The Tattooed Man (20 page)

‘You fucking mongrel!’ Harold shouted.

The blast had propelled Harrigan’s assailant sideways. The man tried to scrabble for his firearm
again, only to be driven back by another shotgun blast. He got to his feet and sprinted away, followed by a third blast. Harrigan got to his feet after him. His right hand was useless. He snatched up his gun with his left hand and ran in pursuit. The man was heading for his car. ‘Police! I’ve got backup coming,’ Harrigan shouted.

By the time he reached the far corner of the house, the man had gone into the coral gums at the end of the garden. Harrigan went after him. He heard a car starting and then roaring away. Running forward, he saw a white BMW disappearing down the track towards Harold’s main gate. It didn’t cross the bridge but turned right onto the Creek Road, driving away at high speed. Harrigan sheathed his gun in his holster and ran through the gardens into the house paddock. Harold joined him.

‘I couldn’t shoot straight, mate. My hands were hurting too much. I was worried I was going to get you.’

‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t know what you saved us all from. If I remember rightly, he can get out onto the highway that way, can’t he?’

‘He can, but he must have been here before. That road’s not on the maps. You’d have to know about it.’

Suddenly the car stopped. There was a gap in time. Then Ambrosine’s cottage blossomed in flames into the night. They heard the car drive on. It hadn’t turned on its headlights.

‘You fucking bastard,’ Harold said. ‘If that spreads to the creek, all that vegetation along there will go up.’

‘I’ll call the fire brigade.’

Harrigan’s right hand was beginning to tingle as the nerves came back to life. He ran towards the house to be met by Ambrosine running out of it.

‘My house. Every fucking thing we own. Everything fucking thing the kids had. All my tattooing gear, my books, my machine, my photographs. Jesus, fucking everything.’

The flames from the cottage flared higher, visible for miles. Her children had followed her out. They stood in a straggling line behind her. Harrigan saw a look of deep anger on the older boy’s face.

‘Mum, something’s coming,’ Jen said.

‘It’s the backup I asked for,’ Harrigan said.

Three cars were crossing the bridge in convoy. He saw one turn onto the Creek Lane and speed in the direction of Ambrosine’s cottage. They would take care of the fire one way or another, including calling out the rural fire service. The other cars continued to the farmhouse.

‘Whoop-de-bloody-do,’ Ambrosine said. ‘Too fucking late now. Come on, kids. Inside. Let’s get you out of the way. We’ll think about what we’re going to do next tomorrow. We’ve got nothing now. Just a rust-bucket car and that’s it.’

‘Mum, Harry said that man must have shot Rosie. Why did he do that?’ Jen asked.

‘Not now, sweetheart.’

‘But why?’

‘Baby, I don’t know. It’s too hard for me right now. Because he’s a cunt. Come on.’ She took Little Man by the hand and they disappeared inside the house.

‘Can you take my shotgun, mate?’ Harold said. ‘I’m going to have a look at Rosie.’

‘No worries.’

Harold turned and walked quickly to the end of the house. Harrigan followed. At Rosie’s enclosure, Harold unhooked the gate and squatted down in front of her kennel. She lay on her blanket, shot once through the head.

‘At least it was quick,’ he said.

After this, he did not speak. Then Ambrosine was there at the gate.

‘Do you want a cigarette, mate?’ she said to Harold. ‘I rolled you one in case you did.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

She lit two cigarettes together, one for her and one for him, then turned and went back to the house.

‘I’ve got to get rid of the carcass. I can’t leave her here till tomorrow.’

‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Harrigan said.

‘No, I’ll do it myself. Your mates are here. You’d better go talk to them.’

Shotgun in hand, Harrigan went to meet the arriving police. Looking back, he saw Harold lodge the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and drag Rosie’s body from out of her kennel on her blanket. He carried her away behind the brokendown poultry sheds. Against the dark, the old struts and chicken wire were as fragile as torn cobwebs. Harrigan watched him disappear, wondering how much it had hurt him to pick her up, how heavy she was in his arms. He checked his watch. It was after midnight and the night had hardly begun. As usual, he had work to do.

I
am a machine, Harrigan thought. He ticked off the details as if feeling and thought were dead. Mercilessly he rang Trevor, dragging him out of bed, giving him lists of directions for what he wanted to happen, people to be flown down to Yaralla first thing tomorrow, including Trevor’s own people and a forensic team.

‘Well, boss,’ Trevor said when Harrigan had stopped talking, ‘I’m glad to hear you’re still alive.’

‘That’s nice to know. Thanks, mate,’ Harrigan said, for once a little thrown.

The local police had retrieved the shooter’s gun. Bagged for examination, it was slender and deadly in its cheap plastic dress. It would go back to Coolemon with one of the police cars. The gold badge would not. Harrigan had collected it from the window sill, planning to oversee its fate himself.

Out in the night, Ambrosine’s cottage had subsided to a smouldering heap. The fire hadn’t spread to the trees along the creek. There was no wind and both the bare soil surrounding the cottage and the dusty lane had acted as a fire break. First thing in the morning, it would be cordoned off as a crime scene. The shooter was
almost certainly well on his way to Sydney by now. Even so, Harrigan wasn’t going to send anyone out into the dark. He decided Ambrosine and her children would be as safe here for the night rather than making the trip to Coolemon. He told the uniformed officers to wait while he went to talk to her. Right now, he wanted information.

She was in the kitchen sitting at the table. Sheets of paper, a small array of pencils and a pencil sharpener were scattered around her. She was drawing; quick constant lines crossed the page. A bottle of whisky stood on the table with a partially drunk glass of it next to her cigarettes.

‘Fucking hell, mate,’ she said when he walked into the room. ‘I didn’t look at you properly before. You can tell you’ve been in fight. What does that other bloke look like?’

‘Worse, I hope.’

‘Do you want a drink? Harry won’t mind.’

He did need a drink. Now that he had time to think about them, his bruises were beginning to hurt. He poured himself a whisky and sat down. There was a sense of late-night exhaustion in the room.

‘Where’d you get the stationery?’ he asked.

‘Out of the drawer over there.’

‘Where are the kids?’

‘I got them into bed. They’re asleep. They already have nightmares, poor buggers. It’ll get worse now. Want a cigarette?’

‘No, I don’t smoke any more. You know that.’

‘Yeah, you gave them up, didn’t you? You used to smoke like a fucking chimney. How’d you do it?’

Brutally, during a long, scorchingly hot drive to Sydney in a car without air conditioning, the day he’d left Coolemon for good. He had woken in the morning sodden and seedy from the previous night’s
celebrations, melancholy with post-alcohol blues, his throat sore from too many cigarettes. Somehow he’d got through the farewell ceremonies. The senior sergeant replacing him, the mayor and the local state school principal had all come to shake his hand. On his way out of town, he’d seen by the roadside a rusting 44-gallon drum with a sign painted on it in bright yellow letters:
Plese put yr rubish in here. Thank u.
On impulse he stopped, threw his cigarettes and lighter into it, and drove on. For the next six or so hours, air at 42°C had blasted in through his windows. By the time he reached Sydney, he felt he’d sweated every lingering trace of nicotine out of his body, along with the alcohol from the night before. His shirt was drenched yellow. He hadn’t had a cigarette since.

‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘You can tell me the truth now. Did the Ice Cream Man find you out here?’

Ambrosine was lighting her own cigarette.

‘Fags will follow me to my grave. That was pretty fucking close tonight,’ she said. ‘Yeah, Mike came and saw me. He died out here too. How did he know I was here? Did you fucking tell anyone?’

‘No, mate. It’s your arms.’

She looked down at them, bare to her shoulders. They were marked with tattoos and psoriatic lesions.

‘He paid someone in the health department for a list of all the chemists who were dispensing the ointment you use under the Pharmaceutical Benefits System. That list had to say Coolemon Chemist. He knew I’d spent time out here; he as good as sent me here. He just joined the dots.’

‘Jesus. I never thought of that. I hardly ever go into town, just when I have to do my shopping. He must have followed me and the kids home.’

‘When was this?’

‘End of September.’ Ambrosine put down her cigarette and started to sketch again. ‘We hadn’t been back from town that long. I’m unpacking things in the kitchen. Little Man was looking out the back door. He says, “Man, man.” It was Mike. He was getting out of his car.’ She stopped and took a drink. ‘When you live like we do, you expect it to happen. We had a plan. If Mike turns up, the kids go out the back window and they head for the creek bed. I try and get to the car. If I get away, I pick them up. If I don’t, they keep going till they get to a farmhouse somewhere.

‘They got out but I didn’t even make it to the front door. Mike got me. He was sitting on my back with his gun at my head. “Hi, Ambro. Long time, no see.” Arsehole. He wanted to play games. I’m lying there, crying. Then there’s a shot outside and another. Mike’s off me and he’s heading for the front door. It opens and someone I’ve never seen before walks in. Just like that, he cracks Mike one in the shoulder. It breaks the bone, I can hear it. Mike drops his gun, he’s down. This guy smacks him one on the head and he’s out for the count. I run for the back door but the man gets me from behind and pushes me against the wall. His gun’s on my head and he says, “Are those your kids, man? They ran down into the creek. You call them back or you’re dead meat.”’

‘What did he sound like?’ Harrigan interrupted.

‘He was South African. You know how they talk. I said, “Fuck you. No way.” I was just waiting. Water’s coming out of my body anywhere it can, I’m pissing myself. He turns me around, wants to know my name. “This man wanted to kill you. You don’t care what happens to him, do you?” I said, “I don’t give a shit and I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
He takes out his wallet and it’s thick. Puts ten hundred-dollar notes in my hand. “Get your brats, get your car and get out. Don’t come back until you’ve spent every cent of that money.” I didn’t look back. I was out the door.’

‘What kind of car did he have?’

‘It turned out he’d been at the house waiting for us and Mike before we got back. He’d put it in the shed so we didn’t see it. The kids did though, when they were running away. It was some big, black four-wheel-drive. My kids heard me driving along the creek. They came out and we drove away as fast as I could. I told Laurie to keep watching just to see if that black thing was behind us. But he didn’t come after us. But that’s not the end of it.’ She stopped and poured herself more whisky. ‘About three weeks later, one night out of the dark, the guy walks in the door again with a gun in his hand. We’re dead. Laurie goes for him and he hits him so I call him a fucking bastard. He laughs and he grabs me. “You don’t want to die. You don’t want your shitty little kids to die. You just keep your mouth shut. Because I can watch you. I’ve got my own dirty copper. If you tell anyone about this, you’re all dead.” Then he lets me go and walks out the door. We can hear him driving away. My poor kids. They were so afraid, they were all twisted up. You know why he didn’t kill us? It was just too messy. If he had, one way or the other you and your mob would come crawling all over this place and who knows what you’d have turned up. But he was going to come back for us one day, I knew it.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’

‘He said he had his own bent copper. How did I know it wasn’t you? That guy was after Mike. I thought maybe you were getting your own back.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Harrigan snapped. ‘You had no reason to think that.’

‘Didn’t I? There’s enough fucking rumours about you and him. Jesus, mate, we’re talking about Mike! What the fuck did it matter if he was dead? I was so fucking paranoid, I didn’t know who I could trust. Me and my kids slept in the same fucking bed for weeks afterwards. Every time we heard a noise, we freaked! I don’t know how many times I’ve lain awake at night thinking, we’ll just get in the car and go. But I knew if we did, one day we’d walk into a shotgun somewhere else. I didn’t have any money anyway.’

‘Did you find anything in the house when you came back?’

‘My kids did. Laurie got up in the roof space one day, he was playing around. He found some ropes and a shirt with blood on them. Mike’s, it had to be. Then Jen was playing outside and she found this funny-looking thing in the dirt. Some little metal stud with a logo on it.’

‘Did it look like this?’ Harrigan asked, showing her his own LPS badge.

‘Yeah, but it was metal, not gold. Where’d you get that?’

He shook his head. ‘It’s a tracking device. I know Mike had one. The gunman would have tracked him here using it. What did you do with it?’

‘I put it up in the roof with all the other stuff Laurie found up there. Then I told the kids to forget all about them.’

‘That’s why our friend burned your house down,’ Harrigan said. ‘He was making sure no one would find anything he’d left behind, accidentally or otherwise.’

‘It’s all gone now. Anyway, about a week after we got back, Jen comes running in. She says she’s found
something in the creek about half a kilometre away. We went down there and it was a grave, you could see it. I thought, yeah, that’s Mike. After all these years, he’s finally fucking dead. I told my kids, whatever you do, you don’t tell anyone about this. It’s just between us. It’s got to stay that way.’

‘Did you ever see any other cars along here?’

‘Just the cars you always see, the farmers and that. Except we heard someone down here about a week ago. Really early in the morning last Thursday. It woke us up and freaked us out. I thought it was that South African guy coming back. But whoever it was, they just drove away. I didn’t see them or their car.’

‘What did the South African guy look like?’

‘This is him. I did this while I was waiting for you to come and talk to me. I’ve drawn you a couple of them.’

She pushed the pieces of paper across the table towards him. Harrigan found himself looking at the man he’d fought with tonight. An ordinary face. Square-featured, black hair, trimmed moustache. It was a good likeness. He would get it faxed to Trevor as soon as possible.

‘We’ll put this out in the media,’ he said.

‘Are you going to pay me for it?’

‘No, mate. This is information received.’

‘What are you going to do for me and my kids now, Harrigan?’

‘I’ll put you on the witness protection program as soon as possible.’

‘Like last time?’

‘You’ll be safe this time. I’ll make sure of it.’ She looked at him suspiciously and then kept drawing. He watched her work. Images filled the sheet of paper she drew on, as if it was the most
natural thing in the world for her to pull them out of its whiteness. She had almost no schooling. Laurie’s father, a tattooist himself, had taught her to draw when he’d taught her to tattoo. He was dead now, shot by a bikie gang when he wouldn’t pay his protection money.

‘What are you looking at?’ she asked suddenly.

‘You working. You’ve got a real talent.’

‘You might not say that when you see this.’

It was a drawing of Harrigan at the kitchen table surrounded by a tattooist’s icons of death. Old clocks, skulls on the bench with small worms crawling out of the eye sockets, flies and dying flowers on the table, an owl roosting on the window ledge. His face stared out of the paper. His hands were on the table in front of him, clasped tightly together. The gaze startled him. It was almost hungry, at once intense and detached.

‘You can chuck it out if you want,’ she said.

‘Why would I do that? You’ve got a cold eye.’

‘I just draw what’s there.’

‘Mummy.’ Jen was standing in the doorway, twisting a bare foot behind her leg. ‘Little Man’s awake. He won’t stop crying.’

‘I’ll come down, baby. We’ll go to sleep together. How’s that?’

She walked out, taking the little girl by the hand, leaving everything behind her on the table: the cigarettes, the ashtray, the sheets of paper, the empty whisky glass. More out of concern for Harold than anything, Harrigan tidied the mess away and decided it was time he got some sleep as well. He kept two constables to watch the house and sent the rest home, giving them Ambrosine’s sketch of his attacker to send on to Trevor. Finally, he went to look for Harold. He found him sitting on the front step, smoking.

‘Your face, mate,’ Harold said when Harrigan appeared. ‘You must be feeling that.’

‘Are you okay?’ Harrigan asked.

‘Yeah, I’m all right. She was a good dog. It’s a waste, that’s all.’

There was silence.

‘What made that racket in the trees out there?’ Harrigan asked. ‘Did you hear it? I thought it’d wake the dead.’

Harold almost grinned.

‘One of my chickens. She got out of the chook yard a while back and she’s been roosting over there ever since. There’s hardly any foxes around here any more. Things are that bad.’

‘I don’t know about the foxes. She almost got me,’ Harrigan said. He looked at his watch. It was the graveyard shift, getting on for dawn. ‘Why don’t you get some sleep?’

‘I will in a while. I forgot to tell you—I’ve put you up in Dad’s room. Tomorrow I’ll take you out on the property and show you what I think this is all about.’

‘I’ll see you in the morning, mate. Try and sleep.’

Harrigan went back into the badly lit house. In Bob Morrissey’s old bedroom, the dead man’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe. A photograph of his two sons in their Geelong Grammar uniforms stood on the tallboy. Stuart at seventeen and Harold at fifteen, both smiling. Grit blown in through the cracks in the house covered the surface of the glass, the furniture. Stillness and dust hung in the air.

Harrigan took off his gun and shoulder holster and put them under the pillow. He put Ambrosine’s sketch of him on top of the tallboy. It made him
look like the death carrier, the person you least wanted to see knocking on your door. He didn’t remember choosing the role willingly. He lay on the bed fully dressed and slept almost immediately. Everything else could wait until the morning.