. The door opened, glass clinked and cardboard scraped on vinyl. The door closed. I wished like hell that I had a gun and that made me think of Bryn and his guns and the possibility that he might keep one right here. I risked a quick peep out of the window. No sign of the albino. I rummaged about quickly and found lengths of pipe, two fishing rods, a pump and a. 22 rifle. The rifle was in a waxed paper sheath and there was a box of bullets taped to the side of the sheath. I pulled out the magazine, put six shells into it and worked one up into the breech; I put the safety catch on and laid the gun down on the floor parallel with the seat. I pulled the tarp up again and waited. Sweat rolled off me and I wanted to scratch in ten places, the tarp was damp with sea water and I felt as if I was slowly pickling like a joint of meat.
He moved like a cat, as I’d seen before. He was in the driver’s seat and starting the motor in one smooth motion and hadn’t made any noise outside that I could detect. His driving was also smooth and efficient and we’d made a few turns and were heading for home before I’d had time to plan the next move fully. The car wouldn’t be visible at the gates I decided, and it wouldn’t be audible, what with the Pacific crashing in a hundred yards away and the breeze roaring through the Norfolk Island pines. I had to hope that the gates were closed. They were. He pulled up a car’s length from them and as he set the handbrake I came up and poked the end of the rifle barrel into the nape of his neck.
“Put your hands on the wheel,” I said.
He did it.
“This is a rifle, feel the sight.” I slid the end of the gun round and rubbed the front sight into the back of his ear, not gently.
“Convinced?”
He didn’t answer, he was thinking and I didn’t want him to. I jabbed the sight into the ear hard, it made a ragged tear in the flesh and blood seeped out.
“OK,” he said, “it’s a rifle.”
The voice was still thin and lilting, there was no fear in it and I realised that I sounded shakier than he did and that I was afraid of him. I started gabbling even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“You hurt a lady I like and you hurt me. I wouldn’t mind killing you, so be careful.”
He let out a light, reedy laugh. “You’re talking too much, you’re scared shitless.”
His voice had a hypnotic quality and I felt a little mesmerised. He was right. I hadn’t done anything positive apart from putting the gun on him. His calmness was getting to me. If it went on like this he’d have me presenting him with the rifle and opening my mouth for him to shoot into. It was no time for subtlety and I was losing at badinage. I reached out my left hand and grabbed one of the lengths of pipe. He made his move — a grab into the door pocket on the right side. But before he got there I hit him left and right with the pipe and the barrel of the rifle. The rifle smacked into his ear and the pipe landed lower down and further back on his skull and he slumped forward and slammed his forehead into the stem of the steering wheel.
I climbed into the front seat and pushed him aside. He slumped against the cardboard box. The motor was still running and I crunched the vehicle into a gear of some sort and kangaroo hopped the thing around to the right of the gates. It stalled close enough up to the fence to be hidden from the house and not at such an unnatural angle to attract attention from the road. That just left me and him. I got some wire out of the back and trussed him up as tight as I could without paying too much attention to his circulation. The gun in the door pocket was a beautiful old Colt automatic. I pushed it into the waistband of my trousers and got out of the Land Rover. I took another look at the albino. He was tied up tight but he could still make a noise so I stuffed a piece of stinking oily rag into his mouth. I grabbed the rifle and set off along the fence to pick an entry point that would give me cover and easy access to the house.
I went over the fence at a point where a gum tree conveniently dripped some branches over it and approached the house from the rear through a few thickets of shrubs and one great maze of a privet hedge. By hopping between the outbuildings I was able to get up close to the back door without breaking cover for more than a few seconds. I sidled round the corner of the house and listened at the kitchen window. I could hear voices but it was hard to tell where they were coming from. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the two rear rooms on the ground floor so I decided to go in. I parked the rifle by the back door, checked the pistol and inched open the fly wire door. It came easily, the door handle turned smoothly and I moved into a glassed-in porch. The kitchen was well- gadgeted, but plain. It was about six o’clock and I thought nervously about the possibility of someone coming into the kitchen to get the drinks, then I remembered that you didn’t go to the kitchen to get the drinks in a house like this, the booze had a room of its own.
I went through a door into a dining room and through that into a hallway dominated by a carved staircase, painted white. From near the front of the place I could hear Bryn Gutteridge’s voice. I moved forward and flattened myself against the wall outside the room. This was the den or something such, ice was tinkling in glasses and I heard the soft hiss of the springs giving in an armchair when Bryn got up. I could hear every word spoken. Bryn
