Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘You didn’t see him?’

She shook her head again and looked away from the stairs. I walked up them counting, thirteen in all. The toilet had a light burning inside it and some light seeped out through the cracked door. There was a light switch on the landing; I flicked it and a sixty- or seventy-five-watt bulb came on above the top stair. There was a threadbare but intact carpet outside the toilet and a runner in the same condition on the stairs. I went back to the kitchen and asked Rose whether the landing light had been on yesterday in the afternoon and evening.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Some of me roomers are quite old, you know. They need the light.’

Then I asked her why she hadn’t asked me for any identification and why she was talking so freely to me.

‘Nothing would surprise me now,’ she said.

‘How’s that?’

‘They found quite a bit of money in Leon’s room, in the mattress. The police, I mean. They wouldn’t say how much, but someone said they filled a paper bag with it. I thought you were something to do with the money.’

I let her go on thinking it. I was thinking myself. A derelict with a bag full of money isn’t unique; Griffo had had a few thousand in the bank when he died, and he’d been panhandling for years. Also, Leon wouldn’t have been the first man to be murdered for the money in the mattress, but in those cases the murderer usually bothered to take the money with him or her. I was sweating in the warm, still air when I got back to the car and that made a drink seem like a good idea.

I found a pub within walking distance from where I’d parked and went in to do some more thinking over a middy. It had begun to look as if Mrs Singer had been on to something and that someone wasn’t happy about information about John Singer being passed around. My enquiry seemed to be the likely link between the deaths of Henneberry and Leon if the latter wasn’t an accident. I didn’t think it was. Information, whatever it was, had, in this scenario, caused the deaths of two men. I didn’t have the information myself but I was still looking for it and I had to face the fact that someone might object strenuously. Not for the first time I reflected that a hundred and twenty a day wasn’t a good rate for getting dead, but there was no point in upping the fees. A thousand a day is still a poor deal.

True to my new code, I had just the one beer. Back at the car I looked across at the flats, which had lost their Hollywood Morocco air as the sun had moved on. The street was peaceful; a couple of cars drifted by and a woman strolled along the pavement with a small child weaving around beside her. It was hard to believe that two murders had been committed within a stone’s throw. Then I told myself I hadn’t clinched that the way it needed to be clinched.

Back in College Street, I had the feeling that I was crisscrossing my tracks and not finding my way out of the woods. The cop at the desk was a survivor of the days when I used to visit Evans there, and he let me go up to Frank Parker’s office without an escort. I admired Frank’s cool even more when I saw how his working conditions shaped up when everyone was in. All four detectives were at their desks; there was a fug in the air and one of the cops was hitting a typewriter like an enraged child. Another was slamming filing cabinet doors as if it was his favourite indoor sport. Parker wasn’t fazed; he had his head down and was annotating a typed sheet with a gold ballpoint pen. His shirt cuffs were folded neatly back, and under the nasty, flickering fluorescent light the scar on his arm stood out like an airstrip in the jungle. There were three phones within Parker’s reach; one rang and he unerringly grabbed the right one. He looked up, saw me and nodded. He tucked the phone under his chin and pulled a sheet of paper towards him.

I leaned against a filing cabinet and congratulated myself that I didn’t have to sit behind a desk covered with paper. Parker’s paper problem was enormous and although he looked as if he had the stuff well organised, it was threatening to organise him. He put the phone down quietly, finished his note-making and folded his hands on top of the paper. He didn’t wear any ring.

‘Hardy,’ he said. ‘What a pleasure.’

‘Busy, Frank?’

He smiled cautiously.

‘Does anyone ever come to take any of this stuff away?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think so. What can I do for you?’

‘Making any progress on the Henneberry case?’

He riffled through some paper and pulled out a sheet with some of his neat ballpoint notes on it. ‘I sent a policewoman to see the Winter girl. Haven’t got her full report yet, but she says she didn’t get anything interesting out of her. She doesn’t seem to know a hell of a lot for someone who’s going to be a doctor or whatever.’

‘They’re like that. It’s pretty unhealthy in Bronte right now, isn’t it?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Did you hear about Leon?’

‘Oh, yeah, I heard about it.’ He flip-flopped his hand across the desk. ‘Down the stairs with a bump. So what?’

‘Did you hear about the money in his mattress?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen those stairs. They’re pretty gentle. Carpeted, too.’

He grunted and lit a cigarette.

‘I’d like to see the medical guff on Leon,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘It sounds to me like he was thrown down the stairs, not pushed-thrown. Wouldn’t you say it took a pretty strong man to do Henneberry in?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a connection between Henneberry and Leon.’

He blew out the smoke to where it could join up with the other smoke. ‘What do I want with two murders?’

‘Good murders,’ I said. ‘Original style. I can tell you that Henneberry saw Leon yesterday and they talked. I don’t know what about, but there’s a connection. If the case gets big you might need some help.’ I prodded at the mountain of paper. ‘Help, Frank. Administrative assistance.’

He looked at me shrewdly but I could feel his eagerness. Frank was ambitious, Frank liked action. He caressed the words. ‘Administrative assistance,’ he said.

‘Right. I’m told Henneberry’s people are big noises in the States.’ That was stretching it a bit, but I was on a winning streak. ‘There’ll be pressure. This is a big case for you, Frank.’

‘Let’s go and look at the file,’ he said.

Like everything else, police records are getting the computer treatment. Frank told me he’d done a computer course after joining the force so the visual display terminal system was child’s play to him. We went into a small room that contained six desks set up in front of small screens with typewriter-style keyboards mounted under them. Frank sat down and started punching buttons.

‘The preliminary stuff should be here,’ he said. ‘The autopsy will be, because the technical boys know how to use the system.’ There was a suggestion of contempt for people who didn’t know how to use it. I nodded sagely and tried to look informed.

The greenish-grey screen suddenly filled with white print, which Frank scrutinised closely. He hit the buttons some more and the print rolled on.

‘Multiple fractures,’ he said. ‘Skull in a couple of places, ribs.’

‘Not there from a fall,’ I said. ‘No way.’

‘Probably pissed,’ he said, and hit another button. He read some more and looked up. ‘Not pissed, not by his standards.’

‘There you are. There’s a light at the top of the stairs, too.’

‘Looks funny.’ He rubbed his chin and then jerked his hand away as if he was disciplining himself not to rub his chin. I wondered what he did for fun.

‘It stinks,’ I said. ‘Someone’s got to talk to all Leon’s mates. He might have seen someone after he talked to Henneberry and passed something on. There’s got to be a reason behind it.’