Alex Palmer - The Tattooed Man

‘We got into his house through the garage. I had Eddie by the hair. “You’re going to be sorry for what you said, mate. You’re not bringing me down.” Joe and me, we let him have it. Put the boot right in. Here’s your chance, Paulie. Prove yourself. No way. You ran for the fucking door. It took the two of us to drag you back. “You shoot him,” I told you. “You do it now.” I shoved that gun in your hand but you dropped it. You shouted at me: “No!” I smacked you in the face for that. You had blood coming out of your mouth, on your shirt, your tie. You were a mess. I did it myself. Twice in Eddie’s head. Finished. Then I rubbed some of Eddie’s blood on your tie. “Welcome to the club,” I said. “This is how it is. Get used to it.”’

Harrigan hit the stop button. He sat there, caught in the memory in his head. Grace had forgotten to smoke; her cigarette was dead in the ashtray.

‘Unsolved Sydney mysteries,’ she said, her face pale in the light. ‘Who killed Eddie Lee? Is that really what happened?’

‘Word for word. They took the house apart after that looking for money. They found it. Mike knew where to look. Then he said I needed fortifying and we went somewhere else. I drove. My hands were shaking but I got there.’

‘Where?’

‘Some flea-bitten dump in South Sydney called the Sportsman Club. It’s not there any more. Mike had an arrangement with the owner. Free beer and free roots in exchange for not bothering him too much about his other activities.’

Grace raised an elegant eyebrow ever so slightly. ‘Daggy decor. Saggy sex workers in G-strings pulling the beers,’ she said with a kind of wry gloominess.

‘I don’t remember much about it. I was twenty-three. I’d just seen someone shot dead. I wanted to get out of there. They were laughing themselves sick. They wanted to get pissed.’

He pressed play again. ‘We always had the back room to ourselves. The girl turned up and I asked for a jug. I took out a little money and tucked it into your top pocket. You looked sick, I thought you needed cheering up. “What’s that for?” you said. I give you money and you say that to me. It sure as fuck wasn’t anything you’d earned. “Buy something for that spastic kid of yours,” I said. “In case you don’t know it, Joe, Paulie here has a kid. No, he’s got a vegetable.” I looked you right in the eyes. “Put him away. He’ll never know who you are. He’ll die soon.” The beer arrived. You got up, said you needed a piss. I told the girl, “Get us another jug. Then you can make yourself useful to my young friend here. He needs a fuck.”

‘When you came back, you weren’t wearing your tie. You threw it on the table with the money I gave you and the car keys. “I’m leaving,” you said. “I’ve got better things to do with my life than run after you.” Joe went dead quiet. I told you, “You say that to me. You cunt.” Then you walked away, right into the girl carrying the beer. You were soaked. I shouted, “You’ve pissed yourself, Paulie.” Me and Joe, we laughed. I thought, you’re finished.

‘We got to your place before you did. Old Jimbo was in hospital at the time, otherwise I would have done it somewhere else. That was the night we let you know what we could do to you if we wanted to. I told you, “Keep your mouth shut or you’re dead.” You knew I meant it. About three weeks later, Dave’s got you back on the job. Then I find out why you’re back. You start giving me grief. You think you can take me on. You paid for that, mate, big time.

‘This is the final payoff, Paulie. I’ve got your tie. It’s got your blood on it along with Eddie’s. I’ve got the gun that shot him, it’s got your prints on it. I’ve got this tape. They’re all in my safety deposit box. When the time comes, they’re all going to Marvin Tooth. Special assistant commissioner, the man who spends half his life up the commissioner’s arsehole. Good old Fang. The man who wants to be commissioner way ahead of you. When I’m gone, you go too. Look forward to it, mate.’

Cassatt’s voice stopped, the tape continued in silence. Harrigan rewound it and took it out. Grace sipped warm soda water.

‘That’s a voice from the grave,’ she said, her own voice shaking a little. ‘Is everything on that tape true?’

‘Every word. And now someone out there has everything that was in Mike’s safety deposit box. They’ve got their hands on my life and there’s no way I can know who they are. Until they ring me up and tell me they want something from me.’

She shook another cigarette out of the packet and lit it. He watched her gathering calm. She was like this, never clingy or brimming with overdone sympathy.

‘Whoever has it, it’s not the Tooth,’ she said. ‘If he had any of that evidence in his possession, let alone this tape, you’d be out of a job right now.’

Harrigan smiled dryly. Grace had her own unpleasant memories of encounters not only with Marvin but with his son as well, including an attempt by the two of them to drive her out of her job while she’d still been with the police. Baby Tooth, as Marvin’s boy, Sean, was known, was also a serving police officer. On a fast track through the ranks, he owed his promotions solely to his father’s patronage.

‘What evidence is there left from Eddie Lee’s murder?’ she asked. ‘Any DNA? Can they tie you in?’

‘There’d be enough. We’ve still got the clothes he was wearing. It wouldn’t be hard to get a match.’

‘How would you protect yourself if any of this did get out?’

‘Do what everyone does. Deny everything. Get a good lawyer.’

‘It wouldn’t save you,’ she said. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t go to gaol for being an accessory but the publicity would finish your career for good. Did you say anything to anyone at the time?’

‘No. If I had, it wouldn’t have mattered who my father was. Right now, I’d be a little pile of bones for the fishes somewhere off South Head.’

Grace shivered. ‘Don’t say that, not even as a joke. Why didn’t you go after them later when they almost killed you? Why not accuse them? Take them to trial.’

‘Because no one would have supported me. My reputation would have been dragged through the mud. I’d have been hounded out of the force and put under so much personal pressure it would have wrecked my life. I’d walked away alive. That was as much as I could expect and I knew it.’

‘But why stay in the job? You could have done something else. Didn’t you have your law degree by then?’

This was a question Harrigan wasn’t prepared to answer, even to himself.

‘Why should I let them chase me out?’

She drew on her cigarette and didn’t reply. They sat in silence for a few moments. Her smoke curled in the air.

‘What a story,’ she said. ‘The Ice Cream Man invites you into his life. Drinking bucketloads of beer in stinky clubs and fucking bored sex workers who couldn’t care less whether you’re alive, dead or a rubber dick. Why would you want to live like that? It’s so nowhere.’

Harrigan had never heard the feared Ice Cream Man brushed aside with so much uncompromising female disdain. It made him laugh from deep inside until the tears came down his cheeks. A nagging tension was resolved; his personal nightmares might have disappeared into the air with the grey wisps of her cigarette smoke.

‘Was it really so funny?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it was.’ He grew serious. ‘That’s not the end of it. I’ve asked Trev to keep me briefed on what’s happening with this investigation. I have to, Grace. If the Ice Cream Man’s involved, I have to know where this job is going.’

Suddenly there was a hint of tears in her own eyes, angry ones.