Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘The ribs worry me,’ Hilde said. She touched a raw rip in the skin, surrounded by a bluish bruise. ‘How did that happen?’

‘At a disco. I fell and they danced on me.’

She snorted and pressed some tape into place, not gently. I put the beer in the fridge, resisted the wine and made a pot of coffee. Hilde went off to Tooth Capping III. I phoned Ann Winter’s less salubrious address and got a woman on the line with a slurred voice and uncertain grammar. She said she’d seen Ann come in the previous night and go again that morning. That was fine, but the woman sounded drunk already.

‘What day is it?’ I asked.

‘Wednesday.’

‘Right. Look, how was Ann? Was she okay?’

‘She was pissed off; someone dumped her at a party or some-thin’. Hey!’ Her voice was suddenly clearer, as if she’d got her tongue working. ‘Are you Cliff?’

‘Yes.’

‘Get stuffed, Cliff.’ She hung up.

It sounded as if my connection to Ann Winter had got looser. That was a pity, but I was relieved that none of the rough stuff had reached her. I shaved around the cuts and abrasions, put on some clean clothes and went off to see my favourite policeman.

Frank Parker looked tired. The hours he’d been working were stencilled on his face in the eye pouches and the grooves beside his mouth. His ashtray overflowed with those judiciously smoked butts.

‘What happened to you?’ he enquired.

I touched my swollen lip and was conscious that I was holding myself carefully on account of the ribs. I perched on the nearest desk. The detective who had ignored us before was at his desk ignoring us again.

‘All in the line of work, Frank. You should get out more. Take a good belting on the street. All this paper work isn’t good for you. I thought you were going to get help.’

‘I got help, but so far the help just makes more work,’ he growled. ‘And I have been on the street. We pulled up a kid in a hot car last night. Took eight minutes-the paper work’s taking eight hours.’

‘Nothing on the Henneberry case?’

‘No. You?’

‘Hard to say. I got picked up last night by some hired hands. We went on a drive into the country.’

He groaned. ‘You’re not here to lay charges of assault and abduction?’

‘No. I got out of it with a split lip and a bent rib. They were heavy boys, though. Take a look at this.’ The security is lousy at that place. I’d walked through it with a fourteen shot Browning Hi-Power in my jacket pocket. I put the gun on Frank’s desk on top of a pile of carbon copies of something. He pushed it around with the tip of a pencil so that the muzzle was pointing towards his colleague.

‘You went up against this, Hardy?’

‘More around it. I met the boss. I wonder if you can tell me who he is.’

He lit a cigarette and looked interested. ‘Try me.’

‘His place is out Camden way, pretty nice layout. His boys are named Rex, he’s a snappy dresser with a good hook, and…’ I felt for the name, ‘Tal. He’s a Yank who did the driving. Rex had the Browning there, Tal had some little thing. The boss’s about sixty, tall and thin, looks a bit sick. He’s got what the Americans call a cocksucker moustache.’

Frank blew smoke. ‘Oh, yeah? Why do they call it that?’

‘I don’t know.’ I fingered my upper lip. ‘Small, wouldn’t get in the way?’

Frank’s expression of disgust gave him rock-solid heterosexual credentials.

‘Freddy Ward,’ he said.

‘Who’s he?’

‘One of the boys. He and Singer and Tom McLeary divided up the action in the eastern suburbs. He’s done some rough things in his time, but I thought he was taking it easy.’

‘He certainly looked sick. I got the feeling that he was a bit past it. But he’s got a foul temper and bugger all control. He didn’t leave the rough stuff to his boys. I just gave him a bit of cheek and you should’ve seen him.’

‘That’s him. I hear that Freddy might not be the full dollar. He was in Changi, which wouldn’t have done him any good. What did he want with you?’

‘He wanted to know who I was working for.’

‘Did you tell him?’

‘No. They said they’d drop me in a hole if I didn’t, but I had the feeling they’d do it if I did.’

A woman sailed past and dropped a folder on his desk. Parker swore and dragged hard on his cigarette. ‘You think this is all connected with the Henneberry thing? There’s a bit of heat in that, by the way.’

‘I don’t know. What sort of heat?’

‘His father’s a senator or something. I had some fucking Foreign Affairs bloke on the phone, wanting results.’

‘Have you checked Henneberry out with the spooks?’

‘Yeah.’ He hunted in the out tray and pulled up a file. I reached for it, but he snapped it away and grinned. ‘They say,’ he ran his finger down a page and quoted, ‘… that he had no connection with any security services’.

‘Do you believe them?’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Lying’s their business. D’you see Rex and his mate fixing Henneberry?’

‘No.’

‘What’s next, then?’

‘Get out and ask questions.’

‘Ask who?’

I stood up. ‘Brother Gentle.’

He looked blankly at me. I gave him a wave and left him with his papers and Rex’s big gun.

It seemed like time to check in with my client but, given all the interest around town in who that was, it also seemed like time to play it cagey. If I’d gone to my office I could have put my feet on the desk, breathed the air of inspiration and been at my very best on the line, but I might also have had listeners-in. I rang Mrs Marion Singer from a public phone and instructed her to go out and ring the booth I was in. I waited ten minutes, faking a call and infuriating two would-be users.

‘Was that necessary?’ she asked.

‘Maybe. Do you know a man named Ward?’

‘Fred Ward? I know of him. What about him?’

‘He gave me a little trouble. Look, Mrs Singer, this is all getting very complicated.’ I told her about Henneberry and Leon and my trip to Camden.

‘I’m sorry for all that,’ she said, without sounding sorry. ‘But what about John?’

‘I’m still on it.’

‘Stay on it.’ she hung up. No more offers of money, no more information.

The bright, dry spell we’d had in Sydney for a week or more looked like coming to an end. There was a coolness in the air and the wind was lifting; it was an indecisive wind, picking up things, tossing them about and putting them down. The clouds that had been light and high for days were darkening and coming down. I caught a cab to Bronte, keeping my fingers crossed that my car would still be there. It was. The radio aerial had been snapped off and ‘Screw Fraser’ had been scratched on the bonnet.

The rain started as I drove to the ashram. It beat down while I sat in the car and looked the place over. The posters were artfully made and they seemed to shine out through the curtain of rain. I subscribe to the belief that rain accentuates aches and pains. I had plenty to be accentuated; if well-being is a lack of consciousness about the body, I wasn’t well. If I moved my head sharply, my brain broke its moorings for an instant, and when I accidentally elbowed myself in the side I felt as if a jagged rib bone was going to pierce a lung, ‘give’ was glowing through the rain but I felt more like taking. A holiday, for example. I could go to Lew Hoad’s tennis ranch in Spain. I’ve always wanted to see it. Good old Glebe boy, Lew. I could work up a topspin backhand and try to beat Hilde. Lew and I could have a few beers and talk about Pancho Gonzales and Pancho Segura. I saw Segura and Rosewall once-the cunningest tennis match ever played.