Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

He disappeared in the direction of the interview room. Grace drew breath and opened the file, and thought, you’re on, girl, better tune up the vocal chords. The head shot showed an olive-skinned girl, her shoulder-length dark hair dyed with blonde streaks. Gina Farrugia, aged twenty-two, resident of Potts Point. One conviction for possessing a trafficable amount of heroin. Released into the detox program seven months ago. Known associates: one lover, Mike Sullivan, ex-boxer, sometime bouncer, small-time dealer, occasional police informer, addict. That was all. A thin file. When she reached the interview room, Trevor was waiting with Harrigan.

‘You ready, Gracie?’ he asked her.

‘Sure.’

‘Keep it gentle and take your time. I’ve told her who you are. You remember — I want this information,’ Harrigan said.

How could she forget?

Grace opened the door expecting to feel ordinary tensions filling the air, zigzags of apprehension and defensiveness. The atmosphere in the grey box this afternoon had another quality to it. The young woman looking up at her exuded an animal smell, fear, something as palpable as a small rustling creature curled up tightly into a corner of the room, head pressed to the wall. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke, the ashtray filled with ash and stubs. An empty cigarette packet lay beside it.

‘Hi, Gina,’ Grace said to a barely perceptible nod. ‘How are you?’

There was no direct reply. As she sat down, she saw Gina’s gaze shift past her to the blank eye in the wall.

‘Who’s watching us?’ the girl asked.

‘You don’t have to worry about that. You’re just talking to me. Do you want my card?’

The girl glanced at the card and pocketed it.

‘Don’t I have to worry about that?’ she said to Grace. ‘You know something I don’t, do you?’

‘No. There’s just nothing for you to worry about. No one here’s going to do anything to you. Do you want a cigarette?’

‘Yeah.’

Grace lit both their cigarettes and put the packet and her lighter in the middle of the table.

‘Help yourself,’ she said.

The girl nodded. She sat there, smoking quickly, and then spoke too quickly.

‘If you want to know why I didn’t come in before — I couldn’t get here. That’s the truth. I just couldn’t get here. I would have come in sooner if I could have.’

‘That’s not an issue for me, Gina. As far as I’m concerned, you’re here now and that’s all that matters. The only question for me is what you’ve got to tell me.’

‘That’s something else, isn’t it? There’s a reward, isn’t there?

$25,000? I need to know. Would I get that?’

‘You certainly could. If you’ve got information, then you should get at least a part of it. Maybe all of it. It would depend on what you’ve got to tell us. Is that very important to you?’

‘I just need to know, that’s all. When would I get it?’

‘You need it soon, do you?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Probably as soon as you want it, in that case. But it all does depend on what you’ve got to say. Why don’t you just relax for a bit and think about what you’ve got to tell me? We’ve got plenty of time if you need it.’

There was a brief pause. Gina was tapping ash into the ashtray, frowning. She glanced up at Grace and then at the blank window again. Grace saw panic in the girl’s face, a split in the fabric, control briefly lost and then regained. She ashed her cigarette and picked up the packet, turning it over and over in her hands before taking out another cigarette and lighting it.

‘What if I want something else? I mean, what if I want something besides the money?’

‘What else do you want?’

‘Couple of hours? Of your time. Would you do that for me? Just a couple of hours.’ Her hands were shaking as she looked at Grace.

‘That’s all I want. And the money. When I get it.’

‘Why do you want my time?’ Grace asked.

‘I just do. You don’t have to worry, nothing’s going to happen. I promise. And I do promise.’

‘You want two hours of my time? What do you want to do?’

‘What do I want to do?’ The girl bit her lip. ‘Nothing really. I just want the company. You know all that junk food, chips and that? It’s my favourite food, I love it. Do you want to have a hamburger with me? One with everything? We could do that.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Grace replied equably. ‘I like junk food when I’m in the mood. You want me to go and have a hamburger with you? We can do that. What else do you want to do?’

‘Just sit somewhere and talk. That’s all. That really is all I want.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Yeah.’

Grace was silent for a moment. The girl crushed out her half-smoked cigarette and waited.

‘Why do you want that, Gina?’ Grace asked.

‘I just want the company, that’s all.’

‘Have another cigarette,’ she said and waited while the girl lit it up.

‘There isn’t anyone else you want to be with for two hours?’ she asked.

The girl shook her head without speaking.

‘Gina,’ Grace said, ‘what happens after two hours?’

‘You just go home.’

‘But what do you do?’

‘I go to work.’

‘You’re still working?’

‘Yeah. It keeps the money coming in. I just don’t want to be alone this evening.’

‘You could stay here.’

‘No,’ she looked around at the ugly room, ‘I don’t want to stay here. I want to be out there. It’s just that my boyfriend’s not around and I don’t know where he is right now. I get worried about him. I didn’t want to be alone out there just thinking about him.’

‘Okay,’ Grace said after a pause, ‘I think I can do that. That shouldn’t be a problem.’

‘Have you got some coffee? Some really strong coffee. I really would like a coffee,’ the girl said, almost desperately.

‘Yeah, I’ll get you some coffee.’

At that moment, Harrigan knocked on the door and asked Grace to step outside.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He sounded outraged. ‘You don’t know what she’s planning. You could be walking into anything.’

‘I don’t think she’s planning anything. She’s genuine.’

‘Genuine is not the point.’ Harrigan could have been talking to a slow child. ‘It’s what’s waiting for you when you get out there with her.’

‘She’s just a girl. I can deal with it,’ Grace said, keeping her reciprocal outrage under wraps as best she could.

‘Boss,’ Trevor intervened, ‘why don’t we wait and see what she’s got for us? If Gracie’s out with her she’s got to be careful, but she should be able to handle it. That’s what she’s paid to do. We’ll have backup out there for her.’

Harrigan glanced at him angrily before looking through the one-way glass once again.

‘The air in there — how can you breathe it?’ he said to Grace, who did not reply.

Both of them watched him calm down. On the other side of the one-way eye, the girl watched without seeing them, her face expressionless, like a rabbit sitting blankly in a set of car lights. Grace looked once and looked away.

‘Get her some coffee and let’s get on with it,’ Harrigan finally said.

The coffee was sent for. Gina sipped it and lit yet another cigarette.

‘Has your boss made up his mind? Or are you going to back out on me?’

‘No, we’ve still got a bargain, Gina,’ Grace said. ‘And you’ve still got things to tell us. It could be worth a lot of money to you.’

Gina grinned in reply, a thin and bitter smile.

‘Yeah. I guess. Something to look forward to, isn’t it? But this has got to be worth something. Because we were there. The morning that shooting happened. In that little shop? It’s just a place people go, we’d been there all night. Me and Mike in that shitty little room. It was so fucking cold. He’d had a hit and he got sick, but I guess you noticed that when you went in there.’ She sipped more coffee and drew on her cigarette. ‘It was getting light and I wanted us to get out of there but I couldn’t shift him. Then I heard someone coming in the back way and down that hallway. And I thought, we’re getting out of here now if there’s someone else around. I got Mike on his feet and out the back somehow, I don’t know how, and I sort of had him leaning in this doorway at the back of the warehouse there. I saw there was this car there and I thought, good, we’re going to take that. Then I heard these shots. These really loud cracks, you know, one after the other. I couldn’t believe it, I was so shit scared. It was like Mike just woke up, right then. We were standing in this little doorway staring at each other. And she came out the back. Running. She had this gun. I was just staring. Then she tripped, you know? She fell and this gun, she dropped it and it went skidding somewhere, I don’t know where. I didn’t see where it ended up. I thought it went in a drain or something.