‘Don’t do that to yourself, Toby. You don’t need to do that.’
‘My friend.’ Toby spoke the words aloud.
He began to strike his desk with his hand. Harrigan hit the emergency call button and then tried to take Toby’s hand but his son pushed him back. He moved Toby out of his wheelchair and set him on the bed, and then tried to cradle him there. Toby rolled away from him, gasping for breath. His body went into spasm as Tim Masson opened the door and came into the room. The nurse injected Toby with a muscle relaxant and they sat him upright so he could breathe.
Harrigan held his son until his body had stopped shuddering. Masson handed him a towel soaked in warm water and he cleaned Toby’s face.
Toby shook his head to stop him.
‘You need some sleep,’ Harrigan said.
Toby signalled ‘no’. They waited.
‘Didn’t use me. My friend,’ he said at length.
Harrigan could not remember when he had last heard his son speak so many words at once.
‘Yes, she is your friend. Whatever else she is, she is that. And she didn’t use you. I was wrong to say that. I’m sorry. Just take that from me. I am sorry.’
Eventually Toby flickered ‘yes’ with his hand. Harrigan touched his son’s hair, bright dark hair, just like his own, letting his hand stay there for some few short moments.
I always leave you in the end, I walk away and I leave you. Just you and what’s in your head.
‘You sleep now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. I’m sorry, okay?’
Toby closed his eyes, his nurse adjusted his pillows. He was slipping away into unconsciousness.
‘I’ll sit with him,’ Masson said.
‘Okay,’ Harrigan replied.
‘Okay,’ he said again, as he walked down the corridor outside, wrung out. He stopped to stand on the back deck to the building, looking out over Cockatoo Island. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to the night air, holding every muscle tensed.
Alcohol was not allowed on the premises of Cotswold House. Susie, dressed down at the end of the day, provided Harrigan with strong coffee in her office instead. She listened to him, occasionally blinking with tiredness.
‘He’s got us all on display, Susie, everyone. Me, Ronnie, Carolyn, all their kids, the whole family. He’s my son, he’s the closest thing to me. To me, this is about as private as it gets, but he’s got me up there on the Net with everyone else.’
He was referring to what a former long-term lover had once called the Harrigan tribe: his two sisters with their extended and conjoint families, a gathering of people that could, when collected, fill a hall.
On such occasions, Harrigan spent most of his time avoiding relatives who wanted favours from him. Photographs of them all, Harrigan included, filled Toby’s website. Toby had not told the world that his father was a policeman, it was almost the only detail he had left out.
Harrigan had refused to let him include it, saying that if he did, he could expect to find abuse, pleas for help, or outrageous flattery in every email he opened.
‘He’s not thinking about what it means to you, Paul,’ Susie replied.
‘He’s thinking about what it means to him. His body keeps him constrained every second of his life. He’s an adolescent boy. He needs to tell the world who he is.’
‘Yeah. And you let him talk to a murderer. And you didn’t even know it.’
Susie rocked a little in her seat with the force of the accusation, her cheeks tinged with red.
‘I can’t stop him talking to people on the Net. I don’t think we should even want to try and do that,’ she said. ‘He never talks to girls anywhere else. He’s a boy. What do you think he’s going to do? And how could anyone have known who this girl was?’
Harrigan sat with his head in his hands, staring at Susie’s desk.
‘He trusted her, you know. Why? Why let someone like that hurt him so much? I — ’
Harrigan stopped, obliged in common honesty to admit that he was the person who had most hurt his son that night. There was a hint of toughness in Susie’s voice as she replied.
‘What are you going to do? Are you going to lock him away so he can’t talk to anyone again?’
‘No, of course I’m not. I don’t understand it myself, I like to see who I’m talking to.’
He knew that not everyone out there wanted to look at his son, that sometimes people turned away at the sight, repulsed. There was silence again. A little of the tension faded from the air.
‘Toby is a very strong-willed person, Paul. He’s the strongest person I know. He’ll get through this.’
‘Yeah, he will. I know he will. I have to go, Susie. I’ve got to go back to work. I’ve got to tell them about this. I’ll come by tomorrow but I’m not sure when. Whenever I can get the time.’
‘Don’t worry about Toby tonight. We’ll look after him, he’ll be fine.
Good night. Take care.’
She spoke in her professional voice but still managed to sound as tired as he felt.
‘Thanks, Susie. Good night,’ he said.
Harrigan walked out into the cold night air. His son’s tears and his mucus were streaked down his shirt and jacket. This was love; it was the strangest thing in the world to feel, as fundamental and difficult as it was. He could not imagine existing without his connection to his son.
How he got through the next few hours he did not quite know. In the Gents, he sponged the stains off his jacket and shirt. Out in the office, he watched himself work, thorough, quietly spoken, controlled.
Before he left that night, the information had been recorded, the responsibility for its investigation allocated and the team advised. He moved through it all somehow numbed against the pain but knowing that it was there waiting for him as soon as this anaesthetic wore off.
By the time he reached home, the rain was pouring down; it was a relief to watch the city dissolve in the streaks of water down the windows.
Tonight, he was exhausted enough to sleep as soon as he lay down.
In the Temple, the preacher was also at work. He sat at his desk, staring at the telephone, thinking of Lucy, of her particular insolence, considering that it was not a good thing for anyone to be quite so insolent. In the artificial light, he appeared aged beyond recognition.
In the luxury of solitude, he let all his masks slip.
‘Do you think I can’t make you come to me, Lucy?’ he said aloud, with no more emotion than if he was reflecting on the state of the weather. ‘I think you’ll see that I can if I want to. I think you’ll see that it’s really just a matter of timing.’
Lucy aside, the timing of events had become one of urgency.
Thinking of this, he made a phone call.
‘Yes? Yvonne Lindley speaking.’
It was an old woman’s voice, creaky and sounding puzzled.
‘Yvonne. It’s Graeme. I hope I’m not calling you too late in the evening.’
‘No, not at all. I never sleep at night these days. I should have realised it was you, Graeme. For one fleeting moment there I hoped it might have been a son or a daughter of mine but of course it’s not.
Nice to hear from you all the same. How can I help?’
‘It’s refuge business again, I’m afraid.’
‘Always a good cause. You know, John would have been very interested in the work you do, he would have seen the value of it.
What’s the problem?’
‘One of my charges, he was out on conditional release. He’s a wild boy and I’m afraid he’s gone and got himself locked up again. Which is a pity because we were making very good progress.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He was caught joyriding in a stolen car. I might add he was a passenger, not the instigator. He foolishly went out with some old acquaintances, one of whom turned up in this car, and they all went for a ride. He’s only fifteen so he certainly wasn’t driving.’
‘When you’re young, you’re mad, aren’t you? We certainly used to do things we weren’t supposed to do. We
