Alex Palmer: The Tattooed Man

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.

Harrigan 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.