Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

When she reached the office, neither the preacher nor the boy had been found and every available person was out searching for them. She stopped in the doorway to Harrigan’s office, hesitating. He was on the phone and gestured to her to wait. As he hung up, he looked at her expectantly.

‘I’ve got the paperwork from Kariong for you if you want to see it,’

she said, feeling cold as she spoke. ‘It looks like they used the psychiatric assessment as a lever to get him out.’

‘Yeah.’ He was distant, unreadable. ‘Leave it with me, would you, Grace? I don’t have time to talk now. Okay?’

‘Sure,’ she said.

She went back to her desk, hiding behind her make-up and scrubbing out a sharply felt disappointment.

Not long after, Louise knocked discreetly on Harrigan’s door and put a message on his desk. It was the transcript of an email they had retrieved from the trash file on Toby’s computer.

Firewall, u have 2 be so careful now, the police know about yourweb site and they are watching everything u say and do. U rememberI love u, Firewall, love u always.

Harrigan nodded as he read it.

‘Keep me posted,’ he said, and buried his head in his paperwork, working at a murderous pace, driving all other thoughts out of his head.

In the afternoon, Lucy woke from her electronic dreams to a curious sense of lassitude. It was the sixth day since the shooting. The thought ‘I am here’ was voiced in her mind as an acknowledgement that she was as good as imprisoned there. Events had slipped into suspension. Elsewhere in the house, her father slept his narcotic sleep.

After they had spoken to each other, he had withdrawn into his bedroom, shutting the door against her, holding her at bay. Out in the rest of the world, everything existed in an uneasy stability. She had the sense that neither she nor the preacher could move without initiating violence. She felt the threat of it in the same way that she might have listened to the sound of someone she feared approaching her from a distance.

She left her room to go and wash. At her door, she stopped and looked down the corridor at the closed door to her father’s bedroom.

She only had to walk in there and say, ‘I’m here, Dad. I just told you, you owe me. Can’t you give a bit, the smallest bit?’ Words that became a craving as she thought them. He had nothing to give her, that door was closed against her, she could not expect to find any mercy in there.

If she walked into his room with those words, he would turn his back to her and wrap himself in impenetrable silence and deafness. He sent whispered messages through Melanie, asking her not to leave, saying he still wanted to see her but only if she was kind to him, because he was a dying man. Come and be my friend before I die, he whispered to her through her sister, there’s no point in accusations. She could not use her gun against that whispered voice.

In the bathroom, she washed herself carefully. Her bleeding had stopped by now but she still washed herself several times a day, polishing her unfamiliar skin and body as a child might. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, carefully drying the soft skin of her vagina, then dressed herself, thinking that no one could touch her now. She traced the edge of her face as she looked at herself in the mirror, unnerved by the awareness that this mask and no other was her face. She felt she was inhabiting herself the way a ghost might take possession of someone else’s body.

As she came downstairs into the hallway, she heard the television in the lounge room. From the kitchen she heard softer voices, Melanie and Stephen speaking to each other, words that were partly indistinct but which seemed to be about everyday things. She stopped at the open door, to see Stephen smoking as he sat at the table reading the day’s paper, while Melanie stood at the bench slicing potatoes. He looked up and smiled at her.

‘Hi, Luce,’ he said.

‘Hi.’

This single syllable filled the air like a breath finally expelled and the past overlaid the present, going back years. It was late at night. She had left her room immediately after her father had and was going to the bathroom to wash herself. When she came out, she saw her father walking downstairs and then Stephen standing in the hallway watching them both. He was staring at her with his mouth open and his face white. He did not speak to her, he turned and went downstairs to the kitchen after their father. She stood at the top of the stairs, too frightened to move, listening. She heard the sound of Stephen’s quieter voice but she could not make out the words. In the cold and silent house, she heard her father shouting with that sudden anger he had, and then the sound of someone at first being hit and then crashing to the floor. She ran downstairs to find Stephen with his knee cracked on the laundry floor, rolling about in pain. She could say nothing; he gripped on to her while he refused to make a sound. Her father was eating a slice of bread, something. He finished, brushed himself down and then called an ambulance. As the ambulance arrived in the driveway, her mother came down to the kitchen for the first time.

‘You okay, Luce?’

Stevie was talking to her. Both he and Mel were staring at her. She shook her head to bring herself back to the present.

‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ she said.

‘You want something to eat?’ Mel asked.

‘No, I’ll just have some coffee.’

‘Whatever you like.’

Lucy looked up from making instant coffee to find Stephen watching her, the expression on his face a mixture of concern and fear.

‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked.

‘He’s still in his room. I don’t think he’s coming out again.’ Melanie answered the question for her brother, tossing her knife down and turning and standing with her arms folded. She spoke without energy.

‘Do you know, he spent the whole time I was in there this morning whispering in my ear about how much he loves you. I can’t deal with that, Luce. I can hardly even deal with the sound of his voice.’

Melanie waited for her to reply but Lucy said nothing. Her sister shook her head.

‘You two are just so alike,’ she said, ‘you won’t let go of anything.

He’s never going to say what you want him to say, Luce, never. He’s just going to keep getting at me and at Stevie until you say to him that it doesn’t matter what he did to you. If you’re going to stay around, just give him what he wants. It doesn’t matter now anyway, it’s too fucking late.’

Again Lucy did not answer. She had no voice; everything she had to say was stuck in her throat.

‘Mum’s in the lounge, is she?’ was all she managed in the end.

‘What do you think?’ Melanie said, turning away again.

Stephen said nothing, only lit another cigarette from the end of the one he was already smoking.

Lucy took her mug of coffee and went outside to sit next to Dora and scratch the old dog’s head. As the dog nuzzled closer to her, she thought she would let her off the chain, and then go and tell her father how evil she thought he was. She did not move: thoughts of her father had caused her to become paralysed. She did not know what she wanted, whether she should stay or go. What was the point of staying here other than that it was somewhere to hide. She shook her head against the confusion. The sound of her phone, stashed in the pocket of her jacket, interrupted her thoughts.

‘Yeah?’ she said, knowing who it would be.

‘Lucy,’ the preacher replied. ‘How are you today?’

‘I’m good, Graeme. I’ve never felt better in my life. What do you want?’

‘I’ve got someone here I want you to talk to.’

Lucy felt cold as she listened to him pass the phone to someone.