Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘I will take you.’

We walked along the path to the back and I bent down to flash the torch at the foundations from time to time. Some of the bricks were crumbling.

‘Damp course trouble?’

He shrugged. At the back he pulled out his keys and we went down a set of steps that the vines and weeds were threatening. He unlocked the padlock on a heavy door; it. swung in and he clicked on the light. It was a small, airless cave, dark despite the bulb. There was another door a few feet into the shadows. It had a strange smell, but how are old cellars supposed to smell? I took a perfunctory look around, said ‘Okay’, and went up the steps. He locked the door and I pointed to the crack running up the bricks. It had fractured a heavy window ledge on the second floor and looked as if it might run up behind a drainpipe to the roof.

‘I’ll have to check that,’ I said. ‘Inside, sorry.’

He looked dubious but I bustled back along the path. ‘Got two other places to see tonight,’ I said. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

He unlocked the front door and we went into a small lobby with a door on the left and a staircase on the right.

‘You go up,’ he said.

The passage looked as if it hadn’t been swept that year or last. The carpet strip was ragged and there was a coating of dust on the dry, flaky boards on either side of it. There were several doors down one side. It was hard to tell in the gloom, but I thought I saw fittings for outside locking. He padded softly along behind me, the keys clinking in his pocket.

At the end of the passage he quickened his pace, stepped in front of me and unlocked the door.

‘No-one in here,’ he said.

But someone had been in there and pretty recently. The room had two distinct smells-old, stale alcohol and the one that comes from handwashed socks and underwear.

It was completely dark outside now. He turned on the light and blew his nose at the same time. The bulb was fly-spotted, like most of the surfaces in the room. On the floor was the inevitable lino, worn through to the newspaper strata in some places and through to the boards in others. Although the night was mild, the room was cold. Plaster had fallen off the wall in lumps above the skirting board and the stuff that hung on glistened wetly. There was some junky furniture, wood-veneered and peeling. The bed was narrow and the mattress was an ancient, sweat-stained ruin. Cobwebs hung in the corners like thick skeins of grey wool.

I heard movements above me, footsteps and something being dropped. The thought of someone living in conditions like these sickened me. I tensed up, my ribs hurt and I moved angrily across to examine the broken window ledge and to give myself a moment to think. It didn’t take much thinking-the place was a gaol of some kind and I had the turnkey right there with me. It looked just like the sort of place that a damaged or deranged person such as Singer had been reported to be could end up in. I took the. 45 from my belt, cocked it and turned. I pointed the gun at his nose.

‘I’m searching this dump from top to bottom. You’re opening the doors.’

He was incredibly quick. One minute his eyes were registering surprise and the next he was in a crouch and scuttling forward to swing a stiff arm at me like a scythe. He wasn’t balanced quite right, though, and the light wasn’t good for that sort of action. The arm missed and I slammed the side of his head with the butt of the automatic. It got him just above the temple and he grunted and went down. I put the muzzle hard in his ear and felt in his shirt pocket for the keys. I hooked a finger round them but then I felt the soft, loose movement under my hand and pulled away as if I’d touched a snake. The contours of the chest weren’t muscular. With my well-placed gun butt, I’d just floored a woman.

It was obvious now; the short, dark hair curling around the ears was softer than a man’s hair, and with the shirt pushed up I could see the roundness of her hips. It didn’t mean that she wasn’t a nasty, dangerous bit of work. I kept the gun pressed close while she shook her head and hurt herself.

‘You’re not a lady,’ I said. ‘Get on the bed.’ She didn’t move. With an amateur I’d have delivered a boot to the bum for emphasis, but she was no amateur. Her eyes were shining with anticipation of more fighting. My side was hurting and I’d done something to the knuckle that had popped when I’d hit Rex. I wouldn’t have backed myself in a fair return fight. A swinging foot would give her all the chance she’d need. I stepped back and pointed the gun at her knee.

‘Get on the bed or I’ll cripple you.’

She said something unpleasant-sounding in a language I didn’t understand and got on the bed.

‘Turn to the wall.’

She turned and I checked the window. It was nailed shut. If she kicked it in she’d have a twenty-five-foot drop in the dark onto the garbage bins, the cans and the broken bottles. I wouldn’t have risked it.

‘Take off your shoes, easy.’

She bent her legs up, unzipped the boots and kicked them off onto the floor. I slung them into the passage, smashed the light bulb with the gun barrel and went through the door in three strides. I pinned the door closed with my shoulder and ran around the key ring until I found the one that locked it. It seemed unlikely that she’d have a spare key, but I waited outside for a while to be sure. I heard the bed creak and scratching noises as she felt her way around and that was all.

Going through that house was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever done. I did it methodically, starting at the top back and working through to bottom front. There were thirteen single rooms and five flatettes with twenty-three occupants. Without exception they were middle-aged or older, and defeated. The ones doubling up in the flatettes were the worst off. A few of them got abusive when I barged in, youngish, healthy and carrying a gun. One old man made a pathetic attempt to take me and I had to gentle him back into a chair.

The squalor of the rooms was profound. They smelled, were dirt-encrusted and there were signs of the depredations of vermin everywhere. The people were living on bread, pet food and cheap wine. There were three toilets in the building, cracked, creaking affairs that flushed about a pint of water. I looked at one chamber pot in one room. Only one.

Most of the occupants wore pyjamas or nightgowns and dressing-gowns. I had to look closely at some of the sunken-in, hopeless faces to determine their sex. They were so far gone it didn’t matter, but some of those who looked like women wore pyjamas and some of those who looked like men wore night- gowns, pathetic nylon affairs with filthy, phony lace.

I forced myself to do the whole round. In one single room a woman tottered towards me, holding out a photograph. I took the picture, which was of a young woman wearing a bathing suit and high heels in a cheesecake pose.

‘Is this you?’ I said.

She cackled at me. She was skeletally thin and she scratched at her groin with fleshless, bony hands. When she stopped scratching there, she moved the hand up to her head. I stepped back.

‘What’s your name?’

Scratch, scratch. Hair and flakes of skin fell onto her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she said hoarsely. ‘What’s yours, dear?’

There were no radios in the rooms, a few magazines, no books. I only glanced into a few drawers and cupboards but there were no pens or pencils. Spoons, bowls and cups were made of plastic.

The smell was bad everywhere, but in one room I nearly vomited from the stench. The floor was a sea of cockroaches and a man was sitting on the bed watching them with a rapt, engrossed smile on his face.

I locked all the occupants in as they were, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. They mumbled at me and each other in slow, toneless voices that were curiously alike. They dribbled and spat. None of them was John Singer.