The Empty Beach by Peter Corris

Author:Peter Corris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 1988-01-08T16:00:00+00:00

19

I WAS under strict medical instructions not to move around more than necessary, but who ever took any notice of strict medical instructions? When I see a rise in the percentage of thin, fit doctors, I’ll start paying more attention to their strict instructions. Besides, the physical good I might have got by sitting on my bum at home would have been countered by the emotional disturbance. I had to know what was going on. I took a few red Codrals for the pain and put myself and my stick in a taxi. First stop was the bank for cash in various denominations, then Randwick.

The taxi driver naturally assumed I was going to the races and that I was a man of leisure.

‘Got anything good?’ He spoke with the mixture of respect and distrust a working man feels for someone who comes out of his house casually dressed in the middle of a weekday. I hadn’t looked at the horses since the Singer case started.

‘Is Roderick Dhu running?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘In the fourth.’

The horse was trained by a friend of mine, an ex-boxer who hardly ever fought an honest fight or ran a dishonest horse. ‘Get on that, each way.’

The Royal Oaks is just far enough from the track for someone to walk over, forget his or her losses and think about punting another day. I limped from the taxi into the back bar, knocked the knee on a chair and was glad to get up on a bar stool and start work on a scotch. The lady in pink was there all right, in mauve that day, drinking and smoking in an experienced sort of way. She had a companion who looked middle-aged, but after Ann’s revelation of my subject’s age I was not confident about reading how many years these women had on the clock. She wasn’t young. They were both blowing the smoke around and not talking much; it didn’t look like anything that couldn’t be broken up with a little money. Ann had told me that she was going by the name of Peggy Harrison just then and that old Peg was a barrel of fun.

They finished the round and the companion came up to the bar and bought the next one. I drank slowly and when Peggy came up for her shout I had a ten-dollar note out and flapping in the breeze.

‘Peggy?’ I said.

‘Two Bacardis and coke, sport,’ she said to the barman, then she turned a magnificently bloodshot eye at me. ‘Yes? Do I know you?’

‘I was at Leon’s wake with Ann Winter.’

The drinks came and naturally that was what she was most interested in. She grabbed them with the excessive caution of someone who has a slight load on board. But she’d caught sight of the ten.

‘Nice girl, Ann.’

‘Yes. Would this buy a little information?’ I nudged the note. The barman was interested and trying to hover within earshot. I looked at him as if he had something in his nose and he backed off.

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