by Alex Palmer
‘Sleeping on an old friend’s couch,’ she answered lightly, with a slight touch of steel and a sharp glance at him. ‘Somewhere I go when I’m feeling stretched.’
They stood in awkward silence while Harrigan tried to think of something intelligent to say in reply.
‘I wasn’t trying to be abrupt when I left last night,’ she said before he had the chance. ‘I’m sorry if it came over like that. I think I was feeling a bit worn.’
You take so much on, Grace. Why do you think any of these people are worth it from you?
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter. We all get worn.
We’ve all got too much work to do.’
‘Yeah. I’ll just finish my cigarette.’
‘No, it’s okay, Grace. I’m not rushing you. Take your time. I’ll see you later.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, embarrassed by her hypersensitivity.
He walked back to his office, a little lighter in spirit than he had felt all day. The watchers inside the cafeteria had no idea that they had just witnessed the unprecedented event of Harrigan apologising to a member of his team.
24
Less than an hour after he had spoken to her in the cafeteria, Harrigan startled Grace by appearing without warning at her desk, with his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. He handed her a file and leaned on the desk with both hands.
‘She’s just a little prostitute,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her I’m offering her immunity if her story checks out, but so far she’s being very cagey with the details and I don’t know why. I want you to talk to her on your own. You have to put her at her ease. You can do that, I’ve seen you do it before. Read that file and think about it. Bring your cigarettes with you when you’re ready. She’s asked if she can smoke and I’ve told her she can. She’s smoking like the proverbial at the moment.’
He disappeared in the direction of the interview room. Grace drew breath and opened the file, and thought, you’re on, girl, better tune up the vocal chords. The head shot showed an olive-skinned girl, her shoulder-length dark hair dyed with blonde streaks. Gina Farrugia, aged twenty-two, resident of Potts Point. One conviction for possessing a trafficable amount of heroin. Released into the detox program seven months ago. Known associates: one lover, Mike Sullivan, ex-boxer, sometime bouncer, small-time dealer, occasional police informer, addict. That was all. A thin file. When she reached the interview room, Trevor was waiting with Harrigan.
‘You ready, Gracie?’ he asked her.
‘Sure.’
‘Keep it gentle and take your time. I’ve told her who you are. You remember — I want this information,’ Harrigan said.
How could she forget?
Grace opened the door expecting to feel ordinary tensions filling the air, zigzags of apprehension and defensiveness. The atmosphere in the grey box this afternoon had another quality to it. The young woman looking up at her exuded an animal smell, fear, something as palpable as a small rustling creature curled up tightly into a corner of the room, head pressed to the wall. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke, the ashtray filled with ash and stubs. An empty cigarette packet lay beside it.
‘Hi, Gina,’ Grace said to a barely perceptible nod. ‘How are you?’
There was no direct reply. As she sat down, she saw Gina’s gaze shift past her to the blank eye in the wall.
‘Who’s watching us?’ the girl asked.
‘You don’t have to worry about that. You’re just talking to me. Do you want my card?’
The girl glanced at the card and pocketed it.
‘Don’t I have to worry about that?’ she said to Grace. ‘You know something I don’t, do you?’
‘No. There’s just nothing for you to worry about. No one here’s going to do anything to you. Do you want a cigarette?’
‘Yeah.’
Grace lit both their cigarettes and put the packet and her lighter in the middle of the table.
‘Help yourself,’ she said.
The girl nodded. She sat there, smoking quickly, and then spoke too quickly.
‘If you want to know why I didn’t come in before — I couldn’t get here. That’s the truth. I just couldn’t get here. I would have come in sooner if I could have.’
‘That’s not an issue for me, Gina. As far as I’m concerned, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. The only question for me is what you’ve got to tell me.’
‘That’s something else, isn’t it? There’s a reward, isn’t there?
$25,000? I need to know. Would I get that?’
‘You certainly could. If you’ve got information, then you should get at least a part of it. Maybe all of it. It would depend on what you’ve got to tell us. Is that very important to you?’
‘I just need to know, that’s all. When would I get it?’
‘You need it soon, do you?’
‘Yeah, I do.’
‘Probably as soon as you want it, in that case. But it all does depend on what you’ve got to say. Why don’t you just relax for a bit and think about what you’ve got to tell me? We’ve got plenty of time if you need it.’
There was a brief pause. Gina was tapping ash into the ashtray, frowning. She glanced up at Grace and then at the blank window again. Grace saw panic in the girl’s face, a split in the fabric, control briefly lost and then regained. She ashed her cigarette and picked up the packet, turning it over and over in her hands before taking out another cigarette and lighting it.
‘What if I want something else? I mean, what if I want something besides the money?’
‘What else do you want?’
‘Couple of hours? Of your time. Would you do that for me? Just a couple of hours.’ Her hands were shaking as she looked at Grace.
‘That’s all I want. And the money. When I get it.’
‘Why do you want my time?’ Grace asked.
‘I just do. You don’t have to worry, nothing’s going to happen. I promise. And I do promise.’
‘You want two hours of my time? What do you want to do?’
‘What do I want to do?’ The girl bit her lip. ‘Nothing really. I just want the company. You know all that junk food, chips and that? It’s my favourite food, I love it. Do you want to have a hamburger with me? One with everything? We could do that.’
‘I don’t mind,’ Grace replied equably. ‘I like junk food when I’m in the mood. You want me to go and have a hamburger with you? We can do that. What else do you want to do?’
‘Just sit somewhere and talk. That’s all. That really is all I want.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Yeah.’
Grace was silent for a moment. The girl crushed out her half-smoked cigarette and waited.
‘Why do you want that, Gina?’ Grace asked.
‘I just want the company, that’s all.’
‘Have another cigarette,’ she said and waited while the girl lit it up.
‘There isn’t anyone else you want to be with for two hours?’ she asked.
The girl shook her head without speaking.
‘Gina,’ Grace said, ‘what happens after two hours?’
‘You just go home.’
‘But what do you do?’
‘I go to work.’
‘You’re still working?’
‘Yeah. It keeps the money coming in. I just don’t want to be alone this evening.’
‘You could stay here.’
‘No,’ she looked around at the ugly room, ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to be out there. It’s just that my boyfriend’s not around and I don’t know where he is right now. I get worried about him. I didn’t want to be alone out there just thinking about him.’
‘Okay,’ Grace said after a pause, ‘I think I can do that. That shouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Have you got some coffee? Some really strong coffee. I really would like a coffee,’ the girl said, almost desperately.
‘Yeah, I’ll get you some coffee.’
At th
at moment, Harrigan knocked on the door and asked Grace to step outside.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He sounded outraged. ‘You don’t know what she’s planning. You could be walking into anything.’
‘I don’t think she’s planning anything. She’s genuine.’
‘Genuine is not the point.’ Harrigan could have been talking to a slow child. ‘It’s what’s waiting for you when you get out there with her.’
‘She’s just a girl. I can deal with it,’ Grace said, keeping her reciprocal outrage under wraps as best she could.
‘Boss,’ Trevor intervened, ‘why don’t we wait and see what she’s got for us? If Gracie’s out with her she’s got to be careful, but she should be able to handle it. That’s what she’s paid to do. We’ll have backup out there for her.’
Harrigan glanced at him angrily before looking through the one-way glass once again.
‘The air in there — how can you breathe it?’ he said to Grace, who did not reply.
Both of them watched him calm down. On the other side of the one-way eye, the girl watched without seeing them, her face expressionless, like a rabbit sitting blankly in a set of car lights. Grace looked once and looked away.
‘Get her some coffee and let’s get on with it,’ Harrigan finally said.
The coffee was sent for. Gina sipped it and lit yet another cigarette.
‘Has your boss made up his mind? Or are you going to back out on me?’
‘No, we’ve still got a bargain, Gina,’ Grace said. ‘And you’ve still got things to tell us. It could be worth a lot of money to you.’
Gina grinned in reply, a thin and bitter smile.
‘Yeah. I guess. Something to look forward to, isn’t it? But this has got to be worth something. Because we were there. The morning that shooting happened. In that little shop? It’s just a place people go, we’d been there all night. Me and Mike in that shitty little room. It was so fucking cold. He’d had a hit and he got sick, but I guess you noticed that when you went in there.’ She sipped more coffee and drew on her cigarette. ‘It was getting light and I wanted us to get out of there but I couldn’t shift him. Then I heard someone coming in the back way and down that hallway. And I thought, we’re getting out of here now if there’s someone else around. I got Mike on his feet and out the back somehow, I don’t know how, and I sort of had him leaning in this doorway at the back of the warehouse there. I saw there was this car there and I thought, good, we’re going to take that. Then I heard these shots. These really loud cracks, you know, one after the other. I couldn’t believe it, I was so shit scared. It was like Mike just woke up, right then. We were standing in this little doorway staring at each other. And she came out the back. Running. She had this gun. I was just staring. Then she tripped, you know? She fell and this gun, she dropped it and it went skidding somewhere, I don’t know where. I didn’t see where it ended up. I thought it went in a drain or something.
And then she got up and she got in the car. Like she hadn’t even noticed she’d fallen down. She had this thing around her face but in the car she was pulling it off. Just kind of ripping it away like she couldn’t breathe. She drove right past us really fast. I don’t know how she didn’t see us. I don’t know what she was looking at. We didn’t wait around, we just got out of there. We got a taxi out on Broadway. Some drivers don’t care, you just have to wave your money around and they’ll pick you up anyway. Doesn’t matter what you look like.’
There was silence. Grace could sense Harrigan leaning on the glass outside the room, waiting.
‘Did you see her face, Gina? Can you give us any kind of a description?’ she asked.
Gina smiled to herself and took another cigarette, lighting it from the end of the one she was smoking.
‘You going to keep your word?’ she asked.
The thin and fixed smile was still on her face. Grace felt a small shock as she watched the girl’s expression.
‘Have you got a name for us, Gina?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I do. But I have to know if you’re going to keep your word first.’
‘I’ll keep my word.’
‘I knew her. That was the thing. I knew who she was. She was a friend of mine once.’ The girl rubbed her forehead, her face haggard.
‘Lucy Hurst. Yeah, Lucy. I liked her, you know. I never thought I’d do this to her.’
On the other side of the glass, Harrigan stood upright. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Got you!’
‘Do you have an address?’ Grace asked.
‘No, I don’t know where she came from. She used to hang around near where I worked. She used to buy from me sometimes, if you really want to know. That’s how we got to know each other.’
‘She was an addict?’
‘Sort of. She moved in and out a bit, she was someone who could do that. She’d binge sometimes. I used to think she was playing some kind of funny game of her own, I don’t know what. Lucy could be really strange.’
‘She didn’t work herself?’
‘Oh, no. No way. No one got within cooee of Luce. I’m not saying she didn’t get jumped on while she was out there, she did. That happens, you just can’t do anything about that. But she never got involved with anyone. She used to hang with this kid called Greg. But they were just friends, you know, they never did it or anything like that. And she had this brother who used to come around looking for her sometimes. His name was Stevie.’
‘Can you do an identikit for me?’ Grace asked.
‘Yeah, I’m good with faces. I’ve got to remember the ones I don’t want to see again.’
‘One more question, Gina.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Why did you take so long to come in here with that information?’
The girl drew a circle on the edge of the ashtray with her cigarette.
She stared up at Grace with a look that seemed to be waiting for some kind of blow, violence of some kind, as if she had withdrawn into herself before this expectation. It was a look that said she had never grown used to it.
‘I really couldn’t get here before. I couldn’t.’
‘But now you can. Because you want the money?’
‘How much of it am I going to get?’
Grace glanced at the blank window before she spoke.
‘Quite a lot of it on that information. All of it, probably,’ she replied.
‘I’ve got to have it,’ the girl said very softly, almost a whisper. ‘I just have to.’
‘It’s okay, Gina. We can fix it up,’ Grace said. ‘Let’s go and do the identikit.’
Outside the interview room, Trevor was waiting by himself.
‘Harrigan wants to see you before you leave with her, mate,’ he said quietly.
‘Sure,’ she replied, not without some anxiety.
Later, Grace placed the identikit, together with a statement, on Harrigan’s desk. He picked up the slightly surreal picture: a robotic, not quite cartoon-like reproduction of a young woman’s face. A face with high cheekbones, a wide forehead and short reddish-brown hair.
‘Not a bad-looking face,’ he said. ‘Do you think this is reliable?’
‘Yes, I do. She was very clear about it. No hesitation, didn’t change her mind once.’
He put it back down on the desk. Outside in the main office, small groups of people had gathered to look at the picture as another copy did the rounds. There was a buzz of activity as his officers rang contacts, searched databases and checked lists for any addresses and possibilities.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘The Cross.’
‘How did I know that? Stay in contact. The last thing I want is anyone hurt.’
Or dead, but superstition prevented him from saying that aloud.
‘I’d like to ring Matthew and let him know. Is that okay with you?’
he asked.
‘No, that’s no problem,’ she said. ‘Don’t let him find it out on the news.’
‘Grace,’ he said, as
she stood up to go, ‘this has got a very nasty smell to it. You have thought about that?’
‘Yes, I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought about it quite a lot. What are we going to do about it? Go after Gina? Is that what we do now?’
‘I’d like to. I’d like to charge her with withholding information. I’d like to throw the book at her for sitting on that name for all this time.
But no, we don’t do that. I’ll tell someone else about her and maybe they’ll go and look into whatever is going on. If they’ve got the time and the money. In the meantime, watch your back. Make sure you ring in when you’re finished. You’d better get going.’
He went back to his papers, she walked out. Neither of them looked at each other, until the last moment when he looked up to see her walk out the door, just in time to see her glance back at him. Once she had gone, he rang the media unit, advising them he had an identikit on its way over to them to be released for saturation coverage. Then he rang the hospital and asked to speak to Matthew Liu.
25
‘Where do you want to go first, Gina?’ Grace asked as she eased out into the evening traffic.
It had clouded over and begun to rain, just lightly. Gina was lighting one more of Grace’s cigarettes and looking at her side on. She leaned forward, bracing one hand on the dashboard. Her nails were bitten to the quick, her cigarette smoke curled up against the windscreen.
‘Do you want to go to Maccas? I can show you where you can park.’
‘Okay.’
Grace cruised up Liverpool Street. The bright lights of the traffic flowed around her.
The girl hummed a tune which Grace recognised. She sang along quietly.
‘Corinna, Corinna, where you been so long?/Corinna, Corinnawhere you been so long?/Got no home, baby, since you’ve been gone.’
‘You know it?’
‘Yeah. I used to sing it once. I used to be a singer. That was a while ago now.’
‘It couldn’t have been that long ago. What did you give it away for?’
‘Got sick of it. I wanted to do something else for a change.’
‘It’s my working name,’ the girl said, ‘Corinna. Because I like the song.’