Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

I’m sorry, Grace, I didn’t want to have to rush off like this. Do you want to see me tonight?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘we can go out to dinner.’

‘I’ll call you, okay? We didn’t even talk about what job you wanted.’

‘Don’t worry about that now, I’ll talk to you this afternoon. You are going to be there?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be there. Even if everyone does hate me now.’

He kissed her once and was gone, like a disappearing act.

Grace sat at the table in a room which had become quiet and still.

She fought the urge to light an early morning cigarette while she drank her cooling coffee. She reached into her bag and took out a letter offering her a placement in the intelligence task force attached to the Attorney-General’s Department, hand-delivered to her at the front desk in the chaotic aftermath of Paul’s announcement yesterday. It was a position she had applied for months ago and she had long since given up any hope that they would hire her. Suck it and see, who knew what it would lead to. At least it would take her out of the reach of the Tooth. In the meantime, there was Paul. Are we always going to be like this, Harrigan? You wanting to run in and out of my life when the job lets you? She stopped herself from arriving at any expectations. The same, strange lightness she had felt yesterday after the siege took hold of her. I am still here, I am still alive. She would take everything just for what it was. The present time, and the quality of the light outside, had never seemed more bright, more intense to her than now.

Grace’s shirt tore across Harrigan’s shoulders as soon as he reached forward to put his keys in the ignition and he had to spend most of the morning wearing his jacket. His new administrative assistant proved her worth by going out and buying him a wearable replacement at the first opportunity with no questions asked, only a sideways glance as she delivered it to him.

He had need of it. Just before lunch, he was asked to attend a meeting with the Assistant Commissioner and a range of other notables, including two crew-cut Americans wearing plain dark suits and thin ties who looked like nothing so much as religious proselytisers.

They were accompanied by a plainly dressed woman from a national security agency and introduced themselves as ‘the American cousins from the Embassy’. Harrigan reflected that his entree to this meeting had been bought at the cost of shafting everyone on his team who had trusted him. The meeting began with one of the Americans tabling an extradition order for the Preacher Graeme Fredericksen as a material witness to the murder of Dr Laura Di-Cuollo. It had been received yesterday, they said.

Harrigan looked it over as it was passed to him. ‘You may be a little late,’ he commented.

‘We’re aware of that, Commander,’ one of the Americans said.

‘Your shooter has done our job for us.’

Harrigan perceived that the use of the word ‘Commander’ had the intent of flattering his ego. The implication behind this supposed compliment insulted him.

‘The issue here is the Avenging Angels.’ The woman from the security agency spoke up. ‘We have been concerned they may be attempting to establish themselves here. That seems unlikely now, given the course of events, but, as you’ll appreciate, we need to be certain.’

‘Have been concerned?’ Harrigan queried.

‘Yes,’ the other American said, ‘we’ve been watching Fredericksen for some time now. Unfortunately — and we regret this — we were unable to anticipate the present outcome. But we have to say, Commander, we’ve been very impressed with the professionalism of your investigation. You’ve got some very good people there.’

Had some very good people there. He did not reply to this.

‘A pity we didn’t join forces before today. We might have had one less death on our hands,’ he said instead in his neutral voice, referring — at least in his own mind — to Professor Henry Liu rather than the preacher.

‘We understand your feelings on this point,’ the first American replied, ‘but you do have to understand that these are very dangerous people we’re dealing with here. We were unable to say or do anything that might jeopardise our own investigations in any way.’

Harrigan did not feel the need to respond.

The man continued: ‘Unfortunately, we weren’t able to exactly determine Fredericksen’s relationship to the Angels’ inner circle prior to his decease. We know he was pretty close but we don’t know how close. We were hoping he could name us some names. I guess we won’t be able to ask him now.’

‘No.’ Harrigan’s reply was untouched by any regret for the preacher’s fate. ‘Was he paid for Dr Liu?’

The agency woman received the question with the same neutrality with which it had been asked.

‘Yes, he was. His financial transactions were paid through a merchant bank in LA, by means of a proxy.’

‘We have that individual in custody now,’ the first American added.

‘He’s helping us with our inquiries, as you put it over here.’

‘Who was bankrolling this, as a matter of interest?’ Harrigan asked.

‘There are a variety of sources we’ve tracked down,’ the man prevaricated. ‘A small-arms manufacturer in California left a certain sum of money to another possible suspect we have in our sights. There are other benefactors as well.’

‘My concern is that the Angels don’t get a foothold here,’ the woman said. ‘We can’t be complacent in assuming they haven’t, irregardless of this turn of events. There are avenues we have to examine. We think it’s best we do this now, while they’re likely to be uncoordinated and may be considering going on the run.’

Harrigan took this to mean that they probably had established themselves in some way and that they might even have escaped from beneath the national security organisation’s net of surveillance.

‘I take it you’d like us to wind up our current investigation ASAP?’

he asked.

‘If you would. We’ll pick up that angle of the investigation from here,’ the woman said briskly. ‘If you can charge this young girl you’ve got in custody without referring to this particular organisation, then we’d like that to end your involvement in the matter. We’ll need to interview her but as we understand it, she knew nothing about their existence. Is that the case?’

‘Yes, that’s quite right,’ he replied. ‘She had no knowledge of that particular connection. She was acting from purely personal motives.’

‘We thought not.’ The second American spoke with a hint of contempt. ‘She was the patsy.’

‘I don’t think I’d quite describe her as that,’ Harrigan said.

‘We can rely on your confidence in this matter, Commander? And that of your people?’ the first American asked.

‘Of course.’ He smiled.

The meeting ended shortly afterwards, everyone unfailingly polite to one another to the end.

After the meeting, Harrigan went back to his old office to talk to everyone as he had promised he would. When he arrived, much of it had already been cleared out and it had the look of the abandoned territory it had become. There was the sense of a pervasive, collective hangover. Both Ian and Trevor were quiet, barely greeting him. They were in the incident room, stripping the images from the corkboard.

Harrigan watched as Matthew and Henry Liu, Greg Smith and the Firewall’s website disappeared into the shredder and were then emptied into the classified waste bag. Everything that had once cushioned him in this job was finishing, the more so when he spoke to them in his old office to tell them they had been warned off any further work on the Avenging Angels. They listened with an expected cynicism.