The Tattooed Man (33 page)

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Gut. And the fact that it couldn’t have been du Plessis.’

‘What are you going to do, boss?’

‘See the commissioner as soon as I leave this office. Ask him to take the question to ASIO. If Brinsmead and Jonas are legitimate, then they’re the ones who should be able to find that fact out for us. Until we know that, I don’t want this information going anywhere. It’s between you and me. That’s why I’ve waited until now to discuss it with you. I wanted to think it through first.’

‘What about getting a statement from Gracie?’

‘We do need to do that. I’ll talk to her about it. In the meantime, add Brinsmead to your list of people to check out. There’s something else you need to know. There are crop specimens in existence. Harold Morrissey took some and gave them to me to bring back. They’re at the Millennium lab right now being tested.’

‘You didn’t enlighten our federal friends about that.’

‘Right now I want this information kept confidential until we know who Jonas and Brinsmead are.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had those specimens before, boss? Was it because of Marvin. You knew he was being run, didn’t you?’ Trevor said.

‘I guessed.’

‘Look, as far as I’m concerned you’re still the boss. I haven’t forgotten what you did for me in the commissioner’s office the other day. But Jesus, mate, if you had an idea about Marvin you could have told me. Maybe we could have worked something out. We’ve lost enough evidence as it is.’

‘I warned you, mate, if you remember. I spent a lot of time and effort keeping him at bay. It’s why I’m going after Calvo now. I want her to incriminate herself.’

‘Isn’t she too smart for that?’

‘It depends on how desperate she is.’

‘All right, we’ll go with it.’

‘There are no secrets from now on, mate,’ Harrigan said.

‘You’ve got nothing left to hide, boss. Is that what you mean?’

‘I mean you can trust me.’

‘I always have, mate. Believe it or not, I still do.’

The commissioner made time for Harrigan as soon as he heard his request and then listened to what he had to say intently. Once Harrigan had finished, it took him some minutes to reply

‘That’s one way of getting information,’ he said. ‘But I know Ms Riordan was a police officer and my understanding is she still works in the field in some way. Her reputation says her word is reliable. She was also able to find Toby.’

‘Our investigation can’t move forward until we get the status of these two individuals cleared up.’

‘I’ve found your judgement dependable, Paul. Leave it with me. I’ll ask ASIO the question. We can’t be assured of an immediate response but we’ll see what they have to say. If they tell us hands off, we’ll know where we stand.’

When Harrigan finally left the building, he was wired for sound. He had Elena Calvo to see; it wasn’t a prospect that made him happy. Later this evening he wanted to see Grace if he could, badly. Someone to make him feel human, to get him out of his head. At the moment, the idea had the appeal of a very welcome change.

T
he city offices of Life Patent Strategies were on the thirty-third floor of Australia Square. As promised, a man was waiting to meet Harrigan at the entrance to the underground car park. He didn’t introduce himself, but politely showed Harrigan where to park and then led him into the elevator. It deposited them near a glass door decorated with the LPS insignia. Elena’s bodyguard Damien was waiting to let them into a reception area furnished with soft chairs. A padded silence absorbed sound. The first bodyguard stationed himself by the door while Damien showed Harrigan to Elena’s office.

It was a large and uncluttered room with a minimal amount of furniture. Clearly, she liked space around her. It stretched from the door to her desk and on either side of her. She had been waiting for him in silence; a visitor’s chair was already in place. Briefly, he looked past her at the view. Against a perfect sky, the glass towers at North Sydney showed a strangely insubstantial outline. She turned to look as well.

‘It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘I’m never tired of that view, it makes me feel free. I’ve very rarely felt that in my life. Please sit down,
Commander. I’m going to trust you once again. That’s all, Damien. I’ll call you.’

Both waited until the door had closed behind the bodyguard. Harrigan watched her take in the sight of his damaged face.

‘You can trust me, Dr Calvo,’ he said. ‘In fact, you can rely on me.’

‘Why do I need to rely on you? My understanding of this meeting is that we’re here to discuss your son. Does this mean you’ve changed your mind since the last time I saw you? If I recall, at that time I offered you a number of things and you refused them all. Are you now prepared to accept them?’

‘Like you said that first time we met, Dr Calvo, assuming we go ahead with those arrangements, you’d have expectations of me. There are a few matters in relation to those expectations I’d like to discuss. If you really do want my services, that is.’

He stopped. She gestured for him to go on.

‘My guess is, you know more about what’s going on right now than just about anybody else. I think you have a very good idea of why those people were shot up at Pittwater even if you don’t necessarily know who did it.’

‘We’re not here to talk about me, Commander.’ She shut him down with one of the iciest stares he had seen. ‘You’ve changed the subject. We’re here to talk about your son. Are you prepared to enter into an agreement with me concerning his future wellbeing?’

‘That depends. Andreas du Plessis kidnapped my son and put me through hell. Worse, he left my son to die of thirst in a long-stay car park. The deal was that my son came home alive. I want an answer from you. Whose idea was it to renege on the deal?’

‘I know nothing about those events and I don’t see what this has to do with me,’ she said. ‘But I will
say that in business, you will almost certainly fail, and fail very badly, if you don’t keep your word once you’ve given it. If I give an undertaking, I always stand by it without exception.’

‘In other words, you’re washing your hands of your dirty tricks man.’

‘Why are you saying that to me? Are you recording this? This smells of entrapment, Commander. I have two bodyguards waiting outside. Should I call them in here? I know a great deal about you. It’s unwise for you to put me offside.’

‘I know quite a lot about you too, Dr Calvo. Have a look at this.’

From his wallet, he took a copy of the photograph of the couple and their child in a ruined city in 1946. She glanced down at it on the desk and then back at him. She said nothing and didn’t touch it.

‘My squad found this picture in Jerome Beck’s wallet when we found his body. You said that at the end of World War Two, your father was a displaced person. Was he ever in Dresden? It’s a long way from your childhood, isn’t it? Something for Beck to resent mightily. Is that what you were arguing about in the car park that night in June four-and-a-half years ago? You deal in DNA, Dr Calvo. We have Beck’s DNA. Would you like to do a match?’

Elena rested her elbows on her desk, her chin on her hands, looking at him. She was very still. Harrigan put the photograph back in his wallet.

‘My guess is, when Beck found out from his mother who his father really was, he went looking for him. Your father gave him a job. Everything I’ve heard about your father tells me he’s not the sentimental type. He must have found something for
his long lost son to do. Something useful to the family firm. Whatever it was, it paid very well. That probably means it was something no one else was prepared to do. I think he went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with du Plessis. They were working for your father. Whatever Beck was doing here, he was doing it for your father as well. That’s the key, isn’t it? Whatever program Beck was running at that research facility in north London, it was for your father. In this country, it was genetically modified crops that harm people in some way and the research was being done out at Campbelltown. Now, that’s not good publicity.’

She leant forward to speak.

‘In business, it’s never a good idea to use guesswork as a basis for a decision. It’s much better to work from factual information. I don’t think you have any means of backing up these bizarre theories.’

‘The contract would have given us that information if we still had it. What did Daniel tell me the morning I visited you? Every contract Abaris draws up records in detail who owns the patent rights and the intellectual property. That’s one of the reasons you wanted to get hold of it so badly, isn’t it? Except someone was thinking ahead of you. There’s still another copy out there somewhere. The killers have got it. You’ve got no leverage where they’re concerned.’

‘Are you telling me you do?’ she asked. ‘You don’t know who they are. I don’t think you have any way of finding out.’

‘Do you have a way of finding out? Do you have something to guide you that we don’t? A suspicion that you can’t quite shake off as impossible? Do you think they’re going to come after you? Is that why
you have two bodyguards in a building as secure as the facility at Campbelltown? You do need me.’

‘If you don’t know who these killers are, what can you do for me? A bodyguard is more useful.’

‘In business,’ Harrigan said, ‘it’s a good idea to trust people who can offer you something no one else can. You just accused me of entrapment. There are two things you can do. You can trust me and give me what I want. Or I can walk out of here and run this investigation the way it should be run, the way I would usually run it. I can do that now Marvin Tooth is a dead man. Then one day, sooner rather than later, we’ll find your dirty tricks man and come knocking on your door. Then everything you’ve worked for will be on the line. You know that. You’ve moved heaven and earth to protect yourself already.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want du Plessis. No one does that to my son and gets away with it. I want him to pay personally for what he did to Toby. Organise that for me, Dr Calvo, and we both get what we want. Wouldn’t you call that a win-win situation?’

‘And after that?’ she said.

‘One step at a time,’ Harrigan replied.

‘How can I arrange to give you something I don’t have?’

‘I said I wanted you to trust me. You set it up, Dr Calvo. You set up a meeting and you give me the details.’

‘For any deal, there’s always a cooling-off period. I need twenty-four hours.’

‘The last time I spoke to you, you told me there was no time.’

‘I gave you time anyway, if you recall. You can do the same for me,’ she replied. She glanced at her watch and then at him. The intensity of her stare
made him want to look away. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning first thing. Can we say this meeting is finished?’

‘If you call me tomorrow morning, what do we do? Do we meet here?’

‘Most probably, yes. I’m usually here on a Saturday.’ She pressed a button on her intercom. ‘Damien, would you come in, please?’

Almost immediately, Damien appeared.

‘Good afternoon,’ Elena said to Harrigan with a polite smile. ‘Damien, see the commander gets to his car. Make sure he gets there safely.’

Harrigan decided it was better to say nothing.

Damien didn’t leave until he had watched him drive out of the car park. At the next set of red lights, Harrigan turned off the wire. There was more space left on the tape. He would wear it again tomorrow. One step at a time. She was more desperate than he’d thought. Now he just had to wait and see if throwing the berley would work.

Harrigan didn’t go home. He drove to the Bondi Junction shopping mall where he went to the gents and took off the wire, locking it in his briefcase. The florist was about to close. He was just in time to buy Grace a dozen long-stemmed red roses before driving over to see her unannounced. He didn’t want to risk calling her first and have her tell him she didn’t want to see him. To his relief, she answered the buzzer.

‘Hi, Abbie, you didn’t have to come and get me. I’m not ready yet. I’ll buzz you in.’

Abbie was Abigail, Grace’s closest friend and a criminal lawyer with a fierce reputation.

‘It’s not Abbie,’ Harrigan said. ‘It’s me. Do you want to see me?’

There was the briefest of pauses.

‘Okay.’

When he reached her floor, he found that her front door was ajar for him. Inside, she was standing in front of the full-length mirror on her wardrobe applying the last of her make-up. Her dress shimmered in the glass. He shut the door behind him.

‘You’re going out,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To dinner with the girls. Then we’re going to a party at Noah’s.’

She put her lipstick down on her dressing table and looked at herself. There was silence.

‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some flowers.’

She took them from him, awkwardly, without looking at him. ‘Thanks. They’re beautiful. I’ll put them in water.’

She didn’t sound as if she meant it. In her tiny kitchen, she filled the sink with water and left them there, not looking for a vase. Suddenly, she opened the drawer where she kept her bills and then shut it. Immediately, he knew what she was doing: searching for her cigarettes. It was one of her strategies, so called, for dealing with her addiction. She refused to buy cartons, only single packets of twenties, and sometimes found herself late at night without a cigarette. On these occasions, she tried to hang on. In her flat, she kept a spare packet salted away for those emergencies when her stamina gave out and she had to light up. Sometimes, when she hadn’t used it for a while, she forgot where this packet was hidden.

‘You’ll have some in your bag,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Where are you going for dinner?’

She had knelt down and was looking in the cupboard under the sink.

‘Claude’s,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask you because I didn’t think there was any chance you’d have the time.’

He had never liked going to expensive restaurants; he always thought of it as a waste of money. It was another difference between them. To Grace, money was something you spent. She shut the cupboard door and stood in front of the sink with her hands on her hips, not looking at him.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

‘I wanted to see you. I have time. Maybe we could go somewhere. If you want to go out, why don’t you let me take you out? Just you and me. You choose. Wherever you like.’

‘Maybe we could go somewhere. Why don’t I let you take me out?’ she repeated and then pulled open another kitchen drawer. She stood there looking down at it. ‘I wanted to see you last night and you didn’t have the time. Now you’ve got a couple of hours to spare for me and you just breeze in here like this and say that. The roses are supposed to make it all okay. That’s one way you can get your sex, I suppose.’

Harrigan was genuinely insulted. ‘Grace, I’ve never treated you like that. I think you should take it easy with what you say. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.’

‘You always are. You always will be. You’ll always have a really good reason why you can’t be here. Fine. I’m not going to ask you for one. The other night I thought, I can’t put myself through this again. Let’s just finish with it.’

‘I thought we were going to see it through until I had this investigation under control.’

‘That was before you didn’t ring me when I asked you to and before you gave me all this time to think about it. Nothing’s going to change. We might as well face up to that now.’

She pushed the kitchen drawer shut. A bag the same colour as her dress was on the table. He picked it up.

‘You’ll have some cigarettes in here. I’ll get them for you.’

‘No, don’t do that!’

It was too late. He took out not her cigarettes but a small old handgun. He put her bag back on the table and turned the gun over in his hand.

‘Do you carry this around with you all the time? Are you taking this to your party tonight?’

‘I’ve got a place in my car where I hide it,’ she said. ‘Give it back.’

‘You don’t have your car with you right now. Is this legal?’

‘What do you think?’

‘No wonder you didn’t want a gun when I offered you one the other day. You already had one. Why do you need this?’

‘You’re the one who said I needed protection. Anyway, aren’t you armed?’

‘Not at the moment. Don’t change the subject. You didn’t get this in the last few days. Why do you need it? Why do you need to have it in your car?’

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, her voice growing angry. ‘Give it back.’

‘Not until you tell me why you’ve got it. Have you had this all the time we’ve been together? Because you thought you needed the protection. From me? Or from someone else? Do you think I wouldn’t protect you?’

‘How could you? You don’t have enough time to do that.’

This hurt him.

‘You tell me what this is about, Grace. I’m not leaving until you do.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that. You’re so used to telling people what to do. Give that back to me. It’s got nothing to do with you. I’m going out now and I need it.’ Moving suddenly and quickly, she reached to snatch the gun out of his hand.