Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

The only habitable part of the place was the flatette in front where the turnkey lived. The four rooms were only moderately clean but their toilet and bathroom, small kitchen and functioning furniture put them in the luxury department. There was food for humans in the cupboards and refrigerator and a decent flagon of red wine on the kitchen table. I rinsed a glass, filled it with wine, drank it down and poured again. I thought very seriously about the packet of cigarettes on the table beside the flagon, but decided on more wine instead. I drank more of it than I wanted to and was feeling the effect pretty soon. I was drinking to get the stink and taste of those foul rooms out of my head.

Then I searched the flatette and I didn’t care what got disturbed or broken. I felt bad when I started-bad from the beating I’d taken the day before and because of the prisoners’ empty eyes and from the wine-and I felt worse as I worked. The woman I’d locked up in room twelve was one Mary Mahoud, thirty four, a naturalised Australian. Ms Mahoud had been doing a highly illegal stunt, one that would earn her about twenty years’ worth of imprisonment. The records were thorough and well-kept: the occupants of number ten Monk Lane were all recipients of pensions of one sort or another. They were registered at a few different addresses and their cheques arrived and were cashed regularly, but not by them. She had something like two thousand bucks coming in weekly. From what I’d seen, the overheads were low.

I found the explanation for the sameness of the prisoners’ apathetic and listless behaviour-a cupboard full of Valium, Mogadon and other preparations. There was also a big stock of laxatives, sleeping pills and painkillers. A bottom drawer in a dresser was locked and I smashed it open. There was a different set of records inside-envelopes with the surnames printed in bold, black capitals and a date. I flicked through a few: ‘Jane Harman Ogilvie 23.6.79’; ‘Elizabeth Hodges 1.12.80’ There were about a dozen of them, and it wasn’t hard to guess what they were-the dead file. The name ‘Singer’ didn’t appear.

I didn’t fancy the next part and when I went out into the lobby Mary Mahoud gave me a chance to put it off. She was drumming on the door of number twelve and sobbing to be let out. The door was holding strong.

‘Shut up!’ I gave the door a thump with the gun.

‘Out, out, out!’ She chanted the word like a street demonstrator. Then she started to scream it and a racket started behind a door further down the passage. I went down and rapped on it.

‘Be quiet. You want to get out of this, don’t you?’

No reply.

‘I’ve got this Mahoud bitch locked up. You’ll be out tonight. Just be patient.’

The voice from behind the door was slow and querulous. I couldn’t recall much about its owner; all the occupants had blended in my mind into one geriatric mass. ‘Locked up? Mary?’

‘Right. It’s over. She’s going to gaol.’

A low, ragged chuckle began, growing into a piercing, near-hysterical laugh. Mahoud must have heard it because she went quiet for a minute and then started sobbing again and hitting the door. I went back and spoke harshly with my mouth close to the wood.

‘You heard that, didn’t you? If you don’t shut up, I’ll come in there and knock you out, then I’ll put you in a room with nine or ten of them and watch what happens. How’d you like that?’

‘No, no. Out. Anything… there’s money.’

‘Forget it and keep quiet.’

There was an interesting assortment of gear in one of Mahoud’s drawers-a studded belt, a pair of handcuffs, a heavy sheath knife and a key on a ring. I took the key and went to the back of the building. The key opened the inner chamber to the cellar. It was the cleanest room I’d found so far. The concrete was swept and the whitewashed walls gleamed under the hard fluorescent light. In one corner was an instrument that reminded me of my mother’s washing copper. It was a large metal tub, with a close-fitting lid. It was gas heated and mounted under a tap. Beside it was a shelf carrying a five-kilo bag of lime and a bigger bag of cement. I lifted the lid. The tub was scummy and smelt bad. There was also a scummy, foul-smelling bucket behind it I went back to the outer chamber and used my torch to look in the corners where the light didn’t shine. There was a set of gardening tools leaning higgledy-piggledy against the wall and a heavy straight digging bar lay on the floor in front of them.

The claret I’d drunk wasn’t giving me courage, but it was stimulating my thinking. The name ‘Singer’ didn’t appear on the house records, but I remembered what Ann had said about the changeability of names on this social level and the dodges used to beat the social security computer. The wine was also stimulating my imagination: under the severe light I could see the tub bubbling and the lime-laced water breaking down tissue. Bones broke and pulverised easily, most of them. The gardening tools were clean and the lush growth in the backyard was an obscenity.

I’d decided it was time to call the cops when I heard the scrape of footsteps outside. I hit the light switch and moved into the outer section of the cellar. I bumped the door going through and the key jumped out and skidded across the floor. Then there was a flurried movement and a dark shape stumbled down towards me into the cellar. I reached for the gun in my belt but a torch beam hit me in the eyes.

‘Touch the gun and I’ll kill you, Hardy.’ I shaded my eyes and saw Manny standing up in the doorway looking wide and solid. He was holding the pump-action shotgun the way a carpenter holds a saw, familiarly and with affection. I had no hope of getting my gun out, and, besides, hanging onto my arm, cursing and breathing hard, was Ann Winter.

Manny lifted the gun a fraction. ‘The key is by your left foot, Hardy. Kick it over.’

I did. He moved smoothly, the way he did in his coffee bar, and scooped them up.

‘Now, put the gun on the ground and slide it across. Softly, please.’ He was enjoying himself. I did that, too, and he put it in his pocket with the key. This meant that he had only one hand on the shotgun for an instant, but he had it tucked back safe and steady. He’d learned to do all this in some very good school.

‘Where’s Mary?’

I didn’t answer. Ann moved even closer to me, which was convenient for him if he was going to shoot. Down there the gun would make a lot of noise. I reckoned he’d fire if he had to, but not just because I wouldn’t tell him where Mary was. He came down the steps and backed us up with the shotgun until we were against the wall. Still watching us, he swung aside to open the inner cellar door. A wave of the gun did all the talking necessary. We went in and he locked the door.

I turned the fluorescent tube on again. Ann’s face was stark white and her lips were twitching.

‘I don’t understand this,’ she said shakily.

‘The other night,’ I said. ‘After the wake. What happened to you?’

‘Nothing. They didn’t touch me. Screw that, what’s happening here?’

I didn’t answer. I was trying to think whether I’d seen any indications in the records that more than one person was involved in running the house. I hadn’t, unless it was the capitals on the dead file; the rest of the writing was in a sloping longhand. But that didn’t mean anything. Then it came to me and I found the reasons to reproach myself that I’d been seeking. Some of the items in the flatette-socks, a belt, a sports coat-were clearly masculine. I’d been confused by my earlier mistake about Mahoud’s sex and had become careless. There was another thing-the dregs in the plastic cups had smelled like Manny’s homemade vino. I should have picked up on that.