Blood Redemption hag-1

by Alex Palmer

  ‘We’re out there looking, Graeme. Every available officer I’ve got.

  I’ve already told you that. And from what you’ve just said to me, I’d have to judge there’s probably no great urgency about it now.’

  ‘But there is, Paul. There is great urgency. I must emphasise that.

  Why wouldn’t there be?’

  ‘Then let me thank you for your help in putting us on the track.

  Perhaps I can show you out.’

  The preacher smiled again and got to his feet without waiting to be asked twice.

  ‘Certainly. Thank you for your time. This meeting has been most valuable to me. I will remember it. I hope we meet again.’

  ‘We will, Graeme. For one thing, we’ll need to talk to you about Greg. Whether we find him or not. I will brief one of my officers on this and she’ll be in touch with you pretty much as soon as is possible.’

  ‘By all means. I’ll wait to hear.’

  At the elevator, Harrigan stood with the preacher waiting for his escort to arrive. Dea, at her desk, watched them between telephone calls.

  ‘I understand your congregation in Camperdown is quite popular, Graeme,’ he said, having heard no such thing, simply curious as to what response he might receive.

  ‘It’s thriving, Paul. I hope to take it out west in due time, I think there are many people out there who need me. I thought so yesterday when I was out there with Greg. But if you’re interested, why don’t you come to a prayer meeting one day? You would be most welcome.

  Several other policemen have been members of my congregation at various times in the past. Why don’t you take my card?’

  Harrigan took the offered card and looked at it. It gave the address of the New Life Ministries and the times of its prayer meetings, together with the text: And behold I come quickly; and my reward iswith me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said, pocketing it.

  Just then the elevator doors opened but instead of the preacher’s escort Grace appeared, returning from her daily visit to the hospital.

  She greeted Harrigan and glanced at the preacher before walking towards the office. Seeing her, Harrigan returned to the practicalities of work.

  ‘Grace. Have you got a moment?’ he called out.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, turning.

  ‘This is someone you need to meet, Graeme. This is Grace Riordan.

  Grace, this is Preacher Graeme Fredericksen. Grace is the officer I’ve assigned to Greg. She’ll be dealing with him, should we find him. If you have any information you think will be useful to us, you need to tell her. You two need to make some time to talk.’

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Grace said with her professional smile, offering her hand. ‘If you’ve got the time, I can talk to you now.’

  ‘Now will not be possible,’ he replied.

  He had not accepted her handshake and was staring at her. Grace, finding her hand ignored, reached into her shoulder bag instead.

  ‘Would you like my card? You can call me,’ she said.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said automatically, taking it without so much as glancing at it. He said nothing else, his gaze still fixed on her. Across his face there appeared like the most transient of skinscapes an expression of loathing, gone in the lightning flash of less than a second. For that passing second, he became completely aged.

  ‘Do you have a card yourself?’ she asked into the vacuum of his response. ‘If we need to be in touch — ’

  He stepped back from her but was still staring.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he replied.

  The elevator doors opened again and the preacher’s uniformed escort appeared.

  ‘We’ll see each other again, Graeme,’ Harrigan said, having watched the whole scene with fascination.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure we will,’ the preacher replied with a smile and was gone.

  When the doors had closed, Grace turned to Dea.

  ‘I must have forgotten to put my deodorant on this morning. I can’t get by without my Mum,’ she added, with exaggerated sarcasm.

  ‘Not you, darl,’ Dea replied with a guttural laugh. ‘That was his problem. I was wondering when I was talking to him, the way he was looking at me. He doesn’t like women. You can feel it.’

  ‘We found him?’ Grace said to Harrigan.

  ‘No,’ he replied, ‘he found us. And an unpleasant little rendezvous it was too. I need caffeine.’

  ‘There’s some fresh brewed coffee in the tea room. Why don’t you both go and get some?’ Dea said, glancing from Harrigan to Grace and back again.

  The tea room smelled of stale milk and over-brewed coffee, the bins jammed with takeaway food containers, a sign of the pressurised work put in by Harrigan’s team. It was a place where they pinned bad jokes and cartoons up on the noticeboard next to cheese-cake calendars, although these days the porn had mostly gone. Grace poured herself coffee before passing the jug to Harrigan.

  ‘Maybe we can get someone else to talk to him. If talking to me is such a disgusting thing to have to do,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that, Grace. That man came in here to tell me — he couldn’t just pick up the phone, he couldn’t talk to Trev, he had to see me in person — to tell me he’s lost that boy, that he’s spent the night pounding the streets looking for him and now he’s deeply concerned for his welfare. And why? Because, he says, the boy is inclined to do himself harm. If that kid isn’t dead by now, he will be.

  If we ever find him again, he’ll be dead from an overdose or he’ll have fallen into the harbour while he was under the influence. Something we can’t possibly prove wasn’t suicide or an accidental death.’

  Grace stirred milk into her coffee, staring at the grubby wall. He sipped his black, standing beside her.

  ‘I was two hours too late for him yesterday. Probably the story of Greg’s life,’ she said, shaking her head, sending a shiver running down her spine. ‘You’d really need more than a hide to come here and do something like that, wouldn’t you? If you had killed him, I mean.

  You’d have to get a real charge out of knowing what you’d done.

  Watch me while I push my luck and see what I can get away with.’

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, he was having a high old time while he was here. I don’t think I fathom our preacher just yet. I walked out of there thinking, nothing would touch this joker.’

  ‘What about Matthew Liu?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Speaking of that,’ she said, ‘it’s sometime this afternoon for Agnes Liu. They’ll call me. They’ve said they’ll give me about an hour’s notice. So I should have the transcript and the recording back here by this evening.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to wait for that. Knock on my door when you’re ready to go. I’ll come with you. I want to listen in.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ she replied, with some hesitation. ‘They’re only going to let me in.’

  ‘No, I want to be there, I want to hear what she’s got to say. We can fix you up with a listening device. I’d like to catch up with Matthew too, particularly after this morning.’

  ‘Okay. When they call me.’

  Jeffo came in and looked at the two of them standing side by side.

  ‘Hi, Boss. Hiya, Gracie,’ he said.

  He sat down at the table over some takeaway lunch, grinning at her. Grace replied with a glance that would have reduced most other people to ash.

  ‘I’ve got to go and do this morning’s write-up,’ she said and left the room at once, coffee in hand. Harrigan, who had things to do himself, walked out after her.

  Once back in his office, he looked at Grace working at her desk before again studying his photograph in the paper. It was quite an array: his own picture, Greg Smith’s, the vague image of the Firewall in the park, lurid shots from her website, together with the obligatory appeal for information. He hoped that out of the wells of
fantasy and posturing these appeals always tapped into, someone would actually have something useful to tell them. She was still out there; the transcripts of her chats with his son were like baits dangled in front of him. That direct connection to a few bits of light on a screen would take them directly to her, if only they could track it down. In an unexpected change of mood, he took on patience with the sense of a trap quietly being set. Whatever he might feel, it could only be a matter of time, and whoever she might be, she could have no way out.

  19

  On the other side of the city and in the clear liquid light of midday, Lucy prowled the ruined garden with her old dog. Dark red camellia blossom had fallen onto the muddy paths, detached petals fanned out in small heaps on the dirt. For Lucy, the glitter of the leaves in a pale sun and the transparency of the sky had the interior light of electricity. There was no depth to her perception of them, they could have been reflected on the surface of a shallow pool of water. Her balance and her thoughts were poised within this shallowness, she was chasing possibilities in her mind. If she had a car. If she could track Greg down. If she could get to Graeme. Getting into the Temple wasn’t easy when the door was locked against you and you had no key. The question remained: what then? This is my gun to your head, Graeme.

  No, this is your gun to your head. What are you going to do about it?

  Twist words. Play games. What was she going to do about it? Could she fire a gun a second time?

  She sat on the edge of the escarpment near the sleep-out and took out her gun, aimed it at a tree and pretended to fire, making soft sounds to imitate the crack of shots. Ka-chung, ka-chung. As she sat there, she was caught unawares by a memory. In a clear vision in her mind, Dr Agnes Liu looked her in the face in the immediate second before she pulled the trigger that morning in the Chippendale alley. Lucy swallowed as she revisited the almost ordinary, surprised expression on Agnes Liu’s face when she looked up from seeing the gun and then directly into Lucy’s eyes. You didn’t know who I was, Lucy said to herself. You couldn’t see who I was because Graeme had said, don’t let them see you. So I didn’t.

  I covered my face. I shouldn’t have. I should have let you see who I was.

  Then you could have known why. Not to make it worse for you, but so that you at least knew why it was happening. And I should never have fired the second shot at that man. Never.

  The word faded in her mind as she rested her gun in her lap. Every feeling she had ran out of her, leaving her empty, without will. I wish it wasn’t like this.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, out of this thought, ‘I am so sorry I did it.’

  There’s nothing I can do now. I’ve just got to keep moving.

  Stephen had gone to Hornsby first thing that morning, to shop, to pick up medications and to see the doctor who came daily to visit his father and who was due to call at the house early that afternoon, to talk over privately how things were. As Lucy climbed the hill, she saw Stevie’s car parked in the driveway. She found him in the kitchen unpacking white plastic bags. Several packets of cigarettes lay on top of the morning paper on the kitchen table.

  ‘I bought you some cigarettes. I thought you might need them,’ he said. He spoke quickly, without looking at her.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks.’ She was puzzled by the way he was speaking to her.

  She picked up the cigarettes and saw the newspaper underneath. She put the packets down and stared at it.

  ‘Shit,’ she said softly.

  DO YOU KNOW THIS GIRL? On the front page, she saw the picture -

  of her back — taken in Belmore Park almost a year ago. She knew the picture well. Stephen knew it well, she had shown it to him herself. She looked up at him. His mouth was open a little, his round rimless glasses seemed to bring a refraction to the look of shock in his eyes.

  They understood each other as clearly as they ever had in this room.

  Their understanding remained unspoken. Just now, silence was the only kindness they had to offer each other.

  ‘You have to go,’ he began to say but she spoke over him.

  ‘I’m going to leave soon anyway, Stevie, as soon as I can and I won’t come back. But I’ve got to talk to Dad first. Whenever I can. I’ve got to talk to him. I’ve got to say something to him. I’ve got to finish it, I can’t go without finishing it.’

  ‘What do you think you want to say?’ He sat down, reached for his own cigarettes, lit one. She sat opposite, he pushed the cigarettes across the table towards her and she lit one as well. ‘Do you want to tell him — that this is all his fault? Is that what you want to say?’

  He gestured to the paper as he spoke, an odd tight movement. Lucy smoked in silence. This was the closest Stephen would ever get to acknowledging what had happened.

  ‘No, Stevie, I’m not going to say that. Everything I do is what I do.

  It’s not him, it’s me. I just want him to say that he shouldn’t have done what he did to me, that he’s sorry, anything like that … ’

  ‘Luce, I don’t know why you ever thought he was going to do that.’

  ‘It’s a craving you get. You want it really badly. Why wouldn’t I want it? Once you get it, it doesn’t want to go away. No, I know it’s no good now,’ she said. ‘He owes me. He owes me from here up to the sky for the rest of my life but, like Mel says, maybe it is too fucking late. Maybe I don’t care any more. I’ve got to see it finished before I go. That’s all I can do now. Fucking finish it. There’s nothing else. I’ve got to do that for me. Before I deal with anything else.’

  They spoke to each other like two people who have agreed to finish their marriage, neither of them wishing to do so but both knowing they have no choice. Both trying to avoid saying what cannot be retracted, or doing anything that will make matters worse.

  ‘If you’re going to talk to him, just don’t make it harder for us.’

  ‘No, I won’t do that. I don’t want to hurt you and Mel. You tell him from me it’s okay. I’ve got nothing to forgive him for but I just want to talk to him. And I’m not going to hurt him or accuse him. Or anything.’

  She laughed. ‘I’m not going to hurt him,’ she repeated. ‘What a joke.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ Stephen said very softly.

  ‘It does matter. It’s just that there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve got a favour to ask you. Have you got a car I can borrow?’

  ‘Yeah. You can have the old Datsun, I’ve just had it fixed up. Take it when you go if you want. I can give you all the papers. I’ll get some petrol for you this afternoon. Is that okay? It’s all I can do, Luce. It should take you some way away from here. I don’t know how far.’

  ‘No, that’s good. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Mel about Dad for you,’ he said.

  They did not seem to know what else to say to each other. As they sat in silence, there was a knock on the back door.

  ‘That’s the quacktor,’ Stevie said, ‘he said he’d be early.’

  ‘Can I take the paper?’

  ‘Yeah, take it with you when you go,’ he said, not looking at her.

  ‘Yeah, I will,’ she said, ‘I’ll get rid of it for you.’

  Stephen ushered the doctor, a man of about thirty-five, into the kitchen just as Lucy was gathering up her packets of cigarettes.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, glancing at them. ‘They’re very bad for you, you know. You don’t want to end up like your father.’

  Who gives a shit, Lucy thought, looking at him in disbelief. She did not bother to reply and walked out.

  In her room, Lucy turned the newspaper pages, looking over the reproductions of her website, photographs of Greg, pictures of the scene of the shooting. She read paragraphs which described her in ways she did not recognise as herself. She was not cruel, she felt this deeply.

  What were the magic words that would make the newspaper people and the radio announcers understand what she had really tried to do?

  These thoughts occupied he
r until she came across a photograph in the paper, not of herself or Greg, but of someone she nonetheless recognised. A face that she knew well but from a different place. She sat looking at it for some moments before opening up her computer, logging on and going out onto the Net. After she found what she was looking for, she felt what was almost a sense of relief, a final letting go of everything. As Greg had said to her often enough, nothing matters.

  Are you out there, Turtle?

  I’m here Firewall I’ve been waiting 4 u Why is that?

  I just am

  Lucy did not type anything for a few moments.

  Are u there?

  I’m here, I’m always here for you. Or I was. Turtle, you said that you never lied to me. That you never have and you never will.

  Never have never U believe me Its true I have never lied 2 u No? Are you sure about that?

  No I never have

  I saw a picture in the paper today. It’s the policeman who’s looking for me. And I thought, I know who that is. That’s your father, isn’t it?

  I know who he is because I’ve looked at his picture, all your family’s pictures. I used to look at them for hours and think, Gee, I wish they were mine. You said he really looked after you. You said he loved you. And I thought, wouldn’t that be nice. People who did that. And then I read the paper today and there he is. You never said that’s what he did. You never said he was a pig.

  He is not that He told me not 2 tell any1 He said people wouldkeep on at me if I did I didn’t tell u It didn’t matter It had nothing 2 dowith u amp; me

  So when you’re telling me that I should go to the police, you’re saying that because it’s good for him. He gets what he wants. And you’re doing that for him. I don’t know if it’s any good for me, but it’s good for him.

  I didn’t say it because of that I am not my father U should knowthat better than anyone U are not your parents are u??? Everythingbetween us is u amp; me Nothing else Its never been anything else U

  can’t say it is

  I don’t believe you. You tell lies like everyone else. People tell you lies and then they laugh at you behind your back. And you’re a liar, Turtle. You lie like everyone else does. You just lie. Lie like a dog.