Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

‘If you look at everything about her,’ she said, ‘she’s such a wild card. How far can you manipulate someone like that?’

‘I think our friendly neighbourhood preacher would consider it a challenge,’ Harrigan said. ‘Now there’s someone who wouldn’t like some upstart girl getting up his nose if she wasn’t doing what he wanted.’

He was tapping his fingers on the table top as he spoke.

‘He’d get a kick out of doing that? Putting a gun in her hand and saying, go out and use it?’ Grace asked.

‘He’d love it.’ Harrigan was musing. ‘Take a good look at him the next time he comes in. I don’t think I’ve met many people more cold-blooded than he is.’

‘No? Haven’t you dealt with some really choice characters — serial killers, people like that?’

‘No one worth talking about. People like that are nothing, Grace.

They’re an empty space. Their only quality is how dangerous they are.

Someone like that is strictly business. You run them to earth, you put them away, you forget their existence. They’re not worth one second of your time.’

The waiter placed a shot glass containing a thimbleful of whisky on the table. He amended the bill before returning to drape himself decoratively over the bar. Harrigan glanced at the sum charged and wondered if he should not have taken out a mortgage on his house before deciding he needed an evening heart-starter.

‘Then she’s not like the preacher,’ Grace said. ‘If that’s what he is, she isn’t like that.’

‘How do you know she’s not?’

Grace ashed out her cigarette and wanted to light another but did not.

‘She was raped,’ she said to Harrigan, looking at him directly, preventing her voice from shaking. ‘I’m not saying it justifies anything, but it does give her a reason for what she did.’

‘A reason? Her reason for shooting down two bystanders is that she was raped?’

Grace’s back was immediately bathed in a cold sweat. ‘You don’t think that matters?’

‘No, that’s not what I said. And it’s not what I think either.’

‘You heard the story,’ she said, with forced detachment. ‘It wasn’t exactly straightforward. Not that I think it’s ever straightforward.

Why wouldn’t it be a reason?’

‘Do you think reason is the word you want to use?’

Grace folded her arms and leaned a little forward, resting on the table.

‘Maybe it is. It’s a reason to her even if it’s not for us. Compulsion, if you think that’s a better word. Maybe I do want to get into her head so I know why she does what she does.’

‘You want to be her?’

‘For a little while maybe. Just to get the insight.’

‘Grace, could you shoot down two people in cold blood?’

‘I don’t think she did act in cold blood. But no, if you’re asking me.

I hope I couldn’t.’

She gave in and lit another cigarette.

‘Then you can’t be her. For the exact same reason you say you want to. She’s got no insight into what she’s doing, she can’t have.

And you do.’

‘I want to know that she’s human. I want to treat her like she is.’

‘Why does someone like you want to get down in the dirt with someone like her?’ he asked.

Why does your son? To have asked him this question would have been unforgivable.

‘Is it dirt?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, if that’s what it is, we’re all down in it, aren’t we? One way or another. It’s all just people doing what they do to each other all the time. Lovely, lovely people.’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t see myself down there. And there’s no way I’d ever see you down there. Not for one second.’

‘I can’t see it as hard and fast as that,’ she said. ‘It’s like a spectrum, we slide up and down it.’

‘Maybe. But some people like it down there, Grace, they like being in the dirt. They do things, they leave devastation behind them, and they walk away like it’s never happened. They don’t care. They’ll give you any excuse why they don’t have to think about what they’ve done.

I don’t believe either of us is like that.’

You don’t know who or what I am, Paul, she thought in reply.

There was a brief silence in which they looked at each other.

‘You’re tired,’ he said, thinking aloud.

‘Aren’t we all? So are you,’ she replied, crushing out her cigarette.

He did not answer.

‘That session got to me,’ she said. ‘More than I thought it would.’

‘That’s going to happen, it’s better to admit it upfront. Do you have something you do when you want to unwind?’ he asked.

‘I go and sink myself in music. I can get lost in it for hours. I might do that when I get home.’

‘Probably a good idea.’

Silence.

‘Do you have anything you do?’ she asked.

‘If it’s bad, I go and see my son. He always makes me feel like I’m a human being again. If I want a real break, I go fishing down the coast. I like to hear the sound of the sea. Nothing very exciting.’

Once more, they sat in silence. Why are we sitting talking like this, he thought? Why don’t you let me ask you home? I’ve got a sound system of my own even if the last time I bought a CD was a year ago and I can’t remember what it was. I’ve got a comfortable bed upstairs in my bedroom. I would love to see you sitting naked on my bed with your hair out on your shoulders, your mind as far away from work as it can get. He shook the thoughts out of his head.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘I was just thinking about the work I’ve got to do,’ he said, slightly embarrassed, glad she could not see into his mind.

‘Yeah,’ she said, looking at him with that same sadness, ‘I won’t hold you up any longer.’

‘I wasn’t rushing you, Grace. Please don’t think I was.’

‘It doesn’t matter, I’ve got to go anyway. I’ve got work to do as well.

What do I owe you for the coffee?’

She was already on her feet, putting on her coat.

‘This is on me, I told you that. Why don’t you go home if you’re feeling low. Give me the tape and I’ll get it written up.’

‘Yeah, okay. Thanks.’

She set the tape on the table without looking at him and walked out, leaving him with his own company, an unfinished coffee and a half-drunk whisky, asking himself what it had all meant. If it had meant anything at all. He watched her through the window of the coffee shop as she crossed the street, thinking that he had made her a gift of his time when he had none to spare and she had not noticed.

He finished his whisky, left a note on the table to pay and walked out as well, going back to work.

Out on Oxford Street in the bright lights and the moving traffic Grace felt savage, emotional pain, just as she had in the hospital; the cold air woke her to its rawness. Whatever you want, Harrigan, I don’t want you to waste your time with me. I don’t need to feel anything for you that’s just going to go nowhere.

This was an old grief, wasted emotion, possibilities that die at birth.

She worked to put him out of her mind as she stood at the traffic lights.

She might keep Harrigan out of her head but the Firewall stayed on, hooked into her. Grace crossed the wide road with everyone else, pinned between the bright lights of the cars. Your father did rape you, didn’t he?

And your mother stood by and she let him. And then they cleaned you up when they needed to without even talking to you. I know how you feel, I’ve been there once upon a time myself. But it wasn’t your father.

This quiet whisper of fact in Grace’s mind nonetheless held the implication of its reverse: that other fathers did, something scarcely comprehensible to her in terms of her own experience. In terms of her work, it was a simple fact, like a piece of rock which for some reason had a particular shape. It was just the way it was.