The Tattooed Man hag-2

by Alex Palmer

  ‘You’ll have some in your bag,’ he said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Where are you going for dinner?’

  She had knelt down and was looking in the cupboard under the sink.

  ‘Claude’s,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask you because I didn’t think there was any chance you’d have the time.’

  He had never liked going to expensive restaurants; he always thought of it as a waste of money. It was another difference between them. To Grace, money was something you spent. She shut the cupboard door and stood in front of the sink with her hands on her hips, not looking at him.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to see you. I have time. Maybe we could go somewhere. If you want to go out, why don’t you let me take you out? Just you and me. You choose. Wherever you like.’

  ‘Maybe we could go somewhere. Why don’t I let you take me out?’ she repeated and then pulled open another kitchen drawer. She stood there looking down at it. ‘I wanted to see you last night and you didn’t have the time. Now you’ve got a couple of hours to spare for me and you just breeze in here like this and say that. The roses are supposed to make it all okay. That’s one way you can get your sex, I suppose.’

  Harrigan was genuinely insulted. ‘Grace, I’ve never treated you like that. I think you should take it easy with what you say. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.’

  ‘You always are. You always will be. You’ll always have a really good reason why you can’t be here. Fine. I’m not going to ask you for one. The other night I thought, I can’t put myself through this again. Let’s just finish with it.’

  ‘I thought we were going to see it through until I had this investigation under control.’

  ‘That was before you didn’t ring me when I asked you to and before you gave me all this time to think about it. Nothing’s going to change. We might as well face up to that now.’

  She pushed the kitchen drawer shut. A bag the same colour as her dress was on the table. He picked it up.

  ‘You’ll have some cigarettes in here. I’ll get them for you.’

  ‘No, don’t do that!’

  It was too late. He took out not her cigarettes but a small old handgun. He put her bag back on the table and turned the gun over in his hand.

  ‘Do you carry this around with you all the time? Are you taking this to your party tonight?’

  ‘I’ve got a place in my car where I hide it,’ she said. ‘Give it back.’

  ‘You don’t have your car with you right now. Is this legal?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘No wonder you didn’t want a gun when I offered you one the other day. You already had one. Why do you need this?’

  ‘You’re the one who said I needed protection. Anyway, aren’t you armed?’

  ‘Not at the moment. Don’t change the subject. You didn’t get this in the last few days. Why do you need it? Why do you need to have it in your car?’

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, her voice growing angry. ‘Give it back.’

  ‘Not until you tell me why you’ve got it. Have you had this all the time we’ve been together? Because you thought you needed the protection. From me? Or from someone else? Do you think I wouldn’t protect you?’

  ‘How could you? You don’t have enough time to do that.’

  This hurt him.

  ‘You tell me what this is about, Grace. I’m not leaving until you do.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that. You’re so used to telling people what to do. Give that back to me. It’s got nothing to do with you. I’m going out now and I need it.’ Moving suddenly and quickly, she reached to snatch the gun out of his hand.

  ‘Don’t do that! I am not going to fight with you over a gun!’

  He felt himself losing control at some deeper level. He spun away from her, turning his back. He broke the gun down instinctively, shaking out the bullets, then with all the strength he had, he smashed it down on the floor tiles in her small kitchen alcove. It cracked with a noise that made him think it must have accidentally fired. It couldn’t have fired, he’d broken it down. It would be unusable now, the barrel cracked or damaged in some way, making it too dangerous to fire. Ammunition lay scattered where it had fallen. Her tiles were cracked and splintered. He turned to her. She was gaping at him.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘You get shot fighting over guns. Do you think I want to see you with a bullet wound in your head? One I put there? If that did happen, I’d probably feel like putting one in my own head!’

  They stared at each other in silence. Then she took her cigarettes out of her bag and lit one.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That isn’t the reason, not for you to act like that. Why did you do that? Tell me.’

  He looked down at the shattered tiles and then at her.

  ‘When I was eighteen, my father shot my mother. It was Cassatt’s gun, I’ve got it in my cellar. He’d had a run-in with a dealer on the docks and he’d shot him. He gave my father the gun to hide. My mother did what you just tried to do, take it out of his hands. He shot her in the face. Cassatt handled the investigation, he got my father off. When we were leaving the law courts, he turned me and said “Your father loved your mother, mate. You ought to realise that.” I hit him so hard, I knocked out one of his front teeth. I saw what my mother looked like when she died. I’m not going to live with another memory like that.’

  She put her cigarette in an ashtray on the table and sat down with her face in her hands. ‘That’s why you went after him. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to say any more than that. This is as much as we’ll ever need to say about this ever again.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘Your turn, Grace. Tell me why you’ve got that gun.’

  She picked up her cigarette and smoked with her eyes closed, shaking from head to foot. He had never seen her like this. He thought it was better that he didn’t try to touch her. She opened her eyes.

  ‘Someone used to stalk me once. He was sort of a boyfriend for a while. We broke up over ten years ago but he kept coming back. I got that gun-’ She stopped. ‘I got that gun after I came home from a party one night and he was waiting for me in the car park. He threw petrol all over me.’

  Harrigan was silent. It was one of the few occasions in his life when he could truthfully say he was shocked.

  ‘I heard him say, “My lighter’s not working.” Something like that. I turned and ran. I wondered later if it was a joke but I don’t think it was. I locked myself in my flat and I sat under the shower fully dressed for hours just soaking myself with water. The next day I moved out of that flat and into this one. Then I got hold of that gun. That’s why I have it, in case he comes back.’

  Harrigan was drumming his fingers softly on the table top.

  ‘Who is this person? What’s his name?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No, what’s his name?’

  ‘Chris Newell,’ she said after a while.

  He took out his notebook and wrote it down.

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Silverwater. He got seven years for armed robbery about a year ago. I kept my gun just in case he got out again somehow. It’s a security blanket. I don’t feel safe without it now.’

  Harrigan jotted down these small details without asking how she’d got involved with someone like that in the first place.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

  ‘Keep an eye on him. Maybe a little more. He sounds like he deserves some attention. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have warned him off for you. I would have made sure he never came back.’

  She lit another cigarette from the end of the one she was smoking without answering him.

  ‘Is he the one who gave you your scar?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. I was only nineteen. It was when I was still singing with my band. He was supposed to be our manager. Then we found
out he was dealing on the side. I’d already decided I didn’t want to sing any more. When I told him it was all over between us, he beat me up and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. When he wasn’t looking, I walked out. I took my car and I drove and I didn’t stop. Then I heard he was in gaol, he’d walked into a sting. He thought I’d dobbed him in but I hadn’t. When he got out, he came after me.’ She put her second cigarette in the ashtray and drew a deep breath. ‘I thought I knew everything back then. I was so green. It’s all over now. I’m a different person.’

  ‘You never reported him.’

  ‘I was drinking back then. I don’t know what kind of a witness I would have made. I didn’t want to put myself through that. I was too frightened of him. That’s the truth.’

  ‘If he ever comes near you again, it’ll be the last time he ever does. That’s a promise.’

  He raped you, he understood, watching her ash, then scrub out her cigarette. He raped you and he left you with that scar. Because men who give women scars like you have almost always do that. Seventeen years on the job had taught him this as a fact of experience. She would never tell him that directly to his face; it would always be unspoken.

  She had stopped shaking. Her face was drawn, her eye make-up smudged.

  ‘You matter to me,’ he said. ‘You must know that. You must know how much.’

  ‘Then why are you never here? It’s the work you do. It crushes everything else out of your life except Toby, and that’s only because he’s the other half of you.’

  ‘You want me to change.’

  ‘You don’t have to work the hours you work. You don’t have to be everyone’s saviour. I know an addiction when I see one. It fills a gap for you. Can’t you imagine having something else in your life as well?’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘I’m not going to live with things the way they are now. I don’t want to break up. I don’t want to put myself through that. But I don’t want to live like this either. You have to make a choice as to what you really want. You’re the only one who can do that. I have to wash my face.’

  When she came back out of the bathroom, he was clearing away the broken gun into a plastic bag.

  ‘I’ll get rid of this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get your tiles fixed. I know someone who owes me a favour. He’ll do a good job.’

  She smiled. ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t.’

  The phone rang. Grace let it go through to the answering machine.

  ‘Hi, Gracie, it’s Abbie. We’re all at Claude’s wondering where you are but I guess you’ve found something better to do. Hope so anyway. Maybe we’ll see you at Noah’s. We just hope you’re not with Harrigan. Give us a call tomorrow, will you? See you.’

  ‘Don’t they approve of me?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course they don’t. They think you’re a Neanderthal. But then they think the same thing about me for doing what I do. According to Abbie’s latest boyfriend, I’m the original fascist.’

  He laughed.

  ‘You look beautiful. We don’t have to sit here all night. Let’s go out.’

  ‘Not just like that. What happens tomorrow?’

  ‘After twenty-four hours, I may have all the time you want me to have with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m fishing for Elena Calvo. I’ve already seen her to get it started. I’m waiting to see if she’s going to bite and if she’s going to give me du Plessis as well as herself. If she does, that could be the end of my career.’

  ‘You gave him the tape. She knows that.’

  ‘It’s not just that. Du Plessis has the contents of Mike’s safety deposit box. If I take Elena Calvo down, I’m sure she’ll take me with her.’

  ‘This could cost you a lot more than your job,’ she said. ‘What are you setting up?’

  ‘A sting. There’s no way back from it now. You say I work too much. Let me stop working for now. Let’s go out and enjoy ourselves.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question. What happens tomorrow?’

  ‘Let’s wait for the sun to come up on Sunday morning first. When it does, if it does, I work out what I want. I do want you in my life. If you want to be there.’

  ‘I’m here now. If that’s how things are, then I think we should go out. Have fun. We may not get another chance. Wait till I put my make-up on again.’

  She had other places to go besides Claude’s. A smaller restaurant she’d just discovered; a nightclub where the band was the best she’d heard all year. ‘The singer has a magic voice,’ she told him. He didn’t drink much; tomorrow he needed a clear head.

  ‘What happens now?’ she asked, much later when they were lying in her bed. ‘How do you know when you’ve caught your fish?’

  ‘Whatever Calvo’s going to do, she’ll move quickly. Probably she’ll want to see me sometime tomorrow. She’ll have the meeting set up already. When I go to it, du Plessis will either be there waiting for me or he’ll be following me. If Calvo wants him to get rid of me, my bet is that everything Cassatt had on me will be left behind with my body. That’ll take care of my credibility forever. But if Calvo wants me to remove du Plessis for her, then he won’t be expecting me. The difficulty I have is getting her to incriminate herself on tape. She’s very cagey about what she says. But she’s frightened. That’ll work for me.’

  ‘That strategy is so dangerous.’

  ‘I’ll get through it. I’ve got Trevor onside and my backup in place. Let’s sleep now. We need to.’

  They did sleep. For now, the morning could take care of itself.

  27

  When Harrigan’s phone woke him, it was still dark. When he sat up, he felt Grace stir beside him.

  ‘Harrigan.’

  ‘Sorry to wake you, boss. It’s Jacquie here. I’m on the night shift. Do you have access to a computer? You should have an email in your inbox now. You need to see it.’

  ‘Can you tell me what I’ll be looking at?’

  ‘A video that’s been posted on the Pittwater website. I’d say it was shot clandestinely. It’s got the same file reference number as the dossier. It must have been made as part of that whole operation. Also, the dossier and the senator’s affidavit have been put up on the Pittwater site as well. Whoever’s behind this is making sure everyone can join the dots.’

  ‘I’ll look at it now.’

  Grace came and sat beside him while he turned her computer on. This time, a single email had been posted to his mailbox. The subject line read: This is real. In the body of the email was a URL. Harrigan hit it.

  He found himself watching a video. A reference number with a time and date stamp were visible in a header. It was December four years ago. From a camera’s eye view, there appeared on the monitor the sight of raggedly dressed, armed African men climbing onto the back of a truck. The angle looked down at the troops; the photographer must have been standing against the back of the cabin. Another truck was following the first. They drove out of a city affected by war, through local markets, hurrying crowds, buildings marked by decay and painted with slogans. The name Kinshasa appeared in the header. Then the photographer sat down like the others on the floor of the tray.

  There was a jump in the sequence. The photographer must have been sitting in the cabin. The truck was driving along a forested road. In front was a group of civilians with their belongings in bundles on their heads and backs, their children hurrying with them. They ran into the forest at the sight of the truck. A skeleton lay in thick vines on the side of the road, still fully dressed, its death’s head looking out at the watcher.

  The trucks came to a stop in a deserted village. The photographer got out and went to meet the driver, who was also getting out of the truck. Harrigan recognised Jerome Beck. He grinned and spoke but there was no sound. The other driver appeared from the second truck: du Plessis, also talking and grinning soundlessly.

  The next image showed the village turned into an encampment with two tents set up in the centre. T
wo of the soldiers were dragging a terrified young girl towards one of the tents. Again the video jumped. The eye was now inside one of the tents. It watched one figure hold the young girl in a chair while another injected her with something. Both wore protective clothing. Then the eye followed her running out of the tent and through the encampment, while the soldiers watched her from a distance, laughing. She made her escape along a dirt road through a partially forested landscape. The camera turned back to the entrance to the tent. The people in protective clothing were seen walking outside. They washed their gloved hands in some solution, then poured it over their heads. Then they took off their headgear. Harrigan again found himself looking at Beck and du Plessis.

  Next, Beck, without protective clothing, was walking through a village where a number of people lay either dead or dying on the ground outside their houses. He stopped to look down at them, his hands on his hips. Then he went inside a house. The young girl from the earlier video, recognisable by the dress she had been wearing, lay curled up on a mat, her face to the wall. Beck was joined by du Plessis. The angle was from behind them, looking between them. They stood looking at the girl, talking, then walked away.

  The watcher and the two men moved from house to house. Other people were shown inside, most of them dead. Some were still alive but sick, lying in their beds, turning their faces away from the intruders.

  Then the eye went back outside. It showed the armed men standing on the periphery of the small village, apparently refusing to come any closer. Du Plessis went up to them; some backed away. He talked angrily to them, gesturing to them to come closer. Reluctantly, they began to move forward. Then, with du Plessis, they moved through the village, shooting whoever had been left alive. Meanwhile, Beck was talking to one of the men. The man was gesturing down the road; the inference was that some of the villagers had fled.