The Tattooed Man

by Alex Palmer

  7

  In the commissioner’s office, four men were waiting for him. Rumpled in a suit and tie, the minister had the same shell-shocked look as yesterday. He fidgeted with sharp and jerky movements, causing Harrigan to think of the walking wounded. Why don’t you scream at the walls? Howl? His adviser sat with him, a nondescript man who listened intently and didn’t say a word.

  Opposite them was the commissioner, his thoughts impenetrable as always, his agenda beyond anyone’s surmise. An older man with an unreliable temper, he had survived the countless scandals that had plagued the force over the last thirty-five years to reach this pinnacle. Noted for being without much mercy, he had a long memory for perceived insults and past injuries, real or imaginary. Harrigan looked at his unhealthy face, his balding hair, and wondered if he would look like this when he was sixty.

  The fourth man was Marvin Tooth. Unlike the others, Marvin smiled at Harrigan when he walked into the room. It was the assassin’s smile. At the sight of it, the skin between Harrigan’s shoulderblades began to itch. The media were inclined to present Marvin as a friendly grandfather, silver-haired and avuncular. Godfather would have been the more accurate description. There was nothing coy about the Tooth’s ambitions. Barring earthquake, floods or acts of God, he would be sitting in the commissioner’s chair almost as soon as it was vacated. It was fair to say he had never wanted anything else so much.

  ‘Commander Harrigan,’ Edwards said, getting to his feet and extending his hand. ‘I understand you’re on leave. I didn’t realise that. Thank you for coming in like this.’

  ‘It’s not a problem, Minister. Thank you for taking the trouble, given what happened yesterday.’

  ‘This is life and death to me now. I will do everything I possibly can to find out who is responsible.’

  ‘You can be assured we will put every resource we have into this, Minister,’ the commissioner said, unsmiling. ‘In case you’re wondering why Marvin is here, Paul, he’ll be managing the budget for this investigation. You’ll remain the ultimate arbiter of operational decisions, though presumably you’ll delegate that authority to your 2IC while you’re on leave. If any negotiation proves necessary, I’m sure you can work it out.’

  The commissioner at work, Harrigan thought. Divide the minions while protecting your backside at the same time. The golden rules for corporate success.

  ‘Shall we start?’ Marvin said.

  ‘Before we do, where’s Inspector Gabriel? I asked for him to be here,’ Edwards said.

  ‘He’s busy at the moment, Minister,’ Marvin replied. ‘I’m not convinced he should continue as the operational officer in charge of this job. That’s something I wanted us to discuss. I have a very well-qualified officer I can recommend.’

  ‘As far as I could tell, he did a good job yesterday. Why are you replacing him?’

  ‘We’re not.’ Harrigan shut down the possibility ruthlessly. ‘Personnel is my responsibility, Marvin. You don’t need to concern yourself with it. For your information, I have complete confidence in Trevor.’

  ‘Then get him. I want him here,’ Edwards said.

  They sat in awkward silence while Chloe located Trevor Gabriel. Harrigan contemplated Marvin’s attempted removal of both himself and Trevor, all before the morning tea break. Why waste time? Shortly afterwards, Trevor arrived.

  ‘Sorry about this. No one told me I was supposed to be up here.’

  ‘You’re here now,’ the commissioner replied with an acidic glance in Marvin’s direction.

  ‘Let’s get on with the reason why I was visiting Nattie yesterday,’ Edwards said impatiently. ‘I understand you received your own copy of this document this morning but there’s no point in wasting these. You can thank my staff for working most of the night to get them ready for you.’

  Edwards’ adviser handed to each of those present a high-quality copy of a thick dossier. The top of each page was marked with a series of file references, then the name Beck, Jerome. Harrigan leafed through detailed notes, surveillance photographs, maps tracking the subject’s movements, emails, lists of associates, known aliases. Each page was stamped Top Secret.

  ‘This was hand-delivered to my electorate office sometime on the night my son and ex-wife were shot.’ Edwards’ voice shook. Barely, he recovered himself. ‘My office has a mailbox for those constituents who prefer to deliver documents in person. This was left there.’

  ‘Do you have any surveillance cameras, Minister?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘No, unfortunately we don’t. This is the envelope it came in but there’s no information on it. There was this note too.’

  The envelope and a note identical to the one received by the commissioner were sheathed in a plastic sleeve. As Edwards had said, there was nothing to identify where either had come from.

  ‘It’s my belief,’ Edwards continued, ‘—and this is based on experience, I have been a cabinet minister for the last five years—that this is a surveillance dossier from a British intelligence agency. You’ll note that all the pages have the British government seal in the lower right-hand corner. Before you say it could still be a fake, the nature of the information contained in that document tells me it’s almost certainly genuine. Whatever this agency is, it’s been on this man’s trail for years. My adviser will sum up the contents for you. He had the pleasure of reading it last night. It runs to several hundred pages.’

  The adviser blinked exhausted eyes. ‘It’s a very detailed document. I’ve only been able to skim it so far. It tells us that Jerome Beck was born in 1946 in Dresden, in what became East Germany. Father unknown. His mother died in 1997 in Berlin. There’s no record of any other close family. He fled from East Berlin when he was eighteen. He applied for political asylum in Britain and was granted it. He’s a British citizen but he’s not based in any single country. Until he came here, his address could have been any number of different locations in Europe and Africa. He was identified as an illegal arms dealer from the 1960s onwards, working mainly in South East Asia. In the late seventies and eighties, he was attached to the South African special security forces under the apartheid regime, working mainly as an agent provocateur. In the nineties, his name was linked to an international arms-smuggling syndicate known to deal in arms sourced from the former Soviet Union. He was also questioned in relation to the murder of a Russian journalist who was investigating that syndicate. Then around 1997, about when his mother died, he disappeared for a while. In a more recent incarnation, he worked in a scientific research facility in north London. He seems to have been an administrator of some kind. By all accounts, this employment was above board. However, during that time, he was also associating with individuals who may have been involved in the illegal diamond trade out of Africa. Then about four years ago, the dossier was closed and that is the end of the information. All in all, he’s had a very comprehensive criminal career.’

  ‘A busy boy,’ Trevor said.

  ‘Very. He was a career criminal and a murderer,’ Edwards replied. In an instant transformation, his body tightened up like a clenched fist. ‘Julian’s dead just because he was in the same room as a man who was nothing but a piece of rubbish.’

  ‘Do you need anything, Minister?’ Harrigan asked after a short pause. ‘Can we get you some coffee?’

  ‘Let’s just get on with it.’

  Marvin looked up from his copy. ‘Why send this to you, Minister?’

  ‘I assumed I was being warned off Beck. But given what’s happened since, that can hardly be the case. I’ve a question for you, Trevor. You’re the operational officer. Why do you think these murderers sent those pictures out on the net this morning?’

  Harrigan watched Marvin stare coldly at his 2IC.

  ‘The killers’ motives are their own, Minister,’ Trevor replied. ‘From our perspective, it’s blown the investigation wide open and put it squarely in the public eye. The publicity will just keep on going. My judgement is, that’s what they wanted to achieve. Also, they could
n’t have known we’d already identified the Ice Cream Man. They were making sure we did.’

  ‘Had you? How did you do that?’

  ‘Cassatt had a unique and distinctive tattoo on his left arm. Given the state of the body, it wasn’t immediately visible. The commander here checked it on instinct.’

  ‘Well done,’ Edwards said.

  ‘You obviously knew the Ice Cream Man well, Paul,’ Marvin said.

  ‘It’s a very well-known tattoo,’ Harrigan said, and noticed Edwards glance quickly at Marvin, summing him up.

  ‘I agree with you, Trevor,’ Edwards said, ‘but I also think my son’s killers wanted us to be each other’s insurance. If you weren’t prepared to act on this information, then I certainly would be.’

  ‘We would always act on information of this significance, Minister,’ the commissioner responded coldly.

  ‘I’d expect so,’ Edwards replied. ‘Now, to get to the point. I’m not so ill informed that I don’t know my ex-wife’s business. She knew exactly who Beck was. Julian told me he was given her name by an associate in London. You need some background. It’s a complicated story and it starts with Julian. He was a troubled young man. We had joint custody but I was never there and he always lived with his mother. He had bad influences, he never finished high school. He experimented with anything he could ingest and he drank heavily. I let him down in other words. But recently he’d started to get involved in green politics. He’d joined an organisation and was working for them. It gave him a sense of purpose. I used to listen to him talk about it. He had real capacity, maybe he could have been a leader. Then just last week he told me he had something on his mind. Among other things, it had to do with your ex-Detective Cassatt.’

  ‘Was your ex-wife involved with Cassatt’s activities in any way?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘She certainly was. It’s also true to say that Cassatt was angling to be involved in hers and Beck’s,’ Edwards replied. ‘My ex-wife’s house is very big. Julian had his own self-contained flat. Nattie didn’t always know when he was there. One day, she was entertaining Beck, Stuart Morrissey and your Ice Cream Man in her lounge room. There’s a mezzanine floor just above it. Julian had had a hard night. He’d gone up there to look at the view and recover. They were just below him, talking. He heard every word they said.’

  ‘You’re telling us your ex-wife and those three individuals were in business together.’

  ‘It’s exactly what’s in the dossier. According to Julian, they were importing diamonds. Blood diamonds, conflict diamonds, diamonds mined illegally in places like the Congo or Angola. It’s a filthy business. This meeting was about landing their first shipment. Beck had organised supply from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although he didn’t say exactly where in that nation. Nattie and Stuart said they had arrangements in place for the diamonds to be marketed here. Cassatt said—and I’m sorry to have to say this to you—he and another policeman named Jerry Freeman had organised protection for the couriers. Does anyone here know that name?’

  There was a heavy silence while Edwards’ listeners stared at him.

  ‘The name Jerry Freeman is known to us but he’s no longer a serving police officer,’ Harrigan replied. ‘You’re saying that both he and Cassatt were involved in this diamond-smuggling scheme.’

  ‘That’s my information. They had people onside in both customs and the police. What they needed now was the money to make payments to those corrupt officers.’

  The commissioner had gone white with shock. He sat forward so quickly he surprised the other listeners.

  ‘That’s a most serious allegation, Minister. I hope you have solid information to back that up. I don’t intend to have my officers’ integrity slurred on the basis of rumour.’

  ‘I’m only telling you what I was told. I would suggest to you that the information is solid as it stands.’

  ‘You should realise that Cassatt was a liar, Minister.’ Marvin spoke more sharply than was usual. ‘He could have been boasting.’

  ‘This is hardly my field,’ Edwards replied, ‘but at a gathering like that, how could he be lying? He’d have to deliver. Evidently he did deliver. I don’t remember any reports of your people seizing shipments of contraband diamonds in the last few months. Unless you want to correct me now.’

  His listeners responded with silence. The commissioner sat back, his eyes bright with anger, outrage written on his poker face for those who knew how to read it. Marvin’s face had a watching expression, half-shrewd, half-fearful.

  ‘When did this meeting happen, Minister?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Four months ago.’

  ‘Why didn’t your son tell you this earlier?’

  ‘Put yourself in his shoes. He’d be dobbing in his own mother. Later he heard in the media that Cassatt was most likely murdered. He decided to leave it where it was.’

  ‘Why tell you about it now?’

  ‘It was mainly to do with Beck. The key to this whole story is this. Beck had another venture going with Nattie and Stuart Morrissey that was altogether separate to this diamond business. A consortium that was involved in researching some kind of experimental crop lines. That sounds ordinary but apparently it wasn’t, not according to Julian. Nattie stumped up the money to get this agricultural consortium off the ground. She was repaid later out of the profits from the diamond-trading scheme. The whole point of that venture had been to finance the consortium. Evidently, the start-up costs alone were huge. Just recently Beck seemed to be suggesting to Nattie that I might like to be involved as well. They were close to signing a contract, it was going to lead to a new phase in the business. With my contacts in government, I could be useful to everyone. If need be, I could protect their interests. That’s when Julian came to me. He said he knew it was the last thing I’d want to do.’

  Harrigan decided not to ask the minister why Beck would be so sure of his cooperation in the first place.

  ‘You’d want to protect your son in that situation, Minister.’ Marvin was still flicking through his copy of the dossier. He spoke in a neutral voice without looking up.

  ‘Of course I would. He was getting his life on track, I wanted it to stay that way. I told Julian I’d talk to Nattie and we’d sort things out. I’d tell her and Beck to go jump in other words. Julian could live with me from then on. He said he was planning a quick trip to Tasmania in the meantime, they were mounting a blockade. I think he came home early because he knew I’d be talking to Nattie the next day. Now they’re both dead.’

  They waited for some moments while Edwards again controlled himself.

  ‘We found the contract you’ve just referred to at the scene yesterday. The shootings prevented it from being signed. It’s a complex scientific document, it’ll need analysis before we can say what it’s about,’ Harrigan said carefully. ‘It identifies their venture as the International Agricultural Research Consortium. The amount of money specified for payment on delivery is extremely large, inconsistent with what they were producing. Do you have any information on that?’

  ‘None at all. Julian said they were very closemouthed about the details.’

  ‘So, as I understand it, Cassatt wasn’t involved in the consortium, just the diamond-trading business. Did he know anything about this consortium?’

  ‘He certainly knew about its existence and, according to Julian’s account of that meeting, he was angling to become involved in it. Presumably he was murdered before that was possible.’

  Speedily removed, Harrigan translated to himself.

  ‘Beck was a strange man by Julian’s account,’ Edwards continued. ‘He kept trying to impress people. He gave Nattie the diamond she was wearing when I found her. He gave Stuart diamonds as well. I can only assume they were examples of his blood diamonds. They were rough diamonds, they needed to be cut.’

  ‘Were they cut here, Minister?’ Trevor asked.

  ‘Yes, they were. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who did it.’

  ‘D
o you know what sort of visa Beck had?’

  ‘He had an Australian passport. It was thoroughly legitimate. Julian said he boasted about getting it. He said the officials were stupid.’

  ‘I can see his point,’ Harrigan said. ‘Assuming that dossier to be authentic, in coming here Beck could only have had the aim of involving himself in more illegal activity. The entire history you’ve given us shows that to be the case from the moment he arrived. How thorough were the character checks?’

  Edwards could only shrug. His face was haggard. ‘Clearly, not good enough,’ he replied in an exhausted tone.

  ‘Excuse me, Minister,’ Marvin interrupted urgently. ‘There’s something very significant we have to consider ahead of anything. It’s imperative this dossier be assessed under the utmost secrecy. If this is from a secret service agency, there will be important matters of national security to consider. We could be endangering any personnel who might be identified by it. I think it’s vital that knowledge of this dossier does not go out of this room.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Edwards replied sharply. ‘How can it be assessed if it doesn’t go out of this room? Don’t you trust your own people?’ Suddenly he laughed loudly, without humour. ‘Special Assistant Commissioner Tooth, isn’t it? Well, Special Assistant Commissioner, I’ve been in politics for a long time and I know exactly what you’re up to. I don’t intend to have this information buried by you or anyone else.’

  ‘Minister, that wasn’t my suggestion.’

  ‘Yes, it was. Why are you doing this? Is there something in that dossier that frightens you? Are you avoiding the simple truth there may be corrupt officers in your service? Are you frightened what the publicity will be if that story gets out? What’s your angle?’

  In a rare sight, Marvin could barely frame a sentence. His face went deep red and he threw his copy of the dossier onto the coffee table as if throwing it away. The commissioner stared at him with surprise and anger.

  ‘I hope you’re not implying what I think you’re implying, Minister.’ Marvin’s own voice was distorted by anger. ‘In my entire career, twenty-seven years, I’ve never accepted so much as a cup of coffee as an inducement. To say otherwise is a gross insult.’