Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

Again there was a pause. Grace glanced up at the nurse.

‘I want to keep talking,’ Agnes Liu said, and they waited.

‘Agnes,’ Grace spoke quietly, ‘can you remember where they lived?

Just the suburb?’

‘I’ve tried to but I can’t — I have a blank.’

‘The clinic?’

‘No. I travel, you see. I go from clinic to clinic. I want to make sure things are being done in the right way. I can’t picture where I was. I know these things happened but I can’t picture any of it.’

Include five possibilities out of five clinics, Harrigan thought, standing outside.

‘I rang the hospital that evening to see how she was. She was already home, they said. Her father had come to get her. I was furious with them. I said, she needed care. Oh, they were so busy. There was no staff, no one had realised. They had no address for her. Or not one that made any sense. There was nothing I could do. But I was distressed. I thought, why was any of that necessary? Then one day -

quite a few months later, I’m not sure how long — this woman, she came to the clinic again. They had an appointment with me but I didn’t know the name. I think it was a different name, I can’t remember what it was. She wanted to see me.

‘I spoke to her in my office. The first thing she said was, we have a car this time. I didn’t quite know what to say. Her daughter was pregnant again, she said. She wanted an abortion, she was waiting outside in the car now. Would I do it? I was flabbergasted. I said, why have you come to see me again? Oh, she said, I didn’t know where else to go. I said, what does your daughter want? Oh, this is what she wants. And then the woman said — I didn’t know if she was being deliberately stupid — my daughter’s uncontrollable. My husband wants her to go on the pill so this doesn’t happen again. He doesn’t like it.

‘There are times when I’m talking to people, when I’m watching their faces. I looked at this woman and I wondered, is this stupidity or cunning? I don’t know. But it’s evil, whatever it is. I said I wasn’t prepared to do that. Her daughter was young, I think she was only fifteen. It’s not good to go on the pill at that age. I asked her to bring the girl in. I spoke to her privately, I insisted. I asked her about her boyfriend. She gaped at me. I asked her about her father. She didn’t seem to know what I meant. She said he was a butcher. Yes, I thought.

I asked was this what she wanted? She said, yes. What else could she say? The mother was waiting outside my office. And she looked at me.

I can only say I knew — I was certain from the look on her face — that this child’s father was the father of her child. I thought, yes, this is cunning. You want to implicate me. This is your way of shifting the blame. If I know, it’s not your fault, is it? It’s mine. I felt ill.

‘What should I have done? Call the police? Throw them out? I thought, I have an obligation. I have to protect this child from injury.

I can perform this abortion and then I know it will be done properly, not some bungled thing. I wouldn’t have trusted the woman not to do something dreadful. I said to her that I needed family details, would she fill out a form? She did. I performed the abortion. And when it was over, the child began to cry. I thought she would never stop. I didn’t wait. I went and I called the police. But when I was on the phone, I saw the woman dragging her daughter out of the recovery room. I didn’t know what to do.

‘I put the phone down and I went after them. Out to the car park.

I stopped them leaving. The girl was in the back seat, curled up. Still crying, I think. The car door was locked. I said to the woman through the window, she can’t have sexual relations with anyone for at least a fortnight. They had to know that. It was all I could do for the girl. This woman just drove away. She almost knocked me down. I rang the police. Then I found out from them — every detail this woman had given me was false. Of course. I was so naive to think otherwise. I still don’t know if I did the right thing.’ She stopped, closing her eyes. ‘I think, that girl crying in the back seat — was she someone who hated me for what I did? I don’t know.’

There was a pause.

‘Could you describe her to us, Agnes? Would that be possible?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure — her face is there but I don’t know how to … She was so young … ’

Standing outside, the doctor signalled to the nurse.

‘That’s it. You’re putting too much pressure on her,’ he said to Harrigan. ‘We’re finished.’

The nurse touched Grace on the shoulder. Grace nodded. She began to disengage her hand.

‘I’ll leave it there, Agnes. Don’t feel you have to think about it any more. Thank you for giving us that. That information’s very important.’

‘Wait,’ Agnes said, in a voice that was too soft to be heard by anyone else, ‘come closer.’

Grace bent down, the woman whispered in her ear.

‘I know you. You came to a clinic. This mad woman was bothering us. You threw her out.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘You look better. Much better than you did.’

Her hand slipped away and Grace found herself outside the room with Harrigan, watching the doctor and nurse bend over the bed.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to Harrigan and took refuge in the Ladies, holding tissues under her eyes to stop the tears from brimming down her cheeks. Mascara flickered fine black speckles onto the white paper.

Holding herself in grip, she repaired her make-up and then went outside to find Harrigan waiting for her in the corridor.

‘The doc’s okay,’ he said, studying her face. ‘She’s out to it but she’s okay. We’ve been told we can go home now. How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Do you want me to buy you a cup of coffee? Since you don’t drink.’

‘A cigarette is what I really need,’ Grace replied, letting a chink of her feelings out.

‘Why don’t we try for both?’ he said. ‘Let’s take half an hour off.

We can spare each other that much time.’

In a coffee shop nearby, where you could sit in an individual booth unwatched by the crowd, Harrigan ordered at great expense a short black and a strong flat white from a silver-studded waiter. Grace lit a cigarette and inhaled the poisonous smoke with gratitude. She forced a shiver down her spine, releasing tension, and came back to the present to find Harrigan watching her from the other side of the table.

‘That was a nasty story,’ she said.

There was no sympathy for the Firewall in Harrigan at that moment. ‘You can say that,’ he replied. ‘I can tell you I’ve heard worse.

It’s not a new story.’

What could be worse? Grace found herself unexpectedly shaken by this reply.

‘No,’ she said and then was silent, staring at the tablecloth, drawing on her cigarette. When she looked up, Harrigan saw an expression of extraordinary sadness cross her face.

‘We don’t even know it’s her, do we? The doc could be talking about someone else who’s got nothing to do with this,’ she said.

‘She could be, that’s possible. I don’t think it’s very likely but it’s possible.’

‘Well, if it is her, then why? Why take it out on the doc? Why not just go and shoot your own rubbish father if he’s done something like that to you? Or your idiot mother. Now, that would be justifiable homicide. I wouldn’t convict her.’

She drew down more smoke, an angry glint in her eye. Harrigan found himself laughing dryly.

‘Good question. We can assume she’s been manipulated in some way. But I wouldn’t say that explained her.’

The waiter brought their coffees. After a few seconds’ hesitation, Harrigan ordered a neat whisky. He looked at Grace to see if she wanted anything else as well but she shook her head.