The Tattooed Man (3 page)

Harrigan sat down in the sand. With his index finger, he traced the slightly uneven line of his reconstructed jaw, feeling the old ache come to life like a twist of hot wire in the bone. His life had teetered in a fragment of time, perhaps no longer than the blink of his eye. In that instant, his fear had peeled him to the bone. Bare-headed in the heat of the late sun, he was cold with the memory. Handfuls of hot sand slid through his fingers. He thought of Cassatt’s death mask. The man’s preserved skin, his shrunken face, merged into one with the colour of the sand.

Harrigan had always seen the occasion of his near murder as a fixed point to which one day, in the event of his real death, he would be forced to return. A gunshot was a final sound. In his dreams, he waited to hear the single shot that in life had never been fired. He knew that as soon as it was, nothing would save him and he would die. Each time he had this nightmare he fought his way out of it, feeling that he was surfacing from his grave.

Cassatt’s capacity to corrupt his life spread further than his nightmares. Harrigan was one of a number of people (so he guessed) who would have lain awake these last two months wondering who had their hands on the contents of Cassatt’s safety deposit box; questioning what would happen to their lives if those contents were ever made public. He grinned sardonically. He was stuck on the same old carousel. After all these years he was still running after his old enemy.

The pervasive heat broke through his thoughts. His shirt clung to his back with sweat. He stood up, catching a faint breeze from the sea, the promise of some coolness from an easterly wind. Its cleanness was a good medicine after a long and bizarre few hours but he’d still had enough. He drove back out onto Pittwater Road under an evening sky that was softening to an infinite blue, thinking of home and sanctuary.

H
arrigan stopped off at Cotswold House, the private facility near the water’s edge at Drummoyne where his son lived. Toby’s mother had abandoned him to Harrigan when he was a baby and then walked out of both their lives. One way or another, Harrigan had cared for his son ever since. As a father, he had learnt that each child has its own particular smell, something in the skin. He thought that blindfolded he would know his son by his smell and the touch of his hair. Toby was a part of himself, fundamental to his happiness and the holder of possibilities he couldn’t have let die at any time.

Susie, the manager, was outside at the barbecue. Toby had lived in places like this all his life. This was the best of them; Harrigan had made sure of that.

‘I guess I’m too late,’ he said. ‘Looks like the party’s over.’

‘I’m afraid it is. A while ago now.’

‘I’ll go in and see Toby in that case.’

‘He’s asleep, Paul. Today really took it out of him. I don’t think we should wake him, I’m sorry. He had a great time though. He said to say good night if you came back.’

‘When did Grace leave?’

‘Half an hour ago. She was sitting with Toby before he went to sleep. They’re very fond of each other.’

‘I’ve missed everybody. Thanks, Susie. I’ll see you. I’ll be round tomorrow.’

‘I’ll tell Toby. Good night.’

He walked out into the warm night air. There could have been few worse times to have received a call like today’s than at this afternoon’s barbecue. The entire extended Harrigan family had been there to celebrate Toby’s eighteenth birthday, a milestone he was never expected to reach. Harrigan’s two formidable older sisters had arrived in convoy with their numerous noisy offspring and partners. Grace had spent most of her time deftly sidestepping their shamelessly intrusive enquiries about her relationship with him. ‘Thanks for throwing me to the wolves,’ she had said to him
sotto voce
when he left. Toby, who couldn’t speak easily, had signed to him,
You always do this.
Harrigan had felt their mutually accusing gaze follow his every step to his car.

You always do this.
Always walk away. After a while, people got tired of it and walked away from him. It was an old story.

He drove home under the glitter of the streetlights, reaching his two-storeyed terrace in Birchgrove not so long afterwards. The upstairs iron-lace veranda shone like a piece of silver trim; the pale, almost ash-pink frontage offered shelter from the night’s heat. From time to time, usually at parties, he was asked how he could afford to live in a waterfront house on the Balmain peninsula on a policeman’s wage. He could have told his questioners he was no blow-in. He had been born in the district in the early sixties, down near White Bay. Maybe it was just over the hill
from where he lived now, but it might as well have been another universe. Even today, where he had lived as a boy was one of the less desirable parts of the neighbourhood. At that time, the peninsula had been a rough place known for its poverty. Its graceful, decaying nineteenth-century terraces sold for almost nothing; its forgotten waterside mansions were more often knocked down and blocks of ugly red-brick units built in their place. Their views of the harbour, the bridge and the city were like gifts thrown away. Those same terraces and mansions sold now for sums unimaginable back then.

The real reason for his silence was the house itself, an inheritance from his paternal aunt while he was still a teenager. No easy endowment, instead a down payment on her interference in his life. A church-ridden, unmarried woman, she had been fiercely ambitious where his future was concerned, nagging and meddling. After her death, his parents had lived in the house with him. Their arguments were ingrained into the walls like some porous inner skin; their deaths had happened here. Even his ancient cat was buried here. Menzies, a ferocious, ragged tom inherited unwillingly from his father, was peacefully snoozing the big sleep in a sunny spot in the garden. It was all too close to the bone for chitchat.

He let himself inside. The house was dark and silent. Grace had said she would meet him here after she left Toby’s barbecue. She had her own key; she could have let herself in. Maybe she’d changed her mind and left him high and dry. Stood him up in exchange for his leaving her marooned once again. Why wouldn’t she? He had done it often enough to her.

He went through to the kitchen where he poured himself a whisky and felt the silence of the house
wrap itself around him. He caught sight of his face in an oval-shaped mirror set in a cedar sideboard that had belonged to his aunt. At the age of forty-one, his darkish fair hair was beginning to thin and the strain in his face was obvious. He looked away.

He remembered he had a phone call to make. The name Stuart Morrissey had rung warning bells for Harrigan from the time he’d first read it in that bloodstained contract. One complication led to another. Stuart led to his brother, Harold, who lived out in the sticks, on a property called Yaralla near a town called Coolemon on the edge of the Riverina.

After Harrigan’s near murder at Cassatt’s hands, the senior ranks in the police force, embarrassed by the scandal, had sent him out to Coolemon to get him out of the way. He’d stayed there on and off for seven years, often working on secondment to the Australian Federal Police and in the end spending more time out of the town than in it. Discovering that Stuart Morrissey’s younger brother lived out there had been something unscripted. Harrigan met Harold for the first time when he had some stock stolen. Expecting another scam merchant, he found himself dealing with a man almost too honest to protect himself. Harold had proved more than once that he was someone you could trust. Just eight months ago he’d given shelter to Ambrosine, a tattooist with three children who had taken one too many risks as Harrigan’s informant. There was no phone in the cottage Harold had let Ambrosine have, and out there the signal for her mobile could be unreliable and it was unsafe to use it. The best way of reaching her was through Harold’s landline.

Harrigan put down his glass and picked up the phone. His call went unanswered, the phone ringing until it cut out. Harold was the only person
Harrigan knew who didn’t own an answering machine. He called again, with the same result. Feeling marooned himself, he put the handset back in its cradle.

‘Paul? Are you here? You left the front door open.’

Grace’s voice startled him. There was the sound of the door shutting, then her heels clicking along the hallway. She walked into the kitchen carrying a bunch of Oriental lilies, a rich iridescent pink in the light. Flowers were something she often brought into his house. She was slender in her summer dress. The sight of her face, framed by her long dark hair and beautiful like the Madonna’s, occupied his mind for some moments.

‘Hi,’ she said, smiling.

Usually he would have kissed her. Tonight he was pinned in his chair by an invisible weight.

‘Where have you been? I thought you’d be here by now.’

Grace put the flowers on the table. She gave him a quick, sharp-eyed look, one that got under his skin like itching powder.

‘I was buying these flowers. How did it go up there? Not too good.’

‘Do I look that bad?’

‘You look like death. Your face is like white rubber.’

‘Did you cope okay after I’d gone?’ he asked, avoiding this.

‘Your sleazy nephew made a grotesque pass at me. His wife was standing right beside him. I couldn’t believe it.’

‘That’s Phil. He’d have a hard time finding shame in a dictionary.’ Harrigan tried to joke but the humour died in the air. He breathed deeply. ‘They said Toby had no brain when he was born. They
said I should let him die. Look at him now. He’ll be at university next year. What did they know?’

‘You’re not talking about your sisters. They’re not like that. Who’s “they”?’

Cassatt with his jabbing voice, each word like a fist in your face.
Put him away, he’ll die soon.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter. It matters to you, that’s pretty clear.’

There was silence.

‘What’s going on?’ Grace asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing,’ she repeated with exasperation. ‘Don’t tell me that. When you’re like this, it’s like being locked in a room with no light and air. I can’t deal with it. Tell me what’s going on.’

‘Don’t drag this stuff out of my head. Leave it where it can’t do anybody any harm.’

He was back there at Pittwater in the unending sunlight with the seated dead. They were staring at him, willing him to sit down with them. Cassatt’s shrunken face and his living voice joined them in a mix of savage memories.
You’re dead, mate.

‘I’m not dead,’ he shouted.

‘What?’

‘Get out of my head!’

He turned and threw his whisky glass at the opposite wall with all the strength he had. It exploded, spraying glass around the kitchen. Grace jerked around, bending away, shielding her face from the fallout.

‘I can’t breathe. I’ve got to get out of here.’

Harrigan was gone, outside to his yard, stumbling onto the thin grass. He turned on the garden tap, squatted beside it and tossed cupped handfuls of water into his face, trying to get some
coolness into his brain. He stood up and drew in breath, stared down at the bay, all the connecting pieces of land and buildings on the opposite shore, everything that had been familiar to him since his boyhood. The scene settled into place; he had a grip on the present again. Wiping his face with his handkerchief, he heard Grace behind him. She was turning off the tap which he’d left running.

‘You haven’t walked out on me,’ he said. ‘Did I hurt you?’

She looked him in the eye.

‘No, you didn’t but you could have. Who did you throw that glass at?’

‘I didn’t throw it at you. I’d never do that. It was at ghosts in my head. I did hurt you. Look at your arm. I’m sorry,’

He’d seen a sudden splash of blood on her arm. A shard from the glass must have glanced her skin. In the shadows, the blood was almost black. She lightly touched the thin, moist trickle and then stared back at him. In the mix of darkness and reflected light, her face had taken on a blue tinge. He placed his damp handkerchief gently onto the scratch. She reached to take hold of it, her hand touching his briefly. After a few moments, she took the handkerchief away. The scratch had stopped bleeding. She looked at the cloth with its small concentration of blood and then at him.

‘Why did you do that?’

He slipped his arms around her. She leaned against him, shivering despite the heat. He put his hand on her hair.

‘I’m not sure myself. Don’t tell anyone you saw me lose it like this.’

‘No,’ she said, moving back and looking at him. ‘You tell me. Why did you do that?’

‘It’s what I saw up at Pittwater,’ he said finally. ‘I walked in on a massacre. Four people dead at a table out on a patio. Three of them had been shot. One of them was a nineteen-year-old kid.’

‘Then we find a way to deal with that. But you can’t do this again,’ she said softly.

‘It’s not going to happen again. I’m not going to let myself down like that. I don’t want to do that to you and I don’t want to be like that to myself.’

She was still standing back, looking at him.

‘In there, you said “I’m not dead”. Who were you talking to? I can’t deal with you when you’re like this if I don’t know what’s going on.’

The noise of the night insects, the distant sound of music, filled the air around them. He heard a fainter sound, waves breaking against the weathered sandstone retaining wall at the end of his garden, ripples generated by a boat passing the mouth of the bay.

‘Come inside and I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘I need to clean myself up first.’

In the bathroom, she washed her cut and dressed it. He showered and changed. They came downstairs. He swept up the scattered glass. She arranged the lilies in one of his aunt’s vases.

‘Thanks for the flowers,’ he said, considering that in the scheme of things he was supposed to give such things to her.

‘Do you like them?’

‘I do. I always do.’

‘Good. It’s all part of having a bit of fun and sparkle in your life,’ she said, looking at him with a glint in her eye.

‘Maybe you should have bought white lilies
instead of pink. White lilies in a wreath with a sash that reads
Harrigan’s Career, Rest in Peace.’

‘What are you talking about?’

He shut the kitchen door.

‘I’m going upstairs to get something out my safe. It’s a tape and I need privacy to play it. Do you want to smoke? Go ahead. I’m having another whisky.’

He got her an ashtray. They exercised this unspoken tolerance towards each other’s vices. He had once smoked heavily and now loathed the taint of cigarette smoke. She had once had the choice between drinking alcohol and staying alive. These days just the smell of it made her ill. She kept beer in her fridge for him; he supplied her with ashtrays that had been unused for years. When he came back downstairs, he put a small audio tape on the table and poured himself a second whisky. She looked at the tape but didn’t touch it. He sat opposite her and watched her light up. No one else smoked in his house.

‘Have you heard any of the news coverage?’ he asked.

‘I was listening to it in the car. Four dead. Two were men but they didn’t give any names. The other two were Natalie and Julian Edwards. They said the minister found them. I thought Edwards didn’t have anything to do with his ex-wife. He didn’t want her reputation damaging his.’

‘He was seeing her about their son. One of those bodies was someone called Jerome Beck. I’ve never heard of him before. But I can tell you the other one was Mike Cassatt, dead as a dodo. Almost mummified. We couldn’t even tell how he died.’

‘You’re joking! What would he be doing there?’

Harrigan sat over his drink for a few moments without touching it.

‘Throwing a time bomb into my life,’ he said. ‘You see this tape? Mike gave it to me about a year ago. I came home one day and found him sitting in my backyard.’

‘Why would he come here?’