Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

‘He’s in real pain. You haven’t seen it.’

‘Good,’ she said.

‘No, it’s not good. You haven’t seen what it means. It’s horrible, it doesn’t matter if it is him,’ he replied, angrily.

‘No, he deserves it,’ she snapped back. ‘Why are you doing this anyway?’

‘I’m doing it for Mel. And because it’s going to be over and done with soon. And after that I’m going to clear everything I can out of this place. We’re going to clean it from top to bottom, I’m going to paint it and it’s going to be like new. And that’ll be the end of it. They’re the only reasons I’ve got. I don’t want to talk about it any more. Can you give it a rest for the moment?’

‘Stevie, I’ve got to ask you about a — ’

‘Not now!’

He walked away.

She went back into her room and then thought she could not stay in there. She went downstairs and followed the sound of the television to the lounge. Her mother was in there as usual. Lucy stood in the doorway, her mother looked up at her and did not speak. She pulled her cardigan close about her and turned her attention back to the television. Wrapped up in her old windcheater, Lucy went and stood out on the back lawn, walked to the edge of her grandmother’s garden and looked across the national park. It was late in the afternoon, not long before dark. In the distance, she saw the house lights that marked the edge of the suburban sprawl begin to appear. The sky was overcast and the contours of the tree tops in the distance were the colour of fresh-cut coal.

Hugging herself in the growing dusk on the edge of the woodland, she shook her head against the furies rising in her mind, the sounds in her head. ‘Don’t,’ she said, ‘don’t,’ as the familiar cries of her own personal ghosts came back to haunt her. She sat down on the damp grass, holding her head in her hands.

When she came back to herself, she heard the dog’s chain clinking as Dora moved around. ‘Fuck you, Dad,’ she said, looking up at the ragged sky, and went and let the dog off her chain. With a strength drawn out of anger, she ripped the chain away — it came easily away from the rotten wood of the kennel — and threw it out into the tangle of the garden. She pulled her windcheater off and stood out there in the bitter cold, letting the chill freeze her body. She felt the gun pressed into her waist grow cold against her skin and did not care if anyone saw that she had it. She waited until ice seemed to take hold of her and she felt nothing.

She needed a car. Even if she went to the police, she would still need a car. She would ask Stevie in the morning if he could help her. She rang the preacher’s mobile telephone number but only reached the answering machine. ‘Graeme,’ she said into the mechanical emptiness,

‘it’s Lucy. I’m going to call you tomorrow in the morning. I should know if I’ve got a car by then. Okay? You had better be there, Graeme.

And remember what I said to you about when we’re on the phone. It’s not just you I want to talk to. So don’t call me, I’ll call you. You make sure you wait for me to call.’

She went back inside the house, to her room. She had stopped in the hallway to look at the door to her father’s room when the door opened and Melanie appeared, carrying a tray of dirty dishes and utensils. The tray was heavily laden and she walked awkwardly. She stopped near her sister’s room and leaned the tray on the railing at the top of the stairs.

‘Do you want me to help you or something?’ Lucy asked, feeling powerless.

For a few moments, Melanie stood with her eyes closed out of tiredness.

‘No, it doesn’t matter,’ she said, shaking her head, and then, ‘Well, yeah. If you do want to help? Go in there and tell him you don’t care, you don’t give a shit what he did to you. Because he’s still punishing me for what you said to him the other day. Me and Stevie together.

You want to make it easier, you can do that for us.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Lucy said with steel in her voice, and shut her door.

She logged back on to her computer, asking herself again, what would Turtle say she should do? He wasn’t out there. She logged off again, disappointed. Driven by hunger, she went down to the kitchen to find something to eat, before going back to her room and working on her creation of the celestial city, the only place she knew where she did not feel like a stranger.

The morning’s newspaper was just one of a number of things on Harrigan’s desk which convinced him that today was going to be an even better day than yesterday. The Daily Telegraph ’s headline, MEET THE FIREWALL — MURDERER’S WEBSITE REVEALED, would give his murdering girl all the publicity she had ever dreamed about, something he was obliged to admit was necessary however much he disliked the idea. There were pages on the story, it included every picture and description they’d ever released. Some fool in the publicity department had thoughtfully sent out the latest photograph of him while at the same time announcing that he was in charge of the investigation.

Information which the paper had then printed with a breathless biography he would not otherwise have recognised as his own. The only thing he read which cheered him was the announcement of a reward of $25,000 for any information leading to the arrest of the killer. He should feel happier about it. In all the fuss, no one was yet publicly reviling them for managing to lose their sole witness.

He looked at his other papers, including Louise’s print-out of Toby’s latest communication with the Firewall. Love you, Turtle, loveyou always, he read. This miasma of declared personal love, as he saw it, reverberated angrily in Harrigan’s mind. She can come and wash and feed you if she really loves you, Toby. She can massage your back.

She can clean you. I’ll supervise her. And is she still going to feel that way about you when she reads the newspaper? U got 2 believe me I’myour friend I am 4 ever I love u always 2 U go 2 the police beforesomething really bad happens , Toby had written in reply. This particular time bomb was due to go off sometime today, it had to.

Toby, why have you done this to yourself?

Without giving himself the chance for a second thought, Harrigan sent out an email to his son. Check the paper today, Toby, I’m in thereand she has to see it sometime. I don’t want this to rebound on you.

Get in touch with me if you want me. I’m here. He could deal with any rebuff or accusation from Toby better than the memory of neglect.

He did not need this convergence of his work into his personal sphere; it asked too much of him, it made it too delicate to balance. He felt this all the more as he flicked open an urgent memo from the Tooth.

Under current staffing levels, insufficient police personnel were available to guard Whole Life Women’s Health Centre clinics on a twenty-four-hour basis. The application of risk management principles indicated that the clinics would be better off employing a private security firm, to which end Marvin recommended a highly reliable agency.

While Harrigan mused over the possible financial incentives the Tooth might have for this recommendation (personal investment, favours owed, the promise of a future directorship), he thought of the warnings he might send out to the extensive crew of health workers now left unprotected. Be alert for strange individuals approaching your door carrying timed incendiary devices — they may not be there to discuss their personal medical problems. Yes, be alert, the country needs lerts like never before and so do I. He rubbed his eyes. The absurdity gelled nicely with a telephone call he then received from the duty sergeant at the front desk. A Preacher Graeme Fredericksen had asked to see him, did he want them to show him up? The man was insistent on seeing him and him only. Harrigan did not say that he’d had every available officer out searching for the man for some eighteen hours or so now, and a fair few others for quite some time before that.