Alex Palmer - The Tattooed Man

‘I think you’ll find we do,’ Trevor said. ‘Why does your client want the contract back if he’s decided against continuing with the business?’

‘The information in that contract is still commercial-in-confidence. It relates to my client’s personal business affairs and is of no concern to anyone else,’ the solicitor said.

‘You can go to court if you want,’ Trevor said. ‘I don’t like your chances but it’s your client’s money. Meanwhile, this is evidence from a murder scene and it’ll be examined thoroughly by a forensic scientist as soon as possible. She’ll go through it in detail and tell us what it means.’

‘How soon is that?’ Stuart asked sharply.

‘I expect to have her on deck about four days from now. It’s the earliest she could make time for us.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ the solicitor said. ‘You’ll be hearing from me. Good morning.’

Trevor let them out of the room. They walked outside to see the small group of watchers.

‘I didn’t know we had an audience. This isn’t a sideshow,’ the solicitor said with irritation.

Stuart zeroed in on Harrigan.

‘Commander Paul Harrigan,’ he said, just short of being mocking. ‘You’ve come up in the world. You were just a sergeant when you blew into my home town all those years ago. None of that baggage weighed you down, did it?’

‘Time’s moved on even if you haven’t changed,’ Harrigan replied.

Almost, Harrigan asked if Stuart had seen his brother lately. As Ralph had suggested, Yaralla would be a good place to base a company that dealt in experimental crops. But with Ambrosine and her children in hiding down there, it was better for now to keep his mouth shut.

‘Let’s go. We don’t have the time to waste here,’ the solicitor said.

Silently, the two men were escorted out. After a single glance at Harrigan, Marvin’s sidekick followed them.

‘What was he doing here?’ Trevor asked.

‘Marvin’s eyes and ears,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I think you’ll see a lot of him.’

Ralph had joined them. ‘I thought we had him there. It was bad luck he jumped the wrong way.’

‘Maybe someone’s threatened him. See if you can find out who’s been in touch with him in the last forty-eight hours or so. Other than Ray Foster.’

‘We’ll get the dogs on him.’

‘It’s a good idea keeping it quiet that we only have one copy of that contract,’ Harrigan said. ‘It won’t do any harm to keep them guessing for a while.’

‘Boss,’ Trevor said, ‘I had the rare and strange experience of actually believing some of the things old Stewie said in there. I don’t think he’s involved in this shooting.’

‘No, he can’t be. If he’d been there at the time, he’d have been sitting at the table with everyone else. Someone wanted to remove all the signatories to that contract before they signed it.’

‘According to Stewie, they were ready to harvest,’ Ralph said. ‘It looks like someone wanted to put the brakes on the whole thing before it got started. Maybe this is about industrial espionage.’

‘Maybe. If they did want to stop it happening, they succeeded. The venture died that night on the patio even if old Stewie’s still with us,’ Harrigan said. ‘Next time you talk to him, put more pressure on him. Find out what this consortium really did. Check the contract first. It’d be nice to know why he’s so anxious to stop us from looking at it.’

‘He didn’t want us checking his farm either, boss,’ Trevor said.

‘No, he didn’t, did he? Look into the legalities of getting on that property without his consent. Be very careful that you’ve got them sorted out before you go down there.’

They had reached the incident room. Ralph disappeared inside. Harrigan stopped at the door. He looked at the people crowded inside the busy room and felt he couldn’t breathe. He decided he wouldn’t go in there a second time that day.

‘I’m finished here, mate,’ he said to Trevor, who had stopped with him. ‘I’ll go now.’

‘Boss,’ Trevor said, ‘are you running this investigation? Or are you on leave? Because if you’re not here, it’s Marvin in charge.’

Grace couldn’t have asked the question better herself. The way things were, the commissioner had left it to Harrigan and Marvin to fight it out in the mud.

‘Consider me in charge,’ Harrigan said. ‘I may not be here all the time but when I said nothing is going to happen I don’t know about, I meant it. You map out your main lines of investigation and then we work out where this investigation goes together. You take direction from me, not Marvin. If he gives you grief, you call me. I’ll put him back in his coffin with a stake through his heart.’

Trevor laughed. ‘No worries. It’ll be good to have you on board. Did you get on to Ambro?’

‘I couldn’t make contact last night. I’ll try again today. You’ll hear from me as soon as I do. A word of friendly advice before I go. Edwards was right. Watch your back. I don’t know what’s Marvin’s up to but be very careful what you say to him from now on.’

‘He’s just an arsehole. For all I know, he wants to big-note himself in front of a federal government minister.’

‘Maybe. Just don’t let him bait you.’

There was more to this than Marvin’s ego, unbridled as it was, but Harrigan kept this judgement to himself. The tension and strain about Trevor was deepening. The Tooth was good at pressuring people; the ultimate aim always being to drive them out of their jobs. In Harrigan’s opinion, this time it was personal as well as political. Marvin was indulging in a very private antagonism towards Trevor. Probably it added spice to the exercise.

Driving out of the car park, Harrigan contemplated a world that existed outside of his job. Maybe one day he would discover how to inhabit it. He should try to contact Ambrosine but right now he needed to feel human. He rang Cotswold House to see what Toby was doing.

‘Come over,’ Susie said. ‘Have a late lunch.’

Harrigan had turned off his phone just before he had gone into the commissioner’s office to meet the minister. There were messages waiting for him but he ignored them. He turned the phone off again. He needed an hour in which no demands were made of him. Like Grace, Toby was someone he could talk to. A relief from being always locked inside that dark enclosure in his head. There were times when his own thoughts were the worst kind of solitary confinement.

In the clear late morning, Harold could see the courier coming from a distance. Glinting in the sun, the van crossed the bridge over Naradhan Creek and drove across the Creek Lane into his open gate directly opposite where the bridge met the lane. It sped up the track that led to the farmhouse drawing a plume of red dust behind it.

Harold’s weatherboard house had been built almost a century ago on a low rise where it had a view of the country for miles around. From the house, a long, low slope led down to the Creek Lane, a dry-weather dirt road which, like a length of discarded snake skin, followed the path of Naradhan Creek, a now dry watercourse that made up Harold’s southern boundary. Here, the old Creek Bridge formed a junction between the Creek Lane and the Coolemon Road, which didn’t cross the creek bed there but continued along on the opposite bank, crossing at a wider and newer bridge several kilometres away. After crossing this bridge, the road did a dog’s leg around the back of Yaralla before heading across country. When the strangers who visited the Cage trespassed on Harold’s property, they always drove in via the Coolemon Road to Stuart’s locked gate. Other people, like the approaching courier, came in through the open front gate to the house.