The Tattooed Man (34 page)

‘Don’t do that! I am not going to fight with you over a gun!’

He felt himself losing control at some deeper level. He spun away from her, turning his back. He broke the gun down instinctively, shaking out the bullets, then with all the strength he had, he smashed it down on the floor tiles in her small kitchen alcove. It cracked with a noise that made him think it must have accidentally fired. It couldn’t have fired, he’d broken it down. It would be unusable now, the barrel cracked or damaged in some way, making it too dangerous to fire. Ammunition lay scattered where it had fallen. Her tiles were cracked and splintered. He turned to her. She was gaping at him.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘You get shot fighting over guns. Do you think I want to see you with a bullet wound in your head? One I put there? If that did happen, I’d probably feel like putting one in my own head!’

They stared at each other in silence. Then she took her cigarettes out of her bag and lit one.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That isn’t the reason, not for you to act like that. Why did you do that? Tell me.’

He looked down at the shattered tiles and then at her.

‘When I was eighteen, my father shot my mother. It was Cassatt’s gun, I’ve got it in my cellar. He’d had a run-in with a dealer on the docks and he’d shot him. He gave my father the gun to hide. My mother did what you just tried to do, take it out of his hands. He shot her in the face. Cassatt handled the investigation, he got my father off. When we were leaving the law courts, he turned me and said “Your father loved your mother, mate. You ought to realise that.” I hit him so hard, I knocked out one of his front teeth. I saw what my mother looked like when she died. I’m not going to live with another memory like that.’

She put her cigarette in an ashtray on the table and sat down with her face in her hands. ‘That’s why you went after him. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’

‘You don’t have to say any more than that. This is as much as we’ll ever need to say about this ever again.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘Your turn, Grace. Tell me why you’ve got that gun.’

She picked up her cigarette and smoked with her eyes closed, shaking from head to foot. He had never seen her like this. He thought it was better that he didn’t try to touch her. She opened her eyes.

‘Someone used to stalk me once. He was sort of a boyfriend for a while. We broke up over ten years ago but he kept coming back. I got that gun—’ She stopped. ‘I got that gun after I came home from a party one night and he was waiting for me in the car park. He threw petrol all over me.’

Harrigan was silent. It was one of the few occasions in his life when he could truthfully say he was shocked.

‘I heard him say, “My lighter’s not working.” Something like that. I turned and ran. I wondered
later if it was a joke but I don’t think it was. I locked myself in my flat and I sat under the shower fully dressed for hours just soaking myself with water. The next day I moved out of that flat and into this one. Then I got hold of that gun. That’s why I have it, in case he comes back.’

Harrigan was drumming his fingers softly on the table top.

‘Who is this person? What’s his name?’

She shook her head.

‘No, what’s his name?’

‘Chris Newell,’ she said after a while.

He took out his notebook and wrote it down.

‘Where is he now?’

‘Silverwater. He got seven years for armed robbery about a year ago. I kept my gun just in case he got out again somehow. It’s a security blanket. I don’t feel safe without it now.’

Harrigan jotted down these small details without asking how she’d got involved with someone like that in the first place.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘Keep an eye on him. Maybe a little more. He sounds like he deserves some attention. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have warned him off for you. I would have made sure he never came back.’

She lit another cigarette from the end of the one she was smoking without answering him.

‘Is he the one who gave you your scar?’

‘It was a long time ago. I was only nineteen. It was when I was still singing with my band. He was supposed to be our manager. Then we found out he was dealing on the side. I’d already decided I didn’t want to sing any more. When I told him it was all over between us, he beat me up and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. When he wasn’t looking, I walked
out. I took my car and I drove and I didn’t stop. Then I heard he was in gaol, he’d walked into a sting. He thought I’d dobbed him in but I hadn’t. When he got out, he came after me.’ She put her second cigarette in the ashtray and drew a deep breath. ‘I thought I knew everything back then. I was so green. It’s all over now. I’m a different person.’

‘You never reported him.’

‘I was drinking back then. I don’t know what kind of a witness I would have made. I didn’t want to put myself through that. I was too frightened of him. That’s the truth.’

‘If he ever comes near you again, it’ll be the last time he ever does. That’s a promise.’

He raped you, he understood, watching her ash, then scrub out her cigarette. He raped you and he left you with that scar. Because men who give women scars like you have almost always do that. Seventeen years on the job had taught him this as a fact of experience. She would never tell him that directly to his face; it would always be unspoken.

She had stopped shaking. Her face was drawn, her eye make-up smudged.

‘You matter to me,’ he said. ‘You must know that. You must know how much.’

‘Then why are you never here? It’s the work you do. It crushes everything else out of your life except Toby, and that’s only because he’s the other half of you.’

‘You want me to change.’

‘You don’t have to work the hours you work. You don’t have to be everyone’s saviour. I know an addiction when I see one. It fills a gap for you. Can’t you imagine having something else in your life as well?’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I’m not going to live with things the way they are now. I don’t want to break up. I don’t want to put myself through that. But I don’t want to live like this either. You have to make a choice as to what you really want. You’re the only one who can do that. I have to wash my face.’

When she came back out of the bathroom, he was clearing away the broken gun into a plastic bag.

‘I’ll get rid of this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get your tiles fixed. I know someone who owes me a favour. He’ll do a good job.’

She smiled. ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t.’

The phone rang. Grace let it go through to the answering machine.

‘Hi, Gracie, it’s Abbie. We’re all at Claude’s wondering where you are but I guess you’ve found something better to do. Hope so anyway. Maybe we’ll see you at Noah’s. We just hope you’re not with Harrigan. Give us a call tomorrow, will you? See you.’

‘Don’t they approve of me?’ he asked.

‘Of course they don’t. They think you’re a Neanderthal. But then they think the same thing about me for doing what I do. According to Abbie’s latest boyfriend, I’m the original fascist.’

He laughed.

‘You look beautiful. We don’t have to sit here all night. Let’s go out.’

‘Not just like that. What happens tomorrow?’

‘After twenty-four hours, I may have all the time you want me to have with you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m fishing for Elena Calvo. I’ve already seen her to get it started. I’m waiting to see if she’s going to bite and if she’s going to give me du Plessis as well
as herself. If she does, that could be the end of my career.’

‘You gave him the tape. She knows that.’

‘It’s not just that. Du Plessis has the contents of Mike’s safety deposit box. If I take Elena Calvo down, I’m sure she’ll take me with her.’

‘This could cost you a lot more than your job,’ she said. ‘What are you setting up?’

‘A sting. There’s no way back from it now. You say I work too much. Let me stop working for now. Let’s go out and enjoy ourselves.’

‘You didn’t answer my question. What happens tomorrow?’

‘Let’s wait for the sun to come up on Sunday morning first. When it does, if it does, I work out what I want. I do want you in my life. If you want to be there.’

‘I’m here now. If that’s how things are, then I think we should go out. Have fun. We may not get another chance. Wait till I put my make-up on again.’

She had other places to go besides Claude’s. A smaller restaurant she’d just discovered; a nightclub where the band was the best she’d heard all year. ‘The singer has a magic voice,’ she told him. He didn’t drink much; tomorrow he needed a clear head.

‘What happens now?’ she asked, much later when they were lying in her bed. ‘How do you know when you’ve caught your fish?’

‘Whatever Calvo’s going to do, she’ll move quickly. Probably she’ll want to see me sometime tomorrow. She’ll have the meeting set up already. When I go to it, du Plessis will either be there waiting for me or he’ll be following me. If Calvo wants him to get rid of me, my bet is that everything
Cassatt had on me will be left behind with my body. That’ll take care of my credibility forever. But if Calvo wants me to remove du Plessis for her, then he won’t be expecting me. The difficulty I have is getting her to incriminate herself on tape. She’s very cagey about what she says. But she’s frightened. That’ll work for me.’

‘That strategy is so dangerous.’

‘I’ll get through it. I’ve got Trevor onside and my backup in place. Let’s sleep now. We need to.’

They did sleep. For now, the morning could take care of itself.

W
hen Harrigan’s phone woke him, it was still dark. When he sat up, he felt Grace stir beside him.

‘Harrigan.’

‘Sorry to wake you, boss. It’s Jacquie here. I’m on the night shift. Do you have access to a computer? You should have an email in your inbox now. You need to see it.’

‘Can you tell me what I’ll be looking at?’

‘A video that’s been posted on the Pittwater website. I’d say it was shot clandestinely. It’s got the same file reference number as the dossier. It must have been made as part of that whole operation. Also, the dossier and the senator’s affidavit have been put up on the Pittwater site as well. Whoever’s behind this is making sure everyone can join the dots.’

‘I’ll look at it now.’

Grace came and sat beside him while he turned her computer on. This time, a single email had been posted to his mailbox. The subject line read:
This is real.
In the body of the email was a URL. Harrigan hit it.

He found himself watching a video. A reference number with a time and date stamp were visible in
a header. It was December four years ago. From a camera’s eye view, there appeared on the monitor the sight of raggedly dressed, armed African men climbing onto the back of a truck. The angle looked down at the troops; the photographer must have been standing against the back of the cabin. Another truck was following the first. They drove out of a city affected by war, through local markets, hurrying crowds, buildings marked by decay and painted with slogans. The name Kinshasa appeared in the header. Then the photographer sat down like the others on the floor of the tray.

There was a jump in the sequence. The photographer must have been sitting in the cabin. The truck was driving along a forested road. In front was a group of civilians with their belongings in bundles on their heads and backs, their children hurrying with them. They ran into the forest at the sight of the truck. A skeleton lay in thick vines on the side of the road, still fully dressed, its death’s head looking out at the watcher.

The trucks came to a stop in a deserted village. The photographer got out and went to meet the driver, who was also getting out of the truck. Harrigan recognised Jerome Beck. He grinned and spoke but there was no sound. The other driver appeared from the second truck: du Plessis, also talking and grinning soundlessly.

The next image showed the village turned into an encampment with two tents set up in the centre. Two of the soldiers were dragging a terrified young girl towards one of the tents. Again the video jumped. The eye was now inside one of the tents. It watched one figure hold the young girl in a chair while another injected her with something. Both wore protective clothing. Then the eye followed her
running out of the tent and through the encampment, while the soldiers watched her from a distance, laughing. She made her escape along a dirt road through a partially forested landscape. The camera turned back to the entrance to the tent. The people in protective clothing were seen walking outside. They washed their gloved hands in some solution, then poured it over their heads. Then they took off their headgear. Harrigan again found himself looking at Beck and du Plessis.

Next, Beck, without protective clothing, was walking through a village where a number of people lay either dead or dying on the ground outside their houses. He stopped to look down at them, his hands on his hips. Then he went inside a house. The young girl from the earlier video, recognisable by the dress she had been wearing, lay curled up on a mat, her face to the wall. Beck was joined by du Plessis. The angle was from behind them, looking between them. They stood looking at the girl, talking, then walked away.

The watcher and the two men moved from house to house. Other people were shown inside, most of them dead. Some were still alive but sick, lying in their beds, turning their faces away from the intruders.

Then the eye went back outside. It showed the armed men standing on the periphery of the small village, apparently refusing to come any closer. Du Plessis went up to them; some backed away. He talked angrily to them, gesturing to them to come closer. Reluctantly, they began to move forward. Then, with du Plessis, they moved through the village, shooting whoever had been left alive. Meanwhile, Beck was talking to one of the men. The man was gesturing down the road; the inference was that some of the villagers had fled.

The eye swung around quickly. It was heading towards one of the trucks on the edge of the village. The truck door was pulled open, the photographer was climbing inside the cabin. Then his hands were on the wheel and he was driving away at speed. A distance down the road, he stopped to collect a small group of villagers, one of whom was carrying a child. A man climbed in the front and spoke to the driver. He was directing him. Presumably the others had climbed into the back.

The truck moved on down the dirt road. Eventually it came to another, larger village that seemed equally deserted. They were passing a large white building when the truck stopped suddenly. It had broken down.

Next, the driver and the villagers were inside what must have once been a schoolhouse. The eye looked out of the window. The other truck carrying the soldiers had stopped outside. In the open space in front of the school, Beck and du Plessis got out of the cabin; the armed men spilled out of the back. They surrounded the building. Through a window, Beck could be seen standing and shouting at whoever was inside the school.

Then Beck gestured to three of the men. The eye watched them return from the truck carrying jerry cans. Then it followed them from window to window as they threw what could only be petrol against the walls of the building. One of them tossed a lighted rag onto the petrol, which burst into flames. The woman with the child ran out of one of the doors. What happened to her the camera did not show and there was no sound. In its eye view, the walls and roof had begun to burn fiercely. Flames rained down around the camera. It saw people burning. Then it was pushed through a door into
another room, a storage area with a window on one side. At floor level there was a long metal grille. The ceiling came down in curtains of flame. The eye was propelled towards the dirt floor against the grille. Then there was nothing.

When the video was over, Harrigan and Grace sat in silence for some moments. Then she got to her feet and went to the kitchen where she began to make coffee.

‘Now we know how Brinsmead got his burns,’ Harrigan said. ‘He was an agent in an undercover operation that went wrong.’

‘Yes,’ Grace said shortly, her back to him.

He went to her. She was crying. He put his arms around her and comforted her, pleased that he had this to do. Anything to occupy his thoughts while he tried to find some meaningful way to deal with what he had just seen.

‘That’s why I do the job I do,’ she said. ‘Knowing that people can do that kind of thing to other people. I hate it, and if I can stop them or get them, I will.’

The coffee was ready. She poured them a mug each and lit a cigarette.

‘Go after them,’ she said. ‘Go after the people behind that massacre with everything you’ve got. Get du Plessis. Take him to trial.’

‘I’m doing my best. But someone with the authority to do it shut down that original operation.’

‘Had they seen that video? They could have prosecuted Beck and du Plessis on the strength of that.’

‘But they didn’t. We don’t know why and I don’t think anyone’s going to tell us.’

‘Daniel Brinsmead will know,’ she said. ‘Somehow he got out of there and was still alive enough to be flown back to London. He must have had that video on him then.’

‘You want my opinion? He’s involved in the shooting up at Pittwater. Him and Jonas together. For all I know, they’re our murderers. I can’t feel for him.’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘Calvo didn’t have the motive to kill those people and then advertise it. That video gives Brinsmead all the motive he needs to kill Beck.’

‘He and Sam didn’t talk that way when I was listening to them the other day. They talked like professional agents. If they are, they can’t be your murderers. Did you find out if they were legitimate?’

‘I’ve asked the question. I don’t know when I’ll get an answer or even if I’ll be told.’

‘That video is as much motive for Calvo as it is for Daniel Brinsmead,’ Grace said. ‘It’s what she has to cover up. She is a murderer. A murderer just like the people behind the killings we saw on that video just now. Someone who gets other people to do it for them. They don’t even have the guts to do it for themselves. They’re worse than the people who actually pull the triggers.’

‘She’s definitely one of them. Grace, you need to calm down. We can only deal with this calmly. That’s the only thing we can do for those people now.’

Grace moved away, restlessly. ‘I want to know the whys and the wherefores,’ she said. ‘Who’s behind what. Calvo would know.’

Harrigan’s phone rang.

‘Paul,’ the commissioner said. ‘Can you come to a meeting in my office immediately? We have a significant development in the Pittwater investigation.’

‘Are you referring to the video that’s on the net, Commissioner?’

‘It’s connected to that. We’ll see you as soon as you can get here.’

‘I’m on my way.’

‘You have to go again,’ Grace said.

‘I don’t know when I’ll be back but I’ll call you. I’ll let you know what’s going on. That’s a promise this time.’

‘I’ll wait,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘What else can I do but sit here and be useless?’

‘Just stay safe.’

It wasn’t yet five when Harrigan hit the road. The traffic was sparse in the early summer Saturday morning. There was a fragile sense of the dawn’s coolness soon to disappear in the heat of the day. When he reached the commissioner’s office, Chloe was waiting for him. She ushered him in immediately. Another man was there for the meeting. Harrigan didn’t recognise him.

‘Paul, let me introduce you,’ the commissioner said. ‘This is Stephen Grey; he’s a first assistant commissioner with ASIO. Stephen, this is Commander Paul Harrigan. With the special assistant commissioner’s demise, he’s the executive officer in charge of the Pittwater task force.’

They shook hands.

‘Thank you for coming in at this hour, Commander,’ Grey said. ‘I’ll get to the heart of the matter. I’m here to advise you that at about 3 a.m. today, we attempted to execute arrest warrants on two individuals who, the commissioner tells me, are persons of interest to your investigation: Dr Daniel Brinsmead and Sam Jonas.’

‘Do you have them in custody?’

‘We do not. They’d flown the coop. At present, their whereabouts are unknown. Let me give you the background. The photograph of the dead associated with your investigation showed a Jerome Beck. Shortly after that photograph was published on the net, he was recognised by a certain agency in Britain with the code name Falcon, a highly secret anti-terrorist organisation. They contacted us and asked us to place a watching brief on your investigation. They sent us photographs of two individuals they were interested in, the two I’ve just identified to you. Both are former agents of Falcon. Both were the primary operatives for the operation recorded in that dossier and also in the video that was posted on the net this morning. Their operation was shut down in December four years ago. It was ruled a failure that almost resulted in Brinsmead’s death. These two individuals have stolen and now illegally published secret information. Both have turned rogue, in other words. Jonas was at one time a highly respected career agent named Sophia Ricks. At present, she’s impersonating a dead woman.’

‘I should tell you, Paul, I was aware that this watching brief was in place,’ the commissioner said. ‘When you spoke to me yesterday, I rang ASIO to take advice on what information your squad should receive. It’s impressive that you found these two individuals out through your own investigations.’

‘It’s also the reason we’re having this meeting,’ Grey said. ‘Secrecy is of the utmost importance at the present. It was necessary for you to be made aware of the gravity of the situation before that information was passed on.’

Harrigan thought how much easier life would have been if he had been told sooner.

‘Do we know what made these people turn rogue?’ he asked. ‘Because that operation had gone bad and was shut down?’

‘I think that’s a question you should ask them,’ Grey said. ‘They may have felt it was an act of betrayal. From the information I have, my opinion is that Brinsmead was a poor choice for an operation of this nature. I’m advised he was a close, long-term friend of Ricks—not a good situation to begin with—and was chosen on her recommendation for his scientific skills and his previous experience in the army. By all accounts, he didn’t have the temperament for undercover work.’

‘You are aware that both individuals were in the employ of or were connected to a Dr Elena Calvo?’

‘We do know that. It’s clear she’s been imposed upon. We will be speaking to Dr Calvo in due course. At present, we don’t consider it the right time for an interview. We’re uncertain about her allegiances to Dr Brinsmead. She was previously involved with him, and since his return from the DRC she’s given him a great deal of support. We don’t want her warning him.’

‘I think it will be the other way around,’ Harrigan said. ‘I think you should warn her.’

‘I’m sorry but that can’t happen. It could jeopardise the operation. I understand she has very professional security of her own. We’ll rely on that.’

‘Did the parent agency in Britain know these two people were working for her?’

‘They were aware of Brinsmead. We found Ricks for them. As part of our watching brief, we sent an agent to Dr Calvo’s launch. She identified her as Calvo’s personal bodyguard.’

Harrigan decided there was no future in advising either Grey or the commissioner that he had known
about Sam from the beginning and could have identified her from whatever picture they happened to have.

‘I’ve advised Stephen that both they and an individual who appeared in this morning’s video, Andreas du Plessis, are persons of interest to us,’ the commissioner said. ‘Could you tell us where we are with that?’