The Empty Beach

by Peter Corris

  ‘I get it. How long were you on with him?’

  ‘A year, bit less.’ She raised a finger to her mouth as if she was going to bite the nail, but pulled it away sharply and took a drink instead.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘He just went limp. He wasn’t the same, wouldn’t talk, no more jokes. He seemed to spend all his time thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘No idea. He hardly talked to me at all. I thought Marion was giving him hell about us.’

  ‘Do you know that for sure?’

  ‘No. But what else could it have been?’

  ‘Was he sick?’

  ‘He was never sick. Fit. You know?’

  Fit, I thought, fit, rich and smart. So what went wrong?

  ‘Peggy said he was impotent.’

  She laughed, a touch brutally, as if she had to toughen herself up to talk about this subject. ‘I bet she didn’t say that. True, though. He couldn’t do it. He gave me a car—I’ve still got it—and some money. He paid three months on the flat and that was it. He didn’t explain. I called him everything, but it made no bloody difference.’

  ‘Did you ever travel with him?’ I asked abruptly.

  ‘Sure. Queensland …’

  ‘I mean overseas.’

  ‘Japan once.’

  ‘He went to the States, didn’t he?’

  ‘Couple of times. No, I didn’t go.’

  The shadows were lengthening on the carpet, deepening the dark blues and reds, and a deep bronze patch glowed in the fading light. A shaft of sun through the clouds and through the window caught on the ornament on top of the TV and made it shimmer. The golden wheel seemed to turn slowly as the light caught it.

  I peeled off fifty dollars and put them on the arm of the chair. Mrs Singer’s bill was going to be high. That made me think of the hospital account, and maybe it was that which caused my knee to give a severe twinge. I bit my lip.

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Have you got any painkillers? I left mine at home.’

  ‘You don’t want a joint? Great for pain.’

  I smiled. ‘You’re a drug fiend, too?’

  She had her handsome face ready for a friendly expression, but it dropped away. ‘What d’you mean, too?’

  It had slipped out. I was so used to needling people, catching them on the raw, that I’d said it automatically. She wasn’t living in a flat with a Persian carpet and five thousand dollars worth of woofers and tweeters on the money John Singer had given her two years before. But it was no business of mine.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Have you got a pill?’

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said coldly. She walked out and I heard her banging cupboards and drawers. The knee was stiffening and getting sore; I got the stick and stood up to loosen it. I hobbled over to the television set and picked up the ornament. It was trophy time again. Every man should have at least one trophy. I used to have one at home myself, a little job: ‘RUNNER-UP HIGH SCHOOLS 4 X 220 YARDS’. I ran third leg and lost some ground that the fourth man made up. A long time ago.

  The doorbell rang and Sandy ran through the room and down the hall. She didn’t seem to be worried about her boyfriend finding her with a strange man and fifty bucks in a neat pile on a chair arm. I looked again at the plaque mounted on the ornament, unshipped my .38 and got it ready to shoot. The front door closed and when they got into the living-room, I had it pointed at his chest. I tossed the mounted steering wheel across at him.

  ‘Hello, Tal,’ I said.

  21

  TALBOT Brown, winner of the Philadelphia Stockcar Grand Prix in 1976, used both hands to catch his trophy. He hugged it to his chest and spoke in his soft accent.

  ‘Boy, oh boy. Are you in trouble.’

  I raised the gun a fraction. Sandy jumped and drew closer to Brown; for a second I thought she was going to slip in behind him. ‘I’d say you were in trouble, Talbot,’ I said. ‘I still owe you a few from last week.’

  I limped away from the window to take up the dominating position in the room, which is always in the centre and a little to the back. He watched me critically.

  ‘We didn’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘No, I met up with someone tougher than Rex.’

  ‘I’m real glad to hear it.’

  ‘He’s dead now, of course.’

  Smartarse stuff, but it’s sometimes like that. The guns are almost comic until they go off. I never heard anyone laugh straight after a gun went off. Sandy didn’t know the rules. She moved forward sharply which caused me to jerk the gun at her.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ She screeched. ‘Tal, do you know this man? What’s the gun …’

  Her alarm made me nervous. ‘Shut up!’ I snapped. ‘You’ve really been the rounds with this mob, haven’t you, Sandy? McLeary, Singer and now Freddy Ward’s chauffeur. Coming down in the world, though.’

  Brown moved forward a step and transferred the trophy to his right hand.

  ‘Put it down gently, Tal,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to break it. Do it or I’ll shoot you. I mean it!’

  He did it. Rex would have been in pretty bad shape when they found him and minus his big gun as well. That must have earned me a little respect, but I couldn’t afford to lose a fraction of it.

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now sit down and let’s keep it friendly. You tell me what I want to know and nobody gets hurt. If you don’t, I won’t be answerable. This leg makes me very bad-tempered. How’s Rex, by the way?’

  He sat down on the edge of a chair, hitching at his pants a bit as he did it. His black beard was carefully trimmed and didn’t look as if it hid a weak chin as my father always opined beards did. He had been wrong about a lot of things. Tal didn’t look quite as wide out of his overalls, but he was wide enough. He was wearing a blue suit with a blue and white wide-striped shirt under it. I picked out the point on the stripe I’d have to hit to stop him.

  ‘Rex is real anxious to meet you again,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll bet. Sandy, you mentioned a drink before. And did you find any painkillers?’

  She looked at Brown, who nodded impatiently. ‘How did you take Rex? He wouldn’t tell us. And what did you do with his gun? He was crazy about that weapon.’

  ‘I took him with a bit of string and a hell of a lot of luck. I’d say Rex was an unlucky type. He should be in a different line of work. I gave his gun to the cops.’

  He looked surprised at that and not pleased.

  ‘I never knew a driver who was any good with a gun. Have you got one, Tal?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. You know, I saw a pump shotgun the other day. Belonged to the guy who gave me this leg. If I had it here I could demonstrate what it can do. I should have souvenired it. It’d knock that fancy TV set through the wall, for a start.’

  Sandy had been clinking things in the kitchen. She came in with a tray and nearly dropped it when she heard me. There was a bottle of Teacher’s scotch on the tray with some glasses and a bowl of ice. She’d filled a milk bottle with water and it rattled against a glass as she put the tray down. A strip of Aspros was beside the scotch.

  Tal didn’t look too comfortable; he glanced at my head bandage a couple of times as if he was wondering whether I’d suffered brain damage. That was all right with me.

  ‘I’ll take four Aspros,’ I said to Sandy. She peeled the paper off. ‘And a bit of the Teacher’s with water. Keep to one side as you do it!’

  I sat down in the chair with the money on it and sipped my drink while she poured two more. She sat down; I put my glass down, picked up the money and flicked it at her. The notes fell untidily on the Persian carpet.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Tal asked, and his accent was a little less soft.

  ‘Information,’ I said. ‘Like what you’re going to give me, except that I’m not going to pay for it.’

  ‘Get fucked.’ He was lifting his glass to his mouth. I swung the stick and the metal ferrule hit it just right�
��the glass shattered and the liquid sprayed all over him. Sandy shrieked and dropped her drink.

  ‘A waste,’ I said. ‘And bloody bad for the carpet.’ I put the stick down, keeping the gun steady, and had a drink. I crumbled two of the Aspros in my fingers and put the powder into the glass.

  ‘My leg hurts. And I’m nervous, and I don’t like people who kick me. As I said, you’re in trouble.’

  ‘He’s mad,’ Sandy whispered.

  ‘I told you to get fucked.’ He was picking glass out of his clothes. His trousers were wet at the thighs and a little cut on his cheek just above the beard was bleeding. A sliver of glass caught in the dark beard glittered like a gem. Adrenalin was rushing through me and my mind was speeding, but I reckoned I didn’t have long in the cockpit. The phone could ring; someone could call. Tal was genuinely tough and resourceful the way racing drivers have to be. He’d try something.

  ‘I won’t try to be reasonable with you,’ I said. ‘Racing drivers are fucking lunatics to start with. I want to know why Freddy Ward was so interested in me.’

  His mouth started to form those same words again and I tapped him on the knee with the stick, not hard, not soft. ‘I learned a bit about knees in the hospital. How they work, and all. Tricky things, easy to hurt.’ I whacked the side of the same knee. He winced and swore.

  ‘Knees and eyes,’ I said. ‘That’s what a driver needs. I guess hands aren’t so important.’ His hand was resting on the arm of the chair and I slammed the stick down on it. He yelped and wrung the hand.

  I kept my eyes locked on his and moved the gun up a bit. ‘This is a Smith & Wesson Combat .38, two-inch barrel, six shots. But you won’t have to worry about the six shots. I’m going to shoot you in the right knee, then I’m going to poke your left eye out with this.’ I tapped the stick. ‘With a bit of luck you’ll still be able to drive—automatics.’

  Sandy started to cry softly. ‘I won’t lay a finger on you,’ I said. It was a crude hard-soft sell and I was using all the props I had. I kept tapping the stick and Sandy kept crying and it all got to Tal eventually.

  ‘You wouldn’t do it,’ he said shakily.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’d lose your licence.’ It was a weak effort and he knew it. I grinned at him and moved the two-inch barrel forward one inch.

  ‘You abducted me and beat me up. I’ve got a witness to the abduction and people saw me afterwards. Now, I’m in a hard game; if it got around that you did that to me and got away with it, I’d lose a lot of business. That’s one thing. Another is that I’ve had a traumatic experience. You can see the bandages. I’m not quite right in the head, you might say. That’s two. Last, who’s on your side? Sandy might go to the cops, but she might not. I might lose the licence. I don’t think so, but what difference would it make to you in your wheelchair? I’m finished talking, Tal. Last chance.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ll tell you what I know.’

  I took a sip of the scotch and couldn’t taste it. ‘Good. Don’t bullshit me, or we’re back where we started. I know there’s politics in it, and the casinos. Let’s take it on from there.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘There’s this new area near Camden; what do you call it down here? A growth area? Freddy wants in with the massage parlours and the gambling. He’s decentralising, but he’s afraid he’s losing his grip. I don’t know much about the casino deal; it’s some kind of three-way split and Freddy missed the boat. This Camden thing is real big for him. There’s people don’t like him and people who have to like him if he’s going to get the action. He thought you might be working for someone who’s trying to keep him out of this new spot.’

  ‘How would I do that?’

  ‘By digging up the dirt on his operations in the eastern suburbs and passing it on.’

  ‘The cops know all about that.’

  ‘It’s not cops we’re talking about.’

  ‘Politicians?’

  ‘Right.’

  I let out a slow breath I hadn’t meant to hold that long. ‘What else?’

  ‘Nothing. I swear it, Hardy. He needs to be Mr Clean for these political types.’

  ‘Why? He’s buying them, isn’t he?’

  ‘That’s the way it works.’

  I thought it over while he fidgeted. People don’t like to see other people thinking. You never can tell which way thinking is going to pan out. I let him sweat. What he’d said sounded right. The new slums-to-be they called ‘growth areas’ were an open go. Fucking and gambling were the in-demand services; there wasn’t much else to do in those dumps. You needed to fix some aldermen, which took more money than subtlety, and some of the next rank of politicians, which took a bit of both. Bill Anderson would be interested. I thought I knew how to use the information myself.

  ‘Is Freddy Ward insane?’

  The change of tack brought a look of relief to his face, which had been locked into a grimace of doubt. He dried his palms on his pants leg. Sandy was quiet.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. You saw him. Look, I just drive for him; I don’t talk to his goddamn doctor.’

  He was getting cocky again and it was time for me to go. ‘Okay, I believe you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you something for free—Tom McLeary says Ward killed John Singer.’

  ‘Jesus.’ He looked quickly at Sandy.

  ‘That’s what Tom told me and what he’s told a lot of people lately. Anything in it, d’you reckon?’

  Brown shook his head slowly. ‘Before my time.’

  ‘Sandy?’

  The tears had made her eyes shine and given her an innocent look she probably hadn’t had since she was twelve.

  ‘I don’t know how John died. He was a wonderful swimmer. I don’t see how he could have drowned.’

  ‘That’s what a lot of people think. Mac says Ward fixed it so he couldn’t swim, but he could be wrong. Nasty rumour, though.’

  I got up carefully, not putting too much weight on the stick and not letting anything deflect the gun. Tal was doing the thinking now and it didn’t look as though he could do that and try rough stuff at the same time.

  I went slowly past them and backed down the passage to the door. I closed it hard behind me and put my ear to it. The first sound I heard was the clink of a bottle against a glass; the second was the sound of a telephone dialling.

  22

  I HAD a slight relapse after this activity. The knee hurt like hell on the way down the stairs at Sandy’s place, hurt in the taxi and felt as if someone was hammering four-inch nails into it when I got home. The hospital had given me some analgesics which I’d avoided, but I took them then. They wiped me out for hours and left me wakeful and fretful through the night. Hilde did some early-morning nursing and brought in a big cardboard box from the doorstep before leaving for her lectures. She looked, I noted resentfully, fresh, fit and cheerful.

  ‘Something here for you to play with,’ she said. ‘Are you comfortable, Cliff?’

  ‘Like a koala in a tree,’ I growled. ‘What’s in the bloody box?’

  She thumped it down on the floor beside the couch. ‘I can hardly bear to leave all this joy and happiness. See you later, sunshine.’

  I grunted and lifted the lid of the box. It contained knee-exercising gear—ropes, weights and pulleys—which the hospital was hiring out to me at some expense. Another bill for Mrs Singer. I’m not mechanically minded, and setting up the equipment taxed me. When it was assembled I set it to ‘light work’, put my foot in the sling and lifted. ‘Light work’ was quite heavy enough for the time being. ‘Transverse movement’ sounded a bit on the painful side. The equipment and the elastic bandage that had to be applied before using it took me back to my athletics days, to those third-leg relays and the long and high jumps that seemed to land me on rubbing tables as often as not. Football meant bruises and stitches, until it seemed that tennis was the only game I could play without injuring myself. Eventually I gave up trying to be Bob Matthias and with drinking, smoking and
staying up late I got in good shape for snooker.

  At mid-morning I got on the phone to Camden. After half an hour I located Bill Anderson at the school where he was teaching history.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. Another cheerful bastard. ‘What’s been happening?’

  ‘Nothing much. I’ve got a line on the owner of that house and a few other details that might interest you.’

  ‘Hang on.’ The line hummed with background sounds—doors opening and closing, yawns and cups clinking.

  ‘American history,’ he said. ‘I told them to check for lies in Nixon’s inauguration address.’

  ‘That’s not history.’

  ‘It is to them. They’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘What about Roosevelt?’

  ‘I asked them once. One of the smarter ones thought he was something to do with Breaker Morant. What’ve you got on mystery mansion?’

  I filled him in on Ward’s plans for the growth area and the way he was likely to go about them. I apologised for not knowing any of the names.

  ‘Don’t need ’em,’ he said. ‘Not hard to guess at a few. It’s very interesting, Mr Hardy. Could help.’

  ‘Cliff,’ I said. ‘How d’you look for the election?’

  ‘Just fair. I’m not too worried. I’m having fun.’

  I’d never heard a politician say he was having fun before. ‘Would you like to do me another favour?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m trying to stir the possum a bit. If you could drop the word that Tom McLeary says Freddy Ward bumped off John Singer, it’d help.’

  ‘Ward responsible Singer murder according to McLeary. That it?’

  ‘Yeah. Be subtle.’

  ‘We’ve got a good bowling club out here. Is that the sort of place you’d like it dropped?’

  ‘Exactly. And a pub or two.’

  ‘You want to make sure it gets to the Lions and Rotary.’

  ‘You’ve got the idea.’

  He said he’d get on it after school, which meant after lunch. School teaching has changed; my teachers would never have said an American President lied, or have knocked off after lunch. Most of them had worn suits, they had all worn ties, and half of them had tried to pretend they had still been in the army.