Peter Corris - The Empty Beach

She gave me instructions to meet her in the lounge of the Regal hotel and, while I haven’t been shy about going into hotels for the past twenty-odd years, today I was just a bit reluctant. It was close to three pm on a fine day with low pollution levels; my own pollution level was low too, because it was two months and sixteen days since I’d stopped smoking. But now I wanted a cigarette badly. I’d been a private detective for ten years, near enough, and I’d always had a cigarette before I met a client, several while I talked and listened, and a few more afterwards while I thought. It was a hard pattern to break.

The Regal dominates a stretch of the Parade at Bondi; it’s white, of course, with a few turrets, one of which supports a flagpole and flag. The palm trees on either side of the entrance would go better in Singapore, but they’re doing their best. I was early as always and I wandered down to the beach to kill the time. The suntanned people outnumbered the pallid, although it was only October. You can sunbathe all the year round in Sydney if you pick your spots and days and have nothing better to do.

I stood on the steps of the pavilion looking out at the heavy surf and the few people braving it with their boards and bodies. They looked frail, as if the sea was playing with them rather than the other way around. Any minute, it seemed, the water could rise up and obliterate them. But the sun was shining and the sand glowed; some of the pale people were turning pink and it was no time for glum thoughts. I took two lungfuls of the ozone and still wanted a cigarette.

The lounge of the Regal was dark and quiet, as lounges should be, and I had to peer about before I located the woman at a table in the corner. As I went across I thought that this was a good place to arrange a meeting-she would have a chance to see her man irresolute before he saw her. My client would have seen a tall, thin man, dark and not saved from looking forty by the soft light. She sat straight and square-shouldered in her chair and held out her hand. Businesslike.

‘Mr Hardy.’

‘Mrs Singer.’ Her grip was dry and firm. It was a nice hand to shake.

‘Marion,’ she said. ‘I’m the client, I’ll buy the drinks. I was having a gin and tonic’

‘I’ll have the same. Thanks.’

She raised her hand and a waiter came over to take the order. I guessed her age at about fifty, perhaps a bit more, but the few extra years weren’t showing. She wore a blue linen suit with a white blouse. Her hair was somewhere between blonde and grey and it suited her strong-featured face. She had big eyes, brown, a curved nose and one of those mouths that seems to have a line drawn around it, defining it. As I feared, she was smoking. Her brand was Kent, though, which wasn’t too hard to resist.

‘What do you think of Bondi?’ It wasn’t a question I’d expected, so for the second time she had the advantage of me.

‘I like it,’ I said. ‘I’m proud of it.’

She smiled at me and gave a bit of the smile to the waiter. She stubbed out her Kent and drank some gin.

‘What do you know about me, Mr Hardy?’

I took a short pull on the drink. ‘Married to John Singer,’ I said. ‘Sorry, that might be offensive, talking about you in terms of your husband. Habit. I don’t know anything about you, Mrs Singer, except that you phoned me up this morning, mentioned an old client of mine and arranged this meeting.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not offended. I’m proud to have been married to John. What do you know about him, then?’

‘John Singer disappeared from Bondi beach about two years ago.’ I swung around and pointed to one of the big, shaded windows. ‘Out there. He was a businessman, successful. Bit of a black marketeer just after the war, then involved with vending machines, pinballs after that. He had interests in taxis and hotels, probably other things too, but the pinballs were the hard core at the end.’

‘That’s a funny way of putting it,’ she said. ‘Are you against pinball machines?’

I shrugged, drank some more gin and wished her cigarette smoke would blow the other way. She’d lit that one while she was talking, the way an experienced smoker can.

‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘Mindless stuff. Profitable, I suppose. I wish the kids were spending their time better.’

‘Not only kids. Adults, too.’

‘They’re a lost cause. Retards.’

She laughed again. ‘Well, you’ve got it pretty right. I’m impressed that you learned so much so fast. I keep the business going as best I can.’

I nodded. She was buying the drinks; she could do the talking.

‘You must be curious about this meeting?’

‘Very.’

‘John may not be dead.’

I nodded, sceptically this time. Harold Holt might not be dead and Sean Flynn and a few thousand others who probably were. You get a lot of nuts in this business, fantasists. I was suddenly feeling less curious about the meeting and I let it show. She leaned forward across the props of alcohol and tobacco and spoke urgently, with strong need in her voice.

‘A week ago I got a phone call. He said he saw John in Roscoe Street, shabby and sick.’

‘He?’

‘A man’s voice. That’s all he said. Wait, I wrote it down.’ She fished up a leather bag from somewhere, rummaged in it and came up with a sheet of notepaper. She

passed it across. The message was written in capitals: ‘I SAW JOHN IN ROSCOE STREET MRS SINGER. HE LOOKS CROOK.’

‘Not eloquent,’ I said.

‘No, but a big shock. I want you to check into it, of course. See if there’s anything in it.’

‘You didn’t know the voice?’

‘No. It wasn’t a nice voice. Very harsh.’

‘Young or old?’

‘Oh, old, I’d say.’

‘This was a week ago, you say. You’ve been thinking about it. Is it all right to ask you how you want it to turn out-dead or alive, as it were?’ I’d picked up her book matches, pulled two out and was shredding them with my fingers, all without knowing it. She tapped my hand with two fingers that carried pricey-looking rings.

‘Stop fidgeting. Why are you doing that?’

‘I stopped smoking.’

‘You poor bastard. Why?’

‘To slow down the ageing process.’

‘You’re ageing all right, I’ve seen worse. Another drink?’

‘I’m watching that, too. No, thanks. What about it, Marion? Dead or alive?’

She finished her drink and pushed it aside as if my example had given her strength, but she didn’t have the skin of a boozer.

‘I’m not sure,’ she said slowly. ‘I’d adjusted, got used to the idea. I’ll be frank. I suppose I hope it’s not true. John and I had been married for fifteen years. We weren’t love birds any more.’

‘Any children?’

She tapped another Kent out, another little reward or penance. ‘No.’

‘Would he have had any reason to fake a disappearance? You know, like that Pommy politician?’

‘Stonehouse,’ she said automatically. ‘Not that I can think of.’

‘Up till you got this call, what did you think had happened to him?’

‘He suicided, it was an accident or he was murdered. I just don’t know.’

‘What would you bet?’

‘I don’t know,’ she repeated. ‘Look, we weren’t all that close at the end. John had other women and I had other men. But we got along all right and the business was in good shape when I took it over. He could have had worries. He was a secretive man.’

‘It sounds as if you didn’t know a lot about him.’

‘Well, it was like that. John was an Englishman, came here after the war. I’m a Kiwi myself. I left New Zealand in 1950 and I’ve never been back. We both loved Sydney, Bondi particularly. No ties for either of us. We both worked at the business and played a lot of tennis and golf. We had a lovely boat. It was enough.’