by Alex Palmer
Streams of blood flowed from her head down a small set of steps onto a pathway. A small winged figure carrying a sword was etched into one corner.
‘I want to know who thinks they’ve got the right to make that decision about someone else,’ Harrigan said, tapping the photograph before turning away.
‘They’re on a mission from God, Boss.’ Louise spoke out again.
‘They can do what they like. They do — that’s who they are.’
‘You find them, Lou,’ Harrigan replied.
‘Do my best,’ she said, with a grin as cracked as her voice.
‘Now, our home-grown protesters. They’re on a mission from God as well. You can start with these nosey people, Ian. They make a habit of photographing the women who go into the clinics and then sending them letters afterwards, saying things like you’re a murderer, we know where you live, and so on and so forth. Question: How do they get the information about who the women are and where they live?
We’ve had a couple of these women ring the hot line already, you can talk to them as well.’
‘Can I get some help?’ Ian asked.
‘Yeah, you can find someone to help you out. You can organise that.’ Harrigan sounded a little surprised.
‘I thought Grace here might like to learn the ropes. She can work with me.’
There were some smirks and suppressed laughter at this, while Grace glanced at him with pity, shaking her head.
‘No, mate, you can find someone else,’ Harrigan replied, with a touch of astringency. ‘Grace is going to be occupied with Matthew Liu, apart from anything else she might have to do. We’ve already agreed on that. Now, America — Trevor’s going to follow up that connection.
And the gun. It’s a pistol, not exactly home-made but something close to it … ’
No, she wasn’t working with Ian. Grace brushed off the silly grins, they did not concern her. She couldn’t work with Ian because she was one of those women, as Harrigan had called them. When she left the clinic, the strange woman and a man had appeared out of nowhere and taken her photograph before disappearing just as quickly into the city streets. Not long afterwards, the print, splashed with red ink, and an ultrasound had arrived in the post. They came with an unsigned letter saying they knew what she was, a murderer, and they could find her if they wanted to, she had better be afraid. She had thrown it all into the rubbish bin. She knew she should walk into Harrigan’s office and tell him this, her training said she should, but the idea of doing so was repulsive to her. Apart from being forced to reveal herself in this way, he might take her off the job, even send her off the team, back out into Area Command, straight into the arms of the Tooth. No, she was keeping her head down, staying here, staying out of sight.
Harrigan spoke over her thoughts. ‘What troubles me most is what this girl might do next. We have to hope she doesn’t have another gun like the one she used today back home under the bed. She might decide she wants to use it on someone else. Now, before we all go … ’
He pinned up onto the board a picture of Matthew Liu in his school uniform, smiling for the camera.
‘This is to keep everyone’s mind focused on what we’re doing here.
Think about this boy. He’s had something killed in him today as well.
And remember — we don’t have any time to spare. We work and we keep working until we find her. Let’s get on with it.’
‘If she has got another gun, Boss, she’ll shoot herself in the foot with it first,’ Trevor said to Harrigan as they left the room together.
‘She’s mad. Probably doesn’t know how to fart properly.’
Harrigan was half smiling when Jeffo pushed in beside them.
‘I reckon that gun belonged to someone who likes to sit on their back porch and pick off cats for target practice, because they splatter.
I knew a bloke who used to do that,’ he said, grinning.
There was a brief silence in which neither man replied. Jeffo turned suddenly to Grace who was walking a little behind Trevor.
‘I hear your claim to fame is that you shoot,’ he said. ‘You’ve won trophies or something. Is that right?’
She looked at him deadpan, feeling a chill of aversion.
‘That’s right. Mainly at my club.’
‘You shoot?’ Ian said, appearing at her elbow. ‘I’ve got a pretty good average myself. We should get together for a little friendly competition sometime.’
Grace did not reply to Ian’s attempts at self-promotion other than with her politest smile.
‘Hit anything but a target?’ Jeffo was asking her. She shook her head. ‘Just kids’ stuff. Wait till you aim at something real.’
‘I can always start on you if you want,’ she replied sweetly as she walked away. People nearby laughed, while Harrigan seemed to be trying to suppress a grin. Jeffo flushed brick-red before disappearing without a word.
Later, after most people had gone and as Grace herself was readying to leave, Harrigan appeared at her desk and spoke to her quietly.
‘A private word if you don’t mind, Grace. In my office.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Grace saw Trev watch them walk into Harrigan’s glassed-in eyrie in the corner of the room.
‘Do I need to shut the door?’ she asked, a little puzzled, wondering if he was about to lecture her for swapping insults with a supposed colleague.
‘No. Don’t give anyone around here anything else to talk about, they don’t need it. Sit down. Keep your voice down if you can, this is between us. I take it you already know Marvin Tooth.’
Grace went cold down her spine.
‘We’ve met once. Very briefly.’
‘So he wouldn’t have any particular reason for asking me to move you out of here?’
‘Did he do that? So what does this really mean? Are you asking me to clear my desk?’
‘No, I’m not asking you to do that. I’m going to be blunt with you about this, Grace. I want to know why he’s got it in for you. Is this personal?’
She shook her head, her face pale underneath her make-up.
‘Would it make any difference if it was?’
Harrigan was looking at her directly.
‘Yeah, it would. For a start, he’d want to make things nasty for us all. And very nasty for you. I’d like to avoid that if I can.’
‘You do want me to go. You want me to say I’ll go for everyone else’s benefit.’
He frowned, shaking his head.
‘No, Grace. Listen to me. I’ve already said I don’t want you to do that. I want people I can rely on. I could rely on you today. I don’t care what’s behind this, I don’t want it to reach in here and make life difficult. If that’s going to happen, I need to know about it. That’s all.’
Grace wondered how she could know whether to trust him or not.
How she could know what was really in his head?
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s nothing. Nothing like what you might think.’
And what’s that, Harrigan thought. He hadn’t been trying to find out if Marvin had put the hard word on her. He decided it would be better if he didn’t say this to her.
‘Okay, fine,’ he said, and then as she got up to go, ‘Watch your back. He’s a bad enemy to have. Come and talk to me if you change your mind.’
She smiled in reply, a slightly crooked smile, full of self-parody and with a sudden sadness that surprised him.
‘Thanks,’ she said and was gone, heading for the lifts.
Outside in the corridor she stopped. She was leaning against the wall, shaking with relief, when Trev appeared.
‘You right, Gracie?’ he asked.
‘I’m fine, I just need a cigarette.’
‘Don’t smoke one in here. You’ll set the smoke detectors off.’
She smiled. Trev took a proprietorial interest in his friends whether they liked it or not; he was inclined to feel responsible for the unprotected. Once, in the very early morning outside a Sydney nightclub, Grace had seen him wade i
nto a street-bashing, shouting,
‘I’m gay. Hit me too.’ When the attackers turned on him, he swatted one of them to the footpath with a single punch. The others had turned and run while he shouted after them.
‘That was about the Tooth. He’s asked Harrigan to move me out of here.’
‘And is he going to?’
‘No, he says he wants me to stay on. I thought I was gone.’
Somehow this did not lessen her anxiety, the extent of the Tooth’s reach left her feeling gloomy and vulnerable. Like it said on the picture of the dead woman in the incident room: you can run but you can’t hide, they were still out there waiting for you.
Trev moved closer. ‘You’ll be fine, mate. You don’t want to worry.
Get yourself home and get some sleep.’
Just then, Harrigan appeared in the corridor and saw them standing there. They looked at him and then looked away as he headed into the Gents.
‘Yeah,’ Grace said. ‘Everything’s going to be okay, isn’t it? I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘Sure it is. See you, mate. You take care now.’
She left in the elevator. After she had gone, Trevor went into the Gents after Harrigan.
Harrigan looked at him as he walked in the door.
‘What have you got to say, Trev?’ he asked as Trevor came and stood beside him.
‘I hear the Tooth’s been talking to you about Gracie. You shouldn’t believe what he says about her.’
Harrigan raised his eyebrows in slight surprise, thinking that, by him at least, she didn’t like being called Gracie.
‘Look, mate, I don’t. What’s so special about it for you? I know she’s your friend.’
‘It’s my fault she’s in the job, isn’t it? I’m the fool who talked her into applying in the first place. She hadn’t thought about it till then.’
Harrigan gave a short laugh. ‘She won’t be thanking you for it now she’s got Marvin gunning for her.’
Trevor smiled without humour.
Harrigan went to wash his hands and stopped to look in the mirror.
As he approached his fortieth birthday, he was still holding down his age. There were no grey hairs visible yet and he was keeping his weight under control, staying fit. He put his hand on his stomach, breathing in a little. Trevor’s moon face appeared in the mirror alongside his own.
‘I was just wondering if you were planning on pissing her off on the quiet. That’s what you’d normally do, isn’t it?’
Harrigan was combing his hair.
‘No. Why should I? Unless you know something I don’t and you want to tell me about it. For starters, did Marvin try and get her in the sack?’
Trevor, who had no more dress sense than a fly, straightened his ugly tie in the mirror and then smoothed down his thick, black moustache. Harrigan glanced at him, waiting. Trev only shrugged.
‘No, mate, it wasn’t anything like that. Talk to her about it. She’ll tell you if she wants to.’
There was silence.
‘Is she a single lady? Has she got someone in her life?’ Harrigan asked.
In the mirror, Trevor gave his reflection a sideways glance.
‘You don’t know, mate, she might be a dyke. But if she is, I haven’t seen her at a Sleaze Ball yet. No, I don’t think she has.’
‘I told her she needs to watch her back.’ Harrigan was slightly embarrassed, parrying with a touch of self-justification.
‘I’ve already told her that myself,’ Trev replied. ‘Half a dozen times at least.’
8
Grace left the overhead light switched off in her tiny flat near Bondi Beach and trod her way across its small square of living space by the light of the street lamps outside. Newly renovated studio apartment, the advertisement had said, living and bedroom in one.
Grace thought that radical austerity combined with New Age squalor was a better description, with the harsh green carpet ruffed up with steel wool as a matching design feature. She had her priorities, accommodation was not one of them. This was somewhere to sleep, to get dressed in. She was here for the scenery outside, for the sight of the headlands with their white and orange buildings and the strip along the beach front just at dawn, both momentarily transformed in a clean wash of light. To drink takeaway coffee on the beach and watch the sea, a cold, marbled green at this time of year, and feel the salt air on her face before she was obliged to paint on the day’s make-up.
Her flat had other useful attributes which were not to be sneezed at: a secure car park you needed a keycard to get into, doors which were programmed to your own personal combination lock. Her ex-lover, her own personal demon, made his reappearance in her life (as well as in her memory) from time to time. She saw him trailing behind her in the street sometimes, or standing at a distance from her building, watching her windows. She had taken some discreet steps for her own protection, obtaining a handgun illegally, something that would not bear examination in her current line of work. There was no other defence she could rely on. Tonight, there was no one out there on the cold and misty street, which proved that even personal demons can be driven away by bad weather. Relieved, she sat at her table, put down her bag and lit a cigarette, kicking off her shoes.
‘I am so tired,’ she said aloud to the rustle of the undrawn curtains.
‘I am so tired.’
In this moment of sudden relaxation, the vision of Henry Liu naked on a steel table came into her mind. She saw him with a handkerchief over his face and then without, and remembered the stink of old blood which had attached itself to her during the autopsy. In her memory, the smell had the same vividness and she felt, briefly, the same sickness. She swallowed. In the clinic, Dr Liu’s hands had been gentle, she had comforted Grace while she sat in the recovery room unexpectedly crying once her abortion was over. Agnes Liu did not carry that smell of blood, nothing like it, she was not the thing those people said she was.
Grace put her cigarette in the ashtray and closed her eyes. She pressed her head between her hands, stretching and then arching her backbone against the chair before relaxing again. She pushed her fingers into her hair and squeezed her scalp. I want, she thought, loosening the knots in her spine, I want. Body warmth to push that cold and ugly picture out of her head. Some sex, now that would be nice. To come home to some beautiful man, thin and muscular, with smooth skin and a smooth stomach, who could make her forget what she had seen during the day. The thought made her smile. She should be so lucky. These days, when she had no one serious to concern herself with, she chose to be casual about it. Keeping sex for when the impulse, the fancy, took her, rarely inviting anyone here into her plain sanctuary.
She shook the appetite away, expunging it. Grace was inclined, from time to time, to move from abstinence to indulgence and back again.
She was in no mood for either state just now, or for the emotional press that went with wanting someone a bit too hungrily. She only wanted to keep her thoughts to herself, on her work, to see how long she could persist in her job among the minefields the Tooth kept laying for her. It was just a game, Survival at Work, where the rules spelled out that you took no prisoners. She did not have to keep playing if it came to that; she could walk away whenever she wanted to.
She allowed herself a few more moments of rest as she finished her cigarette, before the pleasure of stripping away the day’s make-up and letting out her hair.
On the other side of the city, Harrigan stood on the pier in Snails Bay and looked out over the black water towards the lighted span of the Harbour Bridge. He was there in the hope of emptying out his mind and feeling the constraints which cramped his body during the day disappear. Often he did not sleep and, if he lay in bed, could spend hours filling the shadows with his night thoughts, phantasms of failure, scraps of bad memory, old grief. This was a hazardous chemistry for his waking dreams at any time: depression followed after them like a promise. On his dangerous white nights, he came out here where he could think freely. Caught up in the q
uietness of the night noises, and watching the movement of the lights on the water, he might eventually relax enough to be able to sleep as soon as he lay down.
Tonight, nothing could shift the memory of the professor’s face or Matthew’s Liu’s dazed confusion. They touched him more than the thought of Agnes Liu in St Vincent’s Hospital, surviving on the faint lines of green light generated by her life support system. He wondered who else might be dying out there in the luminous darkness of the city.
He could be called out at any time to deal with any stranger’s death.
To resolve it, if it could be resolved, for whoever wanted to know; sometimes for no one other than himself.
He kept this simple word why in his mind as he worked through whatever case he had to hand, even if the why, when discovered, had no sense to it. He always questioned where any death might lead you, ever since his father had shot his mother and handed Harrigan the gun with shaking hands saying: ‘Shoot me, Paulie. I don’t want to live.’ He had fired once, knocking his father back into a chair, to hear him say, ‘That won’t do it. Shoot me again.’ Harrigan had discovered that he could not pull the trigger for a second time, a notch in his mind marking what he could and couldn’t do. His father had taken responsibility for the gunshot wound on himself, pleading a botched suicide attempt. Once again, the court had believed him.
Years ago, Harrigan had gone up-market with everybody else, moving from White Bay across to the inner harbour, just up and over Darling Street — which ran like a spine along the Balmain peninsula -
and down the other side of the hill. Not so very far from his boyhood home, a distance you could walk. These days, it was another world altogether. As he walked along the edge of Birchgrove Park under the Moreton Bay fig trees, he looked up at his house not far from the water’s edge, a pale brick two-storeyed terrace more than a century old with an apron of white lace on the upstairs veranda. ‘How did you afford that, mate?’ A question often asked with the implication, ‘since you’re only a copper?’ ‘By the sweat of my brow,’ he always replied with a grin. It had belonged to his aunt, his father’s sister, a relationship soured by years of arguments too rancorous to be forgiven. She had inherited it from an uncle, much to his father’s chagrin, who had expected that it would come to them both. Harrigan had earned it: she had made him pay for it with sweat and blood in more ways than one.