Alex Palmer - The Tattooed Man

The houses in Freeman’s street were built up on the rock close to Waverley Cemetery where the graves had a view out to the Pacific Ocean. A smattering of cars were parked on the road.

‘I’m the house on the corner of that lane,’ Freeman said. ‘Go up the side, Gracie. I can’t climb the steps any more.’

Halfway along the street a narrow lane dissected the roadway. Freeman’s house was elevated at the front and side, with the bulge of the original sandstone edging the street. A steep set of steps cut into the rock led to up to his porch. It was the only house in the block still in its original condition. All the others had been renovated to luxury, becoming images of tunnel vision with blank walls on either side and glass fronts set rigidly towards the view. Grace drove to the end of the lane, did a turn in the next cross street and then came back down to park beside Freeman’s side gate. On the way up the lane, she had seen bars on all his windows.

He got out of the car wheezing. ‘Fucking useless,’ he said.

She followed him in the gate to the backyard, a small square of couch grass sporting a rusty rotary clothes hoist. The space was surrounded by high fences and the brick wall of the house next door. As soon as the gate closed behind him, she took out the gun he’d given her. He turned and laughed.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You won’t need that.’

She noticed that the back door had a new lock. Freeman deadlocked it behind them as soon they’d stepped inside.

‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked.

‘I’ve told you, Gracie. It’s nothing for you to be frightened of. You’ll see why when we walk through.’

In the kitchen, the smell of blocked plumbing hit her like a wall. The cupboards had been left open, their contents pulled out; the fridge, already empty, had been dragged away from the wall. Even the stove and the ancient, greasy ceiling fan had been pulled out. She followed him down the hallway that ran the length of the house. Every room had been torn apart. The carpets were pulled up, cupboards and sets of drawers had been emptied. The manhole cover had been removed, junk pulled from the roof cavity and tossed onto the floor. In one room, a bedroom, a mattress had been straightened and a bed made up. It was one of the few signs of habitation. They reached the living room at the front of the house where the sunlight was a bright gilding on the dusty windows. Freeman sat heavily in a chair. The air was musty, the room also disordered.

‘Open the front door, would you, Gracie? I need some air. I don’t mind that door being open because I can see people coming.’

He tossed her his keys. She opened the door but left it on the deadlock in case she had to shut it in a hurry. Hot air rushed in from the outside. Freeman had his eyes closed.

‘Who turned your place over like this?’ she asked. ‘What did they want?’

‘At a guess, Gracie, it’s what I’ve got to give you. Those tapes. There’s nothing else here anyone would want. They got in through the back door. Happened while I was in hospital. I ask myself, what if I’d been here at the time? Would I already be outside in the cemetery with my mum and dad?’

‘Where are these tapes?’

‘In a moment. I’ve got to tell you something else. Whoever did it, they did find something. That CD I gave you on the beach. I used to have prints of all those pictures. There’s a few where everyone’s having a real good time and I wanted them to look at, you know, to have a laugh. They were in the top drawer of that sideboard over there when I got carted off to hospital. They’re gone now. As far as I can tell, they’re the only thing that is gone. So whoever broke in here, they wanted my tapes and my pictures.’

‘How could anyone know you had all this information here?’

‘That’s it, you see. Mike. Apart from me, he’s the only fucking person who knew any of it even existed! It’s the same thing with his safety deposit box. He’s the only one who knew how to open it.’ Almost to her shock, Freeman looked distressed, even horrified. ‘You saw that fucking picture of Mike on the net this morning. He’d been put through the wringer. They must have done that to him to make him tell them all that. Whoever broke in here, he’s the one who did that to Mike and then killed him. He must be. He’s the one I want you to get.’

‘Why would they want to do that to begin with?’

‘You listen to the tape. It’ll tell you why. It’s about people with a lot to protect.’

There was silence. Grace thought how she was isolated in the silent suburban wilderness where anything could happen and no one cared.

‘You’ve set me up. You could have given me the tape on Bondi beach.’

‘No, mate. I want you to walk away from here and go back to your boyfriend in one piece. It was too fucking dangerous to carry them around. I’ve got to tell you something else. You see that door over there in the hallway. That’s where that little girl and her boyfriend died. I wish I hadn’t done that. It bothers me.’

Opening the thick, white wooden door, Grace looked at a set of stairs leading down into a black pit. There was an uprush of cold and mouldy air. The light revealed a cellar under the living room floor with walls dug out of the original rock. A single fluorescent tube lit the gloom. She moved forward but the first step shifted dangerously under her foot.

‘Don’t go down there,’ Freeman called out urgently. ‘I’m superstitious about it. People don’t always come out alive. Anyway, the steps are too fucking shaky now.’

Grace put her gun away and stepped back from the door tormented by the question: how could you do that to someone else? Harrigan had his own demons pursuing him in his work; this was the one that drove her. She left the door open and the light on. A place like that needed to be cleaned out with light and air.

There was a knock on the front door. ‘Good morning.’ It was a female voice.

Grace turned sharply to see a tall figure outlined in the doorway. Immediately, Freeman got to his feet, if shakily. Grace rested her hand on her bag, the gun within reach.

‘Who are you?’ she asked.

‘Can I come in?’

‘No, stay out on the fucking porch,’ Freeman said.

Undeterred, the woman walked into the room, her tall figure dwarfing his. Too weak to stand, Freeman had to sit down again.

‘Why don’t you take my card,’ she said, handing it to Grace.

‘Sam Jonas,’ Grace read, recognising the name from the card Harrigan had shown her the night before. ‘Have you got a reason for being here?’

‘I was about to ask you that.’

Grace looked her over. She was strong-looking. Even in this weather, she was wearing a leather jacket. Grace wondered if there was a shoulder holster underneath it. She stood watching the two of them with a stance that said whatever was going on here, she was in control.

‘Who do you think you are, walking in here like this?’ Grace asked, less out of anger than curiosity.

Sam smiled. ‘I go where I like and I do what I like. That’s a decision I made some time ago. But you haven’t come here just to pass the time of day. You’re Grace Riordan, aren’t you?’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Like a lot of people, you’re on the net. I met a friend of yours yesterday. Paul Harrigan. Did he tell you that? There are pictures of the two of you together out there in cyberspace. You must know that.’

Grace could say she possessed a very minor degree of fame. Harrigan was written up in the papers often enough, usually in the crime wrap but sometimes in the gossip columns. She had been photographed with him more than once and was usually described as the ex-policewoman who was his companion.