Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

When he reached Foveaux, his car lights illuminated an inner city landscape of factory outlets selling cheap clothing and dark shop windows barred up against the street. Racks of clothes, ranged like the outlines of people, disappeared into the shadows. Bright lights surrounded a small crowd of police cars and people near the entrance to a short dog-legged alley several blocks up from Central Station. A few bystanders, derelicts and alcoholics were watching from a distance, dark figures gathered on the edge of the light. At least there were other people on the scene and it wasn’t only Freeman leaning against a car, waiting for Grace to show up. Harrigan parked his car and then introduced himself to the sergeant in charge. From a distance, he looked briefly at the bodies on the other side of the ribbons, before standing aside to wait, having no desire to be involved. Freeman, a big man who was fifty plus, overweight and balding, appeared from out of the crowd.

‘Good morning, mate,’ he said, ‘haven’t seen you for a while.

Thought you’d still be in bed. I was looking for your girl. She must be the careful type if she went and called you up. Unless you were there when I rang. What happened? You get lucky, did you?’

He guffawed and slapped Harrigan on the arm.

‘No, mate, I was home alone,’ Harrigan replied, shaking the man off. ‘But good morning, Jerry, it’s nice to see you too. What do you want her for?’

‘Just a couple of questions, my friend, nothing else. Easy as pie for her. Why not? I hear she’s a good-looking woman. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’

‘I might have a few questions of my own first. What did this girl have to do with you?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Let’s just say her and her boyfriend have been helping us out with our inquiries on a range of matters lately, but they’re not going to be doing that any more, are they? What was she doing for you?’

‘She was our witness. Just by chance. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For her that is, not for us.’

‘Not for that chinkie who got shot? She won’t be singing for you now, mate. Bit of bad luck for you.’

Someone called out to Freeman before Harrigan could reply and he took the opportunity to walk away while the man was distracted.

Grace was later arriving than he had expected. Then a taxi came to a halt on a nearby corner and she got out.

‘What happened to your car?’ he asked, walking up to her.

She was dressed for work, with her hair braided over one shoulder, but her face was clear of its usual pancake.

‘The alternator’s gone, I think. It’s going to be one of those days.’

She glanced towards the flashing blue lights where the incident team was going about its work. ‘That’s where they are — over there?’

‘Yeah. Neither of them look very nice. Are you up to dealing with it?’

‘Yes, I can deal with that. I’ll follow you.’

Under the flicker of the ultraviolet lights and the more distant glare of the street lamps, Gina Farrugia sat against a mossy brick wall on the corner of an alleyway, side by side with her boyfriend and leaning against his shoulder. Patches of bright and dark red covered his yellow T-shirt. Kenneth McMichael had finished his examination and was packing his bag. Harrigan watched the incident team gather like circling sharks while Grace hunched down and looked into Gina Farrugia’s face. Her head drooped forward like a stone carving of wilted flowers, tied about the stem with red string.

‘Don’t quote me just yet but not much more than a few hours at the most for the both of them.’ McMichael was adjusting his dirty coat like a flasher. ‘She was raped beforehand, I’d say, very likely more than once. That looks like ordinary plastic rope to me, the kind you can buy in any supermarket. So I would say her first, then him. I think that was probably the point. He got to watch. There is a question of how long it took. Let’s hope it was quicker than it seems. It’s all over now anyway.’

Harrigan watched him shamble away into the dark, his brown polyester trousers flapping at half mast, and felt a powerful sense of relief that he had not been found like this ten years ago.

‘Dumped, were they?’ he asked a young officer with close-cropped hair and a face like a choir boy.

‘Looks that way. It didn’t happen here and they didn’t walk here afterwards.’ Freeman reappeared, elbowing the choir boy out of the way. ‘This your girl, is it, mate? Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

‘Don’t call me a girl,’ Grace said.

‘No need to be like that. I just want to have a friendly chat. Put a face to the name. Nothing for you to get upset about.’ Freeman studied Grace’s face at his leisure while he got out his notebook. ‘If you want to give me a few details. Where and when you last saw her. What you talked about. That sort of thing.’

‘Jerry,’ Harrigan intervened, ‘we’ve got a tape of all that. You can have a transcript if you want.’

‘What about the tape?’

‘You don’t need that. A transcript’s just as good.’

‘Just let me talk to your girl, mate. Let’s not have any fuss, okay?

Just let me get this out of the way.’

‘Do you mind?’ Harrigan asked Grace.

‘I don’t care. I don’t think we said anything to each other that couldn’t be in the paper today if someone wanted to print it.’

Freeman only grinned.

Harrigan stood by and listened irritably as Freeman tried on Grace all the tricks, traps and travesties of truth that he would have tried if he had been interviewing her. There was no joy in having it known that he had sent one of his people into a minefield where Jerry Freeman was also tramping around. If nothing else, the story made him look a fool in the telling. Finally the man closed his notebook and strolled off, grinning again as he said goodbye. By then, Gina and her boyfriend had been lifted away and the incident team had packed up their wares. All that remained were the patches of slightly darker stains on the wet bitumen and police ribbons flapping in the wind.

Grace stood silent for a few moments, looking at the wall and the dark stains. Out on Foveaux, the small group of watchers stood by for a few moments longer before disappearing into the streetscape.

‘Do you want a coffee?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Where can we get a decent one at this hour? Yes, I would. And a cigarette. I think I must have smoked more in the last week than I usually do in a month.’

‘This isn’t relaxation, Grace, it’s work. We’ve got a few things to talk about. I know a place that makes the best coffee in Sydney and it never closes. You can smoke in there as well. I’ll drive. It’s not far.’

Harrigan was feeling guilty. It was a rare emotion. Protecting his officers’ backs was one thing; concerning himself with their personal feelings was another.

It was an older-style cafe, like a milk bar, long and thin, the air stale, with cardboard boxes stacked beside the back exit. The man behind the counter had his silver and black hair tied back in a ponytail and greeted Harrigan by his first name. He drew on his own cigarette before he put saucers on the counter top.

‘Mind if we use the room?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Sure, mate. I just cleaned it up. Go on through.’

‘Why are we in here?’ Grace asked, leaving her coat on against the cold, looking around at a wood-panelled room hung with photographs of soccer teams. Ashtrays on individual stands had been placed around a small and rickety card table. She sat down. Harrigan turned on a heater and the smell of burning dust competed with the faint sharpish smell of old cigarette smoke. He took off his jacket and sat opposite her.

‘We need the privacy,’ he replied as the coffee arrived. The counterman looked Grace over as he left the room. Harrigan waited while she lit a cigarette and she looked at him expectantly, a little wary.