Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

Standing back and out of sight, she looked into the narrow lane at the cold, steadying rain that came out of a steel grey sky. There was no one there to see her as it came down harder, blown into the loading dock by a strong, cold wind. It seeped through her coat but she felt no discomfort. Her body was impermeable, light and clean. Her throat no longer hurt. She felt a sense of loosening, an expectation of release.

She stepped forward a little and saw a car parked further along the narrow laneway near the back entrance to a discount clothing store. ‘I want to die in the open air. I hope I do,’ she said to herself. A young woman came sprinting through the rain towards the car. Lucy reached the woman just as she had unlocked the car door, she pressed her gun into the woman’s ribs.

‘Don’t say anything,’ she said. ‘Don’t call for help. Just take me where I want to go and you’ll be fine.’

The woman looked at her, recognised her and did as she was told.

They got into the car. Terrified, the woman drove where Lucy directed her: to the New Life Ministries at Camperdown. The sky turned from black to green and there was the sound of thunder. Hailstones the size of cricket balls began to crash down, reducing the visibility to almost nothing.

‘My car,’ the woman gasped when the hail smashed onto the bonnet and cracked the windshield.

‘Keep driving,’ Lucy said. ‘Go faster. Now.’

They came skidding dangerously down the hill towards the Temple.

Lucy told the woman to drive up off the road towards the back of the theatre until she was as close to the back door as possible. She already had her key in her hand. They bounced over the uneven ground of the demolition site and slewed to a stop almost at the door, the tyres torn and useless. Lucy did not speak as she left the car. She was inside the building almost before the woman realised she had gone. While she sat at the wheel, too shocked to move, her car was suddenly surrounded by people.

The door opened.

‘We’re police,’ someone said, ‘come with us. Please don’t be frightened.’

Dazed, the young woman was taken by the arm, pulled out of the car and hurried away. Two officers had raced towards the back door of the Temple after Lucy but they were too late. She had slammed the door and dead-locked it. They were all left outside in the weather while the hail continued to come down around them. Just as quickly, they ran for cover.

Harrigan walked into the office, feeling barely fed after having lost his appetite ten minutes into his meeting with (as it turned out) both the Commissioner and an Assistant Commissioner. He was wondering how to handle what he had to do next when, almost simultaneously, his mobile rang and he was stopped by Trevor. Around him, the office was full of racket and movement.

‘We’ve got her. She’s at the Temple. I think we’ve got a siege on our hands,’ Trevor was saying.

Harrigan gestured him to quiet and took the call. It was his surveillance team at the Temple. He told them to cordon off the area and call in the local patrol. He then rang the Tooth immediately. He needed bodies down there, he said, and the place sealed off immediately. Marvin was amenable, but he had no choice.

‘I’d better be able to rely on that, mate,’ Harrigan said, in a dangerous tone.

‘You can,’ Marvin replied. They both hung up on each other.

‘Everyone, quiet. We’ve got work to do,’ Harrigan called to the room, desperately pleased to have a perfect excuse to avoid telling them what he otherwise had to say. ‘We take this step by step. I need you all to stay on now, no one goes home. Ian and Trev, I’ll want you in my office to work out what we need to — Whose phone is that?

Grace. Make it quick.’

Grace went to her desk and answered her phone. ‘Grace Riordan.’

‘Is that you, Grace? Since you wouldn’t tell me what your last name was yesterday. Is that who you are? Are you the woman who talked to me yesterday?’

‘Yes, this is me. What would you like me to call you — Lucy or the Firewall? What do you like better?’ Grace replied, turning on her speakerphone and broadcasting to the room. Harrigan walked towards her desk in the now silent office.

‘You can call me Lucy. How are you, Grace?’

‘I’m good, Lucy. Where are you now?’

‘Don’t you know that? I’m at the Temple. I thought you’d be the first people to find that out.’

‘What are you doing there, Lucy? Did you want to see someone there?’

‘I’ve come to see Graeme. You see, Graeme came and saw me last night and he told me I could have a whole new life. A whole new life.

So I’ve come to talk to him about it. Haven’t I, Graeme?’

In the bleak auditorium, Lucy looked at the preacher who sat, white-faced, angry and frightened both, in front of a small crowd of people pushed up against the side wall and huddling together on the floor. Bronwyn, a woman with her small son, an old man and his wife, some few others who had come out even in this terrible weather. The plastic seats had been upended and tossed aside. The hail, which had crashed so loudly on the old roof that it was hard to hear anyone speak, had ceased although the rain continued to come down.

‘Yeah,’ Lucy said, ‘it’s him and me and there are about seven other people here as well. We’re all in here together. They can’t get out because all the doors are locked. And you can’t get in for the same reason. You see, Graeme likes the doors locked. He always keeps them locked. But I thought we could let you in, if you wanted to come in. I thought you might like to come down here and talk to me.’

‘Why do you want me to do that, Lucy?’ Grace said, sitting down.

Harrigan sat opposite, watching her as they all listened.

‘I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you with everyone listening!’

Grace glanced at Harrigan who nodded.

‘I can come down there and I can talk to you. That’s no problem.

If we come now, I can talk to you as soon as we get there.’

‘No, let me tell you what I want, Grace. I want to see what you look like. I want to know who you are. I have to look at you, I have to talk to you face to face. So I want you in here looking at me. Looking at me and fixed up for sound.’

Harrigan was shaking his head.

‘Okay, Lucy, we’re coming down. You wait for us there.’

‘No, Grace, you’re not listening to me. I am sick of people fucking lying to me,’ Lucy screamed across the office. ‘When you come here, you’re coming inside to see me and you are going to talk to me. I am telling you something. I have a gun with fifteen bullets in it. Now that’s one for everybody here, one for me, and six left over. Now you are coming in here. Because I have put everything on the line to talk to you.

You are coming in. And you’re going to tell me that you are in ten seconds from now or I am going to start shooting people. You listen to me. I am counting as of now. One. Two. Three. Four. Five … ’

Harrigan gave Grace the faintest of nods.

‘I’ll be there, Lucy. I’ll come in and I’ll talk to you.’

‘You will?’

‘Yes, I will.’ Harrigan leaned his chin on his hands.

‘But you have to promise me you won’t shoot anyone. Will you do that?’

‘As long as they don’t move, or try and do anything silly, they’ll be fine,’ Lucy said. ‘And is that a promise from you that you’ll be here?’

‘Yes, it’s a promise from me,’ Grace replied. ‘So who is there with you, Lucy?’

‘There’s Bronwyn. And Graeme. He’s really pleased to be here, I can see it in his face. There’s this woman and her kid. Lucky kid.

There’s an old lady who doesn’t know what day it is and her husband who looks after her and his sister who looks after him. And there’s this other white-faced guy who’s always here. That’s all.’