you think you’re going to do now?’
She thought how easily he changed the conversation. Nothing fazed him. She glanced at her watch. ‘Don’t know,’ she replied.
‘I can help you — ’
‘To Paradise? Yeah.’
‘I can. I can get you out of this building. I can give you money. Do you want to go to California? You can go to California. It costs money but the money is there and it can be done. If I think it’s worth it.’
‘If you think it’s worth it? Graeme, I’m the one who’s holding the gun.’
‘But I’m the one who has the means. You have to ask yourself: what do you want?’
She smiled pure steel. ‘I ask myself that all the time. At the moment there’s nothing for me to want. I’ll tell you something. You know the clinic on Anzac Parade?’ He nodded. ‘It’s going up in a little while.’
He was not quite laughing as he replied. ‘You never joke about these things, do you?’
‘No, I do what I say I’m going to do. I’m the only one who does.
It’s for Greggie. Nothing else is going to make anyone take any notice of him. And then maybe I’ll just ring the pigs and say, hi, here I am.
Blow me away if you want. I don’t care.’
‘You’re going to put yourself in the hands of the police?’ He sounded contemptuous.
‘What does it matter if I do? They can beat the shit out of me. You take it if you have to. How can things be worse than they are now?’
His face had an odd look, not quite triumph, not quite joy.
‘You’ll find out in gaol, won’t you, Lucy? You’ll have the rest of your life in there to think about it. And for you, that’s a very long time indeed.’
‘I’d be careful, Graeme.’ Her voice was shaking. ‘I might blow
‘But you won’t. Because you once told me you wished you never fired the gun in the first place. Isn’t that how you feel?’
‘I can use this on you if I have to, Graeme. Don’t worry about that.’
The threat was unconvincing even to her. ‘But, yeah. I do wish I’d never shot that woman and that man. But that’s different to now, it’s way different.’
He laughed.
‘Oh, yes. It’s very different, Lucy. Think about it. The woman you shot brought death to thousands, including you, ultimately brought death to her husband and ruined her son’s life. But you blame yourself.
She should be accused, not you.’
‘Graeme, I pulled that trigger. It was me, not her.’
‘Do you know what you’re doing when you say that? You’re taking this woman’s guilt on yourself. You’re inviting her to injure you for a second time.’
‘And for this,’ he continued, ‘you want to give yourself up to the police. You don’t even know who the police are. I want you to look at this. It’s all right, I don’t have a gun in here.’
He reached into an inside pocket and took out a photograph which he skidded across the floor to her. Lucy put her gun on the bed. She reached down and picked it up.
‘Her name is on the back,’ he said. ‘She’s with the police but that’s not all she is.’
Turning it over, Lucy looked at a card that had been stapled onto the back, peering at it in the half light.
‘Grace,’ she said. She looked at Graeme watching her. The sight of his face made her pick up her gun again.
‘That woman is a torturer, Lucy. She’s the woman they sent to persecute Greg.’ His voice became a quiet rustling whisper that ate into the intimacy of her thoughts. She pulled back from his gaze but could not escape his words. ‘I’m sure he feared her. I’m sure when she had him in a cell she tormented him beyond endurance. I don’t find it at all surprising that he should be driven to take his own life. She would put that seed into his head herself. Think of her saying to him: You are nothing. Why not die now? She’s a torturer and a witch. We took that picture of her when she was on her way into an abortuary. Bronwyn stopped her. She said, think of that innocent child you’re about to kill. She laughed in Bronwyn’s face. She assaulted her. Get out of my way, she said. Watch me while I kill. That woman walks blood through the streets. Can you imagine what will happen to you when you put yourself in her hands?
She will know how to hurt you. Do you want to be tortured the way you were in your own family? Because this time you will be in gaol for ever and there will be no way out. No streets to escape to.’
His voice had become a sound in her own mind. She felt surprised when it became silent. The gun hung loosely in her hands. She did not speak.
‘Now there is someone who deserves to die, don’t you think?’
Lucy swallowed. ‘I couldn’t get near her.’
‘Finding her wouldn’t be hard. We have her address. But you wouldn’t have to go to her. In her arrogance, she would come to you.
And you would be waiting for her. Then the police would know what they really are. That this war does not work just one way. They can be defeated, they can suffer humiliation as much as anyone else.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to kill anyone. Maybe I’ve done enough of that.’
‘You have a building that’s about to burn. People could die as a result of that if that’s what worries you.’
‘No, they won’t. I’m not hurting anyone. There’s no one in there.’
‘Fires spread. The rain has stopped, there’s nothing to prevent it now. That building is a Hellhole, it will burn fiercely. Others around it may also burn. I don’t say it will happen. I won’t be concerned if it does. That building has to be expunged from the face of the earth and if that’s the price to be paid, so be it. But I do say to you, you have the courage others lack. I can help you. I can get you out of here.’
‘How can you get me out of here?’
‘I can get a car sent here to pick you up. You stay and lock yourself in. I’ll have them come for you tomorrow evening. No one will notice anything. Then there will be a nice house for you to rest in until we can send you away to safety.’
‘Yeah. And along the way I end up dead.’
‘No, Lucy. You will have nothing to be afraid of because I will know that I can rely on you. You will prove it to me. That woman is a murderer. But you will expunge her evil. And you know that it’ll take only a few seconds because you’ve done it before. We’ll help you.
Believe me, we will. You are someone very special.’
Lucy sat with the gun lying loosely in her lap. She thought: my throat is full of broken bones.
‘What will you do?’ he asked.
‘I have to think.’
‘There’s no time.’
She sat for a few moments in silence. ‘You trust me, do you, Graeme? If you think I’m someone special?’
‘Would I ask you to do this if I didn’t trust you absolutely?’
‘Then I want some things from you. I need a phone. My phone’s dead. Have you got one?’
‘I can let you have the one I’ve got with me. Why do you need it?’
‘I just need it, okay? Don’t ask questions. Don’t worry, it hasn’t got anything to do with you.’
After a moment’s silence, he took his mobile phone out of his pocket and passed it over to her. She looked at it, then dropped it on the bed.
‘You have to be careful who you call. You don’t know who is listening these days,’ he said.
‘There’s something else I want.’
‘What is it?’
‘I want a key to the Temple.’
‘You can’t come anywhere near the Temple, Lucy. The police are watching it twenty-four hours a day. They’re across the road in that offensive woman’s house and they think I can’t see them.’
‘I want my key to the Temple back, Graeme. I want that more than anything.’
