Harrigan and Grace - 01 - Blood Redemption (20 page)

‘I didn’t know any of that about your son,’ she said, feeling that she owed Harrigan this courtesy at the least. ‘I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to find anything out. I don’t do that.’

‘I didn’t think you were. I don’t usually talk about it. No one talks about it,’ he replied, looking past her, avoiding her gaze. They might have thought, mutually, that it was the sole thing not discussed exhaustively by the team.

‘Well, I won’t say anything to anyone,’ she said quickly, wanting to move on. ‘So — are you in this job to draw that line? Is that what you do every day?’

‘Me?’ It was unusual to find himself on the other end of the question. He grinned. ‘No, I’m here because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with my life. I needed a job to support my son and this was the only thing I thought I could stick at for more than a fortnight. Sixteen years later I’m still here.’

It was the truth as far as it went, a diversionary tactic rather than a lie. His presence here was the result of a half-formed thought brought into being by his father’s irritated gibe one night in the kitchen: ‘Why don’t you be a fucking walloper? You’re always telling people what to do.’ Not long afterwards, a serving policeman, an old mate of his father’s, had called him with an offer.

‘It’s chance sometimes, isn’t it,’ Grace replied. ‘You never know where your life is going to take you.’

He smiled in agreement; she smiled back in the same way.

‘You are stubborn,’ he said quietly. ‘What are you really trying to do here?’

‘I’m brave and foolish,’ she said, sending herself up. ‘I’m trying to make a difference.’

‘You did make a difference today. You’re the only one here who could have talked to that boy and got anything out of him except four-letter words.’

She shrugged and smiled again. ‘Thanks for saying it.’

They found themselves looking at each other in silence, both searching for something else to say. Grace felt the kick inside, the unexpected jag of attraction, and wished she hadn’t; it was the last thing she needed just now.

‘You’re on the TV, Boss. You too, Gracie,’ Ian called out.

They turned and separated by an unspoken agreement, and then gathered around the bar with everyone else. The barman turned up the sound on the early evening news. The team watched Matthew Liu, flanked by both Harrigan and Grace, make a plea for anyone to come forward with any information that would help them find the girl who had shot both his parents.

‘You are so photogenic, Gracie. They’re going to like that up top,’

Trevor said, smiling at her indulgently as the clip ended.

Grace thought she might say that it was just the bad lighting and then decided to leave it where it was.

‘Okay, folks, I think that’s it,’ Harrigan called out, breaking up the party. ‘Back to it.’ He ignored the groans as he led the way back to work.

Back at the office, he found that the time out had not refreshed any of them; there was a sense of languor throughout the room. Harrigan glanced at Grace as she worked her way through Greg Smith’s files, considering her scruples as he did so. He thought about his own son.

He felt the compulsion to go and see him and make sure that he was safe. The office was acquiring an unusual sense of enclosure, he wasn’t sure he could breathe in here for much longer. He reached for the phone to call Cotswold House, but did not pick up the handset.

Finally, when the day shift was going home and the graveyard shift was settling in, he got to his feet and went in search of Trevor.

‘I’m taking an hour, Trev,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to see my boy.

I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

‘Okay, Boss. I’ll call you if anything happens.’

Harrigan collected his jacket and found himself at the lift at the same time as Grace. Caught a little awkwardly, he stopped and let her get in first.

‘Did you see that?’ Ian asked. ‘Are they going out together somewhere?’

‘He likes her and she likes him,’ Louise said, breathing out gin. ‘All they did in the pub for an hour was talk to each other.’

‘Gracie’s going home, people,’ Trevor announced. ‘I told her to piss off because she’s done everything she can today. And he’s going to see his boy. He told me so in case I need to know where to find him. He’s coming back.’

‘You want to make a bet?’ Jeffo was grinning. He too was heading for the door. ‘How much time do you waste on a spastic kid? She’d know where her bread is buttered. Fifty bucks says he gets it into her.’

Ian and Louise turned away as he spoke.

‘Jesus, mate,’ Trevor said, riled. ‘You know sweet fuck-all about her and you say that. Why don’t you keep your dirty mouth shut for once?’

Trev might divert the talk to other subjects but he knew that no matter what he tried to say now, there was no hope for it. Soon the gossip would be away in a pack with the dogs.

Down in the car park, Harrigan glanced around to see Grace a few cars away from his own, unlocking her own door. They had hardly spoken to each other as they came down in the lift. He waved to her self-consciously across the short distance and saw the gesture returned in a similar fashion. Then they both went their separate ways out into the winter night.

In her car, Grace determinedly watched the road ahead, resisting the urge to check in her rear-view mirror which way he had gone. In his own car, Harrigan was concentrating his thoughts on his son.

14

On her way back up to the house in the early evening dusk, Lucy saw that the dog was once again chained up in her kennel. Dora had disappeared some time during the afternoon and she’d wondered what had happened to her. As soon as Lucy walked into the kitchen, where Melanie was preparing dinner, her sister turned to her.

‘You let the dog off her chain.’

‘Yeah, I did. I don’t see why she has to be chained up like that.’

Melanie leaned on the bench, her face taut. Every muscle in her body was rigid with tension.

‘She’s chained up because Dad wants her to be. So you have to leave her like that or he gets upset. And when he gets upset, he takes it out on me. He can still do that, even if he’s only whispering at me. The things he says — they are just so gross. Would you not take her for a walk like that again? Please. It’s too hard, Luce.’

Lucy turned away, shaking her head against rising furies.

‘Do you want some tea?’ her sister called out to her but Lucy did not reply.

She walked slowly down the hallway to the lounge room, drawn towards the sound of the television. Yellow light shone through the door onto the carpet in the hallway, a contoured and gleaming polyester blue.

As Lucy drew closer, she began to chew on her thumbnail. Through the door she could see the television was turned on to an evening game show, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, the volume turned up high. Then her mother, sitting on the lounge watching the show, and her father, stretched out in his reclining chair, apparently asleep, the tray of medications Melanie had prepared earlier sitting near him on a coffee table. She stopped at the door. The room was filled with an odour of sickness, like rotting flowers. Seeing her, her mother pulled herself upright, dragging her cardigan down past her waist. She tried to speak but could not, looked from her daughter to her sick husband, whose eyes remained closed.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Lucy said, going inside.

Her mother nodded in silent response. Her husband opened his eyes and looked at his daughter.

‘Hi, Luce,’ he said. ‘We heard you were home. How are you?’

Her father’s face had become an under-face, the kind you arrive at after sickness has stripped everything else to the bone. Illness had drawn pain to the surface of George Hurst’s face, it was almost the only thing that still existed of him. Lucy could not speak. She almost cried.

‘Come home to see your old man at last,’ he said against the racket of the television show. ‘Come and give him a kiss, hey? I know I’m not too pretty to look at these days.’

She did not. She sat in an armchair opposite them both.

‘Stevie asked me to come home,’ she said slowly, looking from her father to her mother, who was still playing with the ends of her cardigan. She had not changed at all, she was a round-faced woman, a little pudgy, with flat hair brushed back behind her ears.

‘How are you, Lucy?’ she said, now that her husband had spoken.

‘Are you keeping well?’

Above the noise of the television, the air seemed to simmer with a thousand jangling and unheard sounds.

‘Yeah,’ Lucy replied.

‘I’ve been worried about you,’ her mother said, her attention drifting back to the television set.

‘What have you been up to out there?’ her father asked.

‘Don’t you know?’ Lucy said, poker-faced.

‘Stevie told us you were living with some friends. You had a job in a shop. He said you were doing well,’ her mother said.

‘I’m glad you’ve come, Luce,’ her father said. ‘I wanted to see you.

I haven’t got that much time now. I want you to know your mother and me have always really cared about you. Always.’

‘Always,’ her mother said, looking away from the television screen and back to her daughter. ‘I always did what I had to do for you, Lucy.

I made sure I looked after you. I did the best I could, I couldn’t do any more than that. I hope you know that.’

‘We’ve been worried sick about you since you left.’ Her father moved his chair a little more upright. ‘I thought, my little girl out there all on her own. Who’s going to look after her? And we never heard anything from you, except through Stevie. Not even at Christmas.’

‘You could have sent us a card,’ her mother added. ‘We wanted to hear from you.’

‘Why didn’t you come looking for me?’ Lucy asked.

‘We couldn’t, Luce. We didn’t know where to find you,’ her father said.

‘You could have asked Stevie.’

‘He said you didn’t want to see us,’ her mother said, her face slightly red.

‘It’s hard for a man, worrying about his daughter like that. My little girl, I thought, and I don’t know where she is. And she won’t tell me.

She won’t even tell me.’

The TV show host invaded the lounge room noisily and Lucy saw her mother’s attention once again drift back towards the screen. She got to her feet and turned it off. Her mother blinked a little, but did not speak. Her father stared at her with eyes that were large and bright in his worn face. She sat down again, staring at him, unable to turn away even though she didn’t want to look. It was horrible to see him like this.

‘I’m a sick man, Luce,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘I can’t hide it. Sometimes I think I can’t bear the pain any more. I want it finished.

When it’s finished, I’m going to be happy.’

Lucy, watching and listening to him, had no thoughts. Her feelings were thin, her mind was blank, flat like a sheet of unpainted plasterboard.

‘You have to understand that me and your mother love you. More than anything.’

Lucy did not answer, she sat there waiting. Her gaze shifted from her father to her mother and back again. Her mother kept glancing at the blank television set but she said nothing. Lucy felt weightless, with her feelings slipping towards chaos, the quiet sounds in her head buzzing like insects.

‘Luce, I’m dying, but your life will go on and you’ll do what you want to do with it. You’ll get married and you’ll be happy. And I’m glad for you, I’m glad. Because all that’s ever mattered to me is how much I’ve cared about you. All I ever did was care about you. It’s a normal thing for a father to do.’

In the midst of his illness, there was a flash of her father of old. She knew that look so well. On Saturday mornings, from her place at the cash register, she would watch him as he sold old or fatty or tough meat to his customers. He had always had that same look. Are they going to take it?

‘Did you worry about me?’ she asked.

‘Yes, Luce. I did.’

‘Did you lie awake at night worrying about me?’

‘All the time.’

Lucy waited, again chewing her thumbnail. She imagined how her father would look if she shot him in the chest now, and then looked at her mother, working through the same fantasy, bringing both images together powerfully in her mind. Under her bulky sweatshirt, her gun pressed against her midriff.

‘Did you ever lie awake and wish you hadn’t done what you did to me?’ she said.

‘Look at me, Luce,’ he replied almost immediately. ‘I’m dying and I’m dying too soon. I want us to be friends before I go. You’re home now. This is your home. There’s always a place for you here. And in my will. I’ve remembered you in my will, Lucy, I’ve remembered you especially. You can think about me one day when I’m gone and thank me for that. You can say to yourself, my old man was very generous to me in his will, he did that for me, it’s made my life easier now. Your mother and me have broken our hearts worrying about you these last few years. I’ve broken my heart worrying about you. But I’m not accusing you for that. There’s no point in accusing people for things.

Life’s a matter of give and take. Let’s be friends. Come on. Be friends with me, Lucy, before I die. Please.’

She waited in what seemed to be an endless silence, looking from one to the other expectantly, but neither of them spoke. She sat with her arms folded, pressing her gun hard into her waist.

‘You really don’t want to say anything else to me?’ she asked.

Neither replied.

‘You only have to say it once. You have to mean it, but you only have to say it once. You just have to say you wish you’d never done that to me. That’s all you have to say.’

Again there was silence. Her mother picked at her cardigan. Lucy spoke in desperation. ‘It’s not just me! There’s Mel too. What about her? Don’t you want to say … ’

Her voice dried up.

‘Luce,’ her father said, ‘I only want us to be friends. This is our last chance. I’m dying. You don’t want to put things in the way of it. Let’s just be friends.’

Lucy leaned forward in her chair and wept for some moments. She looked up, meaning to say something else and saw her father watching her, his expression still unchanged. If anything, there was a ghost of satisfaction in his eyes. She could not bear to be watched by him like this.