The Tattooed Man (13 page)

H
arrigan sat at his desk listening to the voices of the dead. They did not whisper but spoke in ordinary tones, spinning off his miniature cassette player thin and low. The first was a voice Harrigan hadn’t heard before. It had a guttural intonation: Beck’s. The other two, Freeman and Cassatt, were too well known. The recording started with Freeman giving a place, time and date before he got out of his car and walked into the pub where they were meeting. Harrigan listened to the sounds of greetings, drinks being brought to the table. The background noise was a low hum broken by the occasional sound of a phone ringing somewhere.

Beck:
Your beers. My whisky. Why do we come here? It’s a pig sty.

Freeman: No
one’s going to be watching us here. There’s nothing wrong with the beer.

Cassatt:
This is what I got to show you, Jerry. It looks like nothing but it fucking got me inside.

Freeman: Is
that a key? Looks like a little metal badge. What’s the logo?

Beck:
LPS. Life Patent Strategies. I thought your
mate
here might want to expand his horizons.
That’s a key to a locked door, Mike. You keep it in your wallet. You’ll need it next time you go back.

Cassatt:
There won’t be a next time. That place gave me the fucking creeps. It’s a fucking prison. Getting out of the can is a piece of piss compared to getting out of there. And it was in the middle of fucking nowhere. It’s a long way out to Campbelltown that time of night.

Beck:
It doesn’t matter when you go, that place never stops. It’s real money. Another world. You don’t walk away from chances like that, you take them. I’m getting another whisky.

Freeman:
You got through that one quickly enough, mate. Jesus, he gives me the shits sometimes. What was he doing taking you to that place?

Cassatt:
What he’s always doing. Fucking jerking himself off. Another world. Crap! I don’t need it if it is.

Freeman:
You going to keep that little badge thing?

Cassatt:
Yeah, think I will. Might be handy if I’m dealing with old Jerome one day. You never know. Might be a problem for him that he gave it to me. Did you see the news last night?

Freeman: No,
mate. I don’t bother with all that shit.

Cassatt:
I turn on the TV and it’s fucking Paulie talking about something or other. I thought, yeah, you cunt, where’s Ambro? The way the fucking press talk about him, it’s like he’s Christ on skates. They should talk to me. I’ll tell them how I fucking near knocked his front teeth out
—

Freeman:
Mate
—

Cassatt: No,
he says, I won’t shoot him. You fucking cunt, Paulie. If I tell you to shoot Eddie,
you fucking shoot him. He’s there on the carpet at your feet. Do it!

Freeman:
Matey, keep your mouth shut. You’re fucking on tape. Beck’s back.

Beck:
You should listen to me. You can manufacture there, you can experiment there. You can turn out something new. You can do a good business out of that place.

Freeman:
I thought we came here to talk about sparklers.

Cassatt: No
one’s going to let us into that place. Everyone wears a white coat.

Beck:
If you pay the rent, why not? It’s what everybody else does.

Cassatt:
We don’t need a setup like that for the shit we sell. Who was that joker you met in the corridor? The one with no fucking hair or ears, like he came out of some horror movie. He knew who you were, mate, and you knew him. It looked to me like the last thing you two wanted was to see each other.

Beck:
He’s nobody.

Cassatt:
He wasn’t acting like that. He acted like you were the nobody and he didn’t know what the fuck you were doing there. What were you trying to prove? The guards fucking near spat in our eyes when you walked in. They don’t like you there. They let you in because they had to. No, mate. You don’t have that to offer.

Beck:
You don’t know who I am. I do have that to offer. But those guards, they’re like you. They won’t see the realities. I’m the side of the business they don’t like to think about. I’m just reminding God’s daughter who I am and who she really is. She won’t insult me again. If she doesn’t like it, too bad.

Cassatt:
Who the fuck is God’s daughter?

Beck: (laughter)

Freeman:
Something tickle your funny bone, mate? Must be a pretty funny joke.

Beck:
It is, believe me.

Freeman:
How come you can get into a place like that?

Beck:
Because I know where the money comes from. I know how it gets spent. That building is the biggest washing machine in the world.

Cassatt:
Where does that much money come from?

Beck:
From the old man. God the Father. The Alpha and the Omega. That’s how he sees himself.

Freeman:
That tells us a lot.

Beck:
Then don’t ask questions. You said we were here to talk diamonds. Okay, we will. I want to get another shipment over here. The same arrangement as last time. Can we do it?

Cassatt:
Just where do you get your rocks from, mate?

Beck:
Why?

Cassatt:
I’m curious.

Beck:
From a place called Kisangani. I’ve got people there.

Freeman:
Kisangani? Sounds like kiss my arse.

Beck:
It’s a town in the Congo, a diamond market. The last time I was there, four years ago, it was a war zone. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

Cassatt:
What were you doing there then?

Beck:
We went there because we were hiding something.

Freeman:
What do you hide in a place like that?

Beck:
There’s a civil war on,
mate.
Dead people. What else?

Cassatt:
Keep your voice down. Do you want to tell the whole fucking room?

Beck:
Who’s here? Some bitch at the bar doing her business. We went there for Jean, God the father, for his daughter. She didn’t know, she said. No? She must be stupid. Their names aren’t on the papers but they knew what we were doing there. Jean told me to my face, you go there and you do this. You come back and you tell me what happens. And they think they’re better than me.’

Cassatt:
What are you talking about, mate?

Beck:
This place is shit. Why do you want to drink in this pig sty? Because it suits you?

Freeman:
If that’s how you feel, I might fuck off, mate. I don’t know about you but I’ve got better things to do.

A second conversation followed almost immediately afterwards, again beginning with Freeman’s voice giving the date and time. It was just a few days after the previous meeting. They were at someone else’s house this time, neutral ground. Beck wasn’t there. Baby Tooth was. Arrogantly alive, he gave Harrigan his catch-all almost straight off. There were sounds of him arriving, the offer of a drink, and then the Ice Cream Man talking.

Cassatt:
I found her, mate. I found where Paulie’s stashed Ambro. It’s so fucking obvious, I should have thought of it myself. I’m on my way out there as soon as I can get away.

Baby Tooth:
I’m glad to hear it. I was pushing my luck getting that address out of my old man. I didn’t want to do it for nothing.

Freeman:
Didn’t he ask you why you wanted to know, mate?

Baby Tooth: (laughter)
You’re joking, aren’t you? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. He just called in a favour from his mate, old Roger, and gave me the address on a piece of paper. He didn’t say a
word. Didn’t even look me in the eye. Far as he’s concerned it never happened.

Freeman:
What are you going to do about Ambro’s kids, mate?

Cassatt:
I’ll work that out when I get there. Why?

Freeman:
Because if she ends up dead, and maybe her kids too, is Sean’s dad going to start asking questions?

Baby Tooth:
You’re not going to shoot the kids, are you?

Cassatt:
I’m not planning on it, but I don’t know what’ll happen.

Baby Tooth:
It’d be one way of making sure Dad never asks any questions.

Cassatt:
Whatever. She’s going to be fucking sorry, that’s for sure.

The tape finished. Harrigan hit the Stop button with relief. He debated whether to copy the tape then decided against it. Somewhere out there an unknown person had Cassatt’s original tape of Eddie Lee’s murder in their possession. Harrigan didn’t want to create a second one that corroborated the first. He had already downloaded the CD onto his computer. That would be enough for the moment.

Freeman had been surprisingly methodical, labelling the tape with a series of numbers. When Harrigan loaded the CD onto his computer, he saw that the numbers matched the photographs of the meetings. Freeman had put together his own sound and light show. The pictures were as sordid as the tape had been. No one could have described the Ice Cream Man and his friends as eye candy. At least they showed why Beck hadn’t turned up on Harrigan’s radar despite several months of association with the Ice Cream Man and Freeman.
They had been very careful about where they met in public, usually in out-of-the-way hotels or multistorey car parks. Interspersed with these pictures were encounters between various sex workers and members of the syndicate, including Baby Tooth. Curiously Beck didn’t feature in any of these photographs. Maybe he had no taste for that kind of group activity.

Harrigan slowed when he reached the sequences attached to the single tape he had. The Ice Cream Man and Beck sat at the table together with half-empty glasses in front of them. The camera had taken in the rest of the room behind them, which held only a few scattered drinkers. A woman sat at the bar, supposedly having a drink and reading a newspaper but in fact looking towards the men at the table.
The bitch at the bar doing her business.
Harrigan recognised Sam Jonas. She couldn’t have known she was on camera. A very professional, skilled agent. Professional enough to get on to Beck’s connection to Freeman and Cassatt when none of his people had managed to. It wasn’t an observation that made him happy.

Harrigan reached over and picked up the LPS brochure, reading Elena Calvo’s biography once again.
Daughter of renowned industrialist Jean Calvo.
Elena was God’s daughter; Calvo was God, or at least according to Beck’s estimation of how he saw himself. Jonas was tracking Beck, presumably keeping an eye on him for Elena Calvo and her father. Given what had happened with the Ice Cream Man, it had been a shrewd move.

Harrigan googled the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The information confirmed much of what he already knew. It was a country riven by years of civil war and invasions, with UN reports of war
crimes in the east of the country, specifically in Kisangani, which was also a well-known illegal diamond market. The capital was Kinshasa, which could also be a centre of conflict. A place where someone could hide any illegal activity, including murder.

Harrigan went back to Freeman’s photographs and looked again at the picture of Beck sitting at the table with Sam watching him. Had he made things too dangerous for Sam’s boss? Proved to be too much of a wild card? What could be more provocative than taking the Ice Cream Man on a tour of her premises? Did Sam kill him and the others? Harrigan decided no. If Elena Calvo was behind the Pittwater murders, she wouldn’t have used as her killer someone who then introduced herself as her employee to the police officer in charge of the investigation. But it would explain why Sam had offered him a bribe. If she was behind these killings, Elena Calvo had a lot to conceal. Apart from any other consideration, such as gaol, if the minister made a connection between her and his son’s death, her company would be finished here.

Harrigan was deep in these thoughts when his landline phone rang. He glanced at the number on the display but didn’t recognise it.

‘Paul,’ a familiar voice said. ‘It’s Marvin here. How are you tonight?’

Of course Marvin could get his home telephone number. He had access to everyone’s personnel records, paper or automated.

‘I’m fine, Marvin. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

‘It’s business. You were at Jerry Freeman’s house today. You and your companion, as I believe she’s called. Freeman’s murder will affect the entire
Pittwater investigation. I’ll have to give the commissioner an updated budgetary figure as soon as possible. I need an estimate from you of the operational impact of today’s events.’

‘I don’t think I can give you one just like that,’ Harrigan said. ‘I’ll have to work it out with Trevor. There’s no point me giving you a figure that’s inaccurate.’

‘Surely you can give me a ballpark.’ Marvin spoke sharply. ‘For example, did you find any evidence in Freeman’s house that could affect the progress of this investigation? Something Freeman may possibly have given your companion. Just knowing that would be enough for me to make an estimate.’

‘Any new evidence,’ Harrigan repeated. ‘What sort of evidence would that be, mate?’

‘Anything relating to Freeman’s murder, obviously. The kind of information a man like him would collect. Tapes, photographs.’

‘All that will be logged.’

‘There may be something you haven’t recorded yet.’

Grace’s information was in Harrigan’s mind while Marvin was speaking.
Today’s gunman is the person who turned over Freeman’s house and killed the Ice Cream Man. He didn’t find the tape but he did find copies of the photos on the CD.
He glanced at the photograph on his desk that Freeman had given Grace on Bondi beach that morning: Baby Tooth at dinner with the Ice Cream Man, pills on the table. He flicked through the images on his computer screen, stopping when he found another picture of Baby Tooth, this time athletically entwined with a willing sex worker.

‘Paul, are you there?’

‘I don’t think you’ve ever rung me at home before, Marvin,’ Harrigan said. ‘There’s never been an emergency that’s made you pick up the phone.’