The Empty Beach

by Peter Corris

  I told Anderson I’d get on to my Aunt Lyndall and put her to work with her coffee circle. He asked me what I’d done with the gun and when I said I’d given it to the police he sounded happy.

  Ann Winter was still at Point Piper and sounding defensive.

  ‘I was thinking of coming over to see you,’ she said. ‘Is your lady there?’

  ‘She’s not my lady. Feel like slumming, do you?’ I was at it again, needling unnecessarily.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Hardy?’ she snarled. I could picture her working with a thumbnail at the ragged end of one of her rollies and dropping ash on the shag pile.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Reckon I’ve chucked it, do you? Stopping on here in Disneyland?’ I didn’t say anything and she went on, working herself up. ‘I’m writing. Heard of that? Writing up? You do it away from the field. Malinowski didn’t do it in the fucking Trobriands, he did it in London.’

  ‘Ann, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s my knee, blame the knee. Listen, are you going back to Bondi soon?’

  ‘Yes, I have to go back tonight for a bit. Some things I have to check. Oh, did you see Peg?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw her. She was a big help. You could help me some more if you’d whisper around a certain canard.’

  I heard her sigh on the line. ‘You know, I could never decide whether I liked you or not, and I still can’t.’

  ‘You do,’ I said. ‘You like me. Besides, we saved each other’s lives. It’s a bond.’

  ‘There’s that, I suppose. What is it—the canard?’

  ‘That Thomas McLeary says Freddy Ward killed John Singer.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘Did he what?’

  ‘Kill him.’

  ‘I thought you might be asking if McLeary said he did.’

  ‘Oh, shit. Never mind. All right, if I get a chance I’ll spread it.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll take you out to dinner when this is all over and we’ll talk about Radcliffe-Brown.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘Look after your other leg.’ Click.

  I’m not what you’d call a committee man. I get restless if I hear more than two people talking about the same subject because it’s a fair bet that only one of them will be talking sense. So I don’t like teamwork or sub-contracting and only do it when I have to.

  Roger Wallace runs a big investigating agency in town and has tried to recruit me several times, without success. We pre serve a mutual professional respect. I got past his secretary to a direct enjoyment of his successful voice.

  ‘I heard you got thumped, Cliff,’ he said.

  ‘Kicked.’

  ‘Not there, I hope.’

  ‘No, Roger, not there.’

  ‘Good. Well?’

  ‘I need a house watched. Big place, out Camden way. Also a tail on one or two men. A phone call to me if there are interesting developments. No action.’

  ‘Easy. Whose house?’

  ‘Freddy Ward.’

  ‘Freddy? How nice. He do the kicking?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You surprise me. All right, you’re on. Two men and they don’t come cheap. How long?’

  ‘Two days, three at most.’

  ‘When do they start?’

  ‘Now.’ I gave him details of Ward’s house and descriptions of Rex and Tal. I told him that there could be activity in Glebe and the eastern suburbs. He told me his chilling daily rate; I looked around my room that needed painting and wondered how much the agents got to keep.

  By lunchtime I felt better. I scrambled some eggs, drank wine and soda and called Frank Parker inviting him over and asking him to bring a few things with him. While I waited I read some more of Hemingway’s letters, which Hilde had given me in hospital. I was reflecting that I hadn’t written a personal letter in years when Frank knocked.

  ‘Nice dump,’ Frank said when he got inside.

  ‘You always say the right thing. Drink?’

  He had one and put his feet on a chair. He was wearing a lightweight grey suit and a blue tie. He fiddled with the end of the tie.

  ‘Not smoking?’ I said.

  ‘No. Get to the point, Hardy. Glebe is all greyhounds and trendies as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t like either.’

  ‘Right. I’m stirring up trouble between Freddy Ward and Tom McLeary.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be hard. Why?’

  ‘To find out what happened to Singer.’

  ‘They know?’

  ‘Someone knows in that bloody troika, and I want to squeeze it out.’

  ‘Troika? You count Mrs Singer in too?’

  ‘Have to.’

  ‘She hired you to find out.’

  I leaned forward to pour him more wine. ‘Maybe she put him through her blender and can’t handle the guilt; I just don’t know. But I reckon I can flush something out.’

  He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a cylinder about the size of a nasal inhaler. He tossed it up and caught it. ‘Why d’you want this?’

  ‘I’ve got one more move to make. I have to front McLeary and twist his balls. That’ll be dangerous and I’d like to have someone on hand to help.’

  ‘We’re understaffed.’

  ‘You brought that. You’re going to play along.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I can probably find a cadet to put on it. It’s irregular, but everything’s fucking irregular these days. Did you hear we’re getting gay policemen?’

  ‘You’ve already had them. It’s just a matter of owning up.’

  He looked sour at that; it was cigarette time, so he played with the cylinder. ‘Pretty simple, this. It gives off a hum in the patrol car-directional. You flick this switch and it screams. Good for half a mile or so.’ He threw it across and I caught it.

  ‘Thanks. How many men can you spare?’

  ‘I’ll give you two for three days.’

  ‘I’d rather have three for two days.’

  ‘No.’ He got up and stretched. ‘Back to it. I’m looking forward to the Glenlivet.’

  ‘You’ll crack.’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I won’t.’ I believed him. ‘I’ll put them on in the morning. That okay?’

  I said it was, and opened the door for him.

  ‘You’ll have to think of somewhere to put that bleeper, Hardy. If you stick it up your arse you won’t be able to work the switch.’

  23

  I READ, watched television, ate and used the knee exerciser. Hilde didn’t come home; she doesn’t always. I took the analgesics again and read Hemingway in the wee small hours. Tough luck, Scott, tough luck, Ernest. I thought about the Singer case and decided I’d handled it all wrong. I should have tried to find out in detail what sort of man Singer was; what he thought, what he did hour by hour. Then I might have been able to judge what he did to himself or what was done to him. But it was too late for that and the water was muddied. My present strategy was a Judas goat approach. I didn’t like it, but it was all there was. Of course I could pull out altogether, declare a no-contest, but that wasn’t on; I’d done it before and it left me with that feeling of being unable to recall a fact, but magnified a thousand times and intolerable.

  Hilde came home in the morning and I sent her out to do a little shopping for me. It took her most of the morning and when she got back she poured herself a hefty glass of wine, a rare thing for her to do before six.

  ‘Some men are watching the house,’ she said.

  ‘That’d be right. What do they look like?’

  ‘I only caught a glimpse—moustaches and longish hair.’ She touched the back of the collar of the shirt she was wearing. She had her hair up in a tight bun.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘They’re cops. It’s the ones with the short hair and suits you have to worry about.’

  She sniffed and drank some wine. I had a glass with her just to be companionable. I flexed the knee and thought it felt a bit firmer.

  ‘What’
s happening, Cliff? Is it dangerous?’

  ‘Moderately. I’ll take you out for a sauerbraten when it’s all over.’

  ‘I don’t like sauerbraten.’

  The second team of cops came on duty in the early evening; Frank had been better than his word. I rang Roger Wallace.

  ‘Freddy’s keeping it rural. He might be sighting in rifles, of course. One of his boys went into town and stomped around the beaches for a bit.’

  ‘Is he back yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think there’ll be action when he gets back. Let me know.’

  He called back an hour later. ‘Moving,’ he said. ‘Freddy and three others, two cars, heading for town.’

  ‘Thanks, Roger. Send me the bill.’

  Hilde had gone out to a film. She phoned as I’d asked and said she thought there were at least two suspicious-looking cars parked near the house. I asked her what film she was going to.

  ‘Gallipoli.’

  ‘My grandfather was there.’

  ‘On which side?’ she asked.

  I got out the knee brace that Hilde had brought that morning. It was a revolting object with straps, flesh-coloured plastic and padding. It nauseated me to look at it, which was part of the idea. I slit the padding and tucked the little cylinder away, positioned so that I could get at the switch and look as if I was scratching my knee. The brace stiffened the knee and hurt, but all great planners have their problems. Think of Napoleon and his piles.

  There was no point in putting it off. I left the house and limped along the street, trying to keep the end of the stick out of the dog shit. I made it to the Toxteth and had a beer in the half-empty bar. The television was on with a news report that a certain known criminal had been shot and killed by a certain known policeman. Everyone seemed to know everyone else—the crim’s brother knew the copper who knew the crim’s girlfriend.

  ‘LA again?’ the barman asked.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘What’d you do to your leg?’

  I thought of saying, ‘A ski-ing accident’, and then I saw my face in the mirror behind the bar. The two grooves that ran down beside my nose seemed to be getting deeper and when I squinted to see better the crows’ feet cracked and fissured beside my eyes. It wasn’t a ski-ing face; it was an amateur boxing face, a square-bashing face, a worrying-about-the-prostate face. Hell, I thought. I am putting it off.

  The street beside the Toxteth hotel is narrow and dark and leads down to the water. Not a very nice stretch of water. I was halfway down it when the car pulled in a few yards ahead of me. A man jumped out of the back seat and went behind me; the driver moved in to block me off. He had a good-sized gun in his hand; it was a bad light for shooting but the range was perfect. Unless I did a Fosdick flop over the car, they had me.

  ‘Get in the car, Hardy,’ Bob said.

  He’d wanted to fight me way back on day one, and now he looked a little embarrassed to be holding a gun on a crippled man. He shoved it in his pocket and flexed a couple of muscles instead.

  ‘How’s Sharon?’ I said.

  He jerked his thumb rudely and I moved towards the car, which was a Commodore, not as roomy for my leg as the Caddy. I leaned on the stick while the second man opened the back door. He gave me a little push and relieved me of the stick as I stumbled in. He swung the stick and broke it on a brick pillar; the broken end snapped up and hit him in the face. I laughed and he swore. We weren’t off to a good start, him and me.

  He got in beside me, still swearing, and the gunman got behind the wheel.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I said.

  My companion in the back told me to shut up. He had bad body odour and I was already sweating with fear. If we went very far, the back seat would smell like a truckie’s crotch.

  We rolled sedately down to the water and took the back way to Bridge Road. Bob picked up speed a bit around Wentworth Park and swung out fast into Wattle Street. He was driving over the speed limit, but not fast enough to raise a five-point alarm. I knocked my knee on one of the turns. Bob kept one eye on the rear vision mirror.

  I reviewed my plan as he did his stuff and the atmosphere in the back of the car got richer. People like Ward, Singer and McLeary inhabit a world of their own. It has its own society and rules, meeting places and established procedures. You don’t find out anything about it by hanging around the edges; you have to dive right into the middle of the steaming pile. I planned to accuse McLeary of killing Singer; if he took it seriously, that would mean something. Ward was already taking it seriously; the trick was to stay alive and to work out what the reactions meant. I had the cops and the bleeper as a safety net. It was crude, but so was Jack Dempsey’s left hook.

  The hard part was the fear. One part of me rejected all this and wanted escape via a magic lantern and three wishes. That part said, To hell with Ward and McLeary and all the other scum that floats in the city. This was the part that wondered why I didn’t have the things other men had—degrees, a wife, superannuation. Against that was the vanity I’d told Ann Winter about, the strong fear of showing fear. And I couldn’t really see myself as Clifford Hardy, MA, father of two and due for his long-service leave. I didn’t need it. The fear was uncomfortable, but it suited me better to fight it than to give in to it.

  The Commodore went faster in Chippendale as we headed up towards Anzac Parade. Bob flicked the wheel and we suddenly shot left down a one-way street. He went down a lane, turned and went back across Cleveland Street through a red light. He did another quick series of turns and I could see the lights of the Parade up ahead of us and the dark blankness of Moore Park off to the right.

  ‘Lose ’em?’ the smelly one asked.

  Bob nodded and lit the cigarette he’d been carrying in his mouth the whole time.

  That was the first thing to go wrong.

  24

  IT was Rushcutters Bay; the water slapped against the pier and the boats and it was expensive water. Expensive to live near and very expensive to sail on. It was cheap to swim in, but the expensive boats’ fuel and wastes had fixed it so no one would want to swim there. I thought of swimming as they herded me through a concrete car park into a lift that ran up into the body of a big apartment block. It was hard going without the stick and with the knee brace and I lurched and grabbed at things to steady myself. One-legged swimming would be no fun, especially with my hands tied. The guy who had a raw streak on his face where the broken stick had hit him laughed when I fell in the lift. I heaved myself up and wondered whether an off balance punch into the middle of his face would be worth what I’d get in return. I decided it wouldn’t.

  We stepped out onto thick carpet and walked between creamy walls with tasteful paintings economically spaced. At suite twelve Bob knocked and brushed down his clothes. Sharon opened the door. She was wearing a pink jump suit, was stilted up on four-inch-heeled gold sandals and looked about sixteen, just. She inclined her head, her platinum hair bounced and my escorts bustled me down a short parqueted passage into a room with thicker carpet than the hallway and worse paintings.

  A man was sitting at a table in the middle of the room. The table was covered with take-away food—cartons of chicken, two medium-sized pizzas, Lebanese bread and meats and chipped potatoes. He was eating with his fingers, stuffing the food in and wiping his hands with a paper napkin. He was bulky, built square and unmistakably the man who had parked his cadillac outside Marion Singer’s apartment building.

  ‘Hello, Mac,’ I said.

  There was a nervous hiss of breath from Bob. Smelly sucked his teeth and went out of the room.

  ‘Sit,’ Mac said. ‘Drink?’ He was drinking beer from a pewter mug but there was a bar in the corner of the room under a painting of horses.

  ‘Scotch.’

  Mac combined more chewing with a nod and Sharon, who wasn’t legally old enough to sniff the stuff, made the drink. She had a drink herself, something greenish. Bob wasn’t invited to sit or drink, but he didn’t seem to mind. I to
ok the drink and made a close study of my host.

  He was about five foot six, I guessed, and must have weighed sixteen stone. Some of the weight was in his belly, but most of it was meat and muscle packed high up on his chest, around his shoulders and into his thick neck. He had small blue eyes, a very high colour and silver hair brushed back. He had on a white business shirt with a light line in it, the dark trousers of an eight-hundred-dollar suit and black oxfords with a high gloss. He had no jewellery, no tie; white hair sprung out at the neck of the shirt. He looked about sixty and good for twenty more years if his eating habits changed.

  ‘Why are you telling lies about me?’ His voice was flat and neutral. He shook his head and spoke again before I could. ‘Nothing but lies.’ He gave the ‘nothing’ a touch of ‘nothink’—a Christian Brothers boy, maybe.

  I drank some of the scotch and rubbed my knee; my fingers slid over that disgusting plastic. ‘I’m like that. I tell lies to find out the truth.’

  Mac up-ended his pewter pot and held it out to Sharon, who was sipping her drink. I finished the scotch and stuck my glass out too.

  ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ Mac said. ‘And I’m not giving you any more free drinks.’ Sharon ignored me and took the pewter mug across to the bar, where she poured half a bottle of Cooper’s ale into it. Mac ate some chips and took a big scoop of the hoummos up with a shovel of bread.

  ‘I’m trying to find out what happened to John Singer.’

  ‘He drowned.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Two years ago.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He looked interested but not fascinated; his priorities at the moment seemed to be the food, the beer, Sharon and me. When she brought the beer over, she bent over and let him see down the front of her suit. I saw a bit too. I paired them mentally—with him on top you’d see her feet and forehead sticking out at either end. The idea amused me.

  ‘I wouldn’t smile if I was you, shithead,’ Mac said. He took a big pull on the beer. ‘Why’re you going around saying Freddy Ward killed Singer and putting it on me?’