Jeffo said something to her, Harrigan could not hear what. He was waving a picture from side to side in front of her, moving his body with it and laughing. She walked up to him. The crowd around him parted a little.
‘Give me that,’ she said.
‘No way, Jose,’ Jeffo replied, passing it out of her reach to someone else.
She hit him hard across the face with an open hand, the sound like a whiplash throughout the open office. He jerked back in shock and touched blood on his mouth. There was a collective gasp and, in the background, muted cheers from a few other watchers. Jeffo stood up slowly, moving around towards her. She stood her ground.
‘Gracie, you back off now,’ Ian said urgently, on his feet as well and circling them. ‘Jeffo, why don’t you sit down and just shut up for once.’
‘You bitch. I bit my lip,’ Jeffo said, moving dangerously close to her.
‘You give me that,’ she said again, not moving, facing him.
Harrigan was between them, outraged.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ he said to Grace. ‘You never do that. You never, never hit anyone you work with. Don’t you ever do that again. Not while you work for me.’
Grace stepped back, pushing her hair out of the way, smudging her makeshift make-up. She looked sideways and then back at him and barely nodded. Jeffo had also stepped back, muttering a single word to her as he did so. He was grinning as he took repossession of the photograph but no one else was smiling. Harrigan turned to him just as he was slipping it out of sight into his top drawer.
‘What’s that, mate? Let me have a look,’ Harrigan said.
‘It’s just a joke. Nothing.’
‘If it’s a joke, let’s share it. We can all have a laugh, we need one.
Come on. Let’s see it. Give it here.’
There was silence as Harrigan found himself looking at a picture of a younger Grace on a stage somewhere, holding a microphone and wearing high heels but otherwise naked to the waist and barely clothed at all.
‘That is not me,’ she said angrily. ‘That is airbrushed rubbish. It’s got nothing to do with me. I don’t even look like that.’
Harrigan felt sick to his stomach. He eyeballed Jeffo while he tore the photograph into four pieces and shouted for Dea. The tiny woman appeared at once.
‘Shred it,’ Harrigan said. ‘Flush it down the toilet with the rest of the shit. Got any more of those to go with it, mate?’
‘No, it’s just the one.’
‘Don’t tell me that. You’ve always got something up your sleeve.
Let’s have a look in your desk.’
Harrigan pulled out an envelope containing several more pictures.
He tore those up as well. They stood in silence listening to the shredder mince them to pieces.
‘So where did these come from?’ Harrigan asked, looking at the envelope. ‘Old Roger. Straight out of Marvin’s office, in other words.
Wouldn’t you know it? Nice to know they’ve got nothing better to do with their time down there. Or their money, for that matter. Unlike the rest of us.’
He smiled. The room remained completely quiet.
‘You love this, don’t you, mate,’ he said to Jeffo, still smiling, ‘little jokes like this. You just love them.’
‘It is just a fucking joke, Boss. I’m not the only one that’s got them.
It’s nothing. What does it matter?’
‘Oh, but you love it. Sticking a knife in there, bad-mouthing someone here, playing little games, pinning nice little pictures up on the wall. You’ve always got something for everyone else to laugh at. You get a charge out of it, don’t you? You’re someone everyone here can rely on when they really need to, aren’t you? You know what loyalty means.
You’re here, waiting to stick it to them when they need you most.’
‘It was just a fucking joke. There was nothing to it. Why worry?
Everyone knows — ’
He stopped.
‘Everyone knows what?’ Harrigan asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘No, come on, tell me. Everyone knows something that I don’t. I don’t think Grace knows it either. What is it? You want to say it?’
Jeffo was silent. He looked at Grace, who had moved to sit down at a spare desk. She looked away, meeting no one’s eye.
‘Okay,’ Harrigan said, ‘no one knows anything. Except this. Clear your desk and get out. You can go home now.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I can. Get out. Now. While I watch you. And don’t waste your time doing it.’
Harrigan stood by as Jeffo cleared his desk and went towards the exit. At the door, he stopped.
‘Why don’t you piss her off instead of me?’ he called as a parting shot. ‘Wouldn’t be a problem then. But we all know the answer to that one, don’t we?’
‘Get out,’ Harrigan almost shouted, unexpectedly stung to real anger.
Jeffo was gone, into the lift. Harrigan turned to look at everyone else. Grace was watching him but it was impossible know what she was thinking. She looked down at the desk, rubbing her forehead. He did not speak to her, there was nothing he could say publicly. The air jangled with the contrarieties of tension, relief and tiredness, a sense of chafing, human irritation pushing at the edges.
‘Everyone who’s got work to do, do it,’ he said. ‘Everyone who can take a break now, take it. Get some fresh air and something to eat.
Forget about the last twenty minutes. We have to keep our minds on this. Take your pagers with you.’
One or two people did leave after he had spoken, friends of Jeffo, but there was nothing he could do about that. Others went back to work.
‘Boss.’
Louise’s slow and gravelly voice interrupted him. She was standing beside him, breathing whisky.
‘What is it, Lou?’
‘Something you should see. I came out to see you earlier but you were preoccupied.’ She smiled a slow, sardonic, alcoholic smile as she glanced around at the room. ‘Thought I’d better wait. You need to know about this. You might like to get some other people in here as well. Gracie, you need to look at this too. This is a different sort of picture,’ she added very quietly.
They gathered around the monitor. Grace sat in her chair, back a little and staying out of the way. She felt a tap on her shoulder and looked up to see Ian handing her a fresh cup of coffee.
‘Don’t worry about it, Gracie,’ he said quietly, ‘Jeffo’s just a shit.’
She smiled at him out of pure relief.
Harrigan noticed the small communication and briefly wondered about everything and nothing that might exist between the two of them, before turning his attention to the screen.
‘I went looking for the Avenging Angels,’ Louise said a little creakily. ‘I thought, they’ll be there somewhere. If people enjoy sending out photographs like the one they sent out, they’ll be on the web somewhere, showing off. And sure enough, there they were. This site moves around. You’ll see why. It’s amateurish, I’ve got to say, you could do better. There’s no talent here. The Firewall would do a better job, she’s got some imagination. But you’ll see. Here we go.’
The site opened to the tinny sound of a drum beating and the words
‘Avenging Angels: Abortionists made to face God’ appeared on the screen. A set of doors opened and the sound of gunshots rang out in the background. An angel with ammunition belts slung around its hips pointed with a handgun to a poster on a brick wall in an alleyway.
‘Bounty Hunters Wanted,’ the poster said, ‘Generous rewards offered for the destruction of persons performing abortions, those who authorise child-killing, and the buildings that house these Hellholes.
Whether you work for God or the Devil (and let the Devil’s own kill each other, we say) the Avenging Angels
