‘And if I don’t reel her in, Toby? What’s she going to do then? Kill someone else.’
Toby sat tapping his good hand on his desk. Harrigan watched his own gesture reflected back at him.
‘You don’t take that on, Toby. You call me, I keep doing what I can.’
They sat in silence for a little longer.
‘Lucy Hurst, Toby. She’s the Firewall. This is what she looks like.’
Toby manoeuvred the identikit to the centre of his desk with his good hand.
‘Yeah. No one looks human in these pictures.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s going out on every outlet in the city at the moment, Toby. We have to find her soon. Someone is going to tell us where she is.’
‘If that’s what you want, yes, I will.’
They sat without speaking.
‘Why do you want that, Toby? She told you to go away. Why ask her back?’
‘You and her?’
How can you be connected to her?
‘Whatever you want, Toby.’
‘No. It’s whatever you want. Look, I’m going to go now, Toby. I’ve got to get some sleep while I can. I’m going to try and get back to see you but I don’t know when that will be now. You email me if you need anything. Okay?’
‘That’s for you. I brought it for you.’
Even so, when he left Cotswold he felt a lessening of the pressures.
It had to be finished with soon.
26
When Harrigan arrived home, he found Menzies curled up on the kitchen window ledge, snoring happily, shedding fur with the rise and fall of his rib cage and radiating the indefinable odour of old cat. He decided he would try his luck at sleeping as well and went to bed with some journalist’s much hyped expose of a well-known Sydney racing identity. The book was more entertaining for what it had wrong than any other feature and he could have written a fairly acidic, laugh-a-minute review along those lines if the information had not been so dangerous. Perhaps it did relax him. When, sometime before dawn, he was woken out of a deep sleep by the sound of the telephone, his bedside lamp was still on and the book was lying dropped on the coverlet. His first thought was for Toby; his second was for Lucy Hurst.
‘Harrigan.’
‘It’s Grace here. I’m sorry to wake you up so early.’
She was the last person he was expecting to call him at this or any other hour. He sat up, the book falling to the floor with a light thud.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘I’ve just had a call. From someone on the job I’ve never heard of before. They’ve found Gina. And her boyfriend.’ She stopped and seemed to be gathering breath. ‘They’re both dead. They’re in Surry Hills just off Foveaux. I’ve been asked to go down there. But I’ve been asked to go alone and without telling anyone I work with. He said just come by yourself and we’ll work out the rest later. I don’t see why it has to happen like that.’
‘Who is this?’
‘Jerry Freeman. Do you know the name?’
‘Yes, I do happen to know Jerry. Why did he call you?’
‘Gina had my card in her pocket. He said it made him curious.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘I’m still in my flat.’
‘Give me twenty minutes. I’ll meet you there. Don’t get there before me. Okay?’
‘Yeah, okay. But who is this person?’
‘Ask me that question later, Grace.’
If Freeman was up to his old tricks, then this slotted in under the heading of Murphy’s law at work and the unpleasant odour Harrigan had detected last night had just got a lot nastier. As he showered and dressed, he wondered if his old sparring partner had even bothered to call in the pathologist or the crime scene people. He drove through Birchgrove up to Darling Street in the strange quiet between sleeping and waking. It was still raining, the roads were slippery with oil. He approached the city, the lights of the tower blocks were distant in the darkness of the early morning, slurred with the rain.
When he reached Foveaux, his car lights illuminated an inner city landscape of factory outlets selling cheap clothing and dark shop windows barred up against the street. Racks of clothes, ranged like the outlines of people, disappeared into the shadows. Bright lights surrounded a small crowd of police cars and people near the entrance to a short dog-legged alley several blocks up from Central Station. A few bystanders, derelicts and alcoholics were watching from a distance, dark figures gathered on the edge of the light. At least there were other people on the scene and it wasn’t only Freeman leaning against a car, waiting for Grace to show up. Harrigan parked his car and then introduced himself to the sergeant in charge. From a distance, he looked briefly at the bodies on the other side of the ribbons, before standing aside to wait, having no desire to be involved. Freeman, a big man who was fifty plus, overweight and balding, appeared from out of the crowd.
‘Good morning, mate,’ he said, ‘haven’t seen you for a while.
Thought you’d still be in bed. I was looking for your girl. She must be the careful type if she went and called you up. Unless you were there when I rang. What happened? You get lucky, did you?’
He guffawed and slapped Harrigan on the arm.
‘No, mate, I was home alone,’ Harrigan replied, shaking the man off. ‘But good morning, Jerry, it’s nice to see you too. What do you want her for?’
‘Just a couple of questions, my friend, nothing else. Easy as pie for her. Why not? I hear she’s a good-looking woman. I’m looking forward to meeting her.’
‘I might have a few questions of my own first. What did this girl have to do with you?’ Harrigan asked.
‘Let’s just say her and her boyfriend have been helping us out with our inquiries on a range of matters lately, but they’re not going to be doing that any more, are they? What was she doing for you?’
‘She was our witness. Just by chance. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. For her that is, not for us.’
‘Not for that chinkie who got shot? She won’t be singing for you now, mate. Bit of bad luck for you.’
