Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

‘Yeah. She had you on a tightrope. She had us all dancing around.’

‘All she wanted to know was who she should shoot now. Because that was the only thing she had left to do. So what are we doing here?

Have we solved anything? We’re just playing some kind of game along with her.’

‘Right first time, Grace. When you get to this point, it is a game and it’s called survival. And you survived. Go and get debriefed. You need to.’

She let it go and he walked away.

‘Do you always talk to him like that?’ Astounded, Trevor dropped his own cigarette butt on the road beside Grace’s small litter. ‘No one else would fucking dare! You must be sleeping with him, Gracie.’

‘No, I’m not. All we ever do is talk,’ she said, watching Harrigan as he went up the steps back into the hall.

The day was not over yet. After the morning’s proceedings had been wrapped up and he had allowed himself the luxury of a shower and a change of clothes, Harrigan stood at the front of the incident room watching it fill. He saw Grace slip in the door almost last of all, fresh out of her debriefing. People turned to speak to her, to shake her hand. She smiled awkwardly in reply. There was still a buzz from the morning; people did not seem to notice (or perhaps they had, what could he know) that both Trevor and Ian were standing quiet and withdrawn at the back of the room. Harrigan had talked to them a little earlier. He called for quiet just after Dea had walked into the room.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘it’s been a very long day. For some of you it’s been a very long thirty-six hours and more and all you want to do is go home. So I’ll be quick. I’ll say first, briefly — probably too briefly

— you were brave today, Grace, very brave. Everyone here thinks so.

I don’t want you to think it hasn’t been noticed.’

There was some applause, she said ‘Thanks’ in her clear voice. He continued.

‘I’m telling you this now because I don’t want you to hear it from anyone else. We might even get bumped to second stop on the news.

One of the area commanders was asked to step down last night. He’s now got a date with the Police Integrity Commission and no one’s expecting him back. I won’t tell you who it is, you’ll hear soon enough; it’s not Marvin, I’ve got to say. As a result, there’s been a reshuffle up top and while I was the last person to expect this because it’s a jump up the ladder for me, I’ve been asked to stand in as the Homicide and Violent Crime Agency Commander as of nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’

There was a ripple of surprise throughout the room. He saw them watching him intently.

‘Now, as you know, we’ve never fitted into the new structure, we’re a glitch from times gone by. It seems Marvin doesn’t like us being too independent on his patch. So I have to tell you — with me going, we’re finished. This unit is disbanded as of now.’

There was a shocked and stony silence.

‘Just like that? Is that it?’ Louise’s rough voice was the first to sound in the room. ‘This job is the only thing that’s keeping me going.’

‘No one’s losing their job. No one. If you want to, there are redundancies on offer. But there’ll be jobs in the agencies or the local commands for you all. Whatever we can work out, there will be jobs and they’ll be ones that you want to have.’ Again there was silence. When he spoke again, he felt he was pleading with them. ‘I told them this was a waste. I said, this is a good team, look at the results. They wouldn’t listen to me. They’d made their minds up before I walked in the room.’

‘You didn’t have to take that job on, Harrigan,’ Trevor called out.

‘You could have said no.’

‘I wasn’t going to do that, mate. There’s no point in me pretending I would.’

‘Don’t call me mate, mate,’ Trevor said to himself.

‘Now, Trev and Ian are going to take this case over to the Agency, to finish it off. I’m not leaving it with Marvin, I got that much out of them. And I’ll be here tomorrow afternoon to talk placements with you all. Does anyone have any questions?’

He waited in the silence. They looked at him but no one spoke.

‘So for all the work we’ve done, Harrigan, for you, for everyone,’

Ian called out, ‘all that happens now is we get shafted. And you let them do it.’

‘There was nothing I could do to stop them. Nothing.’

Again there was silence.

‘If you want to come down to the Maryborough now, I’ll buy you all a drink as a farewell,’ he said.

It was too late, they were leaving anyway, without speaking to him or even looking at him. They walked out in ones and twos, heading for the elevators. All he could do was go and sit in his office and watch them leave. Where Grace had gone, he did not know.

Trevor and Ian appeared, putting on their jackets. Harrigan went out to them.

‘Where’s Grace?’ he asked Ian.

‘How should I know? I thought if anyone would know that, you would,’ Ian replied.

‘There’s no need for this,’ Harrigan said almost angrily as they moved past him. ‘When you’re in the Agency, you can both look for promotions. The prospects will be a lot better for you there. I’ll make sure they are.’

‘Yeah?’ Trevor turned on him and spoke acidly. ‘But they still weren’t going to give me your job, were they? And do I know why?

You fucking bet I do.’

They were gone in the lift with some others.

Dea was among the last to go. He watched her tidy her desk before she left, she was the only one who had. Everyone else had collected their coats and bags and left everything just as it was. Family photos, individual coffee cups, posters, football scarves remained in place. He walked up to her as she was picking up her bag.

‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’

‘I don’t know. Out. The Maryborough, I suppose. Don’t know if they want to see you down there.’ She did not look at him. ‘What happens to me?’

‘I’ll see you get a job, Dea.’

‘Maybe I don’t want one. It might be time to give it away. Might take one of those redundancies you’re tossing around.’

She walked out without looking back or saying goodbye and then there was no one left. Isolation had sucked the air out of the room, he had to get out of there. He picked up his phone and rang Susie, telling her he would be on his way over to see Toby just as soon as possible.

As he spoke, he looked at the vacant office, with its scattered chairs and empty desks, and thought that people asked too much of you sometimes. Shortly afterwards, he was driving in a slow traffic that was picking its way through the storm’s aftermath, on his way to Cotswold House, relieved beyond description to have the day finished with.

Grace was stepping her own way through the chaos of the office, collecting her bag and her coat, glancing at Harrigan’s empty office and asking herself where he would have gone. She had places of her own to go; they did not include the Maryborough where she knew everyone else would be writing themselves off. She drove over to St Vincent’s Hospital, to the intensive care ward where Agnes Liu had been moved out of her goldfish bowl. Her son was with her, as usual. Agnes smiled in a pale sort of way from her mound of pillows when Grace sat down beside the bed.

‘They rang you?’ Grace asked. ‘You do know?’

‘Yes. Your Inspector rang me. A little while ago now,’ Agnes said.

‘Matthew saw it on TV as well. You’ve found her.’

‘Yes, we’ve got her in custody. She’ll probably be there for some time.’

‘Was it her? The girl I told you about?’

‘Yes, it was her.’