‘I’d like to talk to you, Mr Hardy. Excuse us, Helen.’
I didn’t want her to excuse us, but Guthrie was one of those experienced social movers who knew how to get his way without giving offence. I gave Helen Broadway my best we-haven’t-finished-yet look before Guthrie guided me into a quiet room. There was a table covered with a white cloth which had a nest of bottles on it and some baskets and plates with crispbreads and wafers of smoked salmon and turkey.
Guthrie poured an inch of Jack Daniels into a glass and added an inch of water.
‘You can have your drink now’, he said. ‘Party’s nearly over, and I cleared it with Roberta. I want to talk business. You want to sit down?’
I shook my head; I was leg-weary, but when I sat down I wanted to stay down. I leaned against a wall and took a sip of the bourbon which tasted wonderful: I made a silent, private toast to Helen Broadway.
‘You handled that rugby clown pretty well’, Guthrie said. He didn’t have a glass or props of any kind; he just stood there in his well-tailored lightweight suit with a soft collar and a quiet tie, and exuded his own brand of charm.
‘He’d handicapped himself.’ I held up my glass. ‘That elbow of his gets him into trouble in more ways than one.’
He smiled and nodded. Then the smile fell away. ‘How would you like to earn ten thousand dollars?’
I took another sip to give myself reaction time and looked down at him; concentrating on him now and not on the woman somewhere in another room. For the first time, I saw the strain in his face. He must have been over sixty, but his slim figure hid the fact. Now, very late at night, he had a greyish tinge and the white stubble on his face etched worn deep lines. He was old, tired and deadly serious. That’s a combination to make you nervous and send you in the other direction. Worst comes to worst, you can lay a joke over it. I took another sip.
‘Who would I have to kill?’
‘Not for killing, Mr Hardy. For saving someone’s life.’
2
Paul Guthrie was exaggerating, of course; people usually do when they want something from you. But his problem was real enough. He was, he told me, sixty-two years old, a businessman with interests in sporting and leisure activities. He owned a couple of marinas in Sydney, leased game fishing boats to the rich and had controlling shares in a ski lodge and a dude ranch. He used that expression with obvious distaste, which lifted his stocks with me. He’d rowed for Australia in the double sculls at the 1948 London Olympics.
‘Unplaced’, he said.
‘Still, a big kick.’
‘Yeah, it was. A bigger kick was coming home through the States and seeing how they were organising things there. Business, I mean. You never saw anything like it. Marinas sprouting everywhere, airfields; lot of ex-service stuff going into recreational use. That’s where I got the idea for the leisure business. It was slow to take off here, but it has now. I built it up sure and steady.’
‘Well, the Yanks were always long on ideas. You certainly got in early.’
‘Right. Too early, I thought for a while. I worked like a dog at it. Blew a marriage to pieces in the process. I got married again ten years ago. She’s twenty years younger than me, and had two sons from her first marriage. They were about eight and nine at the time. I didn’t have any kids, and I helped to raise those two. I think of them as mine.’
The value of sentiments like that depends on the speaker. I rated Guthrie pretty high: he wasn’t big-noting himself about his business success, just filling me in. And he’d put it down to work rather than brilliance-always a sign that the person is a realist. Physically, he was impressive too; there was no fat on him and he looked as if he could still pull an oar. But his problem was eating at him, sapping his reserves.
‘The boys are the problem, that right?’
‘One of them, Ray-he’s the oldest, nineteen. Just under nineteen. I haven’t seen him for four months.’
‘That’s not so long.’
‘It is for the way it happened. The other boy, Chris, he went up to Brisbane at the beginning of the year. He’s all right- went to university there. They’ve got special studies in race relations-Aborigines, Islanders and all that. That’s what he’s keen on.’
‘What about Ray?’
He rubbed at his close-cropped grey hair, making it rough and spiky. ‘We had our difficulties. Started a few years back. We just didn’t get along as well as we once did. Not serious stuff; just sulks and no co-operation. A real pain in the arse to have around.’
‘That’s normal enough.’
‘So they tell me. Now, Chris could be hard to handle too but he’d go off and hit the books. Ray’s no scholar. He’s not dumb, mind. Passed the HSC, but he wasn’t interested in going on.’
I finished the drink and thought about another. I was tired, and still had some clearing up to do at the party. It was a sure bet that there’d be someone asleep somewhere to be woken up and poured into a taxi. Besides, he was reluctant to tell me the trouble and that’s an attitude I’ve come across before. Sometimes it takes three runs before they come out with it and tonight I didn’t have the time. I wanted to let him down gently, though.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Guthrie. It just doesn’t sound so different from a lot…’
‘It gets different’, he said sharply. ‘We had a bit of a row the day Ray left. He wasn’t under the thumb, you understand. Lived on the boat… I’m sorry, I’m having trouble coming to the point.’
‘You had a row.’
‘Yes. He stormed out. No word since. His mother’s out of her mind. I asked around. Couldn’t find him, and then I heard about the company he’s keeping. Bloke like you would know what I mean. Apparently he’s hanging around with Liam Catchpole, Dottie Williams and Tiny Spotswood
… that lot.’
Those names changed things a lot. Catchpole, Spotswood and Williams were all crims. Not big-time enough to make their full names a household word-Liam Angus Catchpole or whatever-but consistent, professional wrong- doers. All had convictions, but it was rumoured that Tiny Spotswood had done things much worse than those he’d been convicted for. Bad enough, but there were other reasons to avoid them: I wondered whether Guthrie had the whole picture.
‘Bad crowd’, I said. ‘Bad example for an impressionable lad.’
‘It’s not the bad example I’m worried about. Those three are police informers.’
‘Right’
‘And steerers!’
He meant agents provocateurs, and he was right again Catchpole survived by steering men into gaol. Dottie did the same with women and she had a sideline as a drugs provider and procurer. I knew Catchpole had had some connection with Glebe in days gone by, but the details eluded me. I knew of no one who trusted him-not the crims he associated with nor the policemen he provided with information. He was almost, but not quite, a pariah. Tiny’s muscle helped to make people civil to him some of the time.
‘Do you have any idea what’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Has the boy had police trouble?’
He shook his head emphatically. ‘Never. I’d have to say he’s moody and stubborn-but honest as the day. And he’s not lazy-worked like a bastard on the boats. In my experience it’s the work-shy that run into trouble first. Ray’s not work-shy.’ Now that he had it all out in the open, he was determined to convince me. ‘Look, Hardy, you know your way around. I’ve seen you in action and Roberta speaks very highly of you. She’s a good judge of character, though you mightn’t think it. I want you to take this on. Find Ray, talk to him. Find out what’s going on. Get between him and that slime somehow, before he goes wrong.’
‘He might have gone wrong already.’
‘I know it. I’m prepared for that. But I’m sure Ray’s basically solid. There’s something… what do the kids say?… bugging him. I know it doesn’t take long to go off the tracks. All the more reason to step in. Will you do it?’
It didn’t take much thinking about. I liked Guthrie, and the few times I’d seen Liam Catchpole up close I’d
