Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Dig.’

It took about an hour to get the first brick out, but work went faster after that. I scraped and dug until the pain from my ribs and knee got too much and I had to hand over to Ann, who went at it furiously. She wanted to live very badly. After one session she wiped the sweat away and said savagely, ‘You had a gun. Why didn’t you shoot him?’

‘He had a bigger gun,’ I said.

We didn’t talk much after that. I wondered how long it would take Manny to give pills to all the wrecks inside and I prayed that the van, wherever and whatever it was, would be slow to start. I scraped and dug.

We moved the dislodged bricks inside to cut down on the noise and I thought I’d at least have something to throw, if it came to that. When the hole was big enough, I told Ann to get to a phone and call the police.

‘Scream at them,’ I said. ‘Panic them, tell them to bring everyone.’

‘I will, don’t worry.’ She was halfway through when she asked, ‘What about you?’

‘I wouldn’t get through the hole with this leg. Go, for Christ’s sake!’

She kissed me again, quick and hard, wriggled through and started off; I think she’d have charged the shotgun if she’d had to. I dug out more bricks and got a hole big enough for my broad, manly shoulders. I tried to crawl through but I couldn’t get the leverage with the bad knee.

So I sat there with a couple of half-bricks to hand, feeling like the boy with his finger in the dike. I turned the light off and I had a torch to dazzle him with, but he had a torch, too. If he came, I’d be like a blind kitten waiting to be drowned. I didn’t want it to happen for all the usual reasons, and because of Bruce Henneberry who’d never write his articles now because of me. Ordinarily I’d have worried about my knee, which was locked and painful, but I was too worried about the rest of me.

Manny came, but when he did the night was full of sirens and shouts and blinking blue lights. I stuck my head out of the hole and saw him running down the path towards the cellar; lights flashed at him and he let go twice with the pump. The noise bounced off the buildings and roared down into the hole where I crouched with my half-bricks. Manny fired again and he was very close now. Somebody shouted ‘Stop!’ and he turned to see how far he’d got. The light lost him; I flicked on the torch and put the beam up on his chest. The shots were sharp and clean after the muffled boom of the shotgun. The first one took him high in the chest and he spun half around; the next one got him low and he went down. The shotgun slammed into the wall just above the hole.

I moved the torch beam around until I found his face, which was turned towards the wall. The hardness went out of it; his mouth relaxed and his fierce, slanting eyes dimmed and took on a fixed stare. Then blood flowed from his mouth, he gasped twice and he died.

I was shaking when they came for me. I felt cold right through and I thought I was going to have trouble keeping my pants dry. Parker crouched at the hole.

‘Hardy, you okay?’

‘Yeah. Grab his key and get me out of here.’

He burrowed into Manny’s pockets, showing him as much respect as you’d show a scarecrow. He got a lot of blood on his hands, but he also got the keys and opened the door.

‘What’s that?’ He’d turned on the light and pointed at the tub.

‘Glue factory. They’ve been boiling down the senior citizens. See the tools outside? They’re for burying the hard bits.’

‘Shit! Can you stand up?’

‘No. Can you get me some brandy or something?’

He yelled for assistance. The noise felt like a rain of bricks on my head, but a bottle came. I took a pull on it; it wasn’t French, but it did something for that spreading cold.

‘Did you get the other one-the woman?’

‘No.’

‘In a van.’

‘No van.’

‘She’ll see all this a mile off. She runs this bloody place.’

‘We’ll get her. Take it easy.’ He yelled again and I heard the word ‘ambulance’.

‘What happened to your face?’ He lit a cigarette and I didn’t want one.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Looks like you took on Sugar Ray Leonard.’

‘That bad?’ I was sweating and cold, scared and angry at the same time. I groaned and heard the whine in my voice. ‘Studded belt. Shit.’ I ran my tongue around inside my mouth but there was no extra damage there.

‘Where am I bleeding?’

‘Ear,’ he said. ‘Torn pretty bad.’

‘Did Ann fill you in? Where is she?’

Yeah, enough. She’s okay. Is this where the guy you’re looking for ended up?’

‘Looks like it.’

He prowled about, puffing on his cigarette. A man came down and whispered something to him and he issued instructions about ambulances and hospitals.

‘They’re in a bad way up there,’ he said.

‘Yeah. Frank, get a spade and poke around in the garden. Use my torch.’

He took the torch and went out. Stretcher-bearers arrived and lifted me aboard. I clenched my teeth against the pain.

One of them took the bottle from me and said, ‘Who gave him this?’

‘St Bernard,’ I said. I was feeling lightheaded and had a crazy impulse to wave my arms around. Ann Winter’s face swam up and I tried to smile at it, but blood dripped into my mouth.

‘God,’ she said.

They carried me out and made the turn to go up the path. I could see the light weaving about in the shrubbery and heard the spade bite into the earth.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Frank?’

His voice sounded as if he had a mouthful of ground glass. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s a fucking graveyard.’

I was in hospital a week, and if I had had to pay my own bills it would have meant that I would have just about broken even on the Singer case. It’s a muzzy professional and ethical area, medical bills run up in the course of duty. It’s not wise to mention them in the initial interview in case you look accident-prone, but failure to do so can lead to unpleasantness later.

Anyway, they stitched up my ear without any trouble and put a few other stitches in my face, which would add to my tally of fetching scars in time. I had two broken ribs; again, time heals. The knee was the problem: there was ligament damage and chipped bone to worry about. An operation looked likely for a while, and I didn’t fancy that. I never heard of anyone who’d had an operation on his knee ever being any good at what he did again. Eventually they decided to leave it alone and let physiotherapy and clean living repair the damage.

The cops came and took a detailed statement. Frank Parker visited and was almost non-official for ten minutes or so. Hilde visited, Ann Winter called in and one of their visits coincided. They got along very well.

‘She’s a beautiful girl, your lodger,’ Ann said. Hilde had left after delivering a clean nightshirt and Garp. It was two days before I left hospital; I was sitting up in a chair and I had a stick to walk with. With the bandaged ear and all I thought I looked pretty dashing, very World War II and Battle of Britain.

“D’you reckon?’

‘Yes. What a beautiful skin.’ The way she said it made me wonder about Ann Winter. She seemed much more interested in Hilde’s beautiful German skin than in dashing old me.

I’d made the hospital staffs lives miserable until they gave me a telephone. I rang Mrs Singer and her voice on the line was cool, or cooler.

‘I’ve had a spot of bother,’ I said.

‘I read about it.’

The story of the old people held in captivity and defrauded of their pensions had had a long run in the papers. The tabloids had eked it out for days and one of them had come up with ‘The Black Hole of Clovelly’. With some relatives who came to light and the investigations by the Social Security people, who were turning up a three-or four-year history, there was a major paper-selling item. A lot of bones and skulls had been found in the backyard and analysis was proceeding.