Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

‘How would I do that?’

‘By digging up the dirt on his operations in the eastern suburbs and passing it on.’

‘The cops know all about that.’

‘It’s not cops we’re talking about.’

‘Politicians?’

‘Right.’

I let out a slow breath I hadn’t meant to hold that long. ‘What else?’

‘Nothing. I swear it, Hardy. He needs to be Mr Clean for these political types.’

‘Why? He’s buying them, isn’t he?’

‘That’s the way it works.

I thought it over while he fidgeted. People don’t like to see other people thinking. You never can tell which way thinking is going to pan out. I let him sweat. What he’d said sounded right. The new slums-to-be they called ‘growth areas’ were an open go. Fucking and gambling were the in-demand services; there wasn’t much else to do in those dumps. You needed to fix some aldermen, which took more money than subtlety, and some of the next rank of politicians, which took a bit of both. Bill Anderson would be interested. I thought I knew how to use the information myself.

‘Is Freddy Ward insane?’

The change of tack brought a look of relief to his face, which had been locked into a grimace of doubt. He dried his palms on his pants leg. Sandy was quiet.

‘I wouldn’t say that. You saw him. Look, I just drive for him; I don’t talk to his goddamn doctor.’

He was getting cocky again and it was time for me to go. ‘Okay, I believe you,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you something for free- Tom McLeary says Ward killed John Singer.’

‘Jesus.’ He looked quickly at Sandy.

‘That’s what Tom told me and what he’s told a lot of people lately. Anything in it, d’you reckon?’

Brown shook his head slowly. ‘Before my time.’

‘Sandy?’

The tears had made her eyes shine and given her an innocent look she probably hadn’t had since she was twelve.

‘I don’t know how John died. He was a wonderful swimmer. I don’t see how he could have drowned.’

‘That’s what a lot of people think. Mac says Ward fixed it so he couldn’t swim, but he could be wrong. Nasty rumour, though.’

I got up carefully, not putting too much weight on the stick and not letting anything deflect the gun. Tal was doing the thinking now and it didn’t look as though he could do that and try rough stuff at the same time.

I went slowly past them and backed down the passage to the door. I closed it hard behind me and put my ear to it. The first sound I heard was the clink of a bottle against a glass; the second was the sound of a telephone dialling.

I had a slight relapse after this activity. The knee hurt like hell on the way down the stairs at Sandy’s place, hurt in the taxi and felt as if someone was hammering four-inch nails into it when I got home. The hospital had given me some analgesics which I’d avoided, but I took them then. They wiped me out for hours and left me wakeful and fretful through the night. Hilde did some early-morning nursing and brought in a big cardboard box from the doorstep before leaving for her lectures. She looked, I noted resentfully, fresh, fit and cheerful.

‘Something here for you to play with,’ she said. ‘Are you comfortable, Cliff?’

‘Like a koala in a tree,’ I growled. ‘What’s in the bloody box?’

She thumped it down on the floor beside the couch. ‘I can hardly bear to leave all this joy and happiness. See you later, sunshine.’

I grunted and lifted the lid of the box. It contained knee-exercising gear-ropes, weights and pulleys-which the hospital was hiring out to me at some expense. Another bill for Mrs Singer. I’m not mechanically minded, and setting up the equipment taxed me. When it was assembled I set it to ‘light work’, put my foot in the sling and lifted. ‘Light work’ was quite heavy enough for the time being. ‘Transverse movement’ sounded a bit on the painful side. The equipment and the elastic bandage that had to be applied before using it took me back to my athletics days, to those third-leg relays and the long and high jumps that seemed to land me on rubbing tables as often as not. Football meant bruises and stitches, until it seemed that tennis was the only game I could play without injuring myself. Eventually I gave up trying to be Bob Matthias and with drinking, smoking and staying up late I got in good shape for snooker.

At mid-morning I got on the phone to Camden. After half an hour I located Bill Anderson at the school where he was teaching history.

‘Hi,’ he said. Another cheerful bastard. ‘What’s been happening?’

‘Nothing much. I’ve got a line on the owner of that house and a few other details that might interest you.’

‘Hang on.’ The line hummed with background sounds-doors opening and closing, yawns and cups clinking.

‘American history,’ he said. ‘I told them to check for lies in Nixon’s inauguration address.’

‘That’s not history.’

‘It is to them. They’ve never heard of him.’

‘What about Roosevelt?’

‘I asked them once. One of the smarter ones thought he was something to do with Breaker Morant. What’ve you got on mystery mansion?’

I filled him in on Ward’s plans for the growth area and the way he was likely to go about them. I apologised for not knowing any of the names.

‘Don’t need ‘em,’ he said. ‘Not hard to guess at a few. It’s very interesting, Mr Hardy. Could help.’

‘Cliff,’ I said. ‘How d’you look for the election?’

‘Just fair. I’m not too worried. I’m having fun.’

I’d never heard a politician say he was having fun before. ‘Would you like to do me another favour?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m trying to stir the possum a bit. If you could drop the word that Tom McLeary says Freddy Ward bumped off John Singer, it’d help.’

‘Ward responsible Singer murder according to McLeary. That it?’

‘Yeah. Be subtle.’

‘We’ve got a good bowling club out here. Is that the sort of place you’d like it dropped?’

‘Exactly. And a pub or two.’

‘You want to make sure it gets to the Lions and Rotary.’

‘You’ve got the idea.’

He said he’d get on it after school, which meant after lunch. School teaching has changed; my teachers would never have said an American President lied, or have knocked off after lunch. Most of them had worn suits, they had all worn ties, and half of them had tried to pretend they had still been in the army.

I told Anderson I’d get on to my Aunt Lyndall and put her to work with her coffee circle. He asked me what I’d done with the gun and when I said I’d given it to the police he sounded happy.

Ann Winter was still at Point Piper and sounding defensive.

‘I was thinking of coming over to see you,’ she said. ‘Is your lady there?’

‘She’s not my lady. Feel like slumming, do you?’ I was at it again, needling unnecessarily.

‘What’s that supposed to mean, Hardy?’ she snarled. I could picture her working with a thumbnail at the ragged end of one of her rollies and dropping ash on the shag pile.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘Reckoned I’ve chucked it, do you? Stopping on here in Disneyland?’ I didn’t say anything and she went on, working herself up. ‘I’m writing. Heard of that? Writing up? You do it away from the field. Malinowski didn’t do it in the fucking Trobriands, he did it in London.’

‘Ann, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s my knee, blame the knee. Listen, are you going back to Bondi soon?’

‘Yes, I have to go back tonight for a bit. Some things I have to check. Oh, did you see Peg?’

‘Yeah, I saw her. She was a big help. You could help me some more if you’d whisper around a certain canard.’