Blood Redemption hag-1

by Alex Palmer

  She dumped her car on the other side of Central Station, leaving it to be cannibalised. She had come to her final place of sanctuary, a former garment factory in Surry Hills marked for redevelopment, the owners now bankrupt, the ground-floor windows broken and boarded up. Inside, scraps of material, broken sewing needles, clothing racks and parts of discarded dressmaker’s dummies covered the floors. The space had been appropriated by the needy and the homeless, and accommodated another community, a shifting body of artists who wanted the light that came through the wide windows overlooking the street on the second floor. The upper storey room was filled with their leftover works. Soft sculpture and collage, paintings and unfinished objects were spread across the open space amidst the pink, plastic limbs of the dummies.

  Lucy trod quietly through these plastic things and sidestepped the prone figure of someone sleeping in the midst of the debris. She went up to the top floor, to a small dog’s leg of a room opposite a filthy bathroom. She had barricaded this room against invasion by others with her own locks. It had a narrow bed, a limited view and a curtainless window where the rain had covered the glass like a crystal frosting. There was a very weak light in the room, something to push back the shadows a little. She dumped her backpack against the wall and took out her gun, which she left on the bed. She dried herself as well as she could and then sat on the bed with the gun in her hands and waited. She looked at the dial on her watch, luminous in the darkling room. Just on midnight. Time was ticking down.

  The same storm caught the preacher as he crossed a deserted suburban park somewhere on the upper north shore, a lightning flash briefly revealing the isolated figure in the darkness. He hurried through the sparse trees, huddled in his coat, head down, intent on where he was going. He pulled his hood further over his face as he ran towards a waiting car on the far corner of the park, near a house where an outside light was burning. He got in, greeting the driver, and the car pulled away from the kerb. Some minutes afterwards, the outside lights of the nearby house were extinguished.

  The rain had been hammering down but as they drove it began to cease gradually. They travelled the backstreets towards North Sydney.

  Here the preacher left the first car to claim another which had been left waiting for him in a twenty-four-hour car park. He drove into the city between the tower blocks that surrounded the approach to the steel coat hanger and then over the curve of the bridge misty in the lighter rain.

  It was just after midnight. In the near distance, the office towers of the city appeared as hazy pillars of electric light. The preacher saw them as hollow structures floating in profound darkness, a prelude to the day when time would stop and there would be only light everlasting. On that day, he hoped to satisfy his own hunger as a collector of souls. His hunger never let him rest; it pushed him now to meet with someone he was quite sure would be waiting to greet him with a loaded gun.

  He parked not far from the garment factory in Surry Hills and went inside. By now the rain had almost stopped. As he approached the room on the third floor, he wondered whether she had yet arrived but when the unlocked door opened to him he knew that she was there to meet him. He stepped inside and, in the half-shadows, saw Lucy sitting on the bed aiming a gun at him. She said in her familiar voice, ‘Stop right there, Graeme. Don’t move. Just sit on the floor.’

  The preacher closed the door and sat with his back against it.

  ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘it’s nice to see you again.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘It is. You should believe me. I have been looking forward to this meeting very much. We have a great deal to talk about.’

  Lucy laughed.

  ‘There are times when I don’t believe you. You could walk into anything. You don’t even look worried.’

  ‘Why should I be? If God puts his cloak around you, why should you be afraid? God has his cloak around you at the moment, Lucy. You should realise you don’t have a reason to be frightened of anything.’

  He spoke smoothly. She shook her head, trying to shield herself from the immediate hypnotism of his voice.

  ‘Fuck you, Graeme. I didn’t come here to listen to you talk shit to me. I want you to tell me about Greggie. I want to know what you did.’

  ‘I did nothing. Greg overdosed and he overdosed because Bronwyn is too stupid to lock a cupboard door properly. You should talk to her. The woman’s a fool. I sometimes wonder what dimension she really inhabits.’

  Lucy rested her gun on her knees and laughed again.

  ‘You did nothing. You never fucking do, do you? Not because you didn’t want to. In case you’ve forgotten, I was there when you were talking about helping both me and him to the afterlife.’

  ‘Those were only words, Lucy. The afterlife is all around us but we don’t realise it. Now listen to me. What do you think you’re going to do now?’

  She thought how easily he changed the conversation. Nothing fazed him. She glanced at her watch. ‘Don’t know,’ she replied.

  ‘I can help you — ’

  ‘To Paradise? Yeah.’

  ‘I can. I can get you out of this building. I can give you money. Do you want to go to California? You can go to California. It costs money but the money is there and it can be done. If I think it’s worth it.’

  ‘If you think it’s worth it? Graeme, I’m the one who’s holding the gun.’

  ‘But I’m the one who has the means. You have to ask yourself: what do you want?’

  She smiled pure steel. ‘I ask myself that all the time. At the moment there’s nothing for me to want. I’ll tell you something. You know the clinic on Anzac Parade?’ He nodded. ‘It’s going up in a little while.’

  He was not quite laughing as he replied. ‘You never joke about these things, do you?’

  ‘No, I do what I say I’m going to do. I’m the only one who does.

  It’s for Greggie. Nothing else is going to make anyone take any notice of him. And then maybe I’ll just ring the pigs and say, hi, here I am.

  Blow me away if you want. I don’t care.’

  ‘You’re going to put yourself in the hands of the police?’ He sounded contemptuous.

  ‘What does it matter if I do? They can beat the shit out of me. You take it if you have to. How can things be worse than they are now?’

  His face had an odd look, not quite triumph, not quite joy.

  ‘You’ll find out in gaol, won’t you, Lucy? You’ll have the rest of your life in there to think about it. And for you, that’s a very long time indeed.’

  ‘I’d be careful, Graeme.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘I might blow you away for saying that.’

  ‘But you won’t. Because you once told me you wished you never fired the gun in the first place. Isn’t that how you feel?’

  ‘I can use this on you if I have to, Graeme. Don’t worry about that.’

  The threat was unconvincing even to her. ‘But, yeah. I do wish I’d never shot that woman and that man. But that’s different to now, it’s way different.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s very different, Lucy. Think about it. The woman you shot brought death to thousands, including you, ultimately brought death to her husband and ruined her son’s life. But you blame yourself.

  She should be accused, not you.’

  ‘Graeme, I pulled that trigger. It was me, not her.’

  ‘Do you know what you’re doing when you say that? You’re taking this woman’s guilt on yourself. You’re inviting her to injure you for a second time.’

  You don’t know! Lucy screamed the words in her head. She stared at him.

  ‘And for this,’ he continued, ‘you want to give yourself up to the police. You don’t even know who the police are. I want you to look at this. It’s all right, I don’t have a gun in here.’

  He reached into an inside pocket and took out a photograph which he skidded across the floor to her. Lucy put her gun on the bed. She reached down and picked it up.

&nbs
p; ‘Her name is on the back,’ he said. ‘She’s with the police but that’s not all she is.’

  Turning it over, Lucy looked at a card that had been stapled onto the back, peering at it in the half light.

  ‘Grace,’ she said. She looked at Graeme watching her. The sight of his face made her pick up her gun again.

  ‘That woman is a torturer, Lucy. She’s the woman they sent to persecute Greg.’ His voice became a quiet rustling whisper that ate into the intimacy of her thoughts. She pulled back from his gaze but could not escape his words. ‘I’m sure he feared her. I’m sure when she had him in a cell she tormented him beyond endurance. I don’t find it at all surprising that he should be driven to take his own life. She would put that seed into his head herself. Think of her saying to him: You are nothing. Why not die now? She’s a torturer and a witch. We took that picture of her when she was on her way into an abortuary. Bronwyn stopped her. She said, think of that innocent child you’re about to kill. She laughed in Bronwyn’s face. She assaulted her. Get out of my way, she said. Watch me while I kill. That woman walks blood through the streets. Can you imagine what will happen to you when you put yourself in her hands?

  She will know how to hurt you. Do you want to be tortured the way you were in your own family? Because this time you will be in gaol for ever and there will be no way out. No streets to escape to.’

  His voice had become a sound in her own mind. She felt surprised when it became silent. The gun hung loosely in her hands. She did not speak.

  ‘Now there is someone who deserves to die, don’t you think?’

  Lucy swallowed. ‘I couldn’t get near her.’

  ‘Finding her wouldn’t be hard. We have her address. But you wouldn’t have to go to her. In her arrogance, she would come to you.

  And you would be waiting for her. Then the police would know what they really are. That this war does not work just one way. They can be defeated, they can suffer humiliation as much as anyone else.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to kill anyone. Maybe I’ve done enough of that.’

  ‘You have a building that’s about to burn. People could die as a result of that if that’s what worries you.’

  ‘No, they won’t. I’m not hurting anyone. There’s no one in there.’

  ‘Fires spread. The rain has stopped, there’s nothing to prevent it now. That building is a Hellhole, it will burn fiercely. Others around it may also burn. I don’t say it will happen. I won’t be concerned if it does. That building has to be expunged from the face of the earth and if that’s the price to be paid, so be it. But I do say to you, you have the courage others lack. I can help you. I can get you out of here.’

  ‘How can you get me out of here?’

  ‘I can get a car sent here to pick you up. You stay and lock yourself in. I’ll have them come for you tomorrow evening. No one will notice anything. Then there will be a nice house for you to rest in until we can send you away to safety.’

  ‘Yeah. And along the way I end up dead.’

  ‘No, Lucy. You will have nothing to be afraid of because I will know that I can rely on you. You will prove it to me. That woman is a murderer. But you will expunge her evil. And you know that it’ll take only a few seconds because you’ve done it before. We’ll help you.

  Believe me, we will. You are someone very special.’

  Lucy sat with the gun lying loosely in her lap. She thought: my throat is full of broken bones.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked.

  ‘I have to think.’

  ‘There’s no time.’

  She sat for a few moments in silence. ‘You trust me, do you, Graeme? If you think I’m someone special?’

  ‘Would I ask you to do this if I didn’t trust you absolutely?’

  ‘Then I want some things from you. I need a phone. My phone’s dead. Have you got one?’

  ‘I can let you have the one I’ve got with me. Why do you need it?’

  ‘I just need it, okay? Don’t ask questions. Don’t worry, it hasn’t got anything to do with you.’

  After a moment’s silence, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and passed it over to her. She looked at it, then dropped it on the bed.

  ‘You have to be careful who you call. You don’t know who is listening these days,’ he said.

  ‘There’s something else I want.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I want a key to the Temple.’

  ‘You can’t come anywhere near the Temple, Lucy. The police are watching it twenty-four hours a day. They’re across the road in that offensive woman’s house and they think I can’t see them.’

  ‘I want my key to the Temple back, Graeme. I want that more than anything.’

  ‘There’s no need. You can’t use it.’

  ‘You’ve just said I’m special. Prove it. I used to have a key and we both know why I don’t have one any more. I know you, I’ve watched you. You ask people in and then you lock them out again whenever you feel like it. And you never tell them why. You’re not doing that to me. People have been lying to me all my life. I have to know that you can’t lock me out after this. Not with what you’re asking me to do.’

  After a moment’s silence, he took his set of keys out of his pocket.

  ‘The keys to the kingdom,’ he said. ‘You can have this one.’

  ‘How do I know you’re not lying to me?’

  ‘You can see it’s new. I’ll show you.’ He matched the two new keys to each other, the shiny brass finish gleamed faintly in the weak light.

  He slipped one of them off the key ring and handed it to her.

  ‘It’s nice to have you back, Lucy. Don’t lose this. It’s the only spare key I have and I won’t be having another one cut.’

  ‘I never lose anything I want to keep,’ she said, slipping it into her jeans pocket.

  ‘This brings you back to the heart of things. You won’t leave it again now. You’ll always be there.’

  She did not answer this. She looked at her watch. He stood up. He was smiling and relaxed.

  ‘Aren’t you going to wait with me for that building to go up?’

  ‘No, I think I should go now. Some sleep for us both would be in order. And a new day tomorrow, a new life.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right,’ she said.

  She stood up also, leaving her gun and the phone on the bed. He opened the door, then stopped. She was quite close to him. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

  ‘You are very brave,’ he said.

  She watched him leave, he did not look back.

  In the room, she sat on the bed. I’m hungry, Graeme, you could have brought me something to eat. Her throat ached, she would not have been able to swallow anything. She had been hungry before; it was not unusual for her to go without food. She had gone hungry for longer than this when she was out on the streets. There was no sound in the room. Her own breathing, the movement of her blood, was reduced to a regular, silent beat in her ears. Her gun lay beside her on the bed. She looked at her watch. There wasn’t much time.

  34

  Harrigan was taking a catnap when a sleepy-eyed Trevor shook him by the shoulder.

  ‘The Firewall’s online,’ he said.

  ‘Is she talking to Grace?’ He said her name as just another of his officers.

  ‘No. She’s updating her website. Come and see.’

  He followed Trevor into the computer room. The graveyard shift had already gathered there. Grace sat a little to the side, watching from where she was seated in front her own monitor. She did not seem to notice him.

  ‘Lookee here,’ Louise said, as he appeared, ‘this is the promised land.

  It’s so pretty. This girl has so much talent, it’s a waste.’

  The screen displayed a green slope of flowering trees leading down to a honey-coloured rock looking out over a wild forest. Small streams flowed down to become clear waterfalls over the rock, blue and white flowers grew in carpets underneath the trees. At
the summit of the hill there was a small, glittering, turreted castle with wide doors and windows. Birds flew across the blue sky behind it.

  ‘I know that place,’ Grace said, ‘but it doesn’t look like that now.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Louise asked.

  ‘It’s her home,’ Trevor replied for Grace. ‘She’s tarted it up.’

  ‘It’s endgame, Lou,’ Grace added quietly.

  Harrigan had pulled up a chair beside Louise. ‘Where’s she coming from?’ he asked.

  Louise shook her head. ‘I’ve got a trace out but nothing so far. She’s just downloaded this. I don’t know what she’s doing now.’

  ‘She got a phone from somewhere,’ Ian said.

  ‘She’s met with the preacher,’ Harrigan replied. ‘He’s supplied her with one and who knows what else. At least she’s still alive to tell the tale.’

  ‘You put money on that, did you, Boss?’ Trevor asked with a grin.

  ‘No, mate, I didn’t think it was a very good bet at the time.’

  ‘She’s online,’ Grace said suddenly. She acknowledged Harrigan for the first time since he had come into the room: ‘But she’s not looking for me, she’s looking for your son. Will he be online now?’

  ‘I’m sure he is.’

  He came and looked over her shoulder with everyone else.

  Turtle, are you out there? Do you still want to talk to me? I’d like to talk to you.

  Hi Lucy I’m here U are talking 2 me after all I’ve been waiting 2

  hear from u I was hoping u would talk 2 me You know who I am now. You don’t have to call me the Firewall any more.

  Want me 2???

  No, I like you calling me Lucy. I’m still going to call you Turtle though. Do you mind? Will you forgive me for getting so angry with you? I’m sorry, Turtle, I felt so lost.

  That’s ok I just wanna talk 2 u Where are u? Don’t tell me if u don’twant 2 Are u ok???

  I’m all right. I’m really, really hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.

  That’s no good U have 2 eat soon

  I’ve gone hungry before, I know what it feels like. My father died yesterday morning, Turtle. I was there when it happened. I saw him die and I didn’t feel a thing.