so much you can do. Do more and you end up history yourself. It’s as simple as that.’
She shook her head with disbelief.
‘No, Grace,’ he said, before she could speak again, ‘you leave it.
End of story.’
Watching him, she asked herself why this was so urgent for him and wondered how much of it might be his own piece of history.
‘She knew this was going to happen,’ she eventually replied, with an intense and competitive cynicism. ‘Do you know what she was doing when I was out with her last night? She was going through her last rites. A hamburger and coffee and home-made baklava and cigarettes and a walk through the Cross and a bit of company. That was all she wanted.’
‘You did her a favour then, didn’t you? You were there to give them to her. No one else was going to do that for her.’
‘But she couldn’t have known they were going to do that to her.
You couldn’t walk into something like that if you knew that’s what they were going to do.’
‘She was trying to buy their way out of whatever it was they’d got themselves into,’ Harrigan said. ‘$25,000. It wasn’t enough.’
‘Is Jerry greedy, is he?’ Grace asked innocently.
‘I’ve never asked.’
His reply was quiet. Grace’s cigarette had gone out. She picked up her cup and took a sip. ‘The coffee’s cold,’ she said, more to the air than to him, a neutral comment not a complaint. Harrigan hit a button on the wall behind his chair. Shortly afterwards the counterman reappeared.
‘Could we get a refill, Con? Thanks.’
‘Do we have the time?’ Grace asked as the door closed again.
‘Why shouldn’t we? We can take some time off the job. Anyone can find me if they want to call.’
She leaned forward with her chin on her hands. Her face was drawn and tired.
‘I don’t want to do that,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to leave it just like that.’
‘Grace, just listen to me. Let it go. Protect yourself.’
The door opened and the counterman came in with two fresh coffees. He glanced at them both and walked out again. They sat in silence for a few moments, drinking.
‘Days like this I almost wish I’d stayed a singer and that’s saying something,’ she said.
No, you’re not cut out for this shit job, Harrigan thought. You shouldn’t be doing it. You’re not cold-blooded enough. You think too much, you feel too much. ‘What made you stop?’ he asked.
‘It sucks you dry. Performing, I mean. With singing, it’s so personal.
It’s you all alone up there on the stage and the audience just wants to eat you alive. There’s nothing left of you by the time you’re finished.
That’s how I felt anyway.’
‘This job’s not like that for you?’
‘No, it’s different. I can do this. It doesn’t drain me like that.’
‘Boxing is like that,’ he said, after a pause, ‘the way you described singing. It’s personal like that.’
‘Do you box?’
‘I used to. I made my living at it for a while. Not a very good one, I’ve got to admit. That was when I was young. Nineteen, twenty. It was good for me, it got me through a bad time.’
‘When did you start?’
‘When I was about eleven. My father took me up to the police boys club, as they called it back then.’
‘Isn’t that really young?’
‘No. You can’t do yourself any damage at that age, you don’t hit each other hard enough.’ He grinned. ‘That happens later.’
‘But you didn’t stay with it,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
‘They don’t say “float like a butterfly” for nothing. You have to know how to dance. I wasn’t as light on my feet as I needed to be. But I liked it. There’s a lot more to it than people think there is. People don’t understand what’s involved in a fight. In the ring, it’s just the two of you. Until the bell rings. It’s just you and personal survival.’
‘You liked that?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You still go to fights?’
‘When I get the chance. Haven’t you ever been to a fight?’ he asked.
‘No, I’ve never wanted to. Do you ever go to concerts? Listen to music?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘What I know about music could be written on the back of a postage stamp.’
‘How can you live without music?’ she asked, smiling.
‘I don’t know. I do.’
No music. Maybe you could be persuaded to want it in your life.
Grace had not noticed that her hand was soothing down the scar on her neck. He watched her begin to stroke that faint line, unaware, he thought, of what she was doing.
‘That scar,’ he asked, ‘is that the reason you taught yourself to shoot?’
She stopped touching it at once.
‘No. It’s got nothing to do with it.’
‘Why do you shoot? Do you mind me asking you?’
‘No, I don’t mind. It’s a fact about me, I don’t pretend it’s not there.
I used to be an alcoholic. My hands used to shake a lot.’ Her hands were carefully manicured and without jewellery. She might have been telling him she used to be a girl guide. ‘I took up shooting because it taught me how to focus again. My father suggested it — he knows how to shoot, he used to be in the army. He said it was one way of getting my hand-eye coordination back. It worked too.’ She smiled with a faint mockery. ‘I don’t do it that much any more. I don’t think I ever really liked it. Shooting holes in a target is pretty boring when you get down to it. Why do you want to know?’
‘I don’t like guns very much.’
‘But you use them in your job, you have to.’
‘When I have to. I avoid them if I can.’
The room was quiet as they looked at each other.
Your father was in the army. But he wasn’t a nobody, was he? Mine ended up a petty crim. ‘You stopped drinking,’ he said, ‘just like that.’
After I woke up in hospital one day, in detox, with cuts all over my legs and couldn’t remember how I’d got there or what my name was, yes, I stopped. ‘I didn’t have much choice,’ she replied.
‘No one would ever know it, Grace, looking at you now.’
She smiled in reply, with that odd, sad smile she had.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘It’s you. You look so different without your make-up.’
‘No mask,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t put it on yet. I can be myself for a little while.’
‘Let me touch your face,’ he said.
‘That’s stepping way over the line, Paul.’
‘Well, let’s do that, then.’
He stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, bringing his hand to rest lightly under her chin, touching her neck before tracing up into her hair and stroking the loose strands at the edge of her plait.
She leaned into his hand and then reached up and took hold of it. He wound his fingers into hers, stroking her skin. They were leaning across the rickety table towards each other when, with the perfect timing he had come to expect in his work, Harrigan’s phone rang, bringing them both back into working hours. They let go, drawing back. He answered his phone and then took hold of her hand again, massaging it slowly.
‘Harrigan. Good morning, Trev. No, mate, I was just waiting for the call. Where? Have you got the patrol on to it? I’ll meet you there, I’m on my way. I’ll see you.’
They separated, he cut the connection. Grace had already stashed away her cigarettes, he reached for his
