are prepared to pay good money for the bringing of these mass murderers and the witches who serve them before the ultimate court, God’s tribunal. Be a hero. Save a child. Guarantee of payment on receipt of positive proof of destruction, death or disabling.’
‘This is serious?’ Harrigan asked.
‘That’s what I asked myself. I thought, someone’s playing a bad joke on me and I didn’t come down in the last shower. No, it’s serious.
Here’s the proof,’ Louise replied.
A gallery of eight pictures titled ‘The Damned’ appeared on the screen while the background noise became one of children crying.
‘Here we go. One more time.’
Louise clicked on a picture of Agnes Liu marked with a red slash.
She was standing in a supermarket car park at a location presumably somewhere in California, with her sunglasses in her hand and a bag over her shoulder. The words ‘Bounty Paid’ appeared underneath.
‘For your information, that bounty isn’t small. Whoever shot the doc got $20,000 US for it. Which is even better in Australian money. And here’s the piccie our friends sent the doc the morning Hurst shot her.’
The image of Dr Laura Di-Cuollo expanded to cover the screen.
The words ‘Bounty Paid’ were also stamped underneath it.
‘There’s a whole file of names and addresses and photographs in there of people who’ve got prices on their heads and where you can find them if you want to.’
‘Is there anyone else we know in there?’ Harrigan asked in his neutral voice.
‘No. These lucky people are all Americans and Canadians. I guess they just picked on the doc because she was in California for that little while. They thought she was fair game.’
‘Where is this site?’
‘Don’t know. I’ve got a trace out on it but I can’t give you a location just yet and they might shut me out any minute.’
‘Who are these people?’ he said.
‘Oh, no, Boss,’ Louise was grinning, ‘they don’t go around telling people who they are. They just put everybody else’s name out there.’
It wasn’t quite what he had meant.
‘Who got $20,000 US for shooting the doc?’ he asked.
‘The preacher,’ Grace replied. ‘Lucy Hurst doesn’t have it.’
‘Neither does he, Gracie.’ Trev, swallowing a mouthful of hamburger, had appeared later than everyone else and stood in the background.
‘We’ve checked Fredericksen’s finances backwards. That money’s not there.’ He moved forward. ‘So is Hurst working for them? With them?’
‘Maybe they’re using her,’ Grace said.
‘Might be she’s using them,’ Louise replied.
‘Hurst hasn’t been back online?’ Harrigan asked Grace.
‘No. Her mobile’s dead, I think. If that’s the only means of connection she’s got, we won’t hear from her again until she can steal another one.’
Harrigan looked at his watch.
‘All right. We pick that information up and we follow it. Meantime, we still wait. We watch the preacher. We take the phone calls. We keep monitoring. As soon as anything moves, we’re onto it.’
The crowd dispersed, Louise leaving the room with them. Grace turned her chair back to her computer screen and buried her hands in her long hair, then looked up to see Harrigan standing at her elbow.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘Come and talk to me while I’ve got a little time, Grace,’ he said very quietly. ‘Come and enlighten me on a few matters. You owe me an explanation. More than one.’
Grace looked at the screen.
‘What if she comes back on?’
‘If she does, Louise will be here, she can get you back in. I’m going to my little Greek cafe around the corner for an ouzo and water and to remind myself there’s another world out there. You can join me there if you want to.’
Not long after he’d left the room, Louise returned. She might as well have been listening to them talk.
‘Take a break, Gracie,’ she said, ‘go and get a cigarette. I’ll keep an eye on things for you.’
‘Will you?’
‘Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll call you,’ the older woman replied. ‘Go have a fag. Indulge yourself. Life’s too short. Too short for anything.’
‘Thanks, Lou.’
Grace smiled and left, in desperate need of nicotine. In the women’s toilets, she washed away her smudged make-up, feeling too worn to replace it. The cold water on her face revived her. Returning to the office she saw that several other people had also left to get some fresh air. She slipped out. Those remaining noticed that she was gone, checked that the boss was also out, and drew their own conclusions.
Outside, the lights of the tower office blocks burned spangled gold in the rain, a chequerboard of light and dark. The streets were empty, more as a consequence of the weather than the lateness of the hour.
Debris littered the footpaths but the rain was reduced simply to a storm, the strength of the wind had dropped. Grace parked illegally, working on the belief that no one would be delivering goods or handing out parking tickets on a night like tonight. The cafe was empty. Yellow lights gleamed on dull wood and polished grey linoleum. The man with the silver and black hair tied back in a ponytail stood behind the counter, looking a little more crumpled than he had that morning. He recognised her as she walked in.
‘He’s out the back,’ he said. ‘Do you want anything?’
‘Coffee. Do you have anything to eat?’
‘Yeah, I can get you something. Go and sit down.’
The room smelled the same as it had early that morning. Harrigan sat at the table in his shirtsleeves, drinking an ouzo and water and eating a bowl of some sort of meat stew. His pager and mobile sat on the table where he could see them. He smiled at her.
‘You did come,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know if you would.’
She smiled and put her cigarettes on the table.
‘Light up if you want.’
‘No, I’m not going to do that,’ she said. Coffee and a simple meal arrived on the table in front of her. ‘What’s the food like here?’ she asked after the counterman had left.
‘Basic,’ he replied. ‘It’s just fuel. It’ll keep you going.’
She started to eat just as he finished.
‘Talk to me, Grace,’ he said. ‘Tell me why I threw Jeffo off the team just now.’
‘Are you sorry he’s gone?’
‘That’s not the point. And you know that. You can tell me. Is there anything else out wide that I need to know about right now?’
Grace ate in silence for a few moments.
‘It’s not Marvin,’ she said. ‘It’s Baby Tooth. I was at the Academy with him.’
‘Lucky you,’ Harrigan said with genuine sympathy, forbearing to ask if she’d had the pleasure of knocking back the attentions of Tooth junior, who was noted for going after anything that could wear a skirt.
‘It’s like father, like son with them, isn’t it? It was our last night. We were having a party and he got legless. Me and a friend took him back to his room so he could sleep it off. And guess what? He had these exam papers on his desk. They had “Embargo” all over them, he’d got them from head office. He cheated at every exam and he still didn’t do that well.’
‘Grace, I thought you had a brain. Tell me you didn’t.’
‘I didn’t, it was my friend. He was so mad, he went and dragged the principal out of bed. That was Sweet Freddie, wasn’t it? He didn’t want anything upsetting his retirement. He sent it up the line to head office. Nothing happened. Until graduation, when the Tooth walks up to me smiling from ear to ear and tells me ever so quietly I
