Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘Did you have an interesting time?’ Her voice was edged with irony and hostility.

‘Yes. You?’

‘Poor cows,’ she said. ‘I asked Pearl, she was the one in the pink, about your Mr Whatsit. She reckons she knows a lot about them, the Singers. I think she meant the wife, too.’

‘What’s her name, that woman?’

‘Well, she’s going by the name of Spenser right now, I think. She’s had other names. Names are a bit fluid in this crowd. Some people have a couple. For the pension, you know?’

‘I’ve heard of it. I thought it got stamped out.’

‘No way.’

‘I should talk to her.’

‘Not much point now; she’s too pissed.’

‘Would you go back and ask? There’d be some money in it for her.’

She shrugged. ‘If you like.’ She turned and walked away very straight, the way you do when you’ve had enough drinks to care about how you walk.

The car was up ahead. I took a few very straight steps and suddenly there was a pain in my arm and I wondered why. Then there was a whole lot of pain, a flood of it, and some very loud noises. My feet left the ground and my head swooped down towards it and there was nothing after that.

When I could feel things again, I wished I couldn’t. I was lying still and yet moving, there was a constant sound and also a deep silence and my head felt as if it was flapping loose and I couldn’t move my body. I was very confused. After a while I worked out that I was on the back seat of a big car. My hands and legs were tied, my shoulders were on the seat but my head was hanging half off it. I wriggled and thrashed until I got some support for my head. It still hurt, but at least it felt attached to my body.

‘Hey,’ I said, feebly. ‘Hey!’ I twisted and pushed until I forced my head up far enough to see two heads and two pairs of shoulders. I could excuse the driver for not responding; you need to concentrate on your driving when you’ve got someone trussed up on the back seat, but it was just plain rude of the other guy to ignore me. Still, that’s what he did and kept on doing. It was dark and I couldn’t see much out of the windows except the odd light. To judge by noises I wasn’t in the city, but I wasn’t on the Nullarbor Plain either.

I fought to control the panic that the thought of an unsolicited trip to the country with strangers is apt to bring on. I tried to think of any reasons why anyone should be thinking of a shallow grave in the bush for me. There was nothing pressing. I thought I could risk a little resistance so I drew my legs up to my chest and pushed them back hard to thump against the door. A hand came over with a big black gun in it. The metal slammed down hard on my shinbone and I yelped.

‘Don’t,’ a voice said.

I closed my eyes and tried for some of that displacement of body and spirit that Jack London wrote about in The Jacket. His hero travelled in time, fought off pirates and fired flintlocks at circling Indians from the cover of a wagon. I think he got girls every time. Nothing happened and I began to worry about Ann. Was she in a car, too, or had she been around the corner when they took me? Then I thought: Why, again, and who? Good questions, no answers.

I could see the moon through the window but I couldn’t tell the time by the moon. Who can? The car stopped, turned and followed what felt like a rough, unmade road for a while and then it stopped again. The man with the gun got out, the car moved forward a few yards, stopped and he got back in. Private property.

I bounced and rolled around on the seat and tried to work out how far we were going from the road. I couldn’t; it might have been one mile or six. When the car stopped, the gunman opened the back door and looked at me. The interior light was on and I looked back: he had a meaty face with a dimple in his chin. He would have been handsome in an overblown way except for small, close-set eyes that gave him a slightly piggy look. When he was satisfied that I was still tied up, he pulled my legs and tumbled me out inelegantly onto the ground. He put his gun away in his belt.

‘He here yet?’ he asked.

Another voice behind me said, ‘No. What’ll we do with him?’

‘How long?’

‘Morning, probably, early.’

‘Shit.’

I looked around as best I could with my face half in the dirt. I could see white painted fences, trees and the dark shapes of buildings, one very large. I spat out the dirt and sniffed the clean country air. I groaned, thinking that they might put me on a bed if they thought I was hurt. The car door slammed and I saw the feet and legs of the car driver come into view.

‘What’s the trouble, Rex?’ he asked. He had a soft American accent, southern or something. It wasn’t the voice of a humanitarian; more a ‘kick him in the head’ voice than a ‘lay him gently on the bed’ one.

‘No trouble,’ Rex said. He was the gunman and the weapon in his belt looked like a nine-millimetre Browning, which is a lot of gun when your target is tied up like corned silverside. He pulled me up to my feet and I tried to grin at him.

‘Think you’ll need the gun, Rex?’

For an answer he hooked my feet out from under me and I fell heavily. It had been a dry winter and the ground was hard; now my shoulder hurt as well as my shin. I decided that I didn’t like Rex.

‘We’ll put him in the squash court,’ he said. He kicked me lightly in the ribs.

‘Crawl, smartarse. Over there.’

I lay still, so he kicked me again harder and I crawled. It’s hard to crawl when you’re tied up like that; things stick into you and hurt. I got a cramp in the calf after a few yards and stopped. I felt his shoe again and moved on. It wasn’t far, maybe less than a hundred yards, but my clothes were badly ripped and there was a lot of skin missing from me when I got there.

The driver and Rex had followed my progress, chatting chummily. At one point, at a pause for breath and to respond to a boot-delivered change in direction, I got a look at the driver. He wore white overalls and sported a heavy, dark beard. He was built strong and wide and looked like he could do a few useful things besides drive cars. At the end of the crawl the driver pulled out a bunch of keys and unlocked a door. Rex got hold of some shirt and flesh and pulled and pushed me over a low step; then he gave me one of those funny little kicks he was so good at and I pitched over onto a hard wooden floor.

They closed the door and it was very dark. I propped myself up against the wall and checked for serious injuries a limb at a time. I seemed to be in working order, although a lot of the normal movements hurt like hell. There were no windows in the room and I edged my way around the walls, feeling for a light switch with my head and shoulders. I found it and turned it on with my chin, but no light resulted. That was a disappointment. I squatted down again and told myself that a big house like this, and that shape had been really big, would have a master switch to turn off the light in the outbuildings. It was only natural; it wasn’t a direct strike at Hardy.

The squash court was like a coffin. The floor was made of sanded, tightly-packed boards and the walls were smooth. I tried to remember what a court looked like in the light and couldn’t. I’d never played the game, which seemed to me like a barbarity designed solely to make people sweat. I assumed there were lines painted on the floor, but there were no cupboards, no fittings, no racquets left lying about. I was wearing jeans and a denim shirt, desert boots and socks; it wasn’t cold but it felt as if it could get cold, and that’s nearly as bad. However I positioned myself it was impossible to sleep-I lost consciousness a few times, that’s all.