Alex Palmer - The Tattooed Man

‘Why aren’t you in the picture?’ Grace asked.

‘I was too busy taking it. You can keep that. I’ve got the disk in my bag here. There’s a lot more where that came from, let me tell you.’

Grace refolded the paper and dropped it in her beach bag.

‘What’s this got to do with me or Harrigan?’

‘It’s the icing on the cake, mate. I’ve got tapes of all our meetings tucked away back home. He didn’t know it but Baby Tooth was our fish. We had him by the balls. So when Marvin got to be commissioner, we’d have him by the balls too. With what I’ve got, Paulie can hang Baby Tooth out to dry and take old Fang with him as a bonus. That’s an offer you don’t get every fucking day.’

‘That’s a bribe,’ she said. ‘You want Harrigan to do your dirty work for you. You don’t want to do it yourself.’

‘I’d look at it this way if I were you. If Fang gets to be commissioner, Paulie’s going to be fucked for good and all. He knows that. Now it’s going to work the other way around. You can make a choice which way you want it to go.’ He spoke lower. ‘And it’s not just Baby Tooth on those tapes, mate. Paulie’s there as well. You’ve heard about Eddie Lee? Well, Mike talks about him on my tapes. Him and Paulie and everything that happened that night Eddie got shot. You want that to go public? Up to you. But if it does, Paulie’s fucked.’

‘Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?’

‘This is about Mike, Gracie. Who worked him over like that and why. Because I’ve got good information that’ll help you find that out.’ Freeman looked out to sea like someone waiting for the angel of death. ‘Paulie found Mike’s body yesterday in that house up at Pittwater. I’m glad. He’ll get a decent burial now. You might hate him but he was my mate. That’s why.’

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘First off, come back to my place.’

‘I’m not doing that.’

‘Fucking Christ, mate, I’m not going to hurt you. There’s nothing there waiting for you but a bunch of tapes. I want to talk about things I can’t talk about here.’

‘No.’

‘Look.’ He leaned forward again, talking as softly as possible. ‘I’ve got a gun, okay? A.38. You can have it to protect yourself. I know you can shoot. It’s in my bag right here. I’ll give it to you.’

‘Not on Bondi beach!’

‘No, take the bag. It’s got the disk in it. Take it all.’ He shoved it into her hands. ‘There’s no one left but me, Gracie. I’m going to tell you what I’ve got to say and die. That’s it.’

‘I’ll ring Harrigan.’

‘What do you think he’s going to say? Yeah, just hop in the car with Jerry, I don’t mind. If you don’t come back with me, I’m sending everything I’ve got to the papers. If I do, Paulie’s gone.’

‘Why aren’t you doing that anyway? Why should you care what happens to Harrigan?’

Freeman looked down at the sand almost as if he was embarrassed.

‘Because Paulie will get the fuckers who killed Mike. I wouldn’t trust any other copper but he knows what he’s doing. He’ll want to know who they are if only so he can piss on Mike’s grave about it. He’ll keep going till he finds out, he’ll have to. If you don’t know that, you don’t know him.’

This was too true for an argument. At another time, Grace might have laughed that even Freeman respected Harrigan as much as this. She looked in the cheap bag he had pushed into her hands. Just as he’d said, she saw the dull glint of gun metal.

‘I’m ringing Harrigan anyway.’

The phone rang through to his voicemail as it so often did when he was working. ‘It’s Grace,’ she said uselessly. ‘Call me as soon as you can.’

‘There’s nothing at my house, Gracie,’ Freeman said, when she shut her phone. ‘Just the tapes. Do this. It’ll help us both. Then I can die easy.’

Freeman’s face, a stark mask, matched his words. She didn’t believe he was lying. If he did have tapes back at his house, she couldn’t let them end up in the media’s hands. There was something else at work too. Taking risks when she was under pressure was an old habit of Grace’s. If life and death were only a breath apart, there were times when all she wanted to do was walk the tightrope between them. When the emotional impress got too much-the way it almost always did when Harrigan was involved-the adrenaline, the sheer risk, relieved the tension. The way it was now. Doing something so perilous as trusting Freeman was like a drug. As dangerous as it was, it eased away a worse anxiety.

‘Did you drive here?’ she asked.

‘No, I got a cab. They took my licence away. Said I’d be fucking lethal if I was out there driving.’

‘Can you make it to the road? My flat’s not that far away. I’ll get my car and I’ll drive you.’

‘I’ll wait for you at the bus stop. I can get that far.’

At home in her tiny flat, Grace looked at Freeman’s gun more closely. It was a Smith amp; Wesson.38, the kind that used to be standard police issue. It was in good condition and fully loaded. Grace had her own gun, one that lived in a bottom locked drawer. She had acquired it illegally several years ago when an old and dangerous lover had started stalking her. The lover had disappeared when Harrigan had arrived on the scene and these days he was in gaol. The work she did now allowed her to carry firearms legally. Still, she held on to the gun. Nothing was reliable. Harrigan might walk out on her; she might walk out on him. The stalker could get his freedom. She might no longer have a job. Freeman’s gun was more powerful. The compact disk was in the sports bag as well, in an unmarked case just as he’d said. Am I really going to do something as crazy as this, she thought. Again she rang Harrigan and again his phone was switched off. She took the photograph Freeman had given her on the beach and, together with the CD and the gun, put all three into her own shoulder bag. Then she left her flat. She was going to do something as crazy as this.

Freeman was a strange figure waiting for her in the hot summer wind among the tanned and slender bodies of the young backpackers with their fashion haircuts and wash-away designer tattoos. He sat heavily in the passenger seat, breathing strangely.

‘Are we going to make it?’ she asked.

‘I dunno. Lucky it’s not far.’

‘Where to?’

‘Round the back of Waverley Cemetery. I’ll tell you where to go.’

She drove for a short while in silence. His breathing seemed to settle and become more regular. She glanced at him.

‘I’ve got a question to ask you since I’m doing you a favour,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Did you kill Gina Farrugia and her boyfriend?’

‘You’re like Paulie, aren’t you? You don’t let things go. Yeah, I did kill them. They owed me money. Tell you what, though-that little girl. It was a fucking awful thing to have to do. I got the money, I got the money. She just kept on. I-’

‘You can stop right there.’ Grace changed gears viciously. ‘I’m not interested in hearing that. Tell me something else. Gina was raped. Did you do that too?’

‘No, that wasn’t me. I couldn’t by then. I was too sick.’

‘Who did?’

‘What do you want to know for?’

‘I want to send whoever did it a Christmas card. What do you think?’

Freeman laughed. It was a hangman’s cackle, one of the strangest sounds Grace had ever heard.

‘I can see what Paulie sees in you past your looks. Fuck ’em, they ripped me off. It’ll be something for them to remember me by. A couple of mongrels. Dougie Ferry and Rob Sinclair. Dougie’s in gaol already. You don’t have to go after him.’

Oh but I will, Grace thought. You can bet I will. If you weren’t dying, I’d go after you too.