Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘D’you want a drink?’ She waved a hand at a cupboard under the bookcase.

‘No, I want to hear the cassette.’

She took it out of her bag and slipped it into the machine.

‘I’m going to wash.’ She punched the ‘play’ button and went out of the room. Bruce Henneberry’s drawling voice blocked out the sound of water running.

‘October 3,’ he said, ‘One pm. Two items for Cliff Hardy. One, Leon. Talked to him this morning. He knows things and he’ll talk for money. I got an interesting sample-social security scam. Two, the Mellow Yellows. Ashram on Salisbury Street. Guy I saw is Brother Gentle. Off the planet but knows the oldies. Have notes. Have to run, will fill in later.’

I played it through again. Ann came back into the room with a freshened-up look. She leaned against the wall and listened.

‘Pretty cryptic,’ I said. ‘Was it always like that?’

‘No, that’s just a notes tape. It’s not cryptic. Leon, he’s a wino who lives near Bruce. He’s the real thing-picks up cigarette butts in the street, pisses in public. He’s been charged with exposing himself hundreds of times, does a few days or weeks and they let him out. He’s around, no-one notices him, he probably hears things.’

‘Mellow Yellows?’

‘Meditation freaks. Salisbury Street, as Bruce says. Said.’ She stopped and looked at me. I was sitting on the bed and I wondered if she was recalling being in it with Henneberry.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Shit, shit, shit. You still haven’t told me how Bruce died. Was he shot, or what?’

‘He was stabbed,’ I said.

‘It would be something sneaky like that. He was so brave, you know?’

‘I know. I saw him in action.’

She gave a sour laugh. ‘He came over here to avoid the draft initially. Then he went back and came out again. He was so nice. Some of the kids…’ She broke off and went over to the cupboard, which turned out to be a small refrigerator-cum-bar, she got out a can of beer and held it up. I nodded and she got another one. We popped our cans and I suppose we drank a toast to the late champ.

‘You make him sound like a crusader,’ I said. ‘Crusaders in that business get stomped on.’

She shook her head hard. ‘He wasn’t crusading.’

The image of Henneberry on his living-room floor was still sharp in my mind and I didn’t want to talk about him in case I let it slip that ‘stabbed’ wasn’t exactly right. I pointed to the cassette player.

‘Who would have heard this besides you?’

She drank some more beer, showing me that nice neck again.

‘Hell, I don’t know. People at Manny’s could have heard it. They play music tapes on the same machine. Our stuff gets mixed up with it sometimes.’

‘Doesn’t sound very secure.’

‘That’s what I thought, but Bruce said it was. You hide shit in the barnyard, he said.’

Yanks, I thought. ‘Did you leave tapes every day?’

‘No, not every day. But he was going to turn up with one today for sure.’ She finished her beer and set the can down on the floor. Then she dropped down beside it and let her long legs sprawl out on the thick, white carpet. She bit her lip. ‘Sometimes he’d just sing the “Star Spangled Banner” or quote a poem…’

I nodded. ‘Did he ever make copies of a tape?’

‘Yes, if it was something important. One for him and one for me.’

I thought back to the layout in the flat. No cassettes around.

‘Would it upset you too much to play it again?’ I asked.

She scrambled across to the fridge. ‘I’m going to get pissed tonight. Let’s hear it again.’ She got a half bottle of Southern Comfort from the bar and a nice Swedish-looking glass. She asked me if I wanted a drink, I said, ‘No’, and she rewound the tape and played it again. She poured out a big dollop of the booze and knocked it back while I listened closely, trying to pick up background noise. There was traffic, conversation and the sound of things being put down.

‘Manny’s?’ I said.

‘Could be.’

I reached over to recover the tape, but the machine was too complicated for me. She pressed the right button and I lifted the cassette out. I was very conscious of her, close and smelling of tobacco and Southern Comfort. She had a patterned cardigan on over a skivvy; her jeans were white but dirty and her feet were bare. She looked more like a gypsy than ever with her hair tangling down onto her shoulders.

‘Do you like this room?’ she asked suddenly.

I glanced around critically. ‘I’m too poor to like it,’ I said.

She emptied her glass and topped it up. ‘Bruce didn’t like it, and he was rich.’

I could feel the cracks opening in her tough facade and the development of a jumpy, unpredictable logic that might help her through her pain but that only she could follow. I’d seen it before.

‘Well, there’s a lot here…’

‘Here!’ She waved her free hand at the walls that had posters on them that looked hand-painted and the shelf of hard-cover books. ‘There’s nothing here, nothing! You should see the rest of the place. Wanna see it?’

When it came to prostitution and drugs she was as tough as she needed to be, but death was another matter. Maybe she’d never had any direct contact with it before, coming from that Point Piper cocoon. An instinct told me that no comfort from me would be welcome.

‘Another time. I’ve got to go. Will you be all right?’

‘D’you mean will I take pills or something?’ She gave a skittish laugh and raised her glass. ‘Not me. I’ll bomb out on this. I’ll be back in Bondi tomorrow.’

‘Why don’t you give yourself a few days off?’

‘It’s worse here than there, believe me. Come on, I’ll show you back out to the real world.’

We went back the way we’d come, noiselessly.

‘The police’ll be onto you soon. I was a bit vague about you when I talked to them. I’d be grateful if you could be a bit vague about me.’

‘No worries,’ she said. ‘I’ll be feminine, it’s the only way with cops.’

I drove off wondering how feminine wiles would work on Frank Parker. Then I wondered how masculine wiles would work on Ann Winter.

Hilde was still up and watching television when I got home.

‘That killing in Bondi,’ she said. ‘I saw it on the news. Nothing to do with you, was it?’

‘You didn’t really see it. Yeah, it was everything to do with me. I found him.’

‘Ugh. How was it?’

I was tired and frustrated, full of confused half-thoughts with no connections. Like most people, I take those moods out on someone else and Hilde was the nearest to hand. ‘How do you think it was?’ I snapped. ‘It was fucking messy. You work in a pink and white world don’t you, Hilde, love?’

She tried to weather the storm with a light touch. ‘There’s some yellow in it.’

‘Well, intestines, guts, are grey and green. Did you know that?’

She didn’t say anything, just looked blankly at the shimmering screen. She’d turned the sound down and people with orange faces and blue hair were whispering to each other. Within seconds I was sorry for what I’d said. I told her so.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘You get like that. It’s stress.’

‘Why don’t you move in with an apiarist?’ I said. ‘I’m told they’re the most unstressed people around.’

She examined me as she might a chipped tooth-worth saving, maybe, but a lot of work. ‘Where would I find a landlord who’d let me get so far behind with the rent?’

‘Well, you’re helping me defraud the income tax people.’ Saying that swung my mind back to John Singer. His tax records would be interesting. Maybe he owed a bundle and had decided to default.