Blood Redemption hag-1

by Alex Palmer

  The preacher smiled and rested his fingers on the list without looking at it.

  ‘I meet so many people in my work, Paul.’

  ‘But you never forget anyone. You told me that yourself. When I was at your prayer meeting you even knew who the children were. You have to be able to glad-hand people in your line of work, don’t you?

  You want to control them so they jump when you say jump? Then you have to know who they are, don’t you? Read those names and tell me the ones you know.’

  ‘I am not obliged to do that.’

  Fredericksen pushed the paper back across the table.

  ‘Trev?’ Harrigan asked. They listened as Trevor read each name aloud.

  ‘Recognise any of those names, Graeme?’

  ‘They’re just names to me, Paul.’

  ‘Are you a member of a group called the Avenging Angels?’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘You know what they are. You tell me.’

  Fredericksen replied with unshakable self-possession.

  ‘I am my own man, Paul. I do only what I am called to do. Where people are concerned, I am just myself, nothing else.’

  ‘Do you know this woman?’

  He placed on the table the picture of the woman shot dead on her front doorstep with the words ‘You can run but you can’t hide’ written across the image.

  ‘Again you ask me to identify someone from the back of the head.’

  ‘This woman’s face was shot away so it wouldn’t help you much.

  Let me introduce you anyway: Dr Laura Di-Cuollo, obstetrician, Long Beach, California. She used to carry out abortions at a local women’s health clinic.’

  Fredericksen glanced briefly at the photograph. He drew his head up in what appeared a gesture of fastidious distaste. Then the swiftest of expressions, joy, crossed his face.

  ‘Does this picture appeal to you? Does it please you?’

  The preacher did not speak. Harrigan continued.

  ‘It’s a cruel picture, Graeme. Don’t you feel grief, sorrow, anything, when you look at it?’

  ‘This woman dealt in death. Why should anyone, herself, her fellow travellers, be surprised if one day death catches up with her?’

  ‘You’re saying she deserved to die?’

  ‘No, not at all. Only that those who deal in death should not be surprised if one day their partner in life comes to claim them.’

  In the room, briefly, there was a sense of extraordinary cold.

  ‘I see,’ Harrigan said eventually. ‘What about this?’

  He placed in front of the preacher the picture of Professor Henry Liu lying dead in a Chippendale street.

  ‘None of this has anything to do with me. Why are you showing me these things?’

  ‘What about this one?’

  A picture of the professor in the same street with the blue handkerchief Harrigan himself had dropped across his face. He set the two photographs side by side.

  ‘You show me pictures, Paul, but you don’t tell me why.’

  ‘The morning this shooting happened, and we got the call to go down there, we found one dead body and one living one. And one teenager with his life shot to pieces. I dropped that handkerchief over the dead man’s face because of the way he looked.’ There was a pause.

  ‘Don’t you find that sickening to look at?’

  Harrigan’s voice was quiet. He watched the preacher look from one picture to the next without blinking or registering any change to his expression.

  ‘Do you know what this man did for a living? He taught music. I’m asking you, Graeme: should he have expected to be shot dead like that?’

  As he spoke, Harrigan very briefly felt the memory of his conversation with Grace that morning, an impression gone in a second.

  There was silence. The preacher stared at Harrigan, his hands resting on the photographs.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he replied calmly.

  ‘Do you feel any grief for him? His son? His wife? You know who she is, Graeme. Your mates from your congregation spend half their lives outside her clinics buzzing around her clients.’

  ‘She dealt in death. Her son should be accusing her. So should the ghost of her husband. Perhaps in the afterlife he will, when the scales have fallen from his eyes. Perhaps he will accuse her while he watches her fall into her place in Hell.’

  Again there was a sense of profound cold in the room. Harrigan saw how the attention of everyone, himself, his two officers, was fixed on this man who drank it in, unafraid.

  ‘There’s only God’s law for you, Graeme.’

  ‘There is only God’s law for every one of us, Paul.’

  ‘Does this represent God’s law to you?’

  He tapped the pictures, avoiding any physical contact with the preacher. Fredericksen smiled at him with a slightly taunting expression.

  ‘You are the law enforcer here, Paul. Tell me how you see it.’

  ‘I see it as cold-blooded murder.’

  Silence. Fredericksen continued to smile.

  ‘Then we wait for the answer to your question. We wait until the day that we are called to account before God. On that day, the true representatives of the law will be revealed to us. We will see whose blood is innocent and whose is not.’

  ‘You want to talk about blood guilt?’ Harrigan said. ‘The Lius were shot by the same type of gun that shot Laura Di-Cuollo. They’re not all that common in this country in the hands of nineteen-year-old street kids. Did you give Lucy Hurst that gun?’

  ‘How can I have given her a gun? I have no gun. I can’t answer that question.’

  ‘You can’t answer my question?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because to answer the question would be to lie to me directly.’

  ‘I don’t lie, Paul. I tell people the truth in their hearts.’

  ‘Did you give Lucy Hurst a gun and tell her to go out and do this?’

  There was a fraction of a hesitation.

  ‘No, I did not say that to her,’ he replied.

  ‘She killed the wrong person. She didn’t even know how to control the gun. Why pick someone so young? No one else have the nerve?

  Including you? Enforcing God’s law is fine provided you don’t have to do the dirty work.’

  Harrigan laughed in the preacher’s face.

  ‘Her actions have nothing to do with me,’ the man replied.

  ‘You mean the fact that she made such a dog’s breakfast of it?’

  ‘None of this has anything to do with me.’

  ‘You don’t kill people. You get other people to do it for you.’

  ‘That is untrue.’

  ‘You mean you kill people as well?’

  The preacher’s face was not so much white as colourless. He sat completely still.

  ‘I am not an agent of death. Others are the agents of death. Why don’t you harass them?’

  ‘Your agents. Would you kill Lucy Hurst if she was a danger to you?’

  ‘I am not an agent of death. I am a preserver of life.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever wanted to kill someone? Wouldn’t you like to have a go at me now?’

  The preacher drew himself up with the same fastidious movement, and the same brief expression of savage joy crossed his face.

  ‘You are not my concern, Paul. Your fate will be decided by a force far stronger than you, or me for that matter. I may be its agent. But I am not an agent of death. I offer eternal life.’

  ‘Careful what rubbish you say there, mate.’ Trevor spoke very softly and very angrily, words that had been forced out of him.

  The tension snapped like a piece of fine and brittle glass. The preacher jumped from his seat. ‘How dare you talk to me!’ he roared.

  Harrigan was on his feet and in the preacher’s face before anyone else could move.

  ‘You will not talk to my officers like that!’

  The force of his words pushed the preacher back into his seat.

  There was silence. The
preacher’s face had been transformed by fury.

  He sat there shaking.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ he asked.

  Harrigan shook his head.

  ‘I wish to leave now in that case or I will bring a complaint of unlawful detention.’

  ‘You agreed to come down of your own accord, Graeme. But you can go anyway. I’m finished here. But I’m sure we’ll talk to each other again soon.’

  This time the man did not speak or smile. He stood up, the doors were opened and the four of them walked to the lifts. At a nod from Harrigan, Dea phoned for an escort to see the preacher out. No one spoke. The escort took his time.

  While they stood there, they heard the sound of female voices: Louise and Grace returning from some girls’ only coffee break. They appeared in the foyer on their way back to work. Harrigan and Grace looked at each other without intending to. Then he saw her look at the preacher with that steel in her expression she sometimes had.

  Fredericksen watched her go, his face impassive. The lift doors opened and the escort arrived.

  ‘Do you know, Paul,’ the preacher said, turning to him, ‘it’s never wise to be arrogant. Pride does go before a fall.’

  Harrigan placed himself between the preacher and everyone else and spoke quietly and affably. He was smiling.

  ‘Who are you threatening, Graeme? Me or one of my people?

  Because that would be a very stupid thing for you to do.’

  ‘I am not threatening anyone, Paul. I never do. Everything is in the hands of God. Does that worry you? Would that make you step outside your own limits?’

  ‘This man will organise you a lift home,’ Harrigan replied. ‘Thanks for coming in.’

  They looked at each other and then the preacher turned away.

  ‘Good day to you,’ he said to no one in particular.

  He was gone and they all breathed.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Ian and Trevor said, simultaneously.

  ‘Snap,’ Trevor said. ‘Sorry, Dea.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ she said, with an unconcerned wave of her hand.

  ‘He’s a first for me, I’ve got to say that,’ Harrigan said, damping down the fact the interview, and Fredericksen, had disturbed him much more than was usual.

  ‘Why did he scream at you like that, mate?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Who gives a shit?’ Trevor shrugged.

  ‘Why did you say that to him?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Because of all the crap he was going on with. What would he know?

  I need a smoke.’

  ‘Take a break and then come and see me in my office, the both of you,’ Harrigan said.

  He went back into the main part of the office and saw Grace about to disappear into the computer room. He walked up to her.

  ‘My office,’ he said, ‘now.’

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Work.’ The comment was overhead by Jeffo who, Grace noticed, grinned at them both and made a face behind Harrigan’s back.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked as she sat down on the other side of his desk.

  ‘I need to know — would the preacher or anyone connected with him have any reason to know anything about you?’

  ‘Why are you asking me that?’

  ‘Because if they do, I would have to say you are in considerable personal danger as of now. I’m going to ask you again. Do they know anything about you? Your address, anything. Anything you tell me is confidential, Grace.’

  Grace pictured herself sitting in this chair telling him how she had had an abortion eight months ago, or even confining her information simply to describing how the preacher’s hangers-on had tracked her down and leaving it to him to fill in the gaps. She could not bring herself to say any of this, the confession stuck in her throat. What would it matter if she did say nothing? What could she tell him that he didn’t already know? He would finish the investigation soon, within days at the most. She shook her head without speaking.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She shook her head again. He tapped the desk with his fingertips.

  ‘Have you sent out an email to the Firewall?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. I haven’t got anything back yet.’

  He was silent for a little longer.

  ‘I’m going to take you at your word, Grace,’ he said. ‘You’re responsible for what you do in here — ’

  ‘I’ve never seen it any other way.’

  ‘I’m not saying anything different. We were talking about murderers the other night. You just saw the genuine article standing in the foyer. He gets a kick out of it. Think about that. Let me know as soon as you get anything back online.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said and left, meeting Trev and Ian at the door.

  ‘Hi, guys,’ she said and headed back to the computer room.

  ‘Did we interrupt anything?’ Ian asked disingenuously.

  ‘No, mate, there’s nothing to interrupt,’ Harrigan growled. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

  In the computer room, Grace sat in front of the monitor waiting to see if the Firewall would come online, asking herself, what could Harrigan do to protect her anyway? Take her off the job, lock her away? She concentrated on her work. Work was her only possible relief at the moment. She decided that even tedium could have its uses when you needed it enough.

  31

  Hunger woke Lucy. She lay considering that she had hours to wait before her next action and nothing to do between then and now.

  She went to the sink and drank water to ease her appetite and then looked at her computer and mobile phone, wondering how long either of them could last now that she had no means to recharge their batteries. In the garage, there was a suicidally dangerous and illegal electrical connection which ran the lights but no usable outlet. Even so, she logged on and went out onto the Net.

  Various messages were waiting for her. From Turtle: Are u outthere Firewall Come amp; talk 2 me please. She ignored the tug of feeling that said, yes, talk to him, there is nothing you need more.

  She deleted his message. Then there was an email from someone she did not know, with the subject line: Message from Greg. She opened it at once.

  This is to the Firewall. You don’t know me but my name isGrace. I’m going to tell you straightaway that I’m with the police.

  But I have a message for you from Greg. What I am telling you isword for word what he said to me. I talked to him once just beforethey took him up to Kariong and then later he rang me and he leftme this message on my answering machine. It’s for you. I havethe tape if you want it. If we can find a way to get it to you, we’lldo that so you’ll know that what I’m telling you is true. Onceyou’ve read it, if you want to get back to me, you can email me oryou can chat to me. Whichever way you want to do it. But if youdo want to talk to me, I’m here to talk to you. Just come and findme. Grace.

  Lucy read both messages several times before going out in search of the sender.

  Are you out there, Grace. Are you real? Whoever you are. It’s the Firewall here. Why do you want to talk to me?

  Firewall? Is this really you?

  Yeah.

  How do I know it’s you?

  How do I know who you are?

  I sent you Greg’s message.

  I can tell you something in return. I already know that Greggie’s dead. I’ve got his beanie and it’s sitting on the table right beside me now. I know where he is too and I can tell you that. And I will. But first I want to know why you want to talk to me. Why should you? What do you want?

  On the other side of the city, Louise appeared in the doorway of Harrigan’s office to tell him Grace had the Firewall online.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and was on his feet. In the computer room he leaned over Grace to read the words on the screen, his closeness to her crowding her space. A small group gathered behind them.

  ‘I’ve just got her,’ she said to him.

  ‘Keep her talking.’

  In the garage, Lucy waited for Grace’s r
eply.

  I want to know if you’re okay. Where you are now. And what you’replanning on doing next. We’re both caught in a loop, Firewall. Weneed to find a way out.

  There is no way out for me. You know that. I bet you want to know where I am but that doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you. Who told you who I am? It wasn’t Greggie?

  No, it wasn’t. He wouldn’t tell me anything about you. He neverstopped being loyal to you, Firewall.

  I said he wouldn’t, no matter what. I told people we didn’t have to worry about Greggie.

  Who did you say that to?

  I’m not telling you that. Not just yet. What’s your last name?

  In the computer room, Harrigan shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.

  I’m not going to tell you that just yet either, Firewall.

  Don’t you trust me?

  Can I trust you?

  I don’t care if you don’t really. I only care if I can trust you. What do you want? I’m not going to hand myself over to you right now so what else do you want?

  I wanted to talk to you. It’s better if we talk than if we don’t.

  People say that kind of thing all the time. And then they just walk away and leave you to die. How do I know you’re not just a liar like everyone else?

  I’m not lying to you, Firewall. Why don’t you want to try and trustme just a little?

  Because even people you love and think you can trust for ever turn out to be liars sometimes. Make me trust you. Tell me who told you who I am.

  Grace looked up at Harrigan.

  ‘Tell her,’ he said.

  Someone you used to know saw you that morning when you weredriving away. She came and told us who you were.

  Who?

  Gina.

  Gina? Corinna, you mean? She didn’t.

  She was pretty desperate, Firewall. She needed protection.

  She could have come to me, I would have looked after her. Where is she now?

  She’s dead.

  She is not. You’re lying.

  I am not lying. I wish I didn’t have to tell you that but it’s true.

  That’s why I’m out here, Grace. You listen to what I’m saying to you. We were all in a group once, me, Greggie and Corinna, and now there’s just me left. Just me. And they’re dead. And that’s why I have to be out here. No one else is out here for us. That’s why I don’t trust anyone, Grace, including you. Because, in the end, everyone stabs you in the back. And they like doing it. People laugh at you while they’re hurting you. Is that what you want to do?