sounded nervy, impatient.
“I just don’t believe you,” he was saying, “it doesn’t make sense, you have to know something.”
“If I do, I don’t know what it is.” It was his sister’s voice, fairly calm and even. “I know it sounds like nonsense,” she went on, “I almost believe that I do know what you want me to know. But I can’t remember…”
“That’s bullshit, Susan. Brave says you didn’t forget anything important, and this is important.”
“Brave! What would he know? He isn’t a doctor. He’s in jail now and serve him bloody right. God, how you two have put me through it. What the hell do you think you’re doing now?” There was strength in her voice. She hadn’t gone back to the vegetable kingdom where they’d been keeping her and she seemed to be standing up to Bryn nicely. That took some doing because, along with the edginess, there was a menacing quality in his voice which was pretty telling in combination with the usual authority.
“You know very well what I’m doing, Susan. I’m going to force you to tell me where those files are. It has to be you, no one else could have got them. You always were a sly bitch, Susan. You found out the combination to that safe somehow, you took the files when you found Mark dead.”
“I didn’t! You can talk till you’re blue in the face. I didn’t know there was a safe, let alone the combination.”
“You’re lying, Susan. Brave knew you were lying but he was too gentle with you. You’ll tell me here and now!”
“You’re mad, Bryn. How do you know there were any files? I just don’t know what you’re talking about. You’ve got everything screwed up, you need help.”
“Know what I’ll do sister dear, just to prove to you that I mean what I say? I’ll tell you something. Someone’s been using those files. Someone knows a hell of a lot they shouldn’t know about some very big people. They wouldn’t be able to put the pressure on they have unless they had Mark’s own brain inside their heads. So it has to be his files. There are some very scared people about, some politicians, a judge, a couple of lawyers and developers. They’re very scared and they’re getting at me. They think I’m the one and I’m not. It has to be you or someone with you.”
“It isn’t, I swear it isn’t. I’ve been ill for so long…”
“Well, you would be,” said Bryn with sneer in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
The springs creaked again. I guessed that Bryn was leaning forward trying to impose physical as well as emotional pressure on her. There was heavy silence in the room like when old lovers go over the ground and discover how hopeless it all was from the beginning. My scalp was crawling and I sneaked a look behind me, but it wasn’t a threat from outside that had produced the sensation, it was some kind of inbuilt resistance to hearing people expressing their deepest hostilities and antagonisms with no holds barred.
“I’ve been doctoring your insulin for ages, Susan, or having it done. You’ve been eating yourself up, literally.”
“You bastard!” They were twins alright. Susan had exactly the same kind of venom in her voice now. “I wouldn’t tell you anything even if I could. Christ, I’ve felt so rotten, so weak, and Brave nagging away at me, all that stuff about clearing my mind and starting afresh. Well your man Hardy put a rocket under him!”
“Hardy,” Bryn said slowly, “yes, that was a mistake.”
“Why did you hire him?”
“I thought he might stir Brave up, I didn’t think he’d bust him. But let’s get back to you.”
“Yes, let’s. At least I understand it now, that’s a relief. I was doing everything right, the shots, the diet, the exercise and it wouldn’t come good. You’re a sadistic bastard Bryn.”
“I had to do it, Susan, I…”
She cut him off. “Like hell you did. I thought I was mad in that place sometimes. Now I know I’m not. Thanks Bryn, thanks for telling me. I despised myself for being such a dishrag, I’d rather be normally dead than what I was. I don’t know a damn thing about Mark’s files and I don’t give a damn what you think or do.”
Gutteridge was coming apart, I could hear him sloshing his drink about and fidgeting in his chair. When he spoke his voice was a low moan. “Susan, I’m about at the end. They killed Giles, God knows how many of them are after me. You must help me.”
“I can’t, and I wouldn’t anyway.”
“Don’t say that, you’d have done anything for me at one time…”
Susan let out her breath in a long hiss and a glass crashed to the floor. Her voice was so different in tone and quality that it sounded as if a third person had materialised in the room.
“You rotten little queer,” she said, “I hope they kill you slowly.”
Chair springs, a slap and a scream and I was in the room with the Colt gripped tightly in my hand. Bryn had his sister by the hair and was reaching back for another slap. Susan’s knees had buckled and she was falling, trying to cover her face and keep him back. I chopped him in the ribs with my left hand but he seemed bent on scalping her, so I slashed the sight of the pistol across his wrist. He yelled, freed the hair and collapsed on the floor. Susan twisted away and fell back into a chair sobbing and scrabbling her fingers in her tortured hair.
When she’d recovered a little she held out a hand to me. I fended her off. “He’s still dangerous,” I said, “and he might have some help around.”
She pulled back and composed herself in the chair.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “There was just Bryn and the albino man from the beginning.” A look of panic appeared in her face. “Where’s he?” she said quickly. “I’m afraid of him, he’s terrible.”
“I don’t care for him much either,” I said, “but he’s out of action for a while. I surprised him, he’s tied up down at the gates.”
She breathed out noisily. “That’s good. I hope you tied him tightly. I hope it hurts.”
“It does.”
Bryn was crouched on the floor listening and not moving. I couldn’t tell how badly I’d hurt him but I guessed it wasn’t much. He was strangely resilient.
“Into the chair, Mr Gutteridge,” I said, “you’ve got some talking to do.”
“Mr Gutteridge.” His voice was heavily ironic and he’d recovered his breath fast. “Are you always so polite to people you pistol whip, Mr Hardy?”
“Only to ex-employers and you never can tell when it’ll stop in your case. Why did you bomb Ailsa’s car?”
Confidence and control were flooding back into him. He looked bored and just slightly puzzled.
“I didn’t.”
It was my turn to look puzzled, I believed him and my attention must have wavered for a split second because he came up out of the chair and launched a flying kick at my head. It isn’t supposed to work against a well prepared man with a gun but it did. I took it on the shoulder and went down clumsily against a chair. I dropped the gun, scrambled for it and by the time I got it Bryn had rolled over neatly and was out the door moving fast. I got up and started after him. Susan moved in all the wrong directions and I cannoned into her. We both went down and I lost time extricating myself and apologising.
18
Susan held me by the arm longer than seemed necessary — some instinct to protect such close flesh and blood I suppose — and by the time I’d shaken her free Bryn was out of the house. I craned my neck up over the foliage from the back step and thought I saw him moving through the shrubs, already half-way to the road, but I wasn’t sure. I ran across to the Fiat, the keys were in it but I lost some time figuring out how to drive it. When I got the right buttons pressed it roared down the drive in great style. I lost more time opening the gate and when I got out I saw the tail end of the Land Rover disappearing behind a corner a hundred yards ahead. I followed fast, thinking that if he stuck to the roads he didn’t have a chance and if he took to the bush I didn’t have a chance — a nice even money bet. I also tried to remember whether the rifle had been still leaning against the house where I’d left it. I couldn’t remember and it was important to the odds in a showdown between Bryn and me.
The road from Cooper Beach north is all ups and downs with a long drop to the sea on one side and high,
