by Alex Palmer
‘Why are you doing this? What’s in it for you?’
‘This is about Mike, Gracie. Who worked him over like that and why. Because I’ve got good information that’ll help you find that out.’ Freeman looked out to sea like someone waiting for the angel of death. ‘Paulie found Mike’s body yesterday in that house up at Pittwater. I’m glad. He’ll get a decent burial now. You might hate him but he was my mate. That’s why.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.
‘First off, come back to my place.’
‘I’m not doing that.’
‘Fucking Christ, mate, I’m not going to hurt you. There’s nothing there waiting for you but a bunch of tapes. I want to talk about things I can’t talk about here.’
‘No.’
‘Look.’ He leaned forward again, talking as softly as possible. ‘I’ve got a gun, okay? A .38. You can have it to protect yourself. I know you can shoot. It’s in my bag right here. I’ll give it to you.’
‘Not on Bondi beach!’
‘No, take the bag. It’s got the disk in it. Take it all.’ He shoved it into her hands. ‘There’s no one left but me, Gracie. I’m going to tell you what I’ve got to say and die. That’s it.’
‘I’ll ring Harrigan.’
‘What do you think he’s going to say? Yeah, just hop in the car with Jerry, I don’t mind. If you don’t come back with me, I’m sending everything I’ve got to the papers. If I do, Paulie’s gone.’
‘Why aren’t you doing that anyway? Why should you care what happens to Harrigan?’
Freeman looked down at the sand almost as if he was embarrassed.
‘Because Paulie will get the fuckers who killed Mike. I wouldn’t trust any other copper but he knows what he’s doing. He’ll want to know who they are if only so he can piss on Mike’s grave about it. He’ll keep going till he finds out, he’ll have to. If you don’t know that, you don’t know him.’
This was too true for an argument. At another time, Grace might have laughed that even Freeman respected Harrigan as much as this. She looked in the cheap bag he had pushed into her hands. Just as he’d said, she saw the dull glint of gun metal.
‘I’m ringing Harrigan anyway.’
The phone rang through to his voicemail as it so often did when he was working. ‘It’s Grace,’ she said uselessly. ‘Call me as soon as you can.’
‘There’s nothing at my house, Gracie,’ Freeman said, when she shut her phone. ‘Just the tapes. Do this. It’ll help us both. Then I can die easy.’
Freeman’s face, a stark mask, matched his words. She didn’t believe he was lying. If he did have tapes back at his house, she couldn’t let them end up in the media’s hands. There was something else at work too. Taking risks when she was under pressure was an old habit of Grace’s. If life and death were only a breath apart, there were times when all she wanted to do was walk the tightrope between them. When the emotional impress got too much—the way it almost always did when Harrigan was involved—the adrenaline, the sheer risk, relieved the tension. The way it was now. Doing something so perilous as trusting Freeman was like a drug. As dangerous as it was, it eased away a worse anxiety.
‘Did you drive here?’ she asked.
‘No, I got a cab. They took my licence away. Said I’d be fucking lethal if I was out there driving.’
‘Can you make it to the road? My flat’s not that far away. I’ll get my car and I’ll drive you.’
‘I’ll wait for you at the bus stop. I can get that far.’
At home in her tiny flat, Grace looked at Freeman’s gun more closely. It was a Smith & Wesson .38, the kind that used to be standard police issue. It was in good condition and fully loaded. Grace had her own gun, one that lived in a bottom locked drawer. She had acquired it illegally several years ago when an old and dangerous lover had started stalking her. The lover had disappeared when Harrigan had arrived on the scene and these days he was in gaol. The work she did now allowed her to carry firearms legally. Still, she held on to the gun. Nothing was reliable. Harrigan might walk out on her; she might walk out on him. The stalker could get his freedom. She might no longer have a job. Freeman’s gun was more powerful. The compact disk was in the sports bag as well, in an unmarked case just as he’d said. Am I really going to do something as crazy as this, she thought. Again she rang Harrigan and again his phone was switched off. She took the photograph Freeman had given her on the beach and, together with the CD and the gun, put all three into her own shoulder bag. Then she left her flat. She was going to do something as crazy as this.
Freeman was a strange figure waiting for her in the hot summer wind among the tanned and slender bodies of the young backpackers with their fashion haircuts and wash-away designer tattoos. He sat heavily in the passenger seat, breathing strangely.
‘Are we going to make it?’ she asked.
‘I dunno. Lucky it’s not far.’
‘Where to?’
‘Round the back of Waverley Cemetery. I’ll tell you where to go.’
She drove for a short while in silence. His breathing seemed to settle and become more regular. She glanced at him.
‘I’ve got a question to ask you since I’m doing you a favour,’ she said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Did you kill Gina Farrugia and her boyfriend?’
‘You’re like Paulie, aren’t you? You don’t let things go. Yeah, I did kill them. They owed me money. Tell you what, though—that little girl. It was a fucking awful thing to have to do. I got the money, I got the money. She just kept on. I—’
‘You can stop right there.’ Grace changed gears viciously. ‘I’m not interested in hearing that. Tell me something else. Gina was raped. Did you do that too?’
‘No, that wasn’t me. I couldn’t by then. I was too sick.’
‘Who did?’
‘What do you want to know for?’
‘I want to send whoever did it a Christmas card. What do you think?’
Freeman laughed. It was a hangman’s cackle, one of the strangest sounds Grace had ever heard.
‘I can see what Paulie sees in you past your looks. Fuck ’em, they ripped me off. It’ll be something for them to remember me by. A couple of mongrels. Dougie Ferry and Rob Sinclair. Dougie’s in gaol already. You don’t have to go after him.’
Oh but I will, Grace thought. You can bet I will. If you weren’t dying, I’d go after you too.
The houses in Freeman’s street were built up on the rock close to Waverley Cemetery where the graves had a view out to the Pacific Ocean. A smattering of cars were parked on the road.
‘I’m the house on the corner of that lane,’ Freeman said. ‘Go up the side, Gracie. I can’t climb the steps any more.’
Halfway along the street a narrow lane dissected the roadway. Freeman’s house was elevated at the front and side, with the bulge of the original sandstone edging the street. A steep set of steps cut into the rock led to up to his porch. It was the only house in the block still in its original condition. All the others had been renovated to luxury, becoming images of tunnel vision with blank walls on either side and glass fronts set rigidly towards the view. Grace drove to the end of the lane, did a turn in the next cross street and then came back down to park beside Freeman’s side gate. On the way up the lane, she had seen bars on all his windows.
He got out of the car wheezing. ‘Fucking useless,’ he said.
She followed him in the gate to the backyard, a small square of couch grass sporting a rusty rotary clothes hoist. The space was surrounded by high fences and the brick wall of the house next door. As soon as the gate closed behind him, she took out the gun he’d given her. He turned and laughed.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You won’t need that.’
She noticed that the back door had a new lock. Freeman deadlocked it behind them as soon they’d stepped inside.
‘Why are you doing that?’ she asked.
‘I’ve told you, Gracie. It’s nothing for you to
be frightened of. You’ll see why when we walk through.’
In the kitchen, the smell of blocked plumbing hit her like a wall. The cupboards had been left open, their contents pulled out; the fridge, already empty, had been dragged away from the wall. Even the stove and the ancient, greasy ceiling fan had been pulled out. She followed him down the hallway that ran the length of the house. Every room had been torn apart. The carpets were pulled up, cupboards and sets of drawers had been emptied. The manhole cover had been removed, junk pulled from the roof cavity and tossed onto the floor. In one room, a bedroom, a mattress had been straightened and a bed made up. It was one of the few signs of habitation. They reached the living room at the front of the house where the sunlight was a bright gilding on the dusty windows. Freeman sat heavily in a chair. The air was musty, the room also disordered.
‘Open the front door, would you, Gracie? I need some air. I don’t mind that door being open because I can see people coming.’
He tossed her his keys. She opened the door but left it on the deadlock in case she had to shut it in a hurry. Hot air rushed in from the outside. Freeman had his eyes closed.
‘Who turned your place over like this?’ she asked. ‘What did they want?’
‘At a guess, Gracie, it’s what I’ve got to give you. Those tapes. There’s nothing else here anyone would want. They got in through the back door. Happened while I was in hospital. I ask myself, what if I’d been here at the time? Would I already be outside in the cemetery with my mum and dad?’
‘Where are these tapes?’
‘In a moment. I’ve got to tell you something else. Whoever did it, they did find something. That CD I gave you on the beach. I used to have prints of all those pictures. There’s a few where everyone’s having a real good time and I wanted them to look at, you know, to have a laugh. They were in the top drawer of that sideboard over there when I got carted off to hospital. They’re gone now. As far as I can tell, they’re the only thing that is gone. So whoever broke in here, they wanted my tapes and my pictures.’
‘How could anyone know you had all this information here?’
‘That’s it, you see. Mike. Apart from me, he’s the only fucking person who knew any of it even existed! It’s the same thing with his safety deposit box. He’s the only one who knew how to open it.’ Almost to her shock, Freeman looked distressed, even horrified. ‘You saw that fucking picture of Mike on the net this morning. He’d been put through the wringer. They must have done that to him to make him tell them all that. Whoever broke in here, he’s the one who did that to Mike and then killed him. He must be. He’s the one I want you to get.’
‘Why would they want to do that to begin with?’
‘You listen to the tape. It’ll tell you why. It’s about people with a lot to protect.’
There was silence. Grace thought how she was isolated in the silent suburban wilderness where anything could happen and no one cared.
‘You’ve set me up. You could have given me the tape on Bondi beach.’
‘No, mate. I want you to walk away from here and go back to your boyfriend in one piece. It was too fucking dangerous to carry them around. I’ve got to tell you something else. You see that door over there in the hallway. That’s where that little girl and her boyfriend died. I wish I hadn’t done that. It bothers me.’
Opening the thick, white wooden door, Grace looked at a set of stairs leading down into a black pit. There was an uprush of cold and mouldy air. The light revealed a cellar under the living room floor with walls dug out of the original rock. A single fluorescent tube lit the gloom. She moved forward but the first step shifted dangerously under her foot.
‘Don’t go down there,’ Freeman called out urgently. ‘I’m superstitious about it. People don’t always come out alive. Anyway, the steps are too fucking shaky now.’
Grace put her gun away and stepped back from the door tormented by the question: how could you do that to someone else? Harrigan had his own demons pursuing him in his work; this was the one that drove her. She left the door open and the light on. A place like that needed to be cleaned out with light and air.
There was a knock on the front door. ‘Good morning.’ It was a female voice.
Grace turned sharply to see a tall figure outlined in the doorway. Immediately, Freeman got to his feet, if shakily. Grace rested her hand on her bag, the gun within reach.
‘Who are you?’ she asked.
‘Can I come in?’
‘No, stay out on the fucking porch,’ Freeman said.
Undeterred, the woman walked into the room, her tall figure dwarfing his. Too weak to stand, Freeman had to sit down again.
‘Why don’t you take my card,’ she said, handing it to Grace.
‘Sam Jonas,’ Grace read, recognising the name from the card Harrigan had shown her the night before. ‘Have you got a reason for being here?’
‘I was about to ask you that.’
Grace looked her over. She was strong-looking. Even in this weather, she was wearing a leather jacket. Grace wondered if there was a shoulder holster underneath it. She stood watching the two of them with a stance that said whatever was going on here, she was in control.
‘Who do you think you are, walking in here like this?’ Grace asked, less out of anger than curiosity.
Sam smiled. ‘I go where I like and I do what I like. That’s a decision I made some time ago. But you haven’t come here just to pass the time of day. You’re Grace Riordan, aren’t you?’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Like a lot of people, you’re on the net. I met a friend of yours yesterday. Paul Harrigan. Did he tell you that? There are pictures of the two of you together out there in cyberspace. You must know that.’
Grace could say she possessed a very minor degree of fame. Harrigan was written up in the papers often enough, usually in the crime wrap but sometimes in the gossip columns. She had been photographed with him more than once and was usually described as the ex-policewoman who was his companion.
‘Why should you be interested in anything to do with me?’
‘I wasn’t particularly until now. Did Harrigan send you here?’ Sam asked.
Grace smiled back. ‘If you’re not going to answer my question, I’m not going to answer yours.’
Sam looked around, taking in the mess.
‘Looks like someone turned this place over pretty thoroughly,’ she said. ‘What would they be looking for? Did they find it? Or maybe they didn’t. Is that what you’re doing here? You’ve come to collect it.’
‘Jesus, lady. Why don’t you fucking get out of here? I don’t have the time left for you.’
Sam looked at Freeman in his chair.
‘You don’t look like you’ve got any time left at all. You two didn’t answer my question. Did they find what they were looking for?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Grace asked.
‘It’s my job to keep an eye on things. This is an interesting set of circumstances. Whatever this is about, I think I’m going to leave you to it and see what happens. My guess is, none of us has the time to hang around here.’
She walked out, Grace followed her.
‘What do you mean, none of us has the time? How dangerous is it to be here?’
‘Ask him. He should know.’ Sam nodded towards the open door and Freeman.
‘But you don’t care what happens to anyone here,’ Grace said. ‘Is that it?’
Sam turned sharply. Her gaze seemed to pin Grace to a square of paper with her name written across it.
‘You wouldn’t know what I care about or what I don’t. I don’t believe in getting in people’s way. I let them do what they want to do and then see what happens afterwards. To me, it’s the old story of the butterfly flapping its wings in the jungle somewhere. Who knows what the outcome will be? You’ve got a gun in that bag, haven’t you?’
‘What about you? Are you wearing one?’
‘Will you use yours? If you do, what will
happen? Those are the real questions. Bye now.’ She grinned. ‘See you when I see you. If I do.’
Sam walked down the steps, across to the opposite corner of the lane and got into a blue Mazda with tinted windows. She drove away quickly. Grace watched her turn out of the street. It was otherwise empty. Not even the joggers or the dog-walkers had come out in this heat. The road tar shimmered thick and metallic, semi-fluid under the hot sun. She went back inside.
‘Is she gone?’
‘She just drove away. What’s going on? How dangerous is it to be here?’
‘I’ll try and make this fast. Give me my keys, mate. I’ll get you those tapes.’ He levered himself out of his chair. ‘They pulled up all my fucking carpets but they missed this. My mate put this in. I reckon it’s pretty fucking nifty.’
He knelt down by the fireplace. She watched him insert a needle-like rod into a tiny gap between the floorboards and the ornate Art Nouveau tiles. There was a click and a square of tiles flicked up like a jack-in-a-box. Freeman took out a clear plastic bag containing a collection of miniature audio cassette tapes. Then he shut the square of tiles and put his keys back in his pocket.
‘Help me up, mate.’
She gripped him under his arm, feeling the slack muscles, helping him to his feet and then into the chair.
‘This is the tape you want. The rest are just deals and money.’
He handed her the single tape, marked with a white sticker, then put the plastic bag on the arm of the chair. Leaning his head back, he closed his eyes again. Grace put the tape into her bag.
‘What’s on this tape that’s different?’
‘First off, that’s the one where Mike shoots his mouth off about Paulie and Eddie Lee. But mostly it’s about Jerome Beck.’
