The Empty Beach

by Peter Corris

  He went up the steps and knocked on the front door. After a minute or so, a man I hadn’t seen before opened the door. The untidy man started talking and the other guy began shaking his head. I bent as low as I could, given that my ribs were starting to hurt insistently, and scooted across to the car. I opened the back door, rolled in and pulled the door shut. There was nothing to hide under. I just scrunched myself down on the floor and hoped.

  The door opened, there was a slap as something hit the back seat, the door slammed, the springs creaked and the car started. I stayed down for twice as long as I thought I needed to and when I risked a peep we were clear of the property. I looked at the driver, but you can’t do much in the way of character assessment from the back of a head. He had dandruff. I sat upright behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. He started and swung the wheel.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Steer straight.’

  ‘Who’re you? What do you want?’ His voice cracked and broke with alarm.

  ‘I’ve had a bit of trouble back there. You got me clear of it. I want to go to the railway, that’s all.’

  ‘The police, more likely.’

  I brought up the Browning and showed it to him. ‘I didn’t want to do this, but it has to be the railway. I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Are you a prisoner?’

  I laughed but the sound came out harsh and humourless. ‘No; it’s too complicated to explain. Do you know whose house that is back there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What the hell were you doing there?’

  ‘Canvassing. I’m the Labor candidate for the state election.’

  ‘Jesus. What did he say to you?’

  ‘Told me to piss off.’ The conversation seemed to give him some confidence. ‘Uh, Bill Anderson’s my name. What’s yours?’

  ‘Good name,’ I said, ‘top of the ballot. I’ve voted Labor all my life, when I’ve voted. Gough Whitlam’s the greatest Australian this century.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I was going to ask him where the hell we were, but I thought it might scare him. People who don’t know where they are sometimes don’t know other things, like that they shouldn’t kill people. The country was familiar anyway, flat, with the hills in the distance, well-watered. The side road hit the highway and I knew where I was—Camden, Macarthur Onslow country, wool country, fat lambs and fat cheques. I hadn’t told him my name and he hadn’t said he was going to take me to the railway station, but we were still moving and still talking.

  ‘What hope do you have around here, Bill?’

  ‘Not much. Safe Country Party, but you never know.’ He turned onto the highway.

  ‘Is this the way to the railway station?’

  ‘Yes. I don’t know why, but I suppose I’ll take you. I don’t really think you’d use the gun.’

  ‘You’re right, I wouldn’t. I’ve got an aunt in Camden; I’ll tell her to vote for you. Hell, I’ll get her to man the booth.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, I’ll need everyone I can get. Can you tell me what sort of trouble you’re in?’

  ‘No, it’s Sydney trouble. I’m going back to sort it out.’ ‘With the gun?’

  ‘No.’ I dropped the gun onto the front seat beside him. ‘Where’s the station?’

  ‘Bout a mile. Got any money?’

  I’d felt the tightly folded money dig into me several times during the ordeal. It was still there.

  ‘A bit. Trains regular?’

  ‘No. Look, I’ll drive you into town.’

  I was surprised, and moved to the side to get a better look at him. He was thirtyish and the fair hair fell forward onto his forehead and hung down over his ears. He had a beaky nose and a strong chin. He needed a shave.

  ‘I’ll buy the petrol, then,’ I said. ‘You can stop anywhere. Nobody’s looking for me yet.’

  We crossed the Nepean River and Anderson stopped at a BP station. A liquor store across the road beckoned and I went across and bought a six-pack. I paid for the petrol, got in the front seat and offered Anderson a beer. He shook his head.

  ‘Never touch it before five. Can’t in my game.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘School teaching.’ He started the car and we headed for Sydney. ‘It’s amazing, you know. That gun was on the front seat the whole time we were there getting the petrol. The garage bloke didn’t see it, or if he saw it he didn’t care.’

  ‘It’s television,’ I said. ‘We’re learning to love the gun.’

  ‘Is it yours?’

  ‘Hell, no. I took it off a heavy back at Sunnybrook Farm.’

  He grunted and concentrated on driving. The car was a Datsun with a lot of miles on the clock; it bounced around and I had the feeling that Anderson was nursing it. I sucked on a can, conscious of the delicious cold sting of the beer on my cut mouth. I put the gun on the floor and looked out of the streaky window. The Camden district is littered with sandstone buildings drenched in convict sweat. It’s all worth a look on a relaxed drive, but I wasn’t relaxed.

  ‘Are you just being the original good bloke, or are you helping me for a reason?’ I opened the second can and put the empty one carefully down beside the Browning.

  ‘Bit of both,’ he said. ‘I’m curious about that house.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a mystery about it. No-one seems to know who owns it. It changed hands a while back. Do you know who owns it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Another thing. I’ve been told that some pretty high-up people in the opposition have been spending some time out there recently. I thought I’d call in and have a look. Do you know anything about that, a political angle?’

  ‘No. It shouldn’t be hard to trace the owner, though—registers and such.’

  ‘I did that. It’s a company. I forget the name, but I tried to trace it and got another company.’

  ‘Ah, ha. Like that.’

  ‘Yes, and now you pop up all beaten up and carrying a gun. Pretty interesting.’

  ‘Yeah. Tell you what, I’ll be looking into all this in Sydney. Anything useful I turn up I’ll put you onto. Okay?’

  ‘Take one of the leaflets.’

  I reached back and got one. It advised voters to go for Anderson first up and featured a picture of him with his hair trimmed and wearing a tie and a smile.

  ‘Office number’s on the back.’

  I put the paper in my pocket and finished the can. My head hurt where it had hit the pavement; my wrists hurt where they’d been roped; my shoulder ached and my ribs throbbed. I was in great shape.

  The traffic wasn’t too bad at that time of day and we moved along smartly towards the metropolis. When I asked him to stop, he looked across the road, surprised.

  ‘The university?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m a professor of philosophy.’

  He laughed. ‘Hope to hear from you.’

  I wished him luck in the election and he drove away. That left me tramping down Glebe Point Road towards home. The Browning inside my shirt was a bit avant-garde, but the four cans in their plastic collars were just the thing for the neighbourhood.

  Hilde was at home and she went straight into action when she saw me. She ran a bath and got busy with the cotton wool, antiseptic and adhesive tape.

  ‘Very nasty,’ she said, looking at the shoulder and the ribs. ‘Open your mouth.’

  I did and swore because it hurt.

  ‘Lucky you didn’t lose some teeth.’

  I nodded. I’ve lost a few over the years and can’t spare any more. It seemed I’d put a few teeth into my tongue and that one of Rex’s punches had split the skin inside the mouth and pulped up one section of gum a bit. I wouldn’t be chewing on any steaks for a while. While Hilde dabbed at me, I thought of a few of my friends who’d fought professionally in the late 1950s. I could remember the girlfriend of one of them saying that she was the greatest soup maker in Sydney because that’s all her bloke could eat most of the time. I’d walked into a mov
ing piece of two by four in one of my early jobs and Cyn had cried when she saw me. I tried to push the memories away.

  ‘The ribs worry me,’ Hilde said. She touched a raw rip in the skin, surrounded by a bluish bruise. ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘At a disco. I fell and they danced on me.’

  She snorted and pressed some tape into place, not gently. I put the beer in the fridge, resisted the wine and made a pot of coffee. Hilde went off to Tooth Capping III. I phoned Ann Winter’s less salubrious address and got a woman on the line with a slurred voice and uncertain grammar. She said she’d seen Ann come in the previous night and go again that morning. That was fine, but the woman sounded drunk already.

  ‘What day is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘Right. Look, how was Ann? Was she okay?’

  ‘She was pissed off; someone dumped her at a party or somethin’. Hey!’ Her voice was suddenly clearer, as if she’d got her tongue working. ‘Are you Cliff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Get stuffed, Cliff.’ She hung up.

  It sounded as if my connection to Ann Winter had got looser. That was a pity, but I was relieved that none of the rough stuff had reached her. I shaved around the cuts and abrasions, put on some clean clothes and went off to see my favourite policeman.

  14

  FRANK Parker looked tired. The hours he’d been working were stencilled on his face in the eye pouches and the grooves beside his mouth. His ashtray overflowed with those judiciously smoked butts.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he enquired.

  I touched my swollen lip and was conscious that I was holding myself carefully on account of the ribs. I perched on the nearest desk. The detective who had ignored us before was at his desk ignoring us again.

  ‘All in the line of work, Frank. You should get out more. Take a good belting on the street. All this paper work isn’t good for you. I thought you were going to get help.’

  ‘I got help, but so far the help just makes more work,’ he growled. ‘And I have been on the street. We pulled up a kid in a hot car last night. Took eight minutes—the paper work’s taking eight hours.’

  ‘Nothing on the Henneberry case?’

  ‘No. You?’

  ‘Hard to say. I got picked up last night by some hired hands. We went on a drive into the country.’

  He groaned. ‘You’re not here to lay charges of assault and abduction?’

  ‘No. I got out of it with a split lip and a bent rib. They were heavy boys, though. Take a look at this.’ The security is lousy at that place. I’d walked through it with a fourteen shot Browning Hi-Power in my jacket pocket. I put the gun on Frank’s desk on top of a pile of carbon copies of something. He pushed it around with the tip of a pencil so that the muzzle was pointing towards his colleague.

  ‘You went up against this, Hardy?’

  ‘More around it. I met the boss. I wonder if you can tell me who he is.’

  He lit a cigarette and looked interested. ‘Try me.’

  ‘His place is out Camden way, pretty nice layout. His boys are named Rex, he’s a snappy dresser with a good hook, and …’ I felt for the name, ‘Tal. He’s a Yank who did the driving. Rex had the Browning there, Tal had some little thing. The boss’s about sixty, tall and thin, looks a bit sick. He’s got what the Americans call a cocksucker moustache.’

  Frank blew smoke. ‘Oh, yeah? Why do they call it that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I fingered my upper lip. ‘Small, wouldn’t get in the way?’

  Frank’s expression of disgust gave him rock-solid heterosexual credentials.

  ‘Freddy Ward,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘One of the boys. He and Singer and Tom McLeary divided up the action in the eastern suburbs. He’s done some rough things in his time, but I thought he was taking it easy.’

  ‘He certainly looked sick. I got the feeling that he was a bit past it. But he’s got a foul temper and bugger all control. He didn’t leave the rough stuff to his boys. I just gave him a bit of cheek and you should’ve seen him.’

  ‘That’s him. I hear that Freddy might not be the full dollar. He was in Changi, which wouldn’t have done him any good. What did he want with you?’

  ‘He wanted to know who I was working for.’

  ‘Did you tell him?’

  ‘No. They said they’d drop me in a hole if I didn’t, but I had the feeling they’d do it if I did.’

  A woman sailed past and dropped a folder on his desk. Parker swore and dragged hard on his cigarette. ‘You think this is all connected with the Henneberry thing? There’s a bit of heat in that, by the way.’

  ‘I don’t know. What sort of heat?’

  ‘His father’s a senator or something. I had some fucking Foreign Affairs bloke on the phone, wanting results.’

  ‘Have you checked Henneberry out with the spooks?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He hunted in the OUT tray and pulled up a file. I reached for it, but he snapped it away and grinned. ‘They say,’ he ran his finger down a page and quoted, ‘… that he had no connection with any security services.’

  ‘Do you believe them?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Lying’s their business. D’you see Rex and his mate fixing Henneberry?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s next, then?’

  ‘Get out and ask questions.’

  ‘Ask who?’

  I stood up. ‘Brother Gentle.’

  He looked blankly at me. I gave him a wave and left him with his papers and Rex’s big gun.

  It seemed like time to check in with my client but, given all the interest around town in who that was, it also seemed like time to play it cagey. If I’d gone to my office I could have put my feet on the desk, breathed the air of inspiration and been at my very best on the line, but I might also have had listeners-in. I rang Mrs Marion Singer from a public phone and instructed her to go out and ring the booth I was in. I waited ten minutes, faking a call and infuriating two would-be users.

  ‘Was that necessary?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe. Do you know a man named Ward?’

  ‘Fred Ward? I know of him. What about him?’

  ‘He gave me a little trouble. Look, Mrs Singer, this is all getting very complicated.’ I told her about Henneberry and Leon and my trip to Camden.

  ‘I’m sorry for all that,’ she said, without sounding sorry. ‘But what about John?’

  ‘I’m still on it.’

  ‘Stay on it.’ She hung up. No more offers of money, no more information.

  The bright, dry spell we’d had in Sydney for a week or more looked like coming to an end. There was a coolness in the air and the wind was lifting; it was an indecisive wind, picking up things, tossing them about and putting them down. The clouds that had been light and high for days were darkening and coming down. I caught a cab to Bronte, keeping my fingers crossed that my car would still be there. It was. The radio aerial had been snapped off and ‘Screw Fraser’ had been scratched on the bonnet.

  The rain started as I drove to the ashram. It beat down while I sat in the car and looked the place over. The posters were artfully made and they seemed to shine out through the curtain of rain. I subscribe to the belief that rain accentuates aches and pains. I had plenty to be accentuated; if well-being is a lack of consciousness about the body, I wasn’t well. If I moved my head sharply, my brain broke its moorings for an instant, and when I accidentally elbowed myself in the side I felt as if a jagged rib bone was going to pierce a lung. ‘GIVE’ was glowing through the rain but I felt more like taking. A holiday, for example. I could go to Lew Hoad’s tennis ranch in Spain. I’ve always wanted to see it. Good old Glebe boy, Lew. I could work up a topspin backhand and try to beat Hilde. Lew and I could have a few beers and talk about Pancho Gonzales and Pancho Segura. I saw Segura and Rosewall once—the cunningest tennis match ever played.

  It was a nice thought, but now I had people scurrying into a yellow building wi
th yellow pants legs and sandals showing under yellow slickers. There’s nothing like a little damp to force mendicants inside off the street. I found a raincoat in the back of the car and squirmed into it, hurting my side again. It helped to hide the bulge of the gun I stuck in my belt.

  I ran for the door, pushed it open and dripped water on the yellow carpet. The reception nook was empty but I noticed the business end of a TV camera high on a wall. Wired for sight, wired for sound.

  ‘Peace,’ I said to the camera. ‘Cliff Hardy here. Is Brother Gentle available?’

  After two minutes a man came through the door, looking both brotherly and gentle. He was short and plump with thin brown hair brushed carefully across his rounded skull. He had a receding chin and meek eyes. I said my name and put my hand out. He took my hand in both of his and pressed. It felt like warm dough kneading back.

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Hardy?’ He had a lisp, too. It was almost too much gentleness to take in one day.

  ‘I’m a private investigator,’ I said. ‘Here’s my licence.’ I showed him the paper and he shook his head slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry for you,’ he said.

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Identification papers, licences and you carry a gun. You must be very afraid.’

  ‘Not all the time. Is there somewhere we can talk?’

  ‘Of course.’ His sandals creaked and slapped as he walked back through the door. His stiff yellow jacket and limp yellow trousers rustled as he moved. He opened a door with a thin, blue-veined hand that carried several rings on several fingers.

  We went into a larger room with the same decor; it was like stepping into the middle of an apricot. The windows were blanked out, there was carpet on the floor and some thin mats on top of the carpet in the middle of the room. A life-sized, that is, about five foot tall, statue of the Himmler look-alike stood in the corner. It was gilded like the girl in Goldfinger.

  Brother Gentle squatted on one of the mats and motioned me to do the same. I’m a cultural experimenter. I squatted.

  ‘I can’t imagine how I can help you, Mr Hardy. Our worlds are far apart.’