Blood Redemption

‘In the New Life Ministries refuge,’ Grace continued, ‘just up and over the hill. That’s where your guardian, Preacher Graeme Fredericksen, lives as well. He’s not here today, he’s not answering his phone. Do you know why that is?’

‘Why are you asking him that?’ the case worker asked.

‘Just let him answer, Ria,’ Harrigan said quietly.

‘I don’t know. He’s busy, I guess. I don’t care, I don’t want to fucking see him.’

The boy’s hands were twisting at his beanie and he was shaking.

‘Why not? We’d like to see him if we could find him.’

At this, there was a change in the boy. He became still, glancing from Grace to Harrigan, an indefinable expression on his face.

‘Are you afraid of him, Greg?’ Grace asked.

‘No.’

The word had an echo in the small room. The boy seemed almost to smile as he said it.

‘Did you like living in the refuge?’ Grace asked in the silence.

The case worker stirred a little in her seat but did not intervene. The boy glanced at her sideways.

‘It’s just a place,’ he said, speaking in a flat voice. ‘I’m not going back there again, so what does it fucking matter?’

‘No, you’re not,’ Grace replied, watching his face and trying to pin down whatever he was feeling. ‘Why did you want to torch the car?’

‘I wanted to see it burn.’

‘You like that?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, throwing it back at her, ‘I do. I like seeing that. It makes me feel good.’

‘You like it,’ she said very gently. ‘Do you like being in rooms like this too? Being questioned like this. You like being in Kariong? Does that make you feel good?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, picking at his fingernails, ‘I fucking love it.’

He looked up at her, smiling. She was silent at the sight of the desolation in his face.

‘You don’t have to live like this, Greg,’ she said, leaning towards him.

‘You really don’t.’

‘You say that. And that’s all you fucking know. What’s going to fucking change in my life? Nothing. There’s nowhere I can go where anyone wants me. Except here.’

His body language said that he was worn out. Grace felt a nudge in her feelings, a sudden realisation as she looked at him.

‘Where anyone wants you,’ she said. ‘Does no one want you?’

‘No, they fucking don’t,’ he said quietly.

‘Don’t bully him.’

The case worker interrupted, sounding as if she had just remembered that she should put in her two cents worth. Harrigan almost smiled but did not speak.

‘You would have seen the car burn, Greg,’ Grace continued. ‘There was enough petrol on it. It would have gone up like a Christmas tree.

There would have been nothing left. And maybe nothing left of you, if you’d been standing close enough. You did that because someone does want you.’

The boy looked at her but did not answer.

‘Those clothes in the boot,’ she continued, ‘put them together and you know what you have? A young girl. That’s what those pieces add up to. She wants you. That’s why you wanted those clothes to disappear off the planet. So you could protect her. Where did you find them? Were they already in the car? Or did you put them in the boot so you could burn everything in one go?’

‘They were just there. I never touched them.’

‘So when we check them or the boot or anything about them, will we find your fingerprints? Anything that ties them to you?’

‘It doesn’t matter if you do,’ he replied, quite calm.

‘Why not?’

He shrugged, ever so slightly, looking to the side.

‘Because. It just doesn’t matter. Whatever you say. Nothing matters.’

‘Yes, it does. You matter. And she does. She matters. She matters to you, you matter to her,’ Grace said. ‘She’s smaller than you. Small and thin. Just a little girl. When did you see her last? After yesterday morning?’

He became absolutely still, there was just the soft sound of his breath.

‘She fell. When she was running away. Did you know that? Did she tell you? She landed quite hard,’ Grace said. ‘She landed on her hands and knees. She tore her gloves and she scraped her hands. It must have hurt.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ he said very quietly.

‘She didn’t tell you.’

‘That’s entrapment,’ Ria said, quickly. ‘Don’t you say anything, Greg.’

The boy did not reply to either of them.

‘There’s a lot of blood on those clothes, Greg. I saw the shooting later and that was the first thing I thought. How much blood there was.’

‘So fucking what if there was blood?’

Grace leaned closer to him. She spoke to him directly, cutting everyone else out.

‘This is not something she can walk away from, Greg. This is something that means people come after her until they find her, no matter what. You must know that. Maybe you even told her that -

you can’t walk away from this because it’s going to find you wherever you go. What matters is how you deal with it.’

Again there was silence.

‘Do you want to leave her out there? What do you think might happen to her if you do? Is she going to end up dead?’

The boy leaned forward, pressing his elbows on the table and bracing his fists against his forehead. He looked up at Grace once, his mouth a thin pressed line, and then looked down again. He shook his head from side to side.

‘Just tell me,’ Grace said. ‘Tell me who she is. Just do that and we can put a line under this. You can and she can. Before something does happen to her.’

He shook his head again.

‘Yes,’ she said, speaking urgently, ‘finish it now. Stop it where it is.

Just tell me who she is.’

Again he shook his head slowly. No. No.

‘Why not?’ Grace asked. ‘Why not? Who are you going to save?

You can’t save her from this. It’s too late for that. It was too late as soon as she pulled that trigger. The only thing you can do is salvage what you can for her. That’s the only way you can help her and help yourself. You can do that for yourself. You can salvage something for you.’

He began to hit the sides of his head with his fists.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said, ‘don’t hurt yourself.’

‘No,’ he said, his voice strained with tears, ‘I am not fucking going to do it. No.’

He repeated no, no, no and then leaning forward, struck his forehead hard on the table several times, quickly. Ria Allard stood up at once and ran back quickly towards the wall while Harrigan hit the emergency button.

‘You stop that now!’ Grace was standing up, stretching across the table, shoving him back hard with both hands. He stopped like a bird in mid flight at her touch. He had blood on his forehead where he had split open his skin.

Harrigan stood back, watching. When the uniformed officers arrived, he waved them to stay back, indicating they should wait.

‘That was stupid,’ Grace said to the boy, genuinely angry. ‘Do you see this? Look at that — I don’t want this from you.’ She reached forward and wiped the blood from his forehead with a tissue and showed it to him, throwing it on the table. ‘Do you think anybody really cares if you make yourself bleed? No, they don’t. They