Blood Redemption

Do you think your father is watching us talk?

Probably. He wants to find u, Lucy. He’s going to do that. Why???

Wotzup?

I’ve done something else, Turtle. I have to tell people about it.

‘Here we go,’ Trevor said.

Lucy u haven’t killed someone?? Please tell m u didn’t No. Not yet anyway. This is something else. In about twenty minutes, this building is going up in smoke. I was doing it because someone who mattered to me killed himself and I couldn’t cry for him either. I wanted people to know what happened to him. But I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. But someone said to me, what if the other buildings around it go up as well and people do get hurt? I don’t want that to happen. All I want is for everything to be cleaned away so we can start again. Why can’t I just make that happen, Turtle? What do I do now?

Where is it?? U tell me

‘Yeah,’ Harrigan said to the silent room, ‘where is it? Tell me.’

Randwick.

Call the police Call them now

Harrigan pointed to Trev. ‘Fire Brigade. Now. I’ll call the top brass.

Lou, email my son. Tell him we know. You stay here and keep me informed. The rest of you, go now.’

In the release of activity the office was cleared and, in a shorter time than Harrigan had hoped for, every available officer was heading in the same direction, speeding through the streets of Surry Hills on dangerously slippery roads. They came down Anzac Parade in convoy behind the fire engines and the emergency services, sirens sounding in a stretched linear movement. Close to one of Harrigan’s most loved places on earth, Royal Randwick, Trevor was about to say, ‘We’re there,’ when, near the corner of the block on the other side of the road, a white brick building began to produce in a manner almost surreal flickers of fire out of its roof and, smashing outwards through the windows, sheets of red and yellow flame.

‘Fuck,’ Harrigan said. Far away so close. For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, she had been one step ahead of him.

What do I do now, Turtle?

U call them

They know already. They were watching, I know they were. No, I meant about everything else. You have choices, don’t you? Don’t you think, Turtle?

Everyone can choose Lucy, wot do u mean???

It’s just the choice I’ve got to make. What do I do now?

Whatever u do don’t hurt anyone Including yourself I’ve gone too far for that. I haven’t got that sort of choice now. It’s one way or the other, that’s what I’ve got to pick.

Wot are u going 2 do??

I think I’m going to go away. Far, far away. I’ve got to say goodbye to everyone I care about first. That’s almost just you now.

U don’t have 2 say goodbye 2 me We can talk If I went away, I would have to say goodbye to you.

I don’t understand Wherever u go everything is the same U arestill u I’m still me that doesn’t change Wot u did won’t change Wotabout those people u shot Have u forgotten them??

No, I haven’t forgotten them. I’m never going to forget them. You know what I think is one of the worse things?

Wot???

That woman couldn’t see me when I shot her because I had my face covered. She didn’t know who I was. She had a right to know. I should have had the courage to look her in the face. You shouldn’t do what I did to her if you don’t have the courage to look someone in the face.

Lucy No no no no no u don’t do it simple I said 2 u its wrong It’s wrong if you don’t face up to what you’ve done.

Wrong anyway It doesn’t matter wot

Yeah. Love you, Turtle. See you sometime, I hope.

U aren’t going 2 talk 2 me again??? Is that wot this means????

She cut the connection.

In another building not so far away, Louise took a mouthful of whisky from her silver hip flask in the luxury of solitude, and decided that whatever chaos the boss was surrounded by at the moment, he needed to know this. She called him.

In her room, Lucy sat on the bed holding the picture of the woman, Grace. She could not see the face clearly in the light. She checked her watch and thought, yes, the building’s gone by now, and whatever else might have been burned because of it. They would be out there picking up the bits, all of them, including Turtle’s father. Lucy left the picture on the bed, took the phone and her gun and went out, to Belmore Park.

She felt afraid of nothing as she walked through deserted streets flooded with sheets of water. She crossed the wide intersection on Elizabeth Street and walked through the underpass to Eddy Avenue.

There was almost no traffic. At Central Station, yellow lights glowed under the colonnade where people slept like bundles of dirty clothing in alcoves and niches. No one looked at her. With her hood pulled over her head, she was as anonymous and ragged as anyone here. Further along the colonnade, a woman and two men began to fight. One man and the woman beat the other man and tore at his clothes. Their voices echoed harshly at a distance but she could not understand what was being said, all she heard were curses. Soon the police would come by to break them up. The possibility caused Lucy no concern. She felt that nothing could touch her, in her mind she walked through this place unseen, less than a ghost.

She crossed into Belmore Park and stood in the middle of the open space between the Moreton Bay fig trees where she had last seen Greg.

The gazebo had a dull fluorescence in the city’s partial darkness. She looked up and thought she saw a flying fox outlined against the sky.

She waited with the world in balance, believing that in the next second, at the next turning of the earth’s curvature, it might tip into nothing.

Time might really end and there would be a way out of this without her having to do anything more. There seemed to be a cessation of all movement. There was only the sound of rain dripping from the trees, then quietness. The voices of the people on the other side of the road were silenced. Instinctively, she thought that it had happened, that this was the quiet that comes before the world is broken open and there is no more time. She waited, hardly breathing. She was light, floating.

Then the gap closed around her and time returned. A car driven too fast along Eddy Avenue came to a halt at the traffic lights at Pitt Street, skewed to one side. A night train rumbled past on the tracks which spanned the overhead bridge. Across the road under the colonnade she saw two police officers weighing into the fight she had seen start and heard the shouts and curses once again. She smiled sardonically. There was only this time and this place to be dealt with.

She walked out of the park and across the road, turning her back on the police almost within their sighting distance, and went back to her sanctuary. She looked at her watch. Soon it would be dawn and the start of that brand new day Graeme had promised her.

The blue and red lights of the fire engines flashed on the wet roads while firemen spread their hoses out around the white building, dousing the flames. The takeaway shop next door was flaming greasy fire and its window crashed outwards from the heat. The smoke had driven the residents from the block of flats on the other side of the clinic out into the street. Some had had to be evacuated, to their confusion. Huddles of dazed, damp people found themselves marooned on the wet streets, wrapped in blankets over their nightclothes while the media circled them like hungry dogs. They had got here at speed, as they always did; Harrigan wished his people could be as efficient. The television crews were unpacking their goods on the other side of the fire engines, their stand-up comics were getting ready for their routines in front of the cameras. The scene was a mess of umbrellas and damp people bumping against one another.

‘Keep them out of the way. I don’t want to have to worry about those clowns,’ Harrigan grumbled to the uniformed officers before going in search of the senior sergeant in charge of the local patrol.