The Tattooed Man

by Alex Palmer

  ‘Who was he?’ she asked.

  ‘Good fucking question. Six, seven months ago, Stewie says he’s got someone who wants in with us. Someone with money. Ta-di-dah, Beck turns up. Nasty piece of shit. From the first I thought, what the fuck are you really up to, mate? He wasn’t that interested in our syndicate, he wanted our contacts. He was importing diamonds and he didn’t want anyone giving his couriers shit. Stewie was in on that deal. He had a couple of diamonds Beck had given him. Why the fuck was he throwing those things around? It was stupid, drawing attention to himself. I didn’t trust him. I started taping him along with Baby Tooth. Anyway, it all happened. Beck got his shipment of rocks in, we got our payoff. Trouble was, Mike got curious. You see, Beck had another deal going with Stewie and Nattie Edwards, the diamonds were paying for it. Beck kept saying he was going to make a shitload of money out of that deal, like a real shitload. It’d make the diamonds look like crap. That was a red rag to Mike. He wanted in, wanted to know what it was all about.’

  ‘You said Beck was nasty.’

  ‘He had a chip on his shoulder. He drank like a fucking fish, and when he did he got vicious. You could see he thought we were nothing. He used to talk all the time like he was somebody special and we were living in a garbage dump. Anyway, by the time he got his rocks here, Beck had worked out that Stewie was pretty fucking useless except when it came to ripping a dollar off his mates. But Mike had contacts, good contacts. Some of them went all the way to the Bearpit. That was useful, Beck wanted those. So he made out he was going to sideline Stewie and bring in Mike. What he was really doing was playing them off one against the other. I told Mike that. He wouldn’t listen, of course. He kept pushing at Beck, saying, come on, count me in. Then one day, out of the blue, Beck takes Mike to this place down south. Some bright, new, shiny laboratory that’s just been built out at Campbelltown. Fancy name. Life Patent Strategies.’ Freeman put a sarcastic edge on the words. ‘Beck takes Mike on a tour, says to him, you want be in on this other deal I’ve got going with Stewie and Nattie? Then you need to see this place because this is where it all happens. Funny thing was, that place really put the wind up Mike. He came back and said no way. Started talking about cutting Beck out. He didn’t want anything to do with him any more.’

  ‘What would Beck have to do with a place like that?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Fucked if I know. I didn’t get a chance to find out either. Because right after that, things started to happen. You know Ambro? Mike found out where Paulie had hidden her.’

  ‘I’ve heard of her. She’s a tattooist.’

  ‘Yeah, and Paulie’s informant till she did the dirty on Mike once too often. She blew the whistle on a couple of bikies who were supplying him with ice. Paulie put them in the can. Their mate’s still out there looking for her.’

  Grace hadn’t heard any of this before but it wasn’t surprising. Neither she nor Harrigan were able to talk in any detail to each other about their work.

  ‘I thought she used to work for Cassatt,’ she said.

  ‘Mike did too. He wasn’t a happy man when he found out the opposite. With Paulie of all people. Paulie had this safe house lined up for her. This is where you can hang Marvin, mate. He leaked to Baby Tooth where it was. Little Fang says so on that tape I gave you.’

  ‘How could Marvin know that?’

  ‘Because he controls the money. He reads the money trail. Paulie wants money for a safe house, Marvin’s got to okay it. He calls in a favour, gets the address. No problems. Now someone, we never found out who, must have tipped off Paulie that Ambro’s cover was blown because he took her somewhere else quick smart. But Ambro’s got this funny kind of psoriasis. She gets a special ointment for it on the government, not many people use it. Mike paid someone in the health department for a list of every chemist in New South Wales that was selling that ointment for the government. He read it through once and said, I know where she is. He went out to hunt her down. The night before he went, he rang me to say he was leaving the next day. I never saw him again. I reckon wherever Ambro is, that’s where Mike’s grave was.’

  ‘Didn’t you know where he was going?’

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me. Next thing, I’m in hospital. When I wake up, I hear Leanne’s dead and someone’s cleaned out Mike’s safety deposit box. Next I hear Baby Tooth is off to Perth with his wife and kids. His dad got him some job with the local coppers over there on their anti-corruption squad. I ring Stewie. He hangs up without talking to me. Next thing, I hear on the radio Paulie’s calling Mike’s disappearance murder. When I finally get home, my house is like this.

  ‘Put it together, mate. I’ve had a lot of time to think this out these last few months. Whatever deal Beck had going with Stewie and Nattie, when he took Mike down to that place in Campbelltown, he pushed someone too far and too hard. And he knew that’s what he was fucking doing!’ Suddenly Freeman was angry. ‘You listen to that fucking tape. It’s like he was fucking saying to whoever was watching him, Come on! Get me! And they fucking did. Someone came down on him hard and they swatted us along the way. They put the screws on Mike to find out what Beck had let slip. And he told them, he must have done. ’Cause that’s why they’re knocking on my door now. They want my tapes. They’re cleaning up, protecting their arse.’

  He stopped. His mouth was blue. ‘I’m going outside now. I’m feeling cold. I reckon you should get out of here now, Gracie. Take those other tapes too. Paulie’ll want ’em.’

  The plastic bag holding the rest of the tapes was still sitting on the arm of his chair. Grace left them there and followed him out onto the porch. She had one more question to ask before she left. He sat down in a shredding cane chair, labouring with his breathing. Out here, the sky was an endless blue above the marble angels in the cemetery. The sea matched the sky, curling out towards the horizon where both blended together in a hazy line.

  ‘Why didn’t Cassatt kill Harrigan that night in Marrickville?’ she asked. ‘Or even at some other time?’

  ‘Fucked if I know, mate. It’s a mystery to me. Because of old Jimbo, I suppose.’

  The straightforward casualness of this chilled Grace almost more than anything she had heard that morning. Freeman’s breathing was becoming harsher.

  ‘Let me call an ambulance,’ she said.

  ‘No, mate. I just want to sit here in the sun. It’s not going to be long. I’ll give you my keys and you can let yourself out the back. Don’t bother to—’

  He stopped. In the sudden silence, Grace heard the sound of a motorcycle coming speedily down the lane, then saw it stop at the foot of the steps leading up to Freeman’s porch. With a final effort, Freeman pulled himself to his feet. ‘Get inside,’ he said, his voice squeezed for breath. At once, Grace stepped back inside the doorway.

  The rider dismounted and came up the front steps at a run. Dressed in black leathers and wearing a helmet, he was unidentifiable. He reached inside his jacket and took out a gun. Seconds only had passed.

  In the instant the gun was fired, Freeman pushed himself between Grace and the shooter. There was a series of dull, muted cracks. Grace leapt backwards into the house, slamming the door so hard and so quickly she fell to the floor. A bullet thudded into the wood at almost the same instant the door slammed shut. She remembered at once that it was on a deadlock. The keys were in Freeman’s pocket where whoever was out there with a gun could get them. There was no way out through the back door, which was locked, or the windows, which were barred. She was trapped.

  She ran for the cellar, the only possible shelter, shutting the door behind her. There was a bolt on the inside of the door; she slid it into place. Moving as quickly as she could, she went down the stairs. As Freeman had said, they were dangerous. They kept shifting under her feet, once almost catapulting her forward. Down in the cellar itself, there was no place to hide. With the light on, she was like a rat in a trap; it would be like shooting into a fishbowl.

  Grace had trophies to prove she could shoot straight.
With no other choice, she took Freeman’s gun out of her bag and shot the fluorescent tube in half, dropping to the floor to avoid the racket and the ricochet, hoping the bullet would bury itself in the wooden floor above. The tube’s broken pieces fell like a faint iridescent rain before disappearing into blackness. I’m burying myself in another person’s grave, she thought, shivering in the cold, dead air. The silence was greedy, like something waiting. Along with their breath, it had absorbed the final sounds of the last people to be killed in here. The smell was vile. It was a terrible place to die.

  She felt her way along the side of the stairs, until there was enough space underneath them for her to hide there. Even by touch, she could tell they were held up by an unstable scaffold. She heard the door handle above being rattled by someone. Then, with a crash, the door was kicked open. She looked up. Daylight illuminated the cracks in the underside of the top step. She pressed herself into a niche in the wall, holding Freeman’s gun, waiting. Her teeth had been chattering. With her left hand, she forced her mouth closed. Whoever it was turned the light switch off and on several times. When nothing happened, they stepped forward in the dark. The first stair moved under their feet and they stepped back. From where she was, Grace could see nothing of them.

  ‘Are you down there, man?’ said a soft, male South African voice. ‘I’ll find you. I’ll hear you breathe.’

  Grace, barely breathing, had her hand over her nose and mouth. He would be able to smell that a gun had been fired in here, even if he hadn’t heard it. If he walked into the dark down those dangerous steps, he would know that she had a better chance of getting him before he got her.

  ‘Let me tell you something, man,’ the gunman said. ‘That little trick of yours didn’t fool me for one second. I saw that bag of tapes on the chair. But I can count. I know there should be five tapes and one CD. You give me the tape you’re holding and you can walk away. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. Easy. That’s all I want, that tape. I’m taking the rest with me anyway. Just give me the one to make up the whole.’

  He stopped. They both waited.

  ‘You’re not fooling me. I know you’re down there. You don’t want me coming after you, Auntie. You give me that tape and you’re safe.’ There was another pause. ‘Let me tell you something, man. It doesn’t mean anything that you’ve got that CD. I’ve already got all the pictures on it. If they hit the media, they’ll take people down. Maybe it’s someone you know. Someone you care about. You can stop that happening.’

  Again, silence.

  ‘Look, man, if it’s money you want, we can talk about that. You give me that tape. There could be more money in this for you than you can dream about. You think about that.’

  She could hear growing agitation in his voice. Then all at once he was gone, shutting the door behind him. The tension snapped, she leaned back against the rock, breathing deeply. After some moments, she took out her mobile phone. The illuminated screen said no signal. Pressed into the rubble, she was in too much of a cave. If she moved into the centre of the cellar it might be possible to make a call. She waited for more long, terrible minutes, wondering if he would come back.

  Suddenly, the door was pushed open again and brilliant torchlight flashed down the stairs, its beam raking across the cold room. Grace froze where she was. Then a broad Australian voice called out, ‘Police. Is anyone down there? Walk into the light. Keep your hands where we can see them. Come out now.’

  In the dark, Grace leaned back against the icy rock, breathing the filthy air too deeply. She wouldn’t die in here after all.

  ‘I’m down here,’ she called. ‘I’m holding a gun but I’m not going to fire it. Also, I’m on the job. Okay? I’m one of you.’

  ‘Then come out where we can see you. Keep your gun in sight at all times,’ the voice came back.

  ‘I’m coming out now,’ Grace called, and moved towards the light illuminating the stairs, light-headed to be alive.

  11

  When Harrigan reached Cotswold House, he found Toby sitting in the sun poolside in his wheelchair, having lunch with his therapist, Tim Masson. Performing an old ritual, Harrigan and Tim took turns in helping Toby eat. In front of them, the convergence of the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers created a wide expanse of water flowing around the industrial rocks of Cockatoo and Spectacle Islands. On the further shore, townhouses encroached on the green waterline. At the end of the meal, Tim left father and son together, wheeling the mobile table back to the kitchen.

  ‘How are you?’ Harrigan asked. ‘I’m sorry I had to leave like that yesterday. Believe me, I wish I’d been here instead.’

  Toby could speak, and sometimes did, but usually found it too hard to get out an individual word. With his good hand, he typed a text message onto a miniature display device he kept with him, in this case attached to his wheelchair. Harrigan thought of his son’s words living and dying in the soft darkness of his thoughts, caught there like moths trying to find their way out to the light. The glossy and sophisticated brochure from Life Patent Strategies with its promises of bodily regeneration flashed into his mind. Could they untie his son’s disabilities, at least help him speak? The hope was too sharp to think about. He watched Toby’s deft movements across the keyboard. His silent speech was quick, a mix of electronic words and his own private sign language, rejigged from the signing of the deaf.

  Grace was madder at you than I was. I’m good but how are you? They’re all over the net those pictures that got emailed out this morning. Real sicko stuff. Are you okay?

  ‘I’m fine, mate. I’m keeping it at arm’s length.’

  You look like you’ve been run over by something.

  Harrigan smiled. For the first time that day, he let his backbone relax.

  ‘I feel like it,’ he said, a rare admission. ‘Everyone wants too much from me today. It’s like being drained dry.’

  Why do you have to keep doing it?

  ‘I’ve been on the job for seventeen years. I don’t know what else I could do.’

  You could do something else if you wanted to.

  ‘I could change my life, you mean? I think about it sometimes. I wonder what it’d be like if I did. But I don’t know how to do it.’

  You still don’t have to be a policeman forever.

  ‘Don’t talk about me, let’s talk about you. Why are you all dressed up? Are you expecting someone?’

  Toby was wearing a shirt he’d received as a birthday present, a soft blue cotton, light and cool. His crooked legs were bare in the sun. The summer heat relaxed his body, loosening its muscular tightness.

  Emma’s coming to see me. Hypatia are having a BBQ for me at her place. It’s going to be a hookup all around the country. We’re going to talk about it today. Hypatia was an all-girl online mathematicians club that had found Toby through his website and taken him under their collective wing as an honorary member. His son, who had scored perfect marks in mathematics throughout his final school year, exchanged complex equations with them across the net. Harrigan had met them smiling at the other end of the webcam. Five brilliant girls, both attractive and ordinary, who lived across the continent from as far away as Perth. Emma was the Sydney-sider. Toby’s shirt, expensive and carefully chosen, was her gift, bought on behalf of all five girls. For Toby, her card had read. Love from us all. Harrigan hesitated. His son had had his heart broken before.

  ‘Don’t let her hurt you,’ he said.

  I’m not stupid. I know she’s never going to want to have sex with me. I don’t care. She talks to me. I just want to be with her. Emma’s going to enrol in the same course as me next year. We’re going to be at uni together.

  ‘That’s great. You’ll have someone to study with.’

  If that’s what she wants to do. It’s okay. She might find someone else she wants to talk to when she gets there.

  Toby began to drool, something he did from time to time. Harrigan took out his handkerchief and wiped his son’s mouth, the spittle soaking into t
he fabric. Could a seventeen-year-old girl deal with this? Out on the water, boats and ferries plied their way. Close by, the water in the swimming pool was an inviting turquoise. Toby liked to swim in the pool, kicking out with his one good leg. These were the constraints of his son’s world; perhaps they hurt him more than they hurt Toby. Harrigan thought of his son’s website where Toby had drawn a precise representation of his crippled body for other people to look at. He had written: This is how my body is twisted. Harrigan had made that twisted body; it should have matched his own. It would have done if there hadn’t been a glitch somewhere in Toby’s otherwise clear brain, some short circuit that had cramped his muscles permanently.

  ‘Toby,’ he said, ‘if you just ask, there are women I can get for you. I can organise whatever you want. I can set things up for you at home. You can have all the privacy you want. You just have to let me know.’

  Not someone who cares about me. Just something paid for. I don’t want that. I don’t want to talk about it now.

  ‘Just remember. You’re only human. Think about it like that.’

  I do think about it. But it’s not what I want just now. I’ll tell you when I change my mind. It’s like you. You don’t have to be a policeman forever. One day you’ll change your mind.

  ‘I’ll still have to find a way to earn a living.’

  You’re only human. Maybe you could think about it like that.

  Harrigan laughed. At the same time, his beeper went.

  ‘Wait a second, mate. I’ve got to make a call,’ he said. Walking towards the pool, he turned on his phone. ‘Tell me that again,’ he said after some moments, his tone almost incredulous. There was a lengthy silence. ‘No, I’m still here. I’m just taking it in. I’m on my way right now.’

  What is it?

  ‘Mate, I’ve got to go. I always do, don’t I? Let me know how things work out for your barbecue. Am I invited?’

  Yeah, you and Grace. But if you come, you have to stay.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’