by Peter Corris
Ray’s personal belongings were in a tin chest under the bunk. I pulled it out and teased open the cheap padlock with a pocket-knife blade. I turned the bits and pieces over thinking how alike we all are—how we all keep the same things, the bits of paper and objects that mark the staging posts of our lives. Ray had stored away a couple of not discreditable school reports, a learner-driver permit, a swimming proficiency certificate, a half-empty box of long rifle .22 bullets and some photographs.
I stood up from my crouch with creaking muscles, and spread the snapshots out at eye level on the tight blanket on the top bunk. There were five: one showed a big-looking, blond kid at the wheel of the Satisfaction; another was of the same boy with a younger and slightly smaller and darker version of himself, sitting in the yacht’s dinghy; there was one of a small, handsome woman in early middle age standing with her hands on her hips and looking amused at the camera; and a fourth snap showed a teenage girl with long legs and short shorts sitting on a low stone wall. She was smiling at the camera and displaying good teeth, shining mid-length hair and an optimistic glow. If Paul Guthrie had given me intimations of hope about getting old, she was a reminder of the joys of being young. She was the sort of girl song-writers used to write songs about before they discovered Freud and drugs.
The fifth photograph was the maverick in the bunch; it was old, not so old as to be sepia-tinted, but it looked as if it had just escaped that photographic era. It was also cracked and creased as if it had once had a less loving home. The picture showed a man in army uniform caught in the act of lighting a cigarette. He was bare-headed, short-back-and-sided and his face was half-hidden in his cupped hands. A sergeant’s chevrons were on his jacket sleeve; an expert might have been able to tell from the other insignia which unit he belonged to—I couldn’t. The interior shown in the photograph looked like a pub; there was a window with reversed lettering on it behind the military figure. It was impossible to tell anything about the man except in the most general terms—not old, not ugly, not fat.
I took the pictures up on deck to where Guthrie was standing with his legs slightly spread and his hands lightly on the wheel. He breathed a sigh when I spread the photographs in front of him on a flat surface in front of the wheel.
“You sound relieved,” I said.
“I am. I was dreading you coming up with something like drugs or …”
“Nothing like that. Can you give these your attention for a minute?”
He glanced at his course, decided all was well and looked down. He came barely up to my shoulder, but his easy command of the boat seemed to give him extra stature. “No problem,” he said. “What have you got there?” He stabbed one picture. “That’s Ray.”
“Thought so. His brother and your wife?"
He nodded.
“This the girlfriend?”
Another nod.
I nudged the old picture. “What about this?”
He peered at it. “No idea.” He flipped it over as I had already done, but there was no writing on the back. I made a stack of the pictures with the one of Ray on top.
“Big lad,” I said.
“Six two. No way he could’ve been mine—we used to make a joke of it. Chris’s a bit smaller.”
Six foot two, I thought, nineteen years of age and a boat worker—that meant ropes, oars and muscles. I hoped my usual verbal persuasive methods would be adequate for the task. I didn’t fancy trying to make him do anything he didn’t want to. Guthrie checked his course; I separated out the old photograph and the one of Ray at the wheel.
“Can I hang on to these?”
“Sure. Here we go, got to check this.”
He flicked the wheel, cut the motor and brought the yacht close up to a buoy that looked like a giant, floating truck wheel. A flipped switch sent the anchor rattling down through the clear, green water. Guthrie went to the stern, hauled in the dinghy, slipped down into it and skipped across to the mooring buoy with a few easy strokes. I felt useless, so I went back to the cabin and replaced the three photos. When I got back on deck I watched Guthrie circumnavigating the buoy, pulling and testing ropes, car tyre buffers, and metal stanchions. When he was satisfied, he rowed back.
After a few more similar stops, Guthrie anchored in deep water and pulled two cans of light beer out of a cooler in the saloon. He had a plastic-wrapped package of sandwiches in there, too. We ate and drank under the awning.
“Brought you out here because I wanted you to see what kind of a boy Ray is. You think I’m pretty good in a boat?”
I was chewing; I nodded.
“He’s better. Faster and sharper, and he sticks at it. One time we got a mooring rope wrapped around the propeller shaft, just before we tied up. Getting on for winter it was, dark, cold. Ray stayed in the water, down under there, for as long as it took to work the rope free. Could have cut it but he wouldn’t. Bit of a perfectionist, likes to do things right. You don’t see that all that often.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You don’t.”
“Pig-stubborn, mind. But stubborn to a purpose.”
He sucked his can dry and put it down carefully on the deck. He went into the saloon and came out with a big cheque book and a gold pen.
“I can’t bear to think of that boy ruining his life. I can’t do anything directly about it myself—too old. I don’t trust the police, not in this instance anyway. All I can do is write a bloody cheque and hope you’re as useful as you look and as they say you are.’’
“Before you write it,” I said, “you have to ask yourself a few questions you might not like the answers to. Why’s he hanging around with Catchpole and company? What’s his trouble? If you hire me, that’s what you’re going to find out, maybe. The picture of him I get comes from you—he’s stubborn; you won’t just be able to say ‘stop’ to him. I won’t, if I find him. You might not like what happens. Your wife mightn’t like it either.”
He looked at me as if he was sifting the whole of his life inside his head—the good and the bad bits, and wondering how much of each there was still to come. He made a weighing-up gesture with his hands.
“I accept that,” he said. He opened the cheque book, scribbled, tore out the slip and handed it across.
“That’s more than I asked for.”
“You don’t ask enough. You’re not the only one who can check up on a bloke. I checked on you. They say you stick at things and that’s what I want. I want your full attention. You’ve got my resources behind you—if you need a thousand suddenly or whatever, you’ve got it. Understand?”
I nodded and put the cheque away. He seemed to regard money as something to help him get what he wanted rather than as something good in itself or something that conferred a virtue on him. That’s healthy; that’s how I’d regard money—if I had any.
“I’ve got some nosey questions up front. How much money did you give the boys?”
‘‘Just usual pocket money. I paid them for work they did on the boats in the school holidays. Bought them both a car—nothing flash. I give Chris an allowance to top up his scholarship, nothing much. Ray worked up here before he took off. I paid him well; overtime, the works.”
“How big was the row you had? What was it about—money, politics, the future—what?’’
He was stowing away the remains of the lunch and carefully brushing off crumbs into his hand. “To tell you the truth, I really can’t remember. It wasn’t important, nothing out of the ordinary. We rowed mostly about his attitude. I’d say, ‘Don’t look so bloody miserable, Ray. What’s your problem?’ And that’d set him off.”
“Would his mother remember the particular row? Was she there?”
He thought about it for longer than seemed necessary. He took off his sunglasses and when he looked at me his eyes seemed troubled.
“I think that was it,” he said. “The row was sparked off by something he said to his mother. He was just down in Northbridge for the night, stayed up here mostly … no, I can’t get it back. But so
mething like that. You’ll have to ask Pat.”
“Would that upset her?”
“She’s upset already. She’ll take some more if she must—to get somewhere.”
He’d done enough talking. He scattered the crumbs on the water and went back to work. The anchor came up and he headed back to the marina. We swayed a bit as we crossed a bigger boat’s wake, but the engines had a beautiful easy sound, and the Satisfaction cruised smoothly.
“Good motors,” I said.
“Serviced by Ray. Exclusively.”
“What can you tell me about your wife’s first husband?”
Nothing happened; no sudden stiffening, no sweating, no knuckle-whitening. “Not much. Pat didn’t talk much about him at all. Divorced way back. He’s dead now, I think.”
“Have they got his name or yours?”
“Mine.”
He was concentrating now, moving between the fairly tightly packed boats toward his mooring. I looked ahead and saw a tall figure standing by the pylons; she had a rope in her hands and was tugging at it nervously. Guthrie followed my gaze.
“This’ll give you another idea of what Ray’s like,” he said. “That’s his girl, Jess. You never met a nicer kid.”
She was the young woman who’d been sitting on the wall, smiling into the lens. But now she was standing stiffly, she looked older, and she wasn’t smiling anymore.
4
The deft, unhurried movements she used to help Guthrie tie up the boat seemed to be second nature to her. She was tall and athletic; the short hair, shirt, and jeans gave her a practical look and made no concessions to the usual ideas of femininity, but she was as female as you’d want—which is better. She had Paul Guthrie’s full approval, apparent in every movement he made. He nipped up the ladder, hugged her and made the introductions enthusiastically.
“Cliff Hardy, Jess Polansky. He’s going to look for Ray, Jess.”
This news didn’t seem to fill her with delight. She brushed back her light-brown hair and looked at me as if I was the understudy, not the star. “I thought … oh hell, I saw you take the Satisfaction out, and I thought it might mean Ray was coming back. Or something …”
She burst into tears and Guthrie eased his shoulder over for her to huddle into. She had to bend to do it. As I looked at them I tried to interpret what I was seeing. Does a son want the girl his father so obviously wants for him? It struck me that I was getting out of my depth with fathers and sons, although I was old enough to have a son of Ray Guthrie’s age. As I’d told Cy Sackville, I didn’t even have a brother, and my own memories of my relationship with my father weren’t likely to be of much help. He was twenty-plus years dead, a quiet inner sort of man who didn’t seem to approve of anything much. I still occasionally had dreams in which I tried to win his approval, and failed.
Guthrie pulled back, put his hands up on the girl’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. ‘‘Talk to Cliff, Jess, give him all the help you can.”
Off the boat, facing the realities on dry land, Guthrie lost some of his bounce. He let go of Jess, swivelled and spoke to me with his head turned half-away. “Ray was last seen in the Noble Briton in the Cross. Friday of last week. He was drunk. That’s all I know. Stay in touch.” He walked away with his hands in his pockets and his head down.
Jess Polansky wiped her eyes with her hand and looked at me suspiciously.
“What does he mean—you’re going to look for Ray?”
“Just that. I’m a private investigator; I’ve found missing people before, quite a few.”
“Ray’s not really missing though, is he? I mean, Mr Guthrie says someone saw him last week. That’s not missing.”
“No. You’re half-right. There’s missing and missing. Look, can we talk now? Would you like a drink or something?”
She shrugged. “All right. I’m on my lunch break. I might as well have a drink.”
She pulled on one of the mooring lines that held the Satisfaction; muscle swelled and sinew tensed in her slim arm. She let the rope go and moved down the jetty.
“Ray loves that boat,” she said.
“Yeah. How old are you, Jess?”
“Nineteen.”
“What d’you do?”
“I work part-time for Mr Guthrie at the marina, and I teach water-skiing.”
That explained the muscle and sinew. “You must be good—Ray any good at it?”
We climbed steps to the walkway that took us past the boatshed. I paused and looked back down at the boats gently pulling at their ropes, rising and falling in the placid water. Too dull for a spirited youth? I thought. Then I remembered the order on the boat, the finely tuned engines and the anthology of sea verse. Jess Polansky moved ahead of me, exuding health and strength and I decided that Ray Guthrie couldn’t have been bored here. She didn’t answer my question until we were walking through the car park.
“Ray’s good at everything.” Her look challenged me to make something of it.
We went into the beer garden and I asked her what she wanted, expecting her to go for something soft in keeping with the athletic image.
“Gin and tonic, please.”
I got one of those and a glass of white wine for me, and carried the drinks over to where she was sitting. The stone wall she sat on was the one in the photograph. I handed her the glass.
“You and Ray come here much?”
“Hardly ever; why?”
“He’s got a photo of you sitting on that wall.”
“Oh, I remember that. I’d got third in the state slalom titles.” She gulped down a good deal of her drink, inexpertly. “Ray didn’t drink much, neither do I.”
The tenses were becoming confused, as if she was unconsciously getting ready to put him in the past.
“Have you got any idea why he took off, Jess? Or why he’d be drunk in a Kings Cross pub?”
“I’ve been trying to think. He didn’t just vanish overnight, you know. He was sort of around less, always pissing off somewhere. This went on for a while. Then he was just … gone.”
“He didn’t explain? Say what was on his mind?”
She shook her head. “Not a great talker, Ray. Quiet bloke. Terrific bloke.”
It was another weighty tribute to him and I let it have its moment. I drank some wine and thought of Helen Broadway and her one smoke a day. I could’ve done with one now to use as I’d used them for twenty years—to help the wandering mind to focus. But I’d decided some time back that a focusing mind was no good without functioning lungs.
“What was the set up between you and Ray, Jess? Any plans?”
She had dark eyes, slightly slanted, a straight nose and a firm, well-shaped mouth. When she smiled the slant of the eyes was accentuated and her face became lively and optimistic. She smiled now.
“People don’t make plans anymore. They just live day to day or look, say, a few months ahead. Don’t you know that?”
“I hadn’t thought about it. Sorry for the personal question, then. This might be another—did Ray have any unusual visitors, or mention meeting anyone out of the ordinary?”
The smile went and with it the optimism. She was getting a little out of practice at optimism. She concentrated. “I think there was someone like that,” she said slowly. “Two men went out with Ray on the boat one day.”
“What for? Fishing, or what?”
“He didn’t say. They were out a fair while—all afternoon. They didn’t look like fisherman or scuba divers. They wore suits.”
“When was this, Jess?”
I’d finished my wine; she had forgotten her drink in the effort of remembering life. She stared past me, past the stunted beer-garden trees, straight out and up the channel.
“Hard to fix on it … Ray was …” she snapped her fingers; the sound was like a gunshot—all that water-skiing. “Got it! It was a week before I competed in the state titles. I hadn’t seen Ray for a few days. I did lousy. That makes it the first week of September.”
“Would
there be a record of the boat hire for that afternoon?”
“Should be. A whole afternoon’d be pricey. Should be a receipt and everything. You think it’s important?”
I nodded. “Could be.”
“Let’s go and see. I have to get back anyhow.” She abandoned the drink and we went quickly back to the marina. The office was freshly painted, with new glass in the big windows; all the equipment—phones, desks, filing cabinets—were those of a prosperous business. Jess nodded hello to a woman who was talking on one of the phones, smoking, making notes, and drinking coffee. I wondered what she was doing with her feet. Jess ran out a long file-drawer, riffled through the contents and pulled out a spring-backed folder marked Satisfaction.
“We’re computerising soon,” Jess said.
“Everyone is,” I said. “Except me.”
She carried the folder across to a desk and started going through it, muttering, “September, September.”
“Here it is!” She snapped the folder open impatiently and spread the loose sheets. There was one for each day—morning, afternoon, and all-day hirings were noted along with fuel costs, equipment hire, and the name of the hirer. In the first week of September, the Satisfaction had had a scattering of morning and evening hirings, with one all-day job. There was no record of an afternoon session of the kind Jess had described. She looked at the spread sheets and then she thumped them with her fist.
“That’s bloody strange.”
“Describe the men,” I said.
“I can’t. Suits. Ordinary.”
“Big or small, young or old?”
