densely timbered slopes on the other. It’s a place for closely concentrated driving at the best of times. Bryn handled the four-wheel-drive job like an expert; it looked new and must have been in top condition because it touched seventy when the grade permitted and it whipped around the bends like it was on rails. The Fiat was almost too fast for me; it was so long since I’d driven a good car that I had trouble controlling it. Bryn couldn’t get off the road and as I got the hang of driving the sports car I drew closer to him and I could see a shape swaying about in the front seat — the albino. Bryn wouldn’t have had time to untie him, which was a point or two for me.
We screamed along in tandem, thirty feet apart for about five miles. The narrow, winding road was empty both ways and we burned down the middle towards the long, twisting descent to the salt-flat and lake country. If he reached the bottom first, Bryn could pull off into the salt pans and ti-tree and take all the points. I hadn’t driven the road for fifteen years, but it hadn’t changed much and I remembered the tight, cruel turns and bad cambering we were entering. Bryn was using all his power and all the road he needed to stay ahead and get a break on the flat. I lost a fraction of time and an inch of speed correcting a slide but I was in command of the car when a timber truck came lumbering up around a bend. The Land Rover swung desperately into the shoulder and missed the truck by the thickness of a coat of paint. I slid past easily and when I rounded the bend I saw Bryn’s vehicle sliding and fish-tailing down the road fifty yards ahead. The road coiled into a wicked S bend and he didn’t make it — the Land Rover shot over the edge and began scything down saplings. I hit the brakes; the Fiat stopped straight and true. I set the lights flashing and ran to where Bryn had gone over. A hundred feet down the vehicle was wrapped around a tree and before I could move an inch it exploded with a roar and a yellow and blue flash like an incendiary bomb.
I sat on the edge of the drop waiting for the truck driver to come back and compel me to become an honest citizen. There were going to be a few questions about this accident — a brand new Land Rover goes over a cliff with a healthy young man at the wheel, beside him is another man who was unhealthy before he got dead. The fire would do incredible damage to them both, but there was no mistaking baling wire and it wouldn’t take long to trace the car to Gutteridge. A bomb, a murder, a raid, a torturing and a fatal crash all with the name Gutteridge included — Grant Evans wasn’t going to sit on that too long.
The truckie didn’t come back and no one else happened along. I was left to make my own moral decisions.
I scooted back to the Fiat, pressed my luck by making a three-point turn and drove back to Cooper Beach as fast as Italian engineering could take me. I sneaked a few looks in the rear vision mirror and from the high points on the road I could see an orange glow from Bryn’s funeral pyre. The penalties for leaving an accident scene in this state were tough and my investigator’s licence was forfeit from the second I’d got back into the car. But the truck driver, who must have heard the explosion, was the only one who could tie the Fiat to the Land Rover, and he wasn’t playing. The odds on getting back to the house unspotted and gaining a breathing space seemed pretty good. I could use the breathing space to get Susan back to town, report to Ailsa and keep my credentials on the case good and tight. The thought occurred to me that there was a reason to bring Susan and Ailsa together at this point, but I couldn’t quite clinch it. I was thinking about how to handle the bright lights and sleeplessness of a police interrogation when I swung the Fiat into the late Mr Gutteridge’s immaculate concrete driveway.
I put the Fiat back where I found it, reluctantly. It would have done wonders for my professional and neighbourhood image, but I wouldn’t have been able to afford to have its oil changed. I wiped it clean and gave its bonnet a pat reflecting that probate on it alone would be six months’ earnings for me. Pity the rich. The rifle wasn’t where I’d left it. I went through the porch and kitchen and was heading for the den when I froze like an ice-trapped mammoth — Susan Gutteridge was sitting on the staircase about ten steps up and she had the rifle trained directly on my middle shirt button. Her face was dead white and her mouth was set in a hard, concentrated line. She looked more determined than nervous and I wasn’t sure that she recognised me.
“Miss Gutteridge.” It came out as half-croak, half-giggle. “It’s Hardy, put the rifle down please.” Nothing moved in her face or hands. Some people say a. 22 is a toy. Don’t believe it — at that range and with a bit of luck it can be just as final for you as a. 357 magnum. I drew a breath and tried again in a more confidence-inspiring tone.
“Put the rifle down, Susan. I’m here to help you, just put it down slowly.”
“I thought you were Bryn.” Her voice was calm and detached, as if it belonged to no one in particular.
“No.”
“Bryn or the other one. I was going to kill you.”
“There’s no need. I’m a friend.”
She looked at me for the first time. I must have looked a pretty unlikely object for a friend in her circle, but she got the message. She stood the gun up, not inexpertly, and handed it to me with the muzzle pointing safely away. She’d had it cocked and the safety catch was off. I wouldn’t have fancied Bryn’s chances if he’d come into view. I worked the action and shook a shell out of the breech.
“Come and sit down.” I held out my hand to her. She took it and we moved towards the den.
“You said something strange just then,” she said.
I thought I’d been making good, solid sense, but she pressed it.
“It was odd I said I was going to kill Bryn and you said there was no need.”
“That’s right. It was just an expression though.”
“But he’s dead already?”
I nodded. “His car went over a cliff, it burned.”
We sat down in one of the den’s deep chairs, then she jumped out of it and moved across to another chair. I went to the bar and hunted for whiskey. I found an empty decanter and held it up to Susan inquiringly. She pointed to a long cupboard, like a broom cupboard, in the corner of the room. I opened it. A supersize bottle of Johnny Walker swung inside a teak frame; it looked like it held ten litres or more of the stuff and it was still half full. I filled the decanter and poured two stiff ones over ice. I sat down in the chair Susan had deserted and took a few restorative gulps. She did the same and in a strange way we seemed to be toasting her dead brother.
“Have you reported this to the police?” she asked.
“No.” She asked me why and I tried to explain stressing that I didn’t know how she wanted her kidnapping handled, but I also pointed out how deeply I was involved and how being held by the police would hamstring me. She saw it.
“Well it’s not going to matter to Bryn,” she said, “in a way it might please him, the end of it all. He had a sort of Byronic… no, satanic streak, he cultivated it. You might have noticed?”
Byronic was closer I thought. “Yes, I did.”
She was quiet for a minute, thinking God knows what. I let the good liquor work on me and sat being soothed by the sound of the waves on the beach and the feel of the deep piled carpet under my feet. There was a hell of a lot Bryn hadn’t been able to take with him. I wondered if Susan was his heir and what she’d do with all the loot if she was. I wondered about everything except the essential point — what to do next. Susan broke up the reverie by asking me exactly that. I had a few smaller questions of my own, like was Bryn telling the truth when he denied all knowledge of the bombing of Ailsa’s car, and did Susan really know nothing about the files? But I was too tired to pursue them or to come up with any plans for interstate flights, midnight meetings on lonely airstrips or hard drinking, incognito, in low-life taverns.
“Let’s get back to town,” I said, “we can talk a bit on the way.”
It was a mundane suggestion, but she sloshed down her drink and took a quick look around the place. A trifle proprietorial and precious, but who could blame her? I’d have been making an inventory and marking the levels in the bottles. We turned out the lights as we went through the house and I pulled the back door locked. I gave it a test tug but Susan waved me on.
“Don’t worry about the house, or the car. Someone from the town comes up to look after it.”
I hadn’t liked her when she had no personality at all and I wasn’t too keen on this one emerging. I snapped my fingers.
“Of course, silly of me,” I said.
Her head jerked sharply round to look at me. She grinned, then tossed her head back and laughed. “Fair enough Hardy,” she said when she finished laughing. “Don’t like rich bitches, eh?”
We were tramping down the drive now and it didn’t seem to occur to her to ask why. Maybe she trusted me, in any case her stocks with me were climbing a bit.
