Harrigan and Grace - 01 - Blood Redemption (52 page)

They were accompanied by a plainly dressed woman from a national security agency and introduced themselves as ‘the American cousins from the Embassy’. Harrigan reflected that his entrée to this meeting had been bought at the cost of shafting everyone on his team who had trusted him. The meeting began with one of the Americans tabling an extradition order for the Preacher Graeme Fredericksen as a material witness to the murder of Dr Laura Di-Cuollo. It had been received yesterday, they said.

Harrigan looked it over as it was passed to him. ‘You may be a little late,’ he commented.

‘We’re aware of that, Commander,’ one of the Americans said.

‘Your shooter has done our job for us.’

Harrigan perceived that the use of the word ‘Commander’ had the intent of flattering his ego. The implication behind this supposed compliment insulted him.

‘The issue here is the Avenging Angels.’ The woman from the security agency spoke up. ‘We have been concerned they may be attempting to establish themselves here. That seems unlikely now, given the course of events, but, as you’ll appreciate, we need to be certain.’

‘Have been concerned?’ Harrigan queried.

‘Yes,’ the other American said, ‘we’ve been watching Fredericksen for some time now. Unfortunately — and we regret this — we were unable to anticipate the present outcome. But we have to say, Commander, we’ve been very impressed with the professionalism of your investigation. You’ve got some very good people there.’

Had some very good people there. He did not reply to this.

‘A pity we didn’t join forces before today. We might have had one less death on our hands,’ he said instead in his neutral voice, referring — at least in his own mind — to Professor Henry Liu rather than the preacher.

‘We understand your feelings on this point,’ the first American replied, ‘but you do have to understand that these are very dangerous people we’re dealing with here. We were unable to say or do anything that might jeopardise our own investigations in any way.’

Harrigan did not feel the need to respond.

The man continued: ‘Unfortunately, we weren’t able to exactly determine Fredericksen’s relationship to the Angels’ inner circle prior to his decease. We know he was pretty close but we don’t know how close. We were hoping he could name us some names. I guess we won’t be able to ask him now.’

‘No.’ Harrigan’s reply was untouched by any regret for the preacher’s fate. ‘Was he paid for Dr Liu?’

The agency woman received the question with the same neutrality with which it had been asked.

‘Yes, he was. His financial transactions were paid through a merchant bank in LA, by means of a proxy.’

‘We have that individual in custody now,’ the first American added.

‘He’s helping us with our inquiries, as you put it over here.’

‘Who was bankrolling this, as a matter of interest?’ Harrigan asked.

‘There are a variety of sources we’ve tracked down,’ the man prevaricated. ‘A small-arms manufacturer in California left a certain sum of money to another possible suspect we have in our sights. There are other benefactors as well.’

‘My concern is that the Angels don’t get a foothold here,’ the woman said. ‘We can’t be complacent in assuming they haven’t, irregardless of this turn of events. There are avenues we have to examine. We think it’s best we do this now, while they’re likely to be uncoordinated and may be considering going on the run.’

Harrigan took this to mean that they probably had established themselves in some way and that they might even have escaped from beneath the national security organisation’s net of surveillance.

‘I take it you’d like us to wind up our current investigation ASAP?’

he asked.

‘If you would. We’ll pick up that angle of the investigation from here,’ the woman said briskly. ‘If you can charge this young girl you’ve got in custody without referring to this particular organisation, then we’d like that to end your involvement in the matter. We’ll need to interview her but as we understand it, she knew nothing about their existence. Is that the case?’

‘Yes, that’s quite right,’ he replied. ‘She had no knowledge of that particular connection. She was acting from purely personal motives.’

‘We thought not.’ The second American spoke with a hint of contempt. ‘She was the patsy.’

‘I don’t think I’d quite describe her as that,’ Harrigan said.

‘We can rely on your confidence in this matter, Commander? And that of your people?’ the first American asked.

‘Of course.’ He smiled.

The meeting ended shortly afterwards, everyone unfailingly polite to one another to the end.

After the meeting, Harrigan went back to his old office to talk to everyone as he had promised he would. When he arrived, much of it had already been cleared out and it had the look of the abandoned territory it had become. There was the sense of a pervasive, collective hangover. Both Ian and Trevor were quiet, barely greeting him. They were in the incident room, stripping the images from the corkboard.

Harrigan watched as Matthew and Henry Liu, Greg Smith and the Firewall’s website disappeared into the shredder and were then emptied into the classified waste bag. Everything that had once cushioned him in this job was finishing, the more so when he spoke to them in his old office to tell them they had been warned off any further work on the Avenging Angels. They listened with an expected cynicism.

‘That’s no surprise,’ Trevor said, ‘they wouldn’t want us traipsing around. So what do we do now? Just tie up the murder investigation and leave it at that?’

‘That’s about it, yeah,’ Harrigan replied.

‘It’s nice of them to think we’ve got enough brainpower to do that.

That shouldn’t take too long, I guess,’ Ian said. ‘Not much to wrap up there.’

‘I’ve got you positions at the Agency. I’m looking to act you both up at positions a level above the ones you’re in now,’ he said.

‘What more could we want?’ Trevor said. ‘Do you want us to thank you?’

‘No, mate. I want you to do your job and I’m sure you will. Where’s Louise?’

‘The last time I saw Lou, her eyes were disappearing into the top of her head,’ Ian said. ‘Why don’t you ring her at home? Of course, she probably won’t have dried out yet.’

‘I will,’ he said. ‘Okay, thanks. I’ll see you both tomorrow at the Agency.’

‘We’ll be there,’ they said, and left his office.

He wondered if they would ever trust him enough again to have a drink with him.

Shortly after, Grace appeared.

‘How are you?’ he said.

‘I’m fine. You need to read this.’

She handed him a letter which he read over with interest.

‘You didn’t need any help from me,’ he said. ‘This is a very good job you’ve landed. Very prestigious.’

‘Do you think so? Not as prestigious as yours though, is it?’ she replied, smiling at him, making him smile back. ‘What happened to my shirt?’

‘I’m afraid it’s cactus, Grace. It lasted about ten minutes. I can get you a new one.’

‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s just a shirt.’

‘Yeah, I guess. Do you still want to see me tonight? Will you come and spend the night at my place?’

‘I don’t know where you live,’ she said.

She thought, I don’t even know who you are outside of this place.

He wrote his address on a piece of paper and gave it to her.

‘Do you want to go out? I can get some takeaway if you like,’ he said.

‘No, let me do that. All right, I’ll see you there. Seven-thirty?’

‘Yeah. It’ll be good to see you.’

She smiled and left. Yes, it would be. He would need her company, after today.

Grace arrived at Harrigan’s house in the mid evening, walking down wide stone steps and then through the lush plants overgrown onto the flagstones, to see him through the open door to his lighted kitchen. She stopped in the doorway, watching him loosening his tie at the end of the day.

‘Hi,’ he said, seeing her there. ‘You’re here.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, hesitating a little.

‘Do you want to come in?’

‘Sure.’

She walked in and placed a hessian carry bag on his kitchen table.

‘It’s a nice place you’ve got here,’ she said.

‘Are you going to ask me how I can afford it?’

‘No,’ she said, surprised.

‘People ask me that question. It was in the family, I inherited it.’

She shrugged.

‘It’s not my business. Why should I care?’

He walked up to her and stroked her cheek.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s been a long day and I must be feeling got at. It’s nice to see you.’

‘Yeah.’

They kissed for some moments in the middle of the kitchen. Then he held her. She felt him relax against her, draw breath.

He put bowls on the table, she emptied the contents of the carry bag onto the kitchen bench, a collection of white plastic containers, together with whole limes and bottles of soda water.

‘For fresh lime and soda,’ she said. ‘That’s what I said I’d have if I got out of that place alive yesterday. So I am. That’s for me. But you really need white wine for this dish.’

‘What about beer?’ he said.

‘Yes. Beer is good.’

‘What can I contribute to this?’ he asked as he set out glasses for them both.

‘Nothing,’ she said shaking her head, ‘this is from me.’

They ate in his dining room, a white-painted, high-ceilinged room with bare polished floorboards. She set the meal out and said how it should be eaten. He sipped cold light beer while he ate, and relaxed.

They spoke little at first, there seemed to be no need for it.

‘I like your mirror,’ she said, after one of their silences.

He looked up at the wide mirror above the fireplace. It reflected the room they sat in, the hallway through the door and then the wide white room that he’d had built for Toby. The frame was a plainly carved reddish-gold timber.

‘It was my aunt’s,’ he said. ‘No one knows what sort of wood that is. But you look at it and it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.’

‘Has it always been there?’

‘Yeah, it has. She used to say it was hanging there when she was a girl. It arrived with the house, I think.’

‘Looking back in time,’ Grace said. ‘Everyone in your family has been reflected in that mirror at some time or another.’

‘That’s true,’ he said, glancing back up at it.

Things he would prefer not to think about or ever to see again.

‘This is good food,’ he said, ‘I don’t usually eat this well.’

‘Yeah, they are good cooks. They know what they’re doing.’

They had both finished eating but she did not ask to smoke. She sent a shiver down her spine, releasing tension, a gesture he was beginning to recognise. He thought of the shape and the line of her back. It was his turn to suggest that they should go to bed. He wanted to make love to her but he also needed the comfort of her body at the end of a rough day. He cleared the dishes into the ancient dishwasher while she stopped to scratch the cat’s head.

‘What an ugly-looking thing you are,’ she said, as Menzies batted his lumpy head ecstatically against her hand.

‘He’s another heirloom,’ Harrigan said.

He turned out the lights and they went upstairs to bed.

In the darkness of the early morning, while his father slept with Grace, Toby Harrigan dreamed electronic words in his sleep.
I’m here for you,
you remember that, Lucy. Talk to me from where you are. I’m here in
this body, you’re there in that cell. I can reach you and you can reach
me. Someone has to be there for you and it’s me. Remember that.

In her cell, Lucy turned in her bunk, thinking not of the end of the world but of the beginning of time. Time starts for me now, Turtle, I have to find the ways to deal with what happens now, whatever that is. With knowing where I’ve been, what I’ve done, all that weight. I have to do that. You wait, Turtle. I’ll do it because I’ve got no choice.

Grace herself woke suddenly, as though she had heard these very words when they were spoken in Lucy’s mind, and drew in a quick, shallow breath at the memory of a young girl facing her with a gun in her hand. She felt the warmth of Paul’s body next to hers and listened to her heart beating strongly with fright. She sat up. There was no one in the room other than themselves and nothing to fear. She looked at Paul, where he slept beside her. You don’t have to be afraid of this closeness either, she told herself. Not all men are sleeping demons. She lay down beside him and slept again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their time, advice, support and inspiration: David Baldwin, head of Unix Services Group, Information Infrastructure Services at the Australian National University.

Dr Suzette Booth of the Child Protection Unit at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

Julie Cremer, of Birchgrove.

Stephanie Haygarth, editor and writer, Canberra.

Ewan Maidment, of the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University.

John Symonds, biomedical engineer, of The Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

PERFECTBOUND SPECIAL FEATURE

CRIME WRITING

AND BIOGRAPHY

Why do you write crime? That is often one of the first questions I am asked when I tell people what I do; the underlying questions seem to be: Why waste your time? Don’t you have something better to write about?

The short answer is no. Give me a crime novel to write and you have given me
carte blanche
to write about all the complexities, including the best and the worst, of human behaviour in almost any way I choose. Crime stories are some of the most gripping and enduring narratives written. But, as novelist, what I write is also biography even if it has been transformed into imaginative fiction.

Both my biography and the fascination I have for everything human are at the heart of the novels I write.

The first time I saw Australia, I had just turned six on board the
Fairsky
en route from London to New Zealand with my family. Along with many others we were woken before it was light to see the dawn break over a new country as we approached the Western Australian shoreline. All I remember of Sydney from that voyage is the Harbour Bridge. My mother wanted to climb up into one of the pylons to see the view but was advised not to because (so she was told) ‘it’s very dirty up there’. We satisfied ourselves with staring at it from Circular Quay. It was a cold and windy June day in 1958. My parents were recently separated. My mother had become a single parent in the days before welfare subsidies or equal pay for women. She was looking for the means to live and a place in which to raise her children safely.