The Tattooed Man (16 page)

‘This is the most vulnerable entrance,’ Sam said. ‘On week days, it stays open to the outside world for varying lengths of time. On weekends, it’s usually closed up and unstaffed. But if there were any attempts to break in through here, these internal doors would shut and lock immediately, isolating any intruders.’

‘What about breaking out?’ Harrigan asked.

Sam laughed. ‘No chance. Once you’re in here, you can’t get out without all the right passwords.’

A short corridor immediately behind them continued in a curve towards an unknown destination.

‘What’s down there?’ Harrigan asked.

‘That leads past the door to the main air conditioning unit to the animal house,’ Sam said. ‘We can’t go in there either, it’s quarantined. But I have been in once. That was an experience. It was vile, smelt of piss and fear. Everything in there is as good as dead. Their end point is to disappear up the smokestacks as environmentally friendly waste.

‘You know a funny thing about those monkeys in there?’

‘What?’

‘When I saw them, they were completely passive. They didn’t move. They just sat there waiting. They know what’s going to happen to them. So they deal with it by going dead. There’s nothing else they can do.’

‘You wouldn’t be like that, surely?’ he asked.

‘No way. You should always go down fighting whoever you’re up against. But you’ve got to think like that if you’re in this business.’

It was an argument Harrigan had heard often enough in his job: the police were the thin blue line keeping back the forces of darkness. Often, it didn’t matter how you did it.

‘I’ve always seen it more in terms of protecting people,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it the same thing? I bet it’s not for you, is it? You haven’t had your mind changed about that point of view yet. But you must get pretty bleak about your work at times. Who do you protect, really?’

‘As many people as I can.’

‘Bullshit! People like you never protect anyone.’ She spoke with sudden, unhidden and, it seemed, uncontrollable contempt.

‘You want me to tell your boss you just talked to me like that?’

She drew a breath and stepped back. From the expression on her face she knew she’d gone too far. ‘I get carried away sometimes. Sorry.’

It was a brush-off apology. Harrigan debated whether to push it a little more or let it go. On reflection, he had bigger fish to fry just now than resentful bodyguards.

‘Let’s move on,’ he said.

They continued down another corridor. ‘There are no windows here,’ he said.

‘No. There’s no source of external light in this sector except in Elena’s office.’ Sam stopped outside another set of doors.

‘You’re about to meet her. Best behaviour now.’

She led him into a large, well-equipped laboratory. At one of the benches in the centre of the wide white room, a slender woman in a red suit was standing talking to a man with a ruined face. Another taller and more strongly built man stood directly behind her. Numbers of people were busy working throughout the room. There was a hum of activity. When Harrigan walked up with Sam, the woman in red turned to smile at him.

‘Commander Paul Harrigan, Elena,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve just taken him on a tour of the building. We went through the security features like you asked.’ Then she stepped out of the way, quietly withdrawing herself.

‘Commander Harrigan. I’m very pleased to meet you. I’m Dr Elena Calvo.’

They shook hands. Her touch was firm, her skin cool. She appeared younger than her photographs and spoke with a faint accent, attractive to hear. Her face was handsome, her hair cut into a soft, curled style.

‘Pleased to meet you too, Dr Calvo,’ he replied. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m pleased to put a face to the name.’

‘Call me Elena. We prefer informality here, I like people to feel at ease. Let me introduce you to a very good friend of mine and the head of our signature project here at LPS. Everything you see around you in this laboratory is dedicated to burns research, and
the success of this work is attributable to its director. Dr Daniel Brinsmead.’

Calling on a career of meeting the atrocious without betraying a thought, Harrigan extended his hand. He didn’t recall seeing a face more badly scarred than Daniel Brinsmead’s. His features were slashed across with broad scarlet and pallid markings. He had no hair or eyebrows, his ears were stubs, and the skin on his neck was as damaged as his face. Sharp blue eyes like chips of shining porcelain looked directly at Harrigan. His right hand grip was strong. His left hand, its fingers reduced to stubs, was encased in a fingerless glove. Under his lab coat he wore a light white suit. Harrigan saw a badge, gold-plated like his own, pinned to Brinsmead’s lapel.

‘How do you do,’ the man said. His voice was strange, damaged, almost a whisper. ‘You see in front of you the motivation for this research. I hope you don’t find it too shocking.’

‘I see a lot in my work, Dr Brinsmead. It’s not a problem.’

‘Good.’

In his mask-like face, his sharp eyes were sizing Harrigan up, much as he might have examined cells through a microscope.

‘I’ve asked Daniel to explain to you what he’s doing here,’ Elena said. ‘It will help you understand why I’ve worked so hard to establish this place.’

‘You’re here, Commander, because of my face and body,’ Brinsmead said. ‘My skin is my project. I’m looking to see if the human body can be regenerated after burns of even greater magnitude than I have.’

‘I wouldn’t have said yours were trivial,’ Harrigan replied.

‘There are people worse off than I am. After my face, it’s mostly the left side of my body and my torso that’s been affected, and I’ve been repaired to some degree by skin grafts. Other people need virtually new skins. There are other effects which aren’t always immediately apparent. Nerve damage, constant pain and, paradoxically, loss of sensitivity as well. Let me take you through what we do in this big room.’

If Harrigan hadn’t had so much on his mind, the details of Brinsmead’s explanation would have fascinated him. One thing he did notice: from the way Brinsmead spoke and the response of the people working for him, he was a driving force here regardless of his injuries. He led them to a computer where he displayed a detailed transparency on the monitor.

‘Let me introduce myself to you again. I’m here in more than one way. This is a piece of my burnt body magnified. It’s been taken from the dermis, the under layer of skin, which doesn’t regenerate after severe burns. In this laboratory my researchers dissect me, even if they do it by biopsy. I’ve set this project up so I don’t have to be here for it to work. They have bits of me to use in my place. They’ve charted my skin, my injuries, my DNA.’

‘You may not be aware, Commander,’ Elena said, ‘that everything Daniel is achieving here is in the public domain. Millions of people stand to benefit from his work. I’m very proud we have it under our aegis.’

Glancing past Brinsmead, Harrigan saw Sam Jonas two steps behind, watching them closely, taking in every word, every nuance. Between her and Elena, he saw Elena’s second bodyguard, a man in his mid-thirties who had not been introduced.
Why in a building as secure as this should Elena feel the need for two bodyguards? All of them seemed to be positioned as if they were taking their places for some obscure dance, the outcome of which he could not foresee.

‘You’re interested in investing in LPS, Commander?’ Brinsmead was asking him.

‘I’ve been considering it,’ he replied.

‘I’m sure Elena will give you a very thorough introduction as to what you’re putting your money into. Are you expecting good returns?’

‘I’d call that putting the cart before the horse.’

‘No one invests without a hope of return. You must have thought about it.’

‘I’d consider everything here to be a long-term investment,’ Harrigan replied.

‘This project certainly is,’ Brinsmead said in his whispered voice. ‘I’ve set it up so that anyone properly qualified could take it over if something happened to me. It could even be shifted to a new laboratory if need be.’

‘No one else would have your driving force,’ Elena said. ‘What would make you leave something you’ve put so much work into, at such a personal cost?’

‘Something none of us could foresee, Elena. Call it an attempt at insurance against unexpected blows of fate.’

Harrigan couldn’t work out if this was sarcastic or a warning. He felt there was a barb in the words and assumed Elena had as well. Given the way he looked, Brinsmead must have had some knowledge of unexpected blows of fate.

‘Why don’t we take the commander up to the roof? He can see what he’s buying into,’ Brinsmead said.

‘I had planned to do that. Now seems to be a good time.’

‘I’ll get rid of my coat,’ Brinsmead said.

Harrigan watched him walk into his glassed-in office near the main door and hang up his lab coat. His actions were slow and awkward, the movements of someone who dealt with pain as a matter of course. His office, on display to the room, was painstakingly ordered and plain without any hint of personal decoration. Outlined in the glass with the lights on him, his marked face seemed stripped to its essentials. There was nothing to cushion the impress of the bone beneath his damaged skin; everything had been burnt away. Harrigan was suddenly aware of Elena, standing close by. She was also watching Brinsmead, her face expressionless, almost cold. Throughout the tour of the laboratory, there had seemed no warmth or rapport between them.

She turned to see Harrigan watching her. ‘Shall we go?’ she said with an immediate smile.

She led them out of the laboratory into a roomy elevator, where she pressed the button marked Roof. When the doors opened, they stepped out onto a wide viewing platform. Harrigan could see the rest of the industrial estate shimmering in the midmorning heat. The huge metal sheds and cheap brick buildings appeared like toys in the distance.

‘This is the best way to see the building,’ Elena said. ‘As a whole, not disconnected parts. I love this building. I see it as a crystal snake biting its tail. I’ve watched over it ever since it was on the drawing board. Years of hard work have gone into this.’

Seen from the viewing platform, the building resembled a slice taken from a multifaceted diamond where each facet connected into the
next. The garden at the centre was a startling mix of live greens while the interlocking panes of its glass roof formed an arched pattern against the grey walls.

‘Everything inside those walls is cutting edge,’ Elena continued. ‘The waste-disposal systems, sewerage, the air conditioning, water recycling, energy efficiency, everything. Here, we’re researching the regeneration of nerves and skin, the restoration of motor-skill functions, the repair of brain damage. The possibilities are limitless.’

‘You have a very sizeable investment here,’ Harrigan said.

‘You don’t build anything of value without that kind of an investment.’

‘It is a sizeable investment,’ Brinsmead said, at the same time. ‘You could say that any number of people have put their lives into this building, including myself.’

‘I’ve put mine into it,’ Elena said. ‘I was happy to.’

‘This building isn’t just an inanimate object to Elena,’ Brinsmead said to Harrigan. ‘To her, it has the status of a living thing. It means more to her than most other things that are living.’

It was an offensive thing to say about someone standing next to you. Elena moved away without looking back at Brinsmead.

‘It might as well be alive,’ she said. ‘It’s a very complex structure. Its design might almost be said to have given it an intelligence. Planning it was one thing. Standing here seeing it achieved is another. It’s the best thing.’

Questions were in Harrigan’s mind. Attempting to bribe a senior police office might seem trivial when you had something as significant as this at
stake. But why would Elena Calvo risk anything on this scale by involving herself with chancers like Stuart Morrissey, Nattie Edwards and Jerome Beck—people with histories that tainted everything they touched? If their activities did threaten hers, would she be prepared to remove them so cold-bloodedly? If her focus was the regeneration of the human body, why involve the organisation with crop research?

‘Can I ask why you came to Australia?’ he said. ‘Aren’t we out of the mainstream here?’

‘Don’t undervalue yourselves. The land here is cheap, the country is one of the most stable on earth, there’s an educated workforce. Your government was very welcoming, which also helped. I came here because the doors were open. I feel freer here than I have anywhere else. Location isn’t as important as it used to be. The world is a global village now, communication is instantaneous. We can video conference around the world with ease whenever we need to. Quite a number of people working here have come from other countries; other people will join them. I’ll build this facility up until it’s in the first rank anywhere in the world. Now let’s go downstairs. We have business to discuss.’

Pure steel, he thought. She has a backbone of pure steel. No one runs a business like this without it.

He glanced at Sam. She was silent, watching. Behind her was Elena’s second bodyguard, always in their company. Brinsmead’s strange face drew his gaze in much the same way the dead had when he’d seen them seated at the table at Pittwater. You couldn’t help but be drawn to stare at something so wrecked. Harrigan looked from Brinsmead to Sam
to Elena. There was no way to know what their separate motives towards each other might be. For all he knew, they were three thieves forced together, each planning the other’s death. He followed Elena back into the lift without speaking.

W
hen they were downstairs, on their way to Elena’s office, Brinsmead turned to Harrigan. ‘May I sit in on your meeting with Elena today, Commander?’ he asked. ‘I may be able to answer questions on the scientific side in more detail than she can. If you’re going to invest, I’m sure you’d like to know all sides of the operation.’

‘I asked the commander for a private meeting, Daniel. I don’t think he was expecting your company.’

‘I don’t mind if Dr Brinsmead joins us,’ Harrigan replied, curious to see how this strange dance between the two of them might work out.

Elena seemed to be teetering on the edge of saying that wasn’t going to happen when she changed her mind. ‘Then let’s go in,’ she said.

They entered a spacious office with its own view of the central garden. As well as Elena’s desk, there was a lounge suite in front of a coffee table looking out of the windows at the fernery. The lush growth provided privacy. Someone had placed a folder and laptop on the table.

‘Please sit down,’ Elena said. ‘The lounge is the most comfortable place. Coffee?’

‘Thanks,’ Harrigan said.

‘Not for me,’ Brinsmead said. ‘I can’t taste it.’ It was another barb, one so lightly spoken as to be almost delicate.

Harrigan sat in one of the lounge chairs, sinking into the leather. Brinsmead sat in one of the single chairs. Sam positioned herself near the door, the male bodyguard by the window. Both stood watching intently, silently. The silence became a dead weight. Elena poured coffee from a silver pot into fine white cups with complete calmness. In her high heels, she was taller than Grace. She had slender ankles, well-shaped legs. Harrigan observed all this coolly; she did not attract him. Photographs lined the top of a nearby cabinet. The largest was of an old man, probably in his mid-eighties.

‘My father.’ Elena had followed Harrigan’s line of sight. ‘Jean Calvo. He’s still very much in charge of his own business affairs, his mind is very active. I’m sure you’ve noticed how much older he is than I am. He was in his fifties when he married. My mother was only in her twenties. They weren’t a happy couple. She left when I was six. I hardly saw her after that.’

She handed him his coffee. Harrigan wondered why she’d want to introduce this kind of personal history into a meeting with a stranger like himself. Perhaps she thought she was softening him up.

‘I’ve met Jean a number of times,’ Brinsmead said. ‘He holds on to everything he has very tightly indeed. I don’t think I’ve met anybody with a stronger grip.’

‘I have a strong one myself,’ Elena said, almost offhandedly. ‘My father learned his strengths the hard way. Let me tell you his story, I think it’s significant. At the end of World War Two, my
father was a displaced person, stateless. All I know about his war years is that he worked in a forced labour camp where most other people died. He refused to die. He survived by obliterating the first years of his life from his mind. He still won’t tell me where he was born. All I know is it was somewhere in Eastern Europe. Even his name isn’t his own. He took it from a list of the dead in a displaced persons camp one day. He said it would do for him. He built everything we have from nothing.’

‘Very successfully,’ Harrigan felt obliged to say.

‘It gave me an isolated childhood, one full of threats of abduction. I’ve lived with bodyguards all my life. I’ve learnt how to deal with it.’

Harrigan looked at another picture showing Elena with a man much closer to her own age. Both were smiling.

‘That’s me as I used to be,’ Brinsmead said. ‘I met Elena at a research institute in London five years ago. She was in management, I was in research. We know each other very well.’

‘We do,’ she said, an indefinable edge to her voice. ‘That’s how I knew Daniel was the right man to run our signature project. Not because of his terrible experiences but because of his skills. He has a lot of talent to bring to bear here.’

‘As soon as I heard Elena was setting up here, I asked her for the chance to be involved and she gave it to me. It was the opportunity of my lifetime.’

‘I like to be generous.’

Harrigan found himself wondering if she’d had the option to say no. Brinsmead was speaking directly to Harrigan and didn’t see the look Elena gave him. It was a strange mixture of emotional pain, distrust and deep anger. Old love gone bad.

In his photograph, Daniel Brinsmead was good-looking, fashionably dressed, the top few buttons of his shirt open. Around his neck he wore a square gold locket. Someone who could play the field, promise possibilities they could forget as soon as they started talking to the next woman in line. Elena Calvo could be vulnerable to someone like that. But why continue with a connection that seemed to have lost any mutual affection, even descended to a mutual antagonism? Maybe she was ruthless. If he was the best, then she wanted him regardless of what it cost her personally.

Elena had sat down and was sipping her coffee. She sat close enough to Harrigan to assume some kind of mutual purpose. She was a very attractive woman. He was glad he had no interest in her to complicate things.

‘What I’ve shown you is only one side of what we do here,’ she said. ‘We have a lot to offer besides our research program. Security is very important to us. I’m always interested to meet people like yourself who are specialists in that field.’

‘Why is security so important here?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Mainly because of industrial espionage. Our intellectual property is our most significant and valuable asset. We have to protect that investment.’

‘How does your company actually work?

‘You can call me a facilitator. Life Patent Strategies manages the patents on a very large body of genetic information, which my father and a number of other business people have purchased over the years, mainly in Europe and America but also here.’

‘They’re called the Abaris Group,’ Brinsmead interrupted. ‘You should tell the commander about them, Elena.’

‘We don’t usually discuss Abaris,’ she said, without taking her eyes off Harrigan.

‘Abaris are influential, Commander. They’re a small and exclusive club that you have to be invited to join. The group has investors from all over the world and includes some very well-known entrepreneurs and several ex-politicians. It’s very wealthy all told.’

‘Are you a member?’ Harrigan asked Elena.

‘She will be when her father dies.’ Brinsmead continued to speak for Elena. ‘He was the founder of the group. She’ll take over from him.’

‘It’s a cooperative,’ she said quietly. ‘I would have to be accepted by the other members.’

‘Why the name?’ Harrigan asked.

‘In Greek mythology, Abaris was a priest of Apollo,’ Brinsmead said. ‘He had special powers of invisibility and flight and also the power to cure diseases. Curing diseases is what LPS is about. This corporation is an offshoot of Abaris—its child, if you like. Elena is running it for them.’

‘Abaris is a financial group that has been very strategic in its purchases,’ Elena said in a cool voice. ‘It has focused throughout on the regenerative capacities of the human body. Buying patents is only part of the story. Patents are mainly nationally based and they expire after certain periods of time. Abaris has put considerable funds into researching the potential application of its patented gene sequences. As a consequence, it has built up a very substantial body of intellectual property. What my company does is offer other scientific research groups the opportunity to come here and develop the possibilities of that knowledge. We license access to our intellectual property while retaining ultimate ownership of any of the results of the research. Say
if a vaccine were produced, we would market it and the profits would be ours. The glory and a very generous percentage of the royalties would belong to the research team.’

‘So no one here actually works for you,’ Harrigan said.

‘I do have my own in-house scientific staff. They have their own program. Daniel’s project is an example of that. But I built this facility mainly to accommodate people who aren’t employed by me. These research teams are bound by contracts. These contracts specify a certain ongoing amount payable for access to our intellectual property and, of course, our facilities, which, as I’ve said, are state of the art. I work very hard to make sure that all facilities available here continue to be of the highest standard.’

‘There’s something you should know about those contracts, Commander,’ Brinsmead said. ‘They’re a binding legal agreement on the product to be provided and contain a scientific specification of the work to be carried out. Imbedded in that information is also a record of the ownership of the genetic patent rights and the intellectual property. Every contract that Abaris has written has that ownership information. If you have the contract, then you have that information as well. It’s Abaris’s way of protecting its intellectual property rights and its profits. I’m the only researcher in this building who isn’t bound by one of those contracts.’

Elena had been about to take a mouthful of coffee. She turned to look at Brinsmead as he spoke, blinking a little, frozen in that pose, cup in hand.

‘Would you have an example of one of these contracts?’ Harrigan asked Elena.

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. I wouldn’t see it as relevant to our discussion,’ she said with a smile.

‘The people you contract in do your work for you. But you don’t pay them, they pay you.’

‘The original investment was ours. Unless people want to wait for our patents to expire and then do our research all over again, and, of course, pay for it again, this is the best way for them to access the knowledge we’ve already gained. It’s a legitimate enterprise. I have a waiting list of people who want to apply here. We can do a great deal of good.’

‘All owned by you, except for Dr Brinsmead’s project, which is in the public domain?’

‘Yes, that’s the exception. Daniel and I came to that agreement mainly because it was such a personal matter for him. Now, Commander, I have a question for you. You asked for Daniel to be here to answer your questions. But our discussion is about to focus on your interests. Would you prefer him to leave or stay?’

‘What can you have to say to the commander that I couldn’t hear?’ Brinsmead asked.

‘That’s his decision,’ she replied.

Harrigan decided the time had come to oblige. ‘I would prefer a one-on-one meeting, yes.’

Brinsmead looked from Elena to Harrigan. Snookered.

‘All right.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll pack up my tent and disappear into the sunset. Nice to meet you, Commander. I’m sure Elena will make you the offer of a lifetime. I’ll be in the lab if anyone wants me.’

He walked out without looking back. Harrigan watched Elena watch him leave. Just as it had been earlier, her face was expressionless, unforgiving. She turned to Harrigan. Again, her smile appeared at once.

‘I always keep a bodyguard with me but today I’m going to be different,’ she said. ‘I’m going to
trust you. Sam, that will do for now. I’ll call you when I need you. Thank you.’

‘If that’s what you want, Elena, I’m on my way,’ Sam said. She glanced once at Harrigan and walked out.

‘Damien, if you could wait in the inner room.’

‘Sam is very professional,’ Harrigan said as soon as the door had closed and they were alone.

Elena seemed surprised. ‘I would hope so. All my staff are professional. Why do you say that?’

‘I wondered where you found her.’

‘There’s no secret to that. She came from a security agency my father and I have used for many years.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Why do you want to know? Are you considering offering her a job?’

‘Like you, I’m always on the lookout for good people, Dr Calvo.’

‘Please call me Elena. Sam was a policewoman once, but that was some years ago. She came from Griffin Enterprises. I was lucky to find her. I was very much in need of someone at the time and her skills are rare. You can ask her if she wants to change jobs but I don’t think your wages will match mine.’

‘May I ask why you need someone with Sam’s skills on your staff?’

‘I’ve received any number of threats in my life. Threats of abduction and murder. Threats from animal rights activists. I need someone to keep a discreet eye on the people who threaten me. Better than waiting for it to happen.’

‘Very wise,’ Harrigan said.

Elena smiled.

‘There’s another matter we need to discuss now, which is actually to do with your murder inquiry.
Like everyone, I’ve seen the photographs of the victims at Pittwater. It’s a tragedy. Julian was a very troubled but gifted young man. I was ready to offer him a job. He had skills that could have been developed. I didn’t have the chance.’

A little unwillingly, Harrigan had to accept that her grief seemed sincere.

‘But what you really need to know,’ she continued, ‘is that I recognised the fourth victim, the one you haven’t officially identified. His name is Jerome Beck.’

‘Is there a reason you didn’t ring the hotline with this information?’ Harrigan asked.

‘I wanted to tell you in person. Jerome used to work here. Unfortunately, he’s not someone many people would choose to associate with.’

‘But you knew him. How did you meet him?’

‘He was an administrator in a research facility I was managing in London a number of years ago. The same place I met Daniel. Jerome tried to harass me late one night in the car park. He was drunk. Not long after I came here, he contacted me and said he’d come to Australia as well. Could I employ him? At the time, we needed someone very badly and I hired him on a short-term contract because he had the necessary experience. I soon realised he was an alcoholic and I had to dismiss him. After that, he started to make abusive phone calls. I asked Sam to watch him. She discovered he kept company with known criminals. In fact, at one time, he attempted to have one admitted to this facility.’

‘Do you know who this known criminal was?’

‘One of the other victims, Michael Cassatt. At the time, we were completely unaware of who he was. It was a great shock to me.’

‘We need to interview Sam if she’s been tailing them.’