The Empty Beach

by Peter Corris

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Dig.’

  17

  IT took about an hour to get the first brick out, but work went faster after that. I scraped and dug until the pain from my ribs and knee got too much and I had to hand over to Ann, who went at it furiously. She wanted to live very badly. After one session she wiped the sweat away and said savagely, ‘You had a gun. Why didn’t you shoot him?’

  ‘He had a bigger gun,’ I said.

  We didn’t talk much after that. I wondered how long it would take Manny to give pills to all the wrecks inside and I prayed that the van, wherever and whatever it was, would be slow to start. I scraped and dug.

  We moved the dislodged bricks inside to cut down on the noise and I thought I’d at least have something to throw, if it came to that. When the hole was big enough, I told Ann to get to a phone and call the police.

  ‘Scream at them,’ I said. ‘Panic them, tell them to bring everyone.’

  ‘I will, don’t worry.’ She was halfway through when she asked, ‘What about you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t get through the hole with this leg. Go, for Christ’s sake!’

  She kissed me again, quick and hard, wriggled through and started off; I think she’d have charged the shotgun if she’d had to. I dug out more bricks and got a hole big enough for my broad, manly shoulders. I tried to crawl through but I couldn’t get the leverage with the bad knee.

  So I sat there with a couple of half-bricks to hand, feeling like the boy with his finger in the dike. I turned the light off and I had a torch to dazzle him with, but he had a torch, too. If he came, I’d be like a blind kitten waiting to be drowned. I didn’t want it to happen for all the usual reasons, and because of Bruce Henneberry who’d never write his articles now because of me. Ordinarily I’d have worried about my knee, which was locked and painful, but I was too worried about the rest of me.

  Manny came, but when he did the night was full of sirens and shouts and blinking blue lights. I stuck my head out of the hole and saw him running down the path towards the cellar; lights flashed at him and he let go twice with the pump. The noise bounced off the buildings and roared down into the hole where I crouched with my half-bricks. Manny fired again and he was very close now. Somebody shouted ‘Stop!’ and he turned to see how far he’d got. The light lost him; I flicked on the torch and put the beam up on his chest. The shots were sharp and clean after the muffled boom of the shotgun. The first one took him high in the chest and he spun half around; the next one got him low and he went down. The shotgun slammed into the wall just above the hole.

  I moved the torch beam around until I found his face, which was turned towards the wall. The hardness went out of it; his mouth relaxed and his fierce, slanting eyes dimmed and took on a fixed stare. Then blood flowed from his mouth, he gasped twice and he died.

  I was shaking when they came for me. I felt cold right through and I thought I was going to have trouble keeping my pants dry. Parker crouched at the hole.

  ‘Hardy, you okay?’

  ‘Yeah. Grab his key and get me out of here.’

  He burrowed into Manny’s pockets, showing him as much respect as you’d show a scarecrow. He got a lot of blood on his hands, but he also got the keys and opened the door.

  ‘What’s that?’ He’d turned on the light and pointed at the tub.

  ‘Glue factory. They’ve been boiling down the senior citizens. See the tools outside? They’re for burying the hard bits.’

  ‘Shit! Can you stand up?’

  ‘No. Can you get me some brandy or something?’

  He yelled for assistance. The noise felt like a rain of bricks on my head, but a bottle came. I took a pull on it; it wasn’t French, but it did something for that spreading cold.

  ‘Did you get the other one—the woman?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In a van.’

  ‘No van.’

  ‘She’ll see all this a mile off. She runs this bloody place.’

  ‘We’ll get her. Take it easy.’ He yelled again and I heard the word ‘ambulance’.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ He lit a cigarette and I didn’t want one.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Looks like you took on Sugar Ray Leonard.’

  ‘That bad?’ I was sweating and cold, scared and angry at the same time. I groaned and heard the whine in my voice. ‘Studded belt. Shit.’ I ran my tongue around inside my mouth but there was no extra damage there.

  ‘Where am I bleeding?’

  ‘Ear,’ he said. ‘Torn pretty bad.’

  ‘Did Ann fill you in? Where is she?’

  ‘Yeah, enough. She’s okay. Is this where the guy you’re looking for ended up?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  He prowled about, puffing on his cigarette. A man came down and whispered something to him and he issued instructions about ambulances and hospitals.

  ‘They’re in a bad way up there,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. Frank, get a spade and poke around in the garden. Use my torch.’

  He took the torch and went out. Stretcher-bearers arrived and lifted me aboard. I clenched my teeth against the pain.

  One of them took the bottle from me and said, ‘Who gave him this?’

  ‘St Bernard,’ I said. I was feeling lightheaded and had a crazy impulse to wave my arms around. Ann Winter’s face swam up and I tried to smile at it, but blood dripped into my mouth.

  ‘God,’ she said.

  They carried me out and made the turn to go up the path. I could see the light weaving about in the shrubbery and heard the spade bite into the earth.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Frank?’

  His voice sounded as if he had a mouthful of ground glass. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking graveyard.’

  18

  I WAS in hospital a week, and if I had had to pay my own bills it would have meant that I would have just about broken even on the Singer case. It’s a muzzy professional and ethical area, medical bills run up in the course of duty. It’s not wise to mention them in the initial interview in case you look accident-prone, but failure to do so can lead to unpleasantness later.

  Anyway, they stitched up my ear without any trouble and put a few other stitches in my face, which would add to my tally of fetching scars in time. I had two broken ribs; again, time heals. The knee was the problem: there was ligament damage and chipped bone to worry about. An operation looked likely for a while, and I didn’t fancy that. I never heard of anyone who’d had an operation on his knee ever being any good at what he did again. Eventually they decided to leave it alone and let physiotherapy and clean living repair the damage.

  The cops came and took a detailed statement. Frank Parker visited and was almost non-official for ten minutes or so. Hilde visited, Ann Winter called in and one of their visits coincided. They got along very well.

  ‘She’s a beautiful girl, your lodger,’ Ann said. Hilde had left after delivering a clean nightshirt and Garp. It was two days before I left hospital; I was sitting up in a chair and I had a stick to walk with. With the bandaged ear and all I thought I looked pretty dashing, very World War II and Battle of Britain.

  ‘D’you reckon?’

  ‘Yes. What a beautiful skin.’ The way she said it made me wonder about Ann Winter. She seemed much more interested in Hilde’s beautiful German skin than in dashing old me.

  I’d made the hospital staff’s lives miserable until they gave me a telephone. I rang Mrs Singer and her voice on the line was cool, or cooler.

  ‘I’ve had a spot of bother,’ I said.

  ‘I read about it.’

  The story of the old people held in captivity and defrauded of their pensions had had a long run in the papers. The tabloids had eked it out for days and one of them had come up with ‘The Black Hole of Clovelly’. With some relatives who came to light and the investigations by the Social Security people, who were turning up a three- or four-year history, there was a major paper-selling item. A lot of bones
and skulls had been found in the backyard and analysis was proceeding.

  ‘Mrs Singer, we need to break confidentiality, at least a little.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I want you to arrange to release your husband’s dental records to the police. I’ll try to keep it as quiet as I can, but a technician or two might find out what’s going on.’

  She was silent.

  ‘I take it your husband did go to the dentist in the time you knew him?’

  ‘Twice, I think.’

  ‘That’ll do. Will you do what I say?’

  ‘Of course.’ I thought I detected some relief in her voice; certainly, she sounded less hostile. ‘You don’t really expect John to have been one of the victims, do you?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s fantastic.’

  ‘You’re right, it is. You saw the papers. One of the men in there had been a QC.’

  ‘You’re right, Mr Hardy. I’ll contact the dentist.’

  ‘Tell him to get the records to Detective Frank Parker with a covering note stressing confidentiality.’

  I rang off; it wasn’t the moment to try her out on the medical expenses. I couldn’t gauge her reaction. She didn’t seem to take the dental check very seriously and I didn’t know how serious about it I was myself. It would be a neat ending but somehow I hated to think of anyone I’d been connected with, even indirectly, finishing up as one of Manny and Mahoud’s discards.

  I needn’t have worried. Frank rang me the day I got home. I was installed on the couch downstairs with the phone to hand.

  ‘How’s the hero?’

  ‘Crippled. Doubt if I’ll ever hurdle again.’

  ‘Tough. Brace yourself, Hardy. We checked your chopper charts.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘First place, the skulls were mostly female; only two men. Second place, no Singer. Nothing like it.’

  ‘No mistakes? Good man on the job?’

  ‘The best. No mistakes. The soil of Clovelly is a great preserver.’

  ‘I’ve still got a case, then.’

  ‘Yeah. Who’s interested in Singer, if I may ask?’

  ‘Wife. D’you know anything about it?’

  ‘No, but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pull the file and take a look. Anything interesting I’ll pass on.’

  ‘Thanks, Frank. Any sign of Mahoud?’

  ‘No. You mentioned money in the house in your statement.’

  ‘Right. She tried to buy me off with it. I didn’t find any, but I didn’t do a complete search.’

  ‘We did. No money. Could she have been lying?’

  I thought back to the waves of desperation coming from behind that locked door. ‘I don’t think so. Looks like she took off with it.’

  ‘Could have been a bundle. Kertez had a fair bit in the bank, but nothing like what they were making.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Kertez, Manfred Kertez. The late Manfred.’

  ‘Oh.’ I shifted on the couch as the knee gave me a twinge. The ‘late’ tag was comforting; I’d had one nightmare about being alone in a forest with Manny and his shotgun. There had been snow and I had had no shoes; it must have all been terribly Freudian, but that didn’t help.

  ‘With a lot of money she’ll be hard to catch,’ I said.

  ‘True. Well, we shut the place down and we can close the file on Henneberry. Did you see the knife?’

  ‘I saw it.’

  ‘It checks out. The senator’s happy … well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘When can you get back to me on the Singer file?’

  ‘This arvo.’

  I rang Mrs Singer with the good news, if that’s what it was.

  ‘I’m not in the least surprised,’ she said. ‘Will you keep looking?’

  ‘I’m just out of hospital. I’ve got a bad knee and a very big hospital bill.’

  ‘I’ll pay the bill. Will you keep on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I used the stick and the furniture to get out to the kitchen for a drop of wine and a bit of cheese to aid thought. I was back on square one unless something in the police file on Singer put me on square two.

  I propped myself against the window frame in the front room and looked out. Good blue sky, bit of wind in the trees, ideal day for almost anything. I opened the door and hobbled down to the letter box. There was nothing there, but I liked the feeling of independence. I looked carefully up and down the street. My neighbour Harry Soames had a visitor who drove a jeep; a liquor store was delivering to a house across the road; the dog from the house on the corner was curled up asleep on the bonnet of a Holden. I could see his muddy paw marks on the roof. There were no suspicious-looking technicians working in the street, none up poles or down holes. I doubted that Freddy Ward would have the pull to get my phone tapped, but anything is possible. As I limped back to the house I reflected that if Ward was still interested in me I was probably on square three, more exposed and vulnerable than two.

  Frank rang in the early afternoon and was properly cautious. ‘You’d better ask me questions, Hardy. I’ll give you what I can.’

  ‘Did anything point to Singer being murdered?’

  ‘No, but nothing pointed to anything. Shit, he could be in Brazil. There’s one thing you mightn’t know, though. Singer took a trip to the US a few weeks before he disappeared. Bit of a mystery about what he did there.’

  ‘Interesting. Any chance of looking into it?’

  ‘Why don’t you? Wouldn’t she kick in for a trip to Los Angeles?’

  I let myself think about it for maybe thirty seconds. There was the international connection, of course—the ashram, Bruce Henneberry. But I knew it wasn’t on. The answer lay here in Sydney, or there wasn’t one. ‘No, I don’t think I can promote myself a trip to LA out of it.’

  ‘Pity. Well, I can try.’

  ‘Thanks. Whose movements were checked when it happened?’

  ‘The wife’s. All clear. Freddy Ward at his place in the country. Tom McLeary; movements accounted for by employees—not too firm, that. A few others—guy who worked on Singer’s yacht, an old girlfriend—all okay.’

  ‘Can I have the names and addresses?’

  ‘Sure.’ He read them off.

  ‘Listen, Frank, how many people know that those dental records were Singer’s?’

  ‘Just me. I photocopied the dentist’s stuff and blanked out the name. Standard procedure. Why?’

  ‘I’d like to keep it that way. Not knowing who I was working for gave me an edge on Ward and I’d like to keep it.’

  ‘You think Freddy Ward killed Singer?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What’re you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re lucky you don’t have to write reports.’

  ‘I know that. I think of it every month when I can’t meet the mortgage.’

  ‘I can’t meet the mortgage, either.’

  ‘You smoke’, I said. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘I’m stopping. Today.’

  ‘Bet you don’t.’

  ‘You’re on. What’ll it be?’

  ‘A bottle of Glenlivet.’

  ‘How long do I have to go?’

  ‘I’ll pay in a fortnight for a clean slate.’

  ‘How do I prove it?’

  ‘I’ll ask Policewoman Reynolds.’

  He snorted at that and rang off, but I thought I had a bet. Also I did know what I was going to do next—investigate privately, and that meant without telling Frank Parker.

  I rang Ann Winter at Bondi and the whisky voice gave me the number for Point Piper.

  ‘How’s your knee?’ she said.

  ‘Fair. I can just get around with a stick.’

  ‘Your stocks are high out Bondi way just now. Do you fancy older women?’

  I thought about it. ‘Depends on who they’re older than.’

  ‘I know a few who’d give you a good time. That Clovelly place really gave them the hor
rors.’

  ‘Me too. Listen, Ann, I want to talk to that woman who was at the wake. The one in the pink who said she knew the Singers. Where can I find her?’

  She answered immediately. ‘Back bar of the Royal Oak in Randwick.’

  I was working again.

  19

  I WAS under strict medical instructions not to move around more than necessary, but who ever took any notice of strict medical instructions? When I see a rise in the percentage of thin, fit doctors, I’ll start paying more attention to their strict instructions. Besides, the physical good I might have got by sitting on my bum at home would have been countered by the emotional disturbance. I had to know what was going on. I took a few red Codrals for the pain and put myself and my stick in a taxi. First stop was the bank for cash in various denominations, then Randwick.

  The taxi driver naturally assumed I was going to the races and that I was a man of leisure.

  ‘Got anything good?’ He spoke with the mixture of respect and distrust a working man feels for someone who comes out of his house casually dressed in the middle of a weekday. I hadn’t looked at the horses since the Singer case started.

  ‘Is Roderick Dhu running?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the fourth.’

  The horse was trained by a friend of mine, an ex-boxer who hardly ever fought an honest fight or ran a dishonest horse. ‘Get on that, each way.’

  The Royal Oaks is just far enough from the track for someone to walk over, forget his or her losses and think about punting another day. I limped from the taxi into the back bar, knocked the knee on a chair and was glad to get up on a bar stool and start work on a scotch. The lady in pink was there all right, in mauve that day, drinking and smoking in an experienced sort of way. She had a companion who looked middle-aged, but after Ann’s revelation of my subject’s age I was not confident about reading how many years these women had on the clock. She wasn’t young. They were both blowing the smoke around and not talking much; it didn’t look like anything that couldn’t be broken up with a little money. Ann had told me that she was going by the name of Peggy Harrison just then and that old Peg was a barrel of fun.