The Empty Beach ch-4 Read online

  The Empty Beach

  ( Cliff Hardy - 4 )

  Peter Corris

  Peter Corris

  The Empty Beach

  1

  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.’

  ‘We
ll, 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.’

  Just great, Cliff, I thought. Canny Pom goes missing off the beach, wife grieves mildly because she doesn’t know him all that well. It sounded like two days on the street, two hundred dollars and lunch money. Still, maybe I could get some swimming in. I told her I’d do what I could and she wrote me a cheque. I noticed she didn’t write my name on the stub.

  ‘I’ll need a photograph,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes. I’ve got one here of John on the yacht. He’s got a few days growth, but…’ She dug in the bag, which rustled and clinked the way women’s bags do. ‘Damn! I thought I had it.’

  ‘I suppose I could get a newspaper photo.’

  ‘You’d be lucky. John didn’t go in for publicity.’ She looked at her digital watch. ‘I wanted to meet you here because it’s quiet and I didn’t want to broadcast my business. My flat’s a bit public’ She put her cigarettes and matches away. ‘But I feel a bit better just from talking about it.’

  She pulled out her purse and a sheet of typing paper came out with it. She looked at it like an actress studying her lines. ‘Here’s a list of some of John’s interests, the places where he spent some time. It might help.’

  I took the paper and she put money on the table.

  ‘Run me home,’ she said. ‘I’ll get the photo.’

  I escorted her out to my Falcon with a touch of pride. My last case but one had been a moderately fat job and I’d had some money to spend on the car-mechanical overhaul, paint, fresh upholstery in the front. The last case was better forgotten, a foul-up that had cost me money. All the more reason to open the car door smartly for Mrs Marion Singer and not to shut it too roughly after she’d glided her nice, neat legs inside. It costs nothing to be a gentleman, as old Jack Dempsey used to say.

  She directed me north up the hill and around a couple of turns that brought me out in a street I didn’t know. It ran along the side of a cliff that dropped away down to water, rocks and a little sand. There were four apartment blocks. Chez Singer was in a ten-storey block that boasted the name The Reefs. None of the residents would be victims of life’s shipwrecks. The building soared up and was placed to give a maximum view of the water; the balconies were long and deep and the acres of glass were tinted. I guessed that a title for one of the apartments would change hands for around a quarter of a million. I steered the Falcon towards a car park with more potted plants than Vaucluse House. Mrs Singer turned, looked out the back window and prodded my arm.

  ‘Bugger it,’ she said. ‘Mac’s here. Stop a bit further on.’

  I drove past the entrance to the car park, rolling gently. ‘Who’s Mac?’

  ‘My business partner, sort of,’ she said. ‘I’ll mail you the photo. Sorry.’ She clutched at her bag, nervously I thought. ‘I’ll have to think of some story if he saw you.’

  ‘You could say I was your long-lost cousin from New Zealand.’

  ‘God forbid. Please do your best, Mr Hardy, and keep me informed.’

  She got out and walked back to The Reefs. She walked well, head up, tummy in, as befitted someone who filled in her time with tennis and golf. I drove on to the end of the street, past The Main, turned and came back. Through the entrance I saw Mrs Singer talking to a man who stood with one hand almost possessively on her arm. I stopped and looked at them among the potted palms. He was stout, no taller than she, and built wide, like an all-in wrestler.

  2

  Hey!’ The call came from the other side of the street and a little behind me. It came from a car, not an ordinary car like a Bentley or a Saab, but from a silver Cadillac. Why I hadn’t spotted it until then I don’t know. With its gleaming chrome and tinted glass it was like a peacock in a chookyard. A thin white arm reached out of the window in the front of the car and on the road side. It beckoned to me and I got out and went across to it and the car. The Cadillac was like one of the old, Gothic models that had been put on a diet. It was lower and sleeker but a longish walk would still be required to get round it. It carried cheeky gold and blue Californian number plates with the New South Wales plates mounted above them. The customised plate was MAC 1.

  The arm belonged to a blonde. She had makeup in every place it could be applied and her almost white hair was curled and twisted in ways that cost money. She put a cigarette in her mouth and narrowed her eyes. At a distance, she’d have passed for eighteen, up close she looked as if she should be in the third form somewhere doing domestic science.

  ‘Can you give me a light, please?’

  I shook my head. ‘You’re too young to smoke.’

  ‘I’m too young to do a lot of things,’ she giggled. ‘Doesn’t stop me.’

  I glanced back towards The Reefs. The wrestler was laying down the law to my client but she shook her head and puffed smoke and didn’t seem concerned. The blonde didn’t like being looked away from.

  ‘Hey, are you sure you haven’t got a match?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘There’ll be a lighter on that flight deck somewhere.’

  She shook her head. ‘There’s so many switches, and Mac won’t ever leave me the keys. He’s afraid I’ll just drive away.’

  ‘Can you manage a left-hand drive?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Never mind. What’s Mac’s game? Hamburgers?’

  She laughed. It was a sound she hadn’t worked on unlike her voice, which was stage-throaty. The laugh was clear and girlish and suddenly it all felt sad and smutty-the schoolgirl with the cigarette in the big, arrogant car. She was wearing a pink top and tiny shorts, spike heels and a thin gold chain around her right ankle. She saw me looking and poked her tongue out between her little white teeth.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ she purred. ‘Here comes Bob.’

  I swung around to see a big man moving fast around the back of the car and coming towards me. I stepped away from the Caddy and heard the blonde giggle again.

  ‘On your way, mister,’ Bob said. He was six foot three and under the tight tennis shirt he had wide shoulders and a flat middle.

  ‘Just chatting,’ I said.

  ‘He said he wanted to fuck me,’ the blonde said. ‘He said he wanted to suck my tits.’

  I felt a small wave of panic rising. Bob looked like just the sort of boy you’d hire to stamp out unwanted tit sucking. He kept his hands low and put his back gently against the car. It was a good position in which to duck or from which to launch an attack. Bob knew his business and I just wanted to mind mine.

  ‘The lady’s overwrought,’ I said. ‘She reads too much.’

  ‘That little twat can’t read,’ he said. ‘And you’d need the mouthwash handy if you were going to suck her.’

  ‘He wanted to show me his dick,’ the blonde chirped.

  ‘If he did, you wouldn’t know whether to lie down or open your mouth.’

  ‘You’re a shit, Bob. I know what you want.’

  He sighed. ‘I want to keep Mac happy and draw my pay. That means keeping sluts like you unbruised. You won’t be the last, Sharon.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘it’s been exciting talking to you, but I think I’ll be going.’

  ‘You do that.’ He rubbed against the car like a cat. ‘I’m a bit disappointed. Thought you might have a go.’

  Sharon wriggled in her moulded bucket seat and pulled her top down an inch.

  ‘Get rid of him, Bob,’ she hissed. ‘Mac’s coming.’

  I turned and saw the bull-like man heading towards us with his head down and his shoulders hunched. He kicked savagely at a can in his way and it screeched and clattered across the concrete.

  Bob had straightened up like a guardsman awaiting inspection. I grinned at him. ‘Another time,’ I said. I backed across to my car, got in and drove awa
y before Mac made it out to the street. In the rear vision mirror I saw Bob pull open the kerb-side door so that Mac could settle in behind the left hand drive steering wheel.

  3

  My habit is to run a good check on the client before pounding the pavement and knocking on doors, otherwise a man could end up working for a white slaver or a politician. The little I had on Singer was from one source only-a friend in the credit rating racket. I needed more, so I called Harry Tickener at the News and got temporary researcher status, which admitted me to the paper’s first-class library.

  Mrs Singer had been right about John’s penchant for the low profile. The newspapers had reported as fully as they could on his disappearance, but they were scratching to fill the space when it came to background dope. He had extensive business interests concentrated in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, was fifty-eight years of age and president of his tennis club. That last piece of data showed how hard up the papers had been for copy.

  There was no photograph of him. I read the reports carefully. Singer had been in the habit of jogging along the roads at first light (not down on the sand, where you couldn’t move for seekers after aerobic fitness). He’d gone for his run early on a bleak August morning and that had been the last anyone had seen of him. A towelling headband he always wore had been washed up on the beach later the following day, and that was it.

  My client hadn’t rated a mention in the papers at all; she hadn’t been seen anywhere wearing anything, hadn’t put flowers around the necks of racehorses or danced with the premier. My jottings from these stunning pieces of journalism hardly filled half a. sheet of notebook paper.

  I found Harry Tickener belting his typewriter in his latest attempt to win the elusive Walkley Award. Harry has filled out a lot over the years, but his mind is still lean and sharp. I tried the name Singer on him.

  ‘Nope,’ he said. He stared down at his copy paper as if he might forget forever the next thing he wanted to say. ‘Never heard anything about him. Try Garth.’