Blood Redemption hag-1

by Alex Palmer

  No. I’ve told you the real reason I’m talking to you. You know whoI am and what I want. I’m not hiding anything from you. I wish I hadn’thad to write that Gina was dead. I mean that.

  Do you? I wish I knew what to think. I talk to people and it’s like I don’t know where I am.

  I feel like that sometimes. I used to sing and I started to write asong about that once. It went something like: Sometimes when I’mtalking/It feels like I’m walking/In the dark/Don’t where I’mgoing/Don’t know where I’ve been. That was the chorus. That’s howI felt too. That was about as far as the song got, I think.

  It is like that. It is like I’m in the dark all the time. What do you want me to do? Everyone who talks to me tells me what they think I should do. What do you think?

  I’d like you to tell us where you are so we can come and get you.

  That way, no one else gets hurt.

  What good is that going to do me? Lots of people are already hurt.

  How is that going to help them?

  It will mean that no one else is going to get hurt. I’m sure you wantthe chance to do something for Greg.

  What do you think I can do for him now?

  You don’t want to leave him where he is. You want to do the rightthing by him.

  Of course I do. But I’m not going to tell you how to find him until it’s the right time.

  When will that be?

  I don’t know yet.

  Do you have something else you need to do first?

  Yes, I do. I’ve got people I need to talk to for one thing. I have to sort things out with them. I’ll tell you what, Grace, I’ll talk to you again and see what I want to tell you then.

  ‘She’s meeting the preacher,’ Harrigan said. ‘Get a time.’

  When will you talk to me again?

  Later on tonight. Because I do have to talk to other people first.

  Then I’ll talk to you. It might be pretty late. Maybe sometime after midnight?

  You can’t tell me more exactly than that? Just so I can make sureI’m here.

  No, I can’t. Does that mean you’re not going to do what you said you would?

  No, I’ll be here.

  So you’re telling me I can depend on that? For you to be there?

  If I’m not, it’s only because I’ve just left my desk for a little whileand I’ve gone to get something to eat or something like that. And ifthat happens, you just say that you want to talk to me and then I’llcome back and I’ll talk to you as soon as I can.

  There are other people there?

  Yes, there are.

  Are they watching us talk?

  Yes, they are.

  You didn’t say that. But I can trust you, can I?

  Yes, you can. You can trust me to be honest with you.

  No, Grace. Can I trust you full stop?

  You can trust me full stop. But will you do that, Firewall? Will youcome in? Will you tell us where you are?

  Not yet. Everything’s not yet at the moment.

  As these words appeared Lucy’s computer seemed to freeze. The battery on her mobile phone had died.

  On the other end of the line Grace waited.

  ‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘The connection’s gone. We’ve lost her.’

  ‘Try again,’ Harrigan said.

  Firewall are you out there? Have I lost you?

  There was nothing.

  ‘She’s gone. Maybe she’s just dropped out,’ Grace said.

  ‘It’s a start,’ Harrigan said, standing upright. ‘We keep talking to her. We keep talking to her and we keep watching him. Sooner or later they’re going to meet up. We just have to be patient.’

  Grace leaned on her elbows looking at the screen.

  ‘She’s just a kid. She talks just like a kid,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. A dangerous one,’ he replied.

  Grace kept looking at the screen, shaking her head. The rest of the crowd dispersed.

  ‘Keep me posted,’ he said, resisting the urge to touch her on the shoulder, and went back to his office.

  He looked out of the window wondering, if the Firewall and the preacher did meet, who was going to kill who? At the moment, he had his money on the preacher. Outside, there was no rain. The clouds were almost black and although it was supposedly still day it was dark enough to be night. He waited, it was all he could do. He was waiting for his turn to make a move.

  Lucy picked up her dead phone and shrugged. She threw it into a heap of rubbish in a corner then went outside into the main part of the garage. She sat on the concrete floor and leaned against the wall near the office door, looking towards where her car straddled the pit.

  She drew her knees up and leaned her forehead on them. She began to think of death as a combination of presence and absence, where the body is there only to remind you that you can never talk to someone again. She chased this idea around in her mind, drawing circles in the dust on the floor, shaking her head. Absence compounded on absence; she had no power to cry for anyone. She was dry, used up.

  ‘I’ve got nothing to lose, have I?’ she said to her silent ghosts. ‘No one can tell me I do. Not Grace, whoever she is. Even if she is walking in the dark just like me. I don’t feel anything.’

  She lit a cigarette and threw the match, still burning, onto the concrete floor. It burned for a short time longer, then went out.

  Turtle would say that she still had things to lose. He would know, better than anyone. How are you, Turtle? Does your father still come and rub that pain out of your back, the way you said he does? If I could, I would come and see you, I would sit with you and I’d feed you, the way you say he does. I would take you out if you wanted to go out and I wouldn’t care what anyone thought about either of us. You say that sometimes people won’t look at you. You say that they stand right beside you and say that you don’t have a brain or any feelings. If anyone said anything about you like that and I was with you, I’d make sure they never said anything hurtful to you again. I’d tell them what they could do.

  She felt an intense need to talk to him, to go online and say, will you forgive me? I forgive you. I want to talk to you so much. She had no means to reach him and no way of acquiring those means. All she had was time, hours in which to wait. She leaned her head against the wall. This was endgame. One more sleep and it would all be over. If she ever slept again.

  32

  The waiting ground on, like slow wheels. Harrigan had put in place the graveyard shift and sent some of his other people home, but by late in the evening they felt as worn as he was, the enclosure was getting to them. They manned the phones, checked the information they received constantly from the public and found that almost all of it was either old or useless. Opposite the Temple in Camperdown, the surveillance teams sat rubbing their eyes as they waited outside a silent, almost dark building. The sheer boredom ate at everyone.

  Harrigan told his people to catnap whenever they could and sent them out on breaks to give them some fresh air, to get them to move.

  A little after nine, he took a phone call from the surveillance team telling him the preacher had just left the Temple.

  ‘He’s been picked up by a very nice Jaguar,’ a female voice said,

  ‘chauffeur driven. Our registration check says it’s owned by a Mrs Yvonne Lindley, north St Ives. Looks like he’s going out to a late dinner. There he goes. He’s heading off to the Harbour Bridge by the looks of it. Going north.’

  Half his luck.

  ‘Keep on him,’ Harrigan said. ‘Don’t let him get away from you.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  ‘No,’ Harrigan replied, ‘you won’t lose him, is what you’ll do.’

  In an excess of self-protection as much as anything else, he had earlier rung the security firm charged with guarding the Whole Life Health Centre clinics. They had assured him that the clinics were under twenty-four-hour protection. He asked for that in writing and then logged the time and date of his call. He emaile
d Marvin, copying the message to everyone he needed to if he was going to protect his back, expressing concern that at least one of these clinics just might go up tonight, only to receive in reply a phone call from the Tooth’s personal assistant saying that they had every confidence in present arrangements.

  ‘Send me that in writing,’ he said to her, knowing that she would not.

  Harrigan was snookered, he had no people he could send to fill the gap.

  He was reduced to making sure the street patrols had been alerted and having the staff at the clinics warned personally by his own people.

  As the time ground on, he took another call from the surveillance team.

  ‘We’re sitting outside Yvonne Lindley’s pile on the north shore. And a very nice pile it is too. He’s inside,’ the female voice said.

  ‘Call me if anything happens.’

  ‘And the rain comes down at last. We’ll be back to you as soon as he’s on the move.’

  The storm which had threatened all day had finally broken; the rain began to pour in sheets down his window. It was a relief. He went out into the main office to see who was there and who was out. He saw Grace disappearing into the tea room, presumably in search of coffee; a small group in a corner with Jeffo, Ian sitting nearby. Trev was out in search of fast food. Grace reappeared on her way back to the computer room. Engrossed in whatever it was they were looking at, the small group around Jeffo had not seen him. He had turned to go back to his office when he heard laughter, some quiet, almost whispered comments, louder laughter and then Ian speaking, not quietly.

  ‘Fuck off, mate. I wouldn’t show that around here if I was you.’

  Harrigan turned again in time to see Grace stop nearby, putting a mug of coffee down on a desk.

  ‘What’s that?’ she said.

  Jeffo said something to her, Harrigan could not hear what. He was waving a picture from side to side in front of her, moving his body with it and laughing. She walked up to him. The crowd around him parted a little.

  ‘Give me that,’ she said.

  ‘No way, Jose,’ Jeffo replied, passing it out of her reach to someone else.

  She hit him hard across the face with an open hand, the sound like a whiplash throughout the open office. He jerked back in shock and touched blood on his mouth. There was a collective gasp and, in the background, muted cheers from a few other watchers. Jeffo stood up slowly, moving around towards her. She stood her ground.

  ‘Gracie, you back off now,’ Ian said urgently, on his feet as well and circling them. ‘Jeffo, why don’t you sit down and just shut up for once.’

  ‘You bitch. I bit my lip,’ Jeffo said, moving dangerously close to her.

  ‘You give me that,’ she said again, not moving, facing him.

  Harrigan was between them, outraged.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said to Grace. ‘You never do that. You never, never hit anyone you work with. Don’t you ever do that again. Not while you work for me.’

  Grace stepped back, pushing her hair out of the way, smudging her makeshift make-up. She looked sideways and then back at him and barely nodded. Jeffo had also stepped back, muttering a single word to her as he did so. He was grinning as he took repossession of the photograph but no one else was smiling. Harrigan turned to him just as he was slipping it out of sight into his top drawer.

  ‘What’s that, mate? Let me have a look,’ Harrigan said.

  ‘It’s just a joke. Nothing.’

  ‘If it’s a joke, let’s share it. We can all have a laugh, we need one.

  Come on. Let’s see it. Give it here.’

  There was silence as Harrigan found himself looking at a picture of a younger Grace on a stage somewhere, holding a microphone and wearing high heels but otherwise naked to the waist and barely clothed at all.

  ‘That is not me,’ she said angrily. ‘That is airbrushed rubbish. It’s got nothing to do with me. I don’t even look like that.’

  Harrigan felt sick to his stomach. He eyeballed Jeffo while he tore the photograph into four pieces and shouted for Dea. The tiny woman appeared at once.

  ‘Shred it,’ Harrigan said. ‘Flush it down the toilet with the rest of the shit. Got any more of those to go with it, mate?’

  ‘No, it’s just the one.’

  ‘Don’t tell me that. You’ve always got something up your sleeve.

  Let’s have a look in your desk.’

  Harrigan pulled out an envelope containing several more pictures.

  He tore those up as well. They stood in silence listening to the shredder mince them to pieces.

  ‘So where did these come from?’ Harrigan asked, looking at the envelope. ‘Old Roger. Straight out of Marvin’s office, in other words.

  Wouldn’t you know it? Nice to know they’ve got nothing better to do with their time down there. Or their money, for that matter. Unlike the rest of us.’

  He smiled. The room remained completely quiet.

  ‘You love this, don’t you, mate,’ he said to Jeffo, still smiling, ‘little jokes like this. You just love them.’

  ‘It is just a fucking joke, Boss. I’m not the only one that’s got them.

  It’s nothing. What does it matter?’

  ‘Oh, but you love it. Sticking a knife in there, bad-mouthing someone here, playing little games, pinning nice little pictures up on the wall. You’ve always got something for everyone else to laugh at. You get a charge out of it, don’t you? You’re someone everyone here can rely on when they really need to, aren’t you? You know what loyalty means.

  You’re here, waiting to stick it to them when they need you most.’

  ‘It was just a fucking joke. There was nothing to it. Why worry?

  Everyone knows — ’

  He stopped.

  ‘Everyone knows what?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No, come on, tell me. Everyone knows something that I don’t. I don’t think Grace knows it either. What is it? You want to say it?’

  Jeffo was silent. He looked at Grace, who had moved to sit down at a spare desk. She looked away, meeting no one’s eye.

  ‘Okay,’ Harrigan said, ‘no one knows anything. Except this. Clear your desk and get out. You can go home now.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘I can. Get out. Now. While I watch you. And don’t waste your time doing it.’

  Harrigan stood by as Jeffo cleared his desk and went towards the exit. At the door, he stopped.

  ‘Why don’t you piss her off instead of me?’ he called as a parting shot. ‘Wouldn’t be a problem then. But we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?’

  ‘Get out,’ Harrigan almost shouted, unexpectedly stung to real anger.

  Jeffo was gone, into the lift. Harrigan turned to look at everyone else. Grace was watching him but it was impossible know what she was thinking. She looked down at the desk, rubbing her forehead. He did not speak to her, there was nothing he could say publicly. The air jangled with the contrarieties of tension, relief and tiredness, a sense of chafing, human irritation pushing at the edges.

  ‘Everyone who’s got work to do, do it,’ he said. ‘Everyone who can take a break now, take it. Get some fresh air and something to eat.

  Forget about the last twenty minutes. We have to keep our minds on this. Take your pagers with you.’

  One or two people did leave after he had spoken, friends of Jeffo, but there was nothing he could do about that. Others went back to work.

  ‘Boss.’

  Louise’s slow and gravelly voice interrupted him. She was standing beside him, breathing whisky.

  ‘What is it, Lou?’

  ‘Something you should see. I came out to see you earlier but you were preoccupied.’ She smiled a slow, sardonic, alcoholic smile as she glanced around at the room. ‘Thought I’d better wait. You need to know about this. You might like to get some other people in here as well. Gracie, you need to look at this too. This is a different sort of pictu
re,’ she added very quietly.

  They gathered around the monitor. Grace sat in her chair, back a little and staying out of the way. She felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up to see Ian handing her a fresh cup of coffee.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Gracie,’ he said quietly, ‘Jeffo’s just a shit.’

  She smiled at him out of pure relief.

  Harrigan noticed the small communication and briefly wondered about everything and nothing that might exist between the two of them, before turning his attention to the screen.

  ‘I went looking for the Avenging Angels,’ Louise said a little creakily. ‘I thought, they’ll be there somewhere. If people enjoy sending out photographs like the one they sent out, they’ll be on the web somewhere, showing off. And sure enough, there they were. This site moves around. You’ll see why. It’s amateurish, I’ve got to say, you could do better. There’s no talent here. The Firewall would do a better job, she’s got some imagination. But you’ll see. Here we go.’

  The site opened to the tinny sound of a drum beating and the words

  ‘Avenging Angels: Abortionists made to face God’ appeared on the screen. A set of doors opened and the sound of gunshots rang out in the background. An angel with ammunition belts slung around its hips pointed with a handgun to a poster on a brick wall in an alleyway.

  ‘Bounty Hunters Wanted,’ the poster said, ‘Generous rewards offered for the destruction of persons performing abortions, those who authorise child-killing, and the buildings that house these Hellholes.

  Whether you work for God or the Devil (and let the Devil’s own kill each other, we say) the Avenging Angels are prepared to pay good money for the bringing of these mass murderers and the witches who serve them before the ultimate court, God’s tribunal. Be a hero. Save a child. Guarantee of payment on receipt of positive proof of destruction, death or disabling.’

  ‘This is serious?’ Harrigan asked.