Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

I watched the light seep in around the edges of the door as the morning broke. I’d been wrong about the lack of windows; there was a skylight shaded by a tree. Enough light came in to show me the lines on the floor and wall; somehow, in that grey light, the room felt even more menacing than it had in the dark. I’d said a lot of unkind things about squash in my time, and I had the nasty feeling that squash was fighting back.

Just to show some spirit and get the blood flowing, I started battering the door with my shoulders and shouting. The driver came to the door and rapped on it.

‘Shut up!’ His intonation made it worse-he didn’t really care whether I shut up or not. He said it contemptuously, and I slumped back down on the floor.

I panicked a bit then. I’d heard about a man who took two sleeping pills and some scotch when he got on a plane to London and who slept most of the way with his arm in the same poor circulation position. His arm was paralysed for a month as a result. My arms were stiff and sore behind me and I thought I was losing feeling in my hands. I battered and shouted some more, louder.

Rex opened the door. He was freshly showered and shaved; he smelled of after-shave and coffee. I hated him as much as I have ever hated anyone, which is a lot. He gestured with the gun for me to move back.

‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

‘I think my arms are paralysed. Pinched nerve or something.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘I’ve lost feeling in my hands.’

I could see him thinking it over. Does it matter? he was wondering. I wondered too; if it didn’t matter that meant that my feeling things in my hands or anywhere else, wasn’t part of the plan. I tried to keep my voice calm.

‘I don’t know what you want with me. Information, I suppose. If I’m paralysed I’d just as soon be dead and I won’t tell anyone a fucking thing, whatever you do.’

‘How’re your legs?’ He was just the hired help and now he had to make decisions. Life is so unfair.

‘Sore and stiff. You put in a good boot. But it’s the arms I’m worried about.’

He looked around the room carefully. Then he nodded and took a Swiss army knife out of his pocket, the kind that has a shifting spanner and a cross-cut saw on it.

‘Lie down on your belly.’

I did and he put the muzzle of the gun in my ear while he sawed away with the knife. I screamed when my arms came free. At first I thought he’d cut me, but it was just the blood moving and a cramp gripping a muscle. But by the time I’d sat up and swivelled around, he had gone.

I moved my arms gently, massaging, stretching and bending until the feeling got back near normal. All the joints worked, the arms turned in their sockets, the elbows bent. But it took an age to get my legs free; the knots were tight and my fingers were sloppy. When I finished I had complete movement, it was 8.15 am and I had seven feet of hard, thin cord to play with.

I coiled the rope around my waist under my shirt and waited. At nine am I urinated near the door and most of it ran out. At nine-thirty there was some swearing outside and the door was unlocked. Rex was there with his trusty Browning, but the piss had produced some mud outside and he’d got it on his nice clean drill trousers.

‘You filthy bastard,’ he said.

‘What’d you expect me to do? Piss in my mouth?’

He kept the gun steady and sneaked a look down at his slacks. Dry cleaning job, definitely.

‘I oughter brain you for this.’ His face went dark with anger and he lost a good bit of the slightly overweight elegance I’d credited him with. I felt better and gave him some more.

‘It’s only piss. Shouldn’t stain if you get ‘em off quick and give ‘em a good soak. Get them off now.’.

He looked ready to explode but a voice hailed him from behind. He drew in a deep, cooling-off breath.

‘Get up. Try anything funny and I’ll shoot you.’

I got up and walked stiffly to the door; I took a long step over the puddle and gave Rex a grin. He prodded me hard in a very tender rib with the gun.

‘The house. Move!’

We tramped up a wide brick path to the house. The shapes of the previous night became identifiable buildings-a big garage, something that looked like a stable, a greenhouse. The property was a big place; the white fences ran up over a hill in one direction and the pasture flowed on uninterruptedly in another direction until it met the bush.

The house was Australian baronial, a huge affair, two-storeyed with a wide, white pillared verandah right around. There was a lot of sandstone in its construction and a good deal of timber and glass. Old timber, cedar and jarrah. It was a nineteenth-century house, a wool fortune house.

A fresh-looking Toyota Land Cruiser was parked near it; that made me check for other transportation in case I’d be doing some more travelling. I could see the rear end of a Volvo sticking out of the garage and nothing else. There were plenty of horses around. No light aircraft or helicopters.

We went up some steps to a door at the side of the house. Rex yelled, ‘Tal!’ twice and the driver opened the door. He was still wearing overalls, still looking useful.

‘Billiard room,’ Tal said.

We marched through several connecting rooms which seemed to have no function except as places to arrange furniture in. We went down a passage to where a leather-padded, studded door stood open. Tal went on ahead and said, ‘He’s here.’

The room was big and filled with light from a row of high-set windows; it was wood-panelled with two billiard tables, a dart board, some sporting prints on the walls and a bar. It had a sheep-roasting fireplace at one end. A man was bending over one of the tables, lining up a shot with the rapt concentration of an addict. He shot smoothly but missed. Then he straightened up and looked at me. I looked back. He was tall and thin with grey hair brushed severely back. He had the sort of grooved face that comes from dieting and his clothes-blue shirt, grey trousers and the vest of a three-piece suit-hung loosely on him as if he’d lost weight since they were bought or made. His small moustache didn’t suit his rugged face. He chalked his cue with hands that looked well cared for but that hadn’t always been so.

‘Hardy,’ he said.

‘Right. Who’re you?’

‘You don’t need to know.’ He waved the cue expressively as if that dismissed the question and bent over the table again.

‘I’m impressed,’ I said. ‘I’m impressed by your big house and your helpers and your billiard room. Squash court, too. Great setup. What’s your interest in me?’

He shot again and missed again.

‘You’re not lined up right,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Your arse is off line. Swivel your hips a bit and get in line with the ball.’

He swung the cue and smashed its light end down on my shoulder. The wood splintered and I got a sharp pain to add to my dull, throbbing ones.

‘Don’t play the smartarse with me. I’ve seen better men than you off, right off. Understand?’

I rubbed the shoulder and nodded. His face was flushed and his thin body seemed stretched tight with the anger-short fuse, poor control, high blood pressure. Bad health risk, a ‘D’ life, as I’d have said in my insurance days. They had been boring, dispiriting days but right then they had a kind of attraction.

‘What’re you doing poking your nose around in Bondi?’ he said.

‘Working,’ I said. ‘I’m…’

‘I know what you are, a small-time, shit-eating private investigator.’ He made it sound bad, worse than it is. ‘Who are you working for?’

I shook my head. ‘Can’t tell you that. Ethics of the profession.’

‘Ethics,’ he sneered. He was a good sneerer and the moustache looked better when he sneered. ‘Look at you, you’re a mess. How can it be worth it?’ He sat down in a leather armchair and crossed his legs. His socks and shoes were black. Silk and leather, very pricey.