‘Okay. But what did Clive say?’
‘Nothing you probably haven’t heard already.’
‘I wanted to bring you into it a lot more than this.’
‘He knew that,’ Harrigan said ‘That’s why he organised the meeting the way he did. You’ve got to work today, right? And you want this operation to be a success.’
‘Yes.’
They had reached the security perimeter. Now that they had stepped outside the building to the car park, he couldn’t go back.
‘Then you go and do it,’ he said. ‘You’ll do it well, the way you always do. Don’t take your boss on over this. Just concentrate on your work and come home safe and sound every day. There’s only one important thing here. Nothing comes between us.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing. We’ve both dealt with a lot tougher things than this.’
‘Yeah, we have. I’ll see you tonight.’
They kissed each other and then she was gone, stopping at the door to wave to him. He watched her slender figure slip out of sight to do whatever she had to do. It would take more than a jealous puppet master to drive a wedge into their relationship.
Harrigan drove away to his first appointment for the day, guessing that it had probably never occurred to Clive that anyone would simply ignore him. However defiant Harrigan might have appeared in the meeting, in the end Clive would still be expecting him to click his heels and salute. But he had no intention of stopping his inquiries. It just meant that, farcically, he and Grace were in the same boat: she couldn’t tell him and he couldn’t tell her what each of them was doing every day and what they might have found out.
In his judgement it was no way to manage someone under the kind of pressure Grace was about to feel. Whatever she was doing for Orion, he should know about it. Clive knew how much their lives were connected; yet right now he was cutting out both Harrigan and Ellie as if neither mattered to Grace. He wanted full ownership of his operatives. No divided loyalties; there could be nothing more important than the work Clive had decided they should do. No control other than his. Nothing at the centre of Grace’s life other than her work and her boss.
You wait, Harrigan thought. I can play your game better than you can. You’ll find that out. Meanwhile, he had things to do.
9
Frank Wells lived in a small, semi-detached brick house on Bay Street in Brighton-le-Sands. The bricks had a blue tinge to them; the atmosphere in the street, stretching from Rockdale station to the beach, was muggy in the hazy sea air. Sand from the soil had turned the footpaths gritty. The warm morning sun baked the footpath and its background of home units, parched gardens and occasional shopfronts.
The man who opened the door to Harrigan was tall, stoop-shouldered, with a heavy, fleshy face. His hair was white. He ushered Harrigan into a living room bereft of decoration; a small, dark space dominated by a flat-screen television. Beneath it was a shelf of unlabelled videos and DVDs. There were no other signs of entertainment in the room. The house had a stale odour, of old age and a place not often cleaned. Frank Wells motioned to Harrigan to sit down. He himself sat on a tiny two-seater lounge and put his hands on his knees.
‘Did you bring the money?’ he asked in his old man’s voice, low and abrasive.
Harrigan had an account for incidentals like these. Usually his clients paid the costs but today he was working for himself. Frank Wells counted the notes slowly, then tucked them away in his wallet. It was too thick to fit back into his pocket and he put it within reach on the arm of the lounge.
‘What did you want to know?’ he asked.
‘Anything you can tell me about your son and your wife.’
‘They’re both dead now, aren’t they? I got this out for you.’
It came out of a cardboard box, an album housing a small, messy collection of photographs. Baby pictures of Craig were accompanied by a christening certificate with a lock of his dark hair sticky-taped next to it. There was one of him in his school uniform with a pencilled note saying it was his first day at school. He was an unsmiling, tense-looking child. There was a shot of a threesome-Janice, Frank and their son at a barbecue-and after this, occasional ones of Frank and Janice together. No one smiled much in any of these fuzzy pictures. They petered out when Craig would have been no more than seven. The last three-quarters of the album was empty.
Harrigan closed it with a slight thump. It left him with a sense of drabness, almost uselessness. The atmosphere in this room had the same negativity. In this place, you could wake up every day and wonder why you were bothering with life at all.
‘How old was Craig when your wife left?’ he asked.
Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know if I remember. He’d been at school for a while. Eight?’
‘Your wife left this album behind.’
‘She didn’t want it. No one wants it. You can have it if you want to pay for it.’
Harrigan had come prepared. Frank Wells forced the extra notes into his already bulging wallet like a man who is pleased to get his hands on every dollar that he can. Harrigan’s gaze came back to the high-definition plasma television dominating the room. Everything else spoke of someone who probably scraped by on the old-age pension.
‘Can I ask you something about yourself, Frank?’
‘If you want.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Seventy-four.’
‘You’re in good shape for your age.’ The old man smiled. ‘When did you meet your wife?’
‘It was when I came back from New Guinea. I went up there when I was younger. I was working with the police. It was good money and something different to do. I was there for ten years, I suppose. I met my wife when I came back. She left her first husband for me. Then she left me and took up with someone else, then he left her. I think I was just the next one in line.’
Harrigan had the voice now. It wasn’t only harshness and aggression, it was disappointment. Frank Wells was someone who had not taken much from life. There was no sign in this room that he’d spent ten years in another place so very different from this one. Harrigan thought of Grace’s father, Kep Riordan. His house on the Central Coast was filled with artefacts, books and photographs from the time he and his family had spent in New Guinea. Grace herself had photographs, wall hangings and pieces of art which were now in the Birchgrove house. In this claustrophobic room, there was nothing.
‘And before you went to New Guinea?’ Harrigan asked.
‘I worked at Gowings. Started there when I was fourteen. That’s what I did when I came back too. I stayed there till I retired.’ ‘Did you and your ex-wife live here?’
‘She kept nagging me about that. She wanted a larger house. It wasn’t practical. I wasn’t going to take out a mortgage.’
Whatever Janice Wells had been as a person, no one could blame her for leaving this place. Living here would have been like living in a coffin. Harrigan glanced again at the plasma television. Before he could ask another question, Frank interrupted him.
‘Look, you’re not from the solicitors, are you? Anything like that?’
‘What solicitors?’
‘My mother’s maybe.’
‘No, my interest in this is exactly what I’ve told you. Why did you think otherwise?’
‘I thought when you said you were interested in my wife and Craig, it might be something else to do with my mother’s will. Maybe there was some more money. You haven’t really told me that much. Why are you asking about them?’
‘I’m investigating the possibility that Craig may still be alive.’
At this, Frank’s head drooped down. He seemed to be frowning. Then he looked up, his eyes hard and bright.