Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

He pinned up onto the corkboard a photograph of a group of ordinary-looking people with humourless faces and dressed in shabby clothes.

‘Oh, God, look at them. Meet the Addams Family,’ Grace said.

There was some laughter at this, including from Harrigan.

‘No, Gracie, this is the Life Support Group.’ Trevor was grinning.

‘These are the people who stalked Agnes Liu when she was in California. They are way out on the far side of the pro-life movement.

Ask them about abortion and they will tell you it’s Satanic sacrifice.

Women get pregnant so they can go and have abortions and then become witches and work for Satan. That’s where these people connect to the world.’

‘Nothing like being in touch with reality,’ Louise muttered.

‘You said it, Lou. These people are classic urban terrorists. Clinic bombings, threats, harassment, it’s all in a day’s work for them. One of them is in gaol for arson as we speak. You can look her up on the Net. She’s got her own website, she’s a prisoner of God. Is there a connection between these people and the preacher? We could not get one scrap of information out of our American cousins on this bunch, they wouldn’t talk to us. So we did what everybody does when they’re stuck — we went and found our very own Deep Throat. And that’s the journalist who wrote that story.’

There were howls of derision as Trevor pointed to the print-out from the Internet news service that carried the headline: AVENGING

ANGELS’ DEADLY STRIKE. POLICE FAIL TO MAKE ARREST AFTER DOCTOR

SHOT BY EXTREME ANTI-ABORTION GROUP.

Trevor brushed the commotion away with an airy wave of his hand.

‘Laugh as much as you want. But when we got in contact with her, she gave us information. Pages of it. This for starters.’

He pinned up the photocopy of an article from a Californian weekend magazine which had the lead line: IN THE DARK MIND OF

EXTREMITY: THE BLOODY CONSEQUENCES OF MILLENARIAN BELIEF IN THE

ANTI-ABORTION MOVEMENT. STORY BY JANE MONAHAN.

‘What’s all that crap about?’ Jeffo asked.

‘All you need to know, mate, is that you’re looking at this woman, Jane Monahan’s, life. Writing exposes like this one. That’s all she does.

It seems she was a good friend of Laura Di-Cuollo. When that investigation went nowhere, she picked it up in the press. When we got in touch with her, she didn’t want to stop talking. She knows a lot about the Angels: according to her they’ve got more than one shooting behind them. Trouble for us is, how much of her info can we use?

Most of it would get thrown out by any half-decent lawyer. But it fits.

She knows Fredericksen, he’s mentioned in her latest article but just in passing. He was living in the vicinity of Berkeley at the same time the doc was there and had a set-up very similar to the one he’s got here now: rich benefactor, political connections, a private church. Except he wasn’t the main man, he was more of a sidekick. People active within the Life Support Group were connected to his church. This woman’s talked to people who’ve moved away from that group and some of them knew our man. The “nice talker” one of them called him, the man who sets things up. And she knows about the gun that shot her friend. She says she got the ballistics information out of the police forensic lab by paying for it — would you believe, she actually told me that — and if it’s true, I can tell you that the same type of gun

— not the same gun, but the same type — that shot Di-Cuollo also shot our doc. It’s a modified pistol and Monahan tells me it’s a calling card for the Angels. The preacher left the States not long after that shooting. Everything was a bit too warm for him. He’s connected, but we’ve got nothing except our journalist friend to help us prove it.’

‘But is the Firewall one of them?’ Grace asked.

‘That doesn’t matter just at the moment,’ Harrigan said, speaking to her again for the first time since that morning. ‘We know he’s connected. What she is is something we ask her when we find her.’

A short silence followed.

‘It’s a game then,’ Grace said eventually. ‘He likes playing with other people’s lives. It’s a blood sport for him, it gives him a high. It’s not money. It’s the rush.’

‘Yeah, whatever, Gracie,’ Trevor said.

Harrigan found himself looking at her again.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘that’s good, that’s all good. That’s taken us a lot further along the road. Keep digging. And while we do that, we watch the preacher’s every move and we see what happens. We’ve got to turn up something soon.’

‘Like a body maybe?’ Trevor asked him as they all left the room.

‘Say, like poor old Greggie’s?’

‘If I’m going to be honest about it, Trev, I think hell will freeze over before we find that kid,’ Harrigan said.

Grace, moving past him, glanced at him as he said this. Before he could speak to her she was gone into the crowd.

Cafeteria coffee was not Harrigan’s favourite beverage but as he needed both caffeine and a break from the team it was his best choice.

He had sat down to drink it when he saw Grace out on the terrace, leaning against the railing and looking out at the cityscape as she smoked a cigarette. After some moments’ thought, he went out to join her. She looked up in surprise as he appeared. She greeted him and then again looked out at the jumble of roofs and high-rise.

‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’

Yes, he could see that.

‘I’m sorry I ripped into you this morning,’ he said. ‘It was out of order for me to say that to you in front of everyone. You’re doing a good job, Grace. I’m not trying to make your life more difficult.’

She stood upright and shrugged, ever so slightly.

‘Thanks. But I wish I had left my phone on. I wish I had taken that call,’ she said.

‘What could you have done? We would have known a bit sooner and that’s about all. Don’t take it on.’

‘It’s more that it’s all of a piece. That kid sends his last message out to the world and I wasn’t even there to hear it.’

‘Where were you?’ he asked, a question he knew he had no business asking.

‘Sleeping on an old friend’s couch,’ she answered lightly, with a slight touch of steel and a sharp glance at him. ‘Somewhere I go when I’m feeling stretched.’

They stood in awkward silence while Harrigan tried to think of something intelligent to say in reply.

‘I wasn’t trying to be abrupt when I left last night,’ she said before he had the chance. ‘I’m sorry if it came over like that. I think I was feeling a bit worn.’

You take so much on, Grace. Why do you think any of these people are worth it from you?

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, ‘it doesn’t matter. We all get worn.

We’ve all got too much work to do.’

‘Yeah. I’ll just finish my cigarette.’

‘No, it’s okay, Grace. I’m not rushing you. Take your time. I’ll see you later.’

‘Yeah, sure,’ she said, embarrassed by her hypersensitivity.

He walked back to his office, a little lighter in spirit than he had felt all day. The watchers inside the cafeteria had no idea that they had just witnessed the unprecedented event of Harrigan apologising to a member of his team.

Less than an hour after he had spoken to her in the cafeteria, Harrigan startled Grace by appearing without warning at her desk, with his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. He handed her a file and leaned on the desk with both hands.

‘She’s just a little prostitute,’ he said. ‘I’ve told her I’m offering her immunity if her story checks out, but so far she’s being very cagey with the details and I don’t know why. I want you to talk to her on your own. You have to put her at her ease. You can do that, I’ve seen you do it before. Read that file and think about it. Bring your cigarettes with you when you’re ready. She’s asked if she can smoke and I’ve told her she can. She’s smoking like the proverbial at the moment.’