The Tattooed Man

by Alex Palmer

  ‘Why don’t you come in and have a look?’ he said. ‘I don’t think this is just “Good morning, how are you?”’

  ‘I’ve never been in here before,’ she said. ‘It’s always looked too private.’

  ‘This is where I keep myself to myself. Come in. Take the weight off your feet.’

  ‘Do you mind if I open the window?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  The morning air carried into the stuffy room the sweet smell of jasmine from an ancient vine that covered the length of the garden fence. Harrigan’s study was upstairs at the back of the house. At night, from the window, he could see the lights of Louisa Road reflected in the water across the bay. His study was a bare room, the furniture spare and the floorboards covered with a worn imitation Persian rug. His bookcases lined one wall; his safe, two chairs and his desk, which was made of old dark wood and had come with the house, made up the rest.

  Grace sat in his spare chair. In the morning light, her skin was shadowed to a soft pearl. She studied the contents of his bookcases. Journals on law and policing, digests on forensic medicine and psychology, mixed with Norman Mailer’s The Fight and The Executioner’s Song. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and Ellroy’s My Dark Places shared space with Crime and Punishment, The Devils. Histories of racing and boxing stood next to them. On a shelf not completely full were a pair of Harrigan’s own boxing gloves, from a time when, as a twenty year old, he had tried unsuccessfully to make a career as a boxer. Even if the attempt had been a failure, he still remembered it as a gap in his life when his time had been his own.

  ‘Do you only ever read books on crime?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not. I read the form guide as well.’

  He saw her looking at the wall above his desk. His law degree hung beside a collection of prints, reproductions of works by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya that Harrigan had bought overseas years ago. Savage satire from The Caprichos mixed with horrors from The Disasters of War. He watched her look at these representations of bizarre human folly hung alongside those showing useless fighting, massacre and the dead. Facsimiles of the original nineteenth-century Spanish publications of Goya’s collected series of prints were visible on the shelf beside his desk. Beside them was an outsized book titled simply Goya.

  ‘You’re a fan,’ she said.

  ‘He’s an obsession of mine. I’m like that. Once I decide I want something, I hang on to it.’

  She got up from the chair and went to look at the prints. ‘And still they won’t go!’ she said aloud, reading the title of one. Misshapen yet human creatures desperately held up a monolith about to crush them while nonetheless staying huddled beneath where it would fall.

  ‘Don’t you think people are like that?’ he said.

  ‘It’s grotesque.’

  ‘It’s people who are grotesque. He’s showing us what we are.’

  ‘What about this one?’ she asked.

  One can’t look. Unseen soldiers thrust bayonets in from the right of the print, towards huddled people waiting in terror on their summary and bloody massacre. Pity had been expunged from the etched shadows.

  ‘You have to look,’ Harrigan said. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s sadistic?’

  ‘No. It’s about sadism. It’s a voice for all the people who die like that. The man who drew that is bringing them back to life. That’s an accusation.’

  ‘It’s a fine line. Why did he draw things like this?’

  ‘It’s what he saw in his own life. He lived through a civil war. He put it down on paper.’

  ‘They’re all so bleak,’ she said. ‘Except when you get to her. What’s she? Rest and recreation?’

  Separated out from the rest was a print of one of Goya’s paintings, The Naked Maja. She seemed to smile out of the picture, looking directly at the watcher, both an enigma and a challenge.

  ‘I like her,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful. Like you.’

  She gave him a half-smile that was slightly self-deprecating. He often thought Grace didn’t seem to know how lovely she was. When they had first met, he’d been harsh towards her, too harsh. At the time, he’d said it was the fault of the pressure of his work. He regretted it now and hoped he had made up for it since, even given the time his job took out of their relationship. What do you see in me? A question he wasn’t going to ask her. Just keep seeing it.

  ‘Why do you have these on the wall? Why do you need to look at them?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t look at them all the time. Sometimes I take them down and put them away because I don’t want to see them for a while. I just need to know they’re there. They take the pressure out of my head.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I see things like this all the time in my job and I can’t pretend I don’t. This is what we do to each other every day. I know what that means. Someone else knew that as well. They knew enough to put it down on paper like this so it has some meaning.’

  ‘Someone else knew how we get a real thrill out of hurting each other,’ she said softly. ‘That won’t ever change.’

  He wondered what lay behind her words. Perhaps, since he was opening himself up to her like this, he should have asked her. He knew that she had grown up in New Guinea, a childhood that was still a vivid and beautiful dream in her mind. The dream had been shattered when her mother had died suddenly of cerebral malaria when Grace was fourteen. Her father had brought them all back to Australia where Grace had spun off into a cycle of wildness that hadn’t ended until she was in her twenties. For a few years she had been an alcoholic, although no one would have ever guessed that now. Somewhere along the way she had also acquired a faint scar that ran like a silken thread down the length of her neck. He had never asked her and she had never told him who had put it there or why. All the times they had made love, he’d never once intentionally touched it or put his mouth to it.

  ‘I’d better see what the commissioner wants.’

  She looked over his shoulder as he opened his inbox. Three emails, all with the same subject line and attachments, were waiting for him. Two had been forwarded: one from his son, the second from the commissioner. The third had been sent directly to his personal address from an unknown source. The time identified them as being sent sometime after midnight. The subject line read: They gather for the feast. Harrigan opened the one addressed to him first. The message consisted of a URL followed by the words: Ex-Detective Senior Sergeant Michael Cassatt leaves his grave and arrives at Natalie Edwards’ table at Pittwater for dinner.

  Three pictures had been attached to the email. Harrigan didn’t look at these immediately but went to the website. The words They gather for the feast flashed on screen again. The first image took his breath away. In sharp colour, the dead sat at the table on the patio at Pittwater, assembled for a meal they would never eat, Cassatt at the head as if presiding over them. He heard Grace draw her breath in sharply.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Is that what you saw? How did you recognise him?’

  ‘Intuition. We looked at his left shoulder, he had a tattoo there. Why send this out? What’s the point?’

  ‘Is that man with the glasses Jerome Beck?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s him. Will anyone else recognise him now? Is that the point?’

  He went to the next photograph. Cassatt lay in his unidentified grave, recently dead. In the narrow trench, his face and body, just recognisable, were shockingly marked.

  ‘Someone worked him over before he died and they weren’t gentle,’ Harrigan said. ‘What did they want? And why tell the world like this? If you’re going to splash it all over the net, why not tell us where his grave was as well?’

  ‘They can’t want you to know. It’s like advertising,’ she said. ‘Or reality TV. They want us to think it’s real life. Except that it’s artificial from the beginning.’

  ‘Whoever did that to Mike must have buried him as well. They have to know where his grave was. Whoever that person i
s, they’ll know someone was looking over their shoulder while they were doing it.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t this be from the person who killed him?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I think it’s more likely it’s not,’ he said after a few moments’ thought. ‘This is someone telling us what they want us to know. Someone wants us to see a connection between the killings at Pittwater and Mike’s murder. Killers usually keep things secret. These people want this out there.’

  ‘Then it’s also a message for Cassatt’s killers, whoever they are. Someone’s on to them.’

  The third photograph showed Cassatt in this same grave in the mummified state he’d been in at the table at Pittwater. The narrow confines cradled him like a child.

  ‘Before and after,’ Harrigan said. ‘We saw you bury him and now we’ve dug him up and taken him to Sydney for a meal with the dead. Who are these people?’

  ‘Twisted,’ Grace said. ‘You’d have to be. I’m going to have a shower. I need to wash seeing that away.’

  Harrigan opened the other two emails. Each was identical to the first. The commissioner’s came with the concise message: Please phone. His son had written: Isn’t this where you went yesterday, Dad? These pix are everywhere, they’ve been posted all over the place. People are putting them up on their own websites. Sicko.

  Thanks, mate, Harrigan typed in return. Sorry about yesterday, see you today if I possibly can.

  He picked up the phone and made his call.

  ‘Paul,’ the commissioner said, dispensing with greetings. ‘Have you seen the email?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s gone to every media outlet in the country. Some newspapers have managed to get those pictures out on the street already. That’s bad enough. But if you check the Sydney Morning Herald online, you’ll find there’s media speculation this investigation may already be compromised as a result of Cassatt’s body being found at the scene.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘According to them, the Ice Cream Man may have had evidence implicating a serving senior police officer in the Edward Lee murder. This senior officer may wish to protect himself by impeding the investigation.’

  ‘Is this alleged senior serving police officer named?’

  ‘Of course not. The paper isn’t planning on being sued. The journalist is very clearly referring to the various rumours connecting you to Cassatt—’

  ‘There is no truth whatsoever in those rumours,’ Harrigan snapped, wondering why fate had to do this to him.

  ‘I didn’t say there was. But I won’t have it said that, under my command, this service is subject to the same degree of corruption that existed with Cassatt.’

  ‘I’m not aware anyone is saying that.’

  ‘I don’t intend to give them the chance. I discussed the matter with the special assistant commissioner. Marvin advises that you should stand down from your position as commander during this investigation. However…’ The commissioner drew breath. Harrigan, awaiting the axe, sensed a reprieve. ‘Senator Edwards phoned a short while ago. He wants to meet with the senior officers managing this investigation, including you. You impressed him yesterday. He was very insistent that you be involved. Can you be here in an hour?’

  Harrigan smiled mordantly to consider that, purely by circumstance, he’d managed to avoid one of Marvin’s more outrageous gambits.

  ‘I’ll be there,’ he replied. ‘Are you asking me to break my leave?’

  ‘Not as such. I’m asking you to make yourself available as needed. I would expect that from all my executive officers. You will be conducting yourself as though you have nothing to hide.’

  ‘I have no reason to do otherwise, Commissioner.’

  There was a pause. ‘There’s something else you need to know. I received an anonymous parcel this morning. It contains a dossier that appears to be from an intelligence-gathering organisation. It’s relevant to this case.’

  ‘Someone sent this to you?’

  ‘With a note that says: Read this and it will explain who Jerome Beck is. I’ve discussed it with Marvin. He thinks it’s a hoax. I don’t share that opinion. It appears the senator also received a copy of this same dossier but a day sooner than we did. That’s what he wants to discuss with us.’

  ‘Strange happenings, Commissioner,’ Harrigan replied.

  ‘Yes, unfortunately. In an hour.’

  Harrigan put the phone down, reflecting that there was no mistaking the commissioner’s priorities. He went and found Grace in the bathroom where she had finished showering and was brushing out her hair.

  ‘They want you to go in, don’t they?’ she said.

  ‘In an hour. They want me to talk to the minister. I don’t have a choice. I have to go.’

  ‘Of course you don’t have a choice. You can’t ring them up and say I’m not coming in, my girlfriend won’t let me.’

  ‘You’re a lot more to me than just a girlfriend.’

  She put her hairbrush back down on the vanity. Small items indicating her presence had begun to appear in his house. A bottle of her perfume on the dressing table in his bedroom; a cream silk chemise tossed over a chair; a brightly coloured packet of tampons in his bathroom cabinet.

  ‘But you’re still going in. You still don’t have a choice. It’s not whether either of us likes it. It’s the fact that you don’t have a choice.’

  He didn’t like where she was taking this.

  ‘According to God, those pictures are everywhere,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘They’ve even made it to some of the newspapers this morning. It’s too much for his sensibilities.’

  ‘I’ll get dressed and go and get them. We should see this.’

  By the time Grace came back from the corner store, he had showered, shaved and dressed and was eating a quick breakfast. She spread the papers out on the table. The headlines were ghoulish enough: Ice Cream Man’s body found in House of Death. There were photographs of Harrigan as the head of the task force together with colour pictures of Nattie Edwards’ gaudy house at Pittwater. A school photograph of Julian Edwards when he could have been no more than thirteen covered the Daily Telegraph’s front page. Harrigan could almost hear the sub-editors salivating.

  ‘The Australian talks about Stuart Morrissey,’ Grace said. ‘They say he had a number of business connections with Natalie Edwards. Is he involved in this?’

  ‘He had a deal going with Edwards and Beck. The three of them were meeting to sign a contract on the night of the murders. He didn’t turn up. I’m waiting to find out why.’

  ‘Beck’s just an unidentified body in these reports. No one’s even speculated about him. They’re all more interested in the Ice Cream Man.’

  Harrigan glanced at his watch.

  ‘I have to go. What are you going to do today?’

  ‘What am I going to do?’ Suddenly, she couldn’t hide her disappointment. ‘I think I’ll go over to Bondi, go for a swim. I was going to cook dinner for us tonight. Is that still going to happen?’

  Grace was a very good cook. It relaxed her, she said, to put food together at the end of a working day. The kitchen in her tiny flat, small as it was, was packed with cooking utensils and foodstuffs whose existence had previously been unknown to him. She did this kind of thing, took care with how they ate and drank. With her, he had dressed himself up and gone to restaurants he would otherwise never have looked inside, found himself at films, cabaret nights and concerts. He thought she was trying to civilise him. He enjoyed this, it relaxed him. Whether it was having the intended effect was another question. On the rare nights when his time was his own, he still went to the boxing. When the fighting was good, he came home feeling clean.

  ‘I’ll be there, if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you.’

  He tried to take her in his arms but she shrugged away from him. He went after her anyway and held on to her. They leaned against each other.

  ‘You don’t have to put distance between us,’ he
said.

  ‘You don’t have time for us. You have to see the commissioner. That’s the way it always is.’

  ‘Just for now. You don’t have to look so sad.’

  ‘For now and always. You have to go. I’ll see you tonight,’ she said, this time slipping away and succeeding in putting air between them.

  I’ll be there. He had said it to her, he had said it the commissioner. Always, people demanded things from him.

  At his father’s funeral, Jim Harrigan’s mates had agreed there was something to be said for going out the way old Jimbo had. Propped up against the bar of the William Wallace with a half-drunk schooner of Tooheys New in front of him. As usual, Harrigan the son had different ambitions. He had no wish to live out his old age in an empty house with only a bottle of whisky for company or to be like the other men he saw in pubs, watching Fox Sports and eating alone. He had hoped Grace might be persuaded to move in one day. So far, things could not have gone worse.

  Always careful with his appearance, Harrigan dressed smart casual, eschewing a tie. There had to be some benefit to supposedly being on leave. In the clear sunlight, he drove to Victoria Road and joined the city-bound traffic. Is this what I want? He had always avoided giving much time to this question. This morning it forced its way into his mind. Vehicles flowed slowly across the Anzac Bridge; traffic fumes shimmered against the concrete bulwarks lining the roadway. Through the bridge’s steel web, the sky rolled above him in a blue curve.

  He felt a sense of revulsion, he couldn’t help it. Everything in him wanted to stop his car, to get out and leave it where it was; to start to walk and to keep walking; to disappear into the fabric of the city as if he had never existed, to sleep in the open with the derelicts where no one knew him. It was an instant as powerful as it was brief. He kept driving.