Alex Palmer: The Tattooed Man

He walked out without looking back. Then he stopped. Nothing was happening the way it had when Sam had made Elena do the lockdowns the first time around.

‘What were you really just doing?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’ve just wiped out Brinsmead’s personal files, haven’t you? Just in case there’s something in there that incriminates you.’

‘I’m going to reverse the lockdowns now. This is my office. Get out.’

He ignored her and waited while she continued to work on her computer. This time, the lights briefly went out and came on again, the air conditioning changed. The doors stayed open. She didn’t look at him. Once she’d finished, she picked up her phone to make a call. Even without washing the blood off her face, she was putting the essentials in place. Harrigan leaned forward and took the phone out of her hand.

‘You owe me your life,’ he said.

‘You owe me yours.’

‘No. I told you it was a suicide pact. I gave you the time to manipulate the lockdown. Upstairs, I dragged you out of the way of Sam’s bullet. I would have saved your neck in there if you’d bothered to cooperate with us. Because you didn’t, someone I care about almost got killed. You have something I want. You’ll remember. You tried to use it once to blackmail me. If you have any decency at all, you’ll send it to me.’

‘Decency!’

‘If you don’t, I’ll walk out of here thinking you’re nothing but a piece of rubbish, Dr Calvo. I thought you told me you always fulfilled your business obligations, no matter what.’

He left without looking back.

By the time the paramedics were wheeling her out to the ambulance, Grace had woken up. She moved her head one way and then stopped.

‘Don’t move,’ the paramedic said.

‘I can’t, my head hurts too much.’ She looked at Harrigan. ‘You’re blurry. Is it really you?’

‘I’m still here, believe me,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and see you in hospital as soon as I can.’

‘You have work to do,’ she said to him in a soft, drifting voice.

He did have work to do. By the time the police got there, Elena had called in her lawyers. They arrived before the forensic team and were escorted in by one of the security guards from the front desk. Harrigan didn’t speak to her again. He organised the crime scene, directed the allocation of jobs. Throughout this, the police left the emergency exits open, moving in and out. As a result, numbers of the monkeys made their escape out of the building. Others were dead. The forensic team marked where their carcasses lay. Harrigan watched as the human dead were taken away. This is futile, he thought. It means nothing. Nada.

He left the scene as soon as he could. At the main gate, the media was assembled en masse. He drove through the crowds, heading for Liverpool Hospital where Grace was. Several crews followed him. There were uniformed police on duty at the hospital. Harrigan told them to keep the media out whatever else they did. Grace was in Emergency. She managed faintly to raise an eyebrow at him.

‘You got here,’ she said. ‘They’re talking about scanning my brain. I told them it’s probably peasized but they should be able to find it if they look hard enough.’

‘You’re alive. I didn’t have to see you with a bullet in your head. I don’t care about anything else.’

‘Not even about the job?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t.’

He realised that for the first time in his working life, this was probably true.

The medical staff moved Grace to Royal North Shore Hospital and told Harrigan she would be there for several weeks while they assessed any possible damage. He visited her every day. For the rest of the time, he worked at his job with one aim in mind: setting up the investigation so it could run without his daily involvement. He spoke to ASIO, made statements, worked through the evidence with Trevor and his senior people. Any information concerning Falcon’s operations was classified, they were told. It could only be presented in a closed court and now there was no one left alive to try. After consultations with all parties, the commissioner’s directive was to close the Pittwater case as soon as possible and let the dead bury the dead. The investigation into the murder of Senator Edwards, his adviser and a police guard remained in the hands of the AFP and was continuing. Harrigan looked at the bald facts and knew they would not even get close to Elena Calvo.

Harrigan knew she had won most comprehensively when he received a phone call from Millennium Forensic Technologies.

‘We have ASIO on the premises,’ the owner said. ‘They want the plant specimens you gave me and also any information I have on the subject. All my notes, all my test results, everything. Do I give it to them?’

‘I don’t think you have any choice,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I can’t stop them.’

Harrigan rang Stephen Grey, the only useful contact he had in ASIO. He was almost surprised when Grey took his call.

‘We’re seizing those specimens and that information on behalf of our counterparts in Britain,’ he said. ‘It’s been authorised at the highest levels in both governments. All that evidence will be sent to London.’

‘Why is that necessary? We can do a very professional analysis here.’

‘I haven’t been made privy to the reason,’ Grey replied. ‘I’ve been told that the data attached to those specimens is classified as top secret. I can’t give you any more information than that.’

‘Those specimens are obviously connected to the operation around Brinsmead and Jonas. Why is it necessary to close this analysis down? On the face of it, it has nothing to do with the events in the DRC.’

‘There are still issues of secrecy involved. I think you should also realise that once those specimens are gone, that will be the end of your people’s involvement concerning anything to do with Brinsmead, Jonas or these plants. I have no more information than that to give you. Good morning.’

Toby was also still in hospital. Without his computer, he had to pen their one-sided conversations with his single hand.

‘I want you to know that I didn’t leave you to die,’ Harrigan said. ‘I did everything I could to get you back.’

That man wanted something for me, Dad. Something important. I heard him say so. Did you give it to him?

‘Yes, but he didn’t keep his word. He left you in that car park to die. Grace found you on a tipoff. There’s something else I think you should know. Someone made me an offer to research you personally. To try and find a way to repair some of the things that don’t work the way we’d like them to. I said no before I asked you what you wanted.’

What do they want you to do?

‘That’s not the point.’

Yes, it is. They wouldn’t be doing something like that for nothing. They must want something from you. What is it?

‘That’s my side of it. I want to know what you think.’

Are they going to find a cure for me? No, they’re not. Maybe twenty years from now, maybe never. I’ve read about these things. No one’s thought about them more than me. They’re asking me to hope. I’m not going to do that. I’m not having anyone getting into my head for things I might never be able to have. I’ll keep wanting to be something I’m not and then I won’t do anything with my life. I’ll never be happy.

‘You’re happy now. Is that what you’re telling me?’

I make my life work. Yes, I am in my own way.

‘Good,’ Harrigan said. ‘I’m glad.’

Later, he shredded this sheet of paper down the men’s toilet. His actions in trying to get his son back remained what they had always been: a matter of necessity, something unquestionable.