Harrigan was drumming his fingers softly on the table top.
‘Who is this person? What’s his name?’
She shook her head.
‘No, what’s his name?’
‘Chris Newell,’ she said after a while.
He took out his notebook and wrote it down.
‘Where is he now?’
‘Silverwater. He got seven years for armed robbery about a year ago. I kept my gun just in case he got out again somehow. It’s a security blanket. I don’t feel safe without it now.’
Harrigan jotted down these small details without asking how she’d got involved with someone like that in the first place.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘Keep an eye on him. Maybe a little more. He sounds like he deserves some attention. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have warned him off for you. I would have made sure he never came back.’
She lit another cigarette from the end of the one she was smoking without answering him.
‘Is he the one who gave you your scar?’
‘It was a long time ago. I was only nineteen. It was when I was still singing with my band. He was supposed to be our manager. Then we found out he was dealing on the side. I’d already decided I didn’t want to sing any more. When I told him it was all over between us, he beat me up and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. When he wasn’t looking, I walked out. I took my car and I drove and I didn’t stop. Then I heard he was in gaol, he’d walked into a sting. He thought I’d dobbed him in but I hadn’t. When he got out, he came after me.’ She put her second cigarette in the ashtray and drew a deep breath. ‘I thought I knew everything back then. I was so green. It’s all over now. I’m a different person.’
‘You never reported him.’
‘I was drinking back then. I don’t know what kind of a witness I would have made. I didn’t want to put myself through that. I was too frightened of him. That’s the truth.’
‘If he ever comes near you again, it’ll be the last time he ever does. That’s a promise.’
He raped you, he understood, watching her ash, then scrub out her cigarette. He raped you and he left you with that scar. Because men who give women scars like you have almost always do that. Seventeen years on the job had taught him this as a fact of experience. She would never tell him that directly to his face; it would always be unspoken.
She had stopped shaking. Her face was drawn, her eye make-up smudged.
‘You matter to me,’ he said. ‘You must know that. You must know how much.’
‘Then why are you never here? It’s the work you do. It crushes everything else out of your life except Toby, and that’s only because he’s the other half of you.’
‘You want me to change.’
‘You don’t have to work the hours you work. You don’t have to be everyone’s saviour. I know an addiction when I see one. It fills a gap for you. Can’t you imagine having something else in your life as well?’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I’m not going to live with things the way they are now. I don’t want to break up. I don’t want to put myself through that. But I don’t want to live like this either. You have to make a choice as to what you really want. You’re the only one who can do that. I have to wash my face.’
When she came back out of the bathroom, he was clearing away the broken gun into a plastic bag.
‘I’ll get rid of this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get your tiles fixed. I know someone who owes me a favour. He’ll do a good job.’
She smiled. ‘I’d be surprised if you didn’t.’
The phone rang. Grace let it go through to the answering machine.
‘Hi, Gracie, it’s Abbie. We’re all at Claude’s wondering where you are but I guess you’ve found something better to do. Hope so anyway. Maybe we’ll see you at Noah’s. We just hope you’re not with Harrigan. Give us a call tomorrow, will you? See you.’
‘Don’t they approve of me?’ he asked.
‘Of course they don’t. They think you’re a Neanderthal. But then they think the same thing about me for doing what I do. According to Abbie’s latest boyfriend, I’m the original fascist.’
He laughed.
‘You look beautiful. We don’t have to sit here all night. Let’s go out.’
‘Not just like that. What happens tomorrow?’
‘After twenty-four hours, I may have all the time you want me to have with you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m fishing for Elena Calvo. I’ve already seen her to get it started. I’m waiting to see if she’s going to bite and if she’s going to give me du Plessis as well as herself. If she does, that could be the end of my career.’
‘You gave him the tape. She knows that.’
‘It’s not just that. Du Plessis has the contents of Mike’s safety deposit box. If I take Elena Calvo down, I’m sure she’ll take me with her.’
‘This could cost you a lot more than your job,’ she said. ‘What are you setting up?’
‘A sting. There’s no way back from it now. You say I work too much. Let me stop working for now. Let’s go out and enjoy ourselves.’
‘You didn’t answer my question. What happens tomorrow?’
‘Let’s wait for the sun to come up on Sunday morning first. When it does, if it does, I work out what I want. I do want you in my life. If you want to be there.’
‘I’m here now. If that’s how things are, then I think we should go out. Have fun. We may not get another chance. Wait till I put my make-up on again.’
She had other places to go besides Claude’s. A smaller restaurant she’d just discovered; a nightclub where the band was the best she’d heard all year. ‘The singer has a magic voice,’ she told him. He didn’t drink much; tomorrow he needed a clear head.
‘What happens now?’ she asked, much later when they were lying in her bed. ‘How do you know when you’ve caught your fish?’
‘Whatever Calvo’s going to do, she’ll move quickly. Probably she’ll want to see me sometime tomorrow. She’ll have the meeting set up already. When I go to it, du Plessis will either be there waiting for me or he’ll be following me. If Calvo wants him to get rid of me, my bet is that everything Cassatt had on me will be left behind with my body. That’ll take care of my credibility forever. But if Calvo wants me to remove du Plessis for her, then he won’t be expecting me. The difficulty I have is getting her to incriminate herself on tape. She’s very cagey about what she says. But she’s frightened. That’ll work for me.’
‘That strategy is so dangerous.’
‘I’ll get through it. I’ve got Trevor onside and my backup in place. Let’s sleep now. We need to.’
They did sleep. For now, the morning could take care of itself.
27
When Harrigan’s phone woke him, it was still dark. When he sat up, he felt Grace stir beside him.
‘Harrigan.’
‘Sorry to wake you, boss. It’s Jacquie here. I’m on the night shift. Do you have access to a computer? You should have an email in your inbox now. You need to see it.’
‘Can you tell me what I’ll be looking at?’
‘A video that’s been posted on the Pittwater website. I’d say it was shot clandestinely. It’s got the same file reference number as the dossier. It must have been made as part of that whole operation. Also, the dossier and the senator’s affidavit have been put up on the Pittwater site as well. Whoever’s behind this is making sure everyone can join the dots.’
‘I’ll look at it now.’
Grace came and sat beside him while he turned her computer on. This time, a single email had been posted to his mailbox. The subject line read: This is real. In the body of the email was a URL. Harrigan hit it.
He found himself watching a video. A reference number with a time and date stamp were visible in a header. It was December four years ago. From a camera’s eye view, there appeared on the monitor the sight of raggedly dressed, armed African men climbing onto the back of a truck. The angle looked down at the troops; the photographer must have been standing against the back of the cabin. Another truck was following the first. They drove out of a city affected by war, through local markets, hurrying crowds, buildings marked by decay and painted with slogans. The name Kinshasa appeared in the header. Then the photographer sat down like the others on the floor of the tray.