‘Have you got some coffee? Some really strong coffee. I really would like a coffee,’ the girl said, almost desperately.
‘Yeah, I’ll get you some coffee.’
At that moment, Harrigan knocked on the door and asked Grace to step outside.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ He sounded outraged. ‘You don’t know what she’s planning. You could be walking into anything.’
‘I don’t think she’s planning anything. She’s genuine.’
‘Genuine is not the point.’ Harrigan could have been talking to a slow child. ‘It’s what’s waiting for you when you get out there with her.’
‘She’s just a girl. I can deal with it,’ Grace said, keeping her reciprocal outrage under wraps as best she could.
‘Boss,’ Trevor intervened, ‘why don’t we wait and see what she’s got for us? If Gracie’s out with her she’s got to be careful, but she should be able to handle it. That’s what she’s paid to do. We’ll have backup out there for her.’
Harrigan glanced at him angrily before looking through the one-way glass once again.
‘The air in there — how can you breathe it?’ he said to Grace, who did not reply.
Both of them watched him calm down. On the other side of the one-way eye, the girl watched without seeing them, her face expressionless, like a rabbit sitting blankly in a set of car lights. Grace looked once and looked away.
‘Get her some coffee and let’s get on with it,’ Harrigan finally said.
The coffee was sent for. Gina sipped it and lit yet another cigarette.
‘Has your boss made up his mind? Or are you going to back out on me?’
‘No, we’ve still got a bargain, Gina,’ Grace said. ‘And you’ve still got things to tell us. It could be worth a lot of money to you.’
Gina grinned in reply, a thin and bitter smile.
‘Yeah. I guess. Something to look forward to, isn’t it? But this has got to be worth something. Because we were there. The morning that shooting happened. In that little shop? It’s just a place people go, we’d been there all night. Me and Mike in that shitty little room. It was so fucking cold. He’d had a hit and he got sick, but I guess you noticed that when you went in there.’ She sipped more coffee and drew on her cigarette. ‘It was getting light and I wanted us to get out of there but I couldn’t shift him. Then I heard someone coming in the back way and down that hallway. And I thought, we’re getting out of here now if there’s someone else around. I got Mike on his feet and out the back somehow, I don’t know how, and I sort of had him leaning in this doorway at the back of the warehouse there. I saw there was this car there and I thought, good, we’re going to take that. Then I heard these shots. These really loud cracks, you know, one after the other. I couldn’t believe it, I was so shit scared. It was like Mike just woke up, right then. We were standing in this little doorway staring at each other. And she came out the back. Running. She had this gun. I was just staring. Then she tripped, you know? She fell and this gun, she dropped it and it went skidding somewhere, I don’t know where. I didn’t see where it ended up. I thought it went in a drain or something.
And then she got up and she got in the car. Like she hadn’t even noticed she’d fallen down. She had this thing around her face but in the car she was pulling it off. Just kind of ripping it away like she couldn’t breathe. She drove right past us really fast. I don’t know how she didn’t see us. I don’t know what she was looking at. We didn’t wait around, we just got out of there. We got a taxi out on Broadway. Some drivers don’t care, you just have to wave your money around and they’ll pick you up anyway. Doesn’t matter what you look like.’
There was silence. Grace could sense Harrigan leaning on the glass outside the room, waiting.
‘Did you see her face, Gina? Can you give us any kind of a description?’ she asked.
Gina smiled to herself and took another cigarette, lighting it from the end of the one she was smoking.
‘You going to keep your word?’ she asked.
The thin and fixed smile was still on her face. Grace felt a small shock as she watched the girl’s expression.
‘Have you got a name for us, Gina?’ she asked.
‘Yeah, I do. But I have to know if you’re going to keep your word first.’
‘I’ll keep my word.’
‘I knew her. That was the thing. I knew who she was. She was a friend of mine once.’ The girl rubbed her forehead, her face haggard.
‘Lucy Hurst. Yeah, Lucy. I liked her, you know. I never thought I’d do this to her.’
On the other side of the glass, Harrigan stood upright. ‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Got you!’
‘Do you have an address?’ Grace asked.
‘No, I don’t know where she came from. She used to hang around near where I worked. She used to buy from me sometimes, if you really want to know. That’s how we got to know each other.’
‘She was an addict?’
‘Sort of. She moved in and out a bit, she was someone who could do that. She’d binge sometimes. I used to think she was playing some kind of funny game of her own, I don’t know what. Lucy could be really strange.’
‘She didn’t work herself?’
‘Oh, no. No way. No one got within cooee of Luce. I’m not saying she didn’t get jumped on while she was out there, she did. That happens, you just can’t do anything about that. But she never got involved with anyone. She used to hang with this kid called Greg. But they were just friends, you know, they never did it or anything like that. And she had this brother who used to come around looking for her sometimes. His name was Stevie.’
‘Can you do an identikit for me?’ Grace asked.
‘Yeah, I’m good with faces. I’ve got to remember the ones I don’t want to see again.’
‘One more question, Gina.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Why did you take so long to come in here with that information?’
The girl drew a circle on the edge of the ashtray with her cigarette.
She stared up at Grace with a look that seemed to be waiting for some kind of blow, violence of some kind, as if she had withdrawn into herself before this expectation. It was a look that said she had never grown used to it.
‘I really couldn’t get here before. I couldn’t.’
‘But now you can. Because you want the money?’
‘How much of it am I going to get?’
Grace glanced at the blank window before she spoke.
‘Quite a lot of it on that information. All of it, probably,’ she replied.
‘I’ve got to have it,’ the girl said very softly, almost a whisper. ‘I just have to.’
‘It’s okay, Gina. We can fix it up,’ Grace said. ‘Let’s go and do the identikit.’
Outside the interview room, Trevor was waiting by himself.
‘Harrigan wants to see you before you leave with her, mate,’ he said quietly.
‘Sure,’ she replied, not without some anxiety.
Later, Grace placed the identikit, together with a statement, on Harrigan’s desk. He picked up the slightly surreal picture: a robotic, not quite cartoon-like reproduction of a young woman’s face. A face with high cheekbones, a wide forehead and short reddish-brown hair.
‘Not a bad-looking face,’ he said. ‘Do you think this is reliable?’
‘Yes, I do. She was very clear about it. No hesitation, didn’t change her mind once.’
He put it back down on the desk. Outside in the main office, small groups of people had gathered to look at the picture as another copy did the rounds. There was a buzz of activity as his officers rang contacts, searched databases and checked lists for any addresses and possibilities.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘The Cross.’
‘How did I know that? Stay in contact. The last thing I want is anyone hurt.’
Or dead, but superstition prevented him from saying that aloud.
‘I’d like to ring Matthew and let him know. Is that okay with you?’
