Why did the air in the house smell like this? A faint and secondary odour under the cold, something in the skin of the walls, an invasive rottenness that Harrigan noticed as soon as he walked in the door. He looked at the incandescent lights burning in competition with the growing daylight outside, the shattered television set and a window broken in the spray of bullets, a young girl he did not know rocking herself on the sofa with her arms folded around her body, weeping. Nothing out of the ordinary. Domestic rubbish left behind by a night-time explosion of violence, shock spreading in the aftertaste of the morning hangover. Lucy Hurst’s earlier presence was printed on the air; her absence was a shadow in every room.
Harrigan was in role: considering the information he had to hand, deploying his people, speaking quietly. Genuinely untouched by what he saw, he set about playing the watcher. Seeing if anything could be salvaged from what was otherwise a wasted exercise; something he had realised as soon as he had walked down the driveway, past the patrol cars and the ambulance and seen the expressions on the faces of the waiting officers. He sent Grace to comfort Melanie Hurst and talk to the mother, Trevor and Ian to talk to the brother. They met Stephen Hurst in the hallway, just as he came down the stairs.
‘My father’s up there. He hasn’t been dead for more than an hour.
Can’t this wait? Can’t I see to him first?’
‘You have called your doctor, Mr Hurst?’ Harrigan asked.
‘Of course I called him. He’s up there now. I just spoke to him.’
‘Then may I go up there? I need to speak with him before your father is removed.’
‘I don’t believe this. I didn’t believe it when she took that gun out and I still don’t believe it. If you want to, go up. There’s nothing to see.
Just my father.’ Stephen Hurst shook his head.
Harrigan nodded and walked upstairs, listening as Trevor asked if Mr Hurst would like to go through with them into his own kitchen for just a few questions. He glanced back down and saw that the young man walked with a noticeable limp.
Upstairs, he stopped to look into an empty room which someone had already cordoned off, into which, once they arrived, he would send the forensic team to comb for any human trace. On the floor, the sheets, anywhere. Hair, body fluids, blood. He thought dispassionately of Lucy Hurst’s electronic voice reaching out to his son from this ordinary, shabby, adolescent room and moved on. The door to the main bedroom was open. The doctor was drawing the sheets up over the head of the dead man. He and Harrigan introduced themselves at the foot of the bed, shaking hands in front of the mute form lying under pink cotton flowers.
‘I will be signing the death certificate,’ the doctor said, slightly pompous. ‘This is a wholly natural death, I have been waiting for it.
It’s a good thing for him it’s over.’
‘Yes,’ Harrigan replied laconically, without a trace of irony.
‘I understand the family don’t know I was the one who called in?’
He was waiting. Harrigan nodded.
‘I’d appreciate it if it could stay that way,’ the doctor said.
‘At the moment, I think they’re probably waiting to hear from you what you’ve just told me,’ Harrigan replied, with a perfunctory smile.
The doctor left.
The odour of human sickness Harrigan had detected throughout the house was no stronger here, but in a room which was both cold and seemed airless it had an extra bite. He looked at the figure in the bed.
Unmoved by the dead man’s presence, he peeled back the sheet to look at the death mask. The features had already shrunk back onto the skull.
As wasted as it was, the corpse had the presence of a familiar spirit, malevolent if impotent. Harrigan considered that wherever he had so far set foot in this house with its narrow corridors and packed boxy rooms, it had left its imprint. This particular demon had played itself out. What it had loosed was somewhere out there in the city, out of his reach and, for all he knew, was only just beginning its own campaign. He replaced the sheet and walked to the window to look out over the national park.
Rain clouds were building on the dawn horizon and he could see the wind moving through the tree tops, hear it worrying at the glass. He left the window closed and touching nothing else went downstairs.
The kitchen was a dark room with no external window, the only outside light would come through the back door into the adjacent laundry. This door was now closed against the weather, he could see it shaking in the wind like the window upstairs. At the present moment, the room was lit by a single fluorescent tube flat against the ceiling. Harrigan appeared silently and stood leaning against the kitchen bench where he could watch Stephen Hurst. The boy had a candid face, presently shadowed in the spread of the white light. Ordinary things had been placed at random on a green laminex table: cigarettes, plastic lighters, ashtrays, chipped coffee cups which were half filled with instant coffee.
Stephen, wearing a dark red and blue check flannelette shirt, leaned on his elbows, a numbed expression on his face. He was smoking, the air thick with the smell of it. Harrigan watched him, assessing the variables of fact, emotion and agenda in each of the answers he gave.
‘She’s got some money, your car and a full tank of petrol. A brown 1977 120Y Datsun?’ Trevor said, without so much as a grin.
‘Yeah.’
Harrigan wondered how he might explain to the waiting media that their home-grown terrorist had escaped New South Wales’s finest by trundling away in an infamous, shit-brown 120Y.
‘She can’t be travelling very fast, I guess,’ Ian commented. ‘Do you think your sister would steal a car if she needed to?’
‘She probably already has,’ Stephen replied, exhausted.
‘She’s good at that, is she?’ Ian continued.
Stephen did not reply.
‘You say you don’t know where she’s gone,’ Trevor said. ‘Do you know of a Preacher Graeme Fredericksen?’
‘I don’t think she’s gone to see him.’
‘You do know him then?’ Trevor asked.
‘Yeah, I’ve met him. Sleazy creepy little bastard.’
A pity your sister didn’t see him that way, Harrigan thought.
‘Why do you say she won’t be there?’ Ian asked.
‘Because I went looking for her there once. The day those people got shot. That afternoon,’ Stephen replied. ‘He said she wasn’t there but he was lying, I’m sure he was. I went back and found her later that night. She was a mess, she looked so sick. I don’t know what happened but I think ….’ He stopped and swallowed. ‘I know it seems like a mad thing to say but I wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t tried to kill her or something. She doesn’t trust him now. I’ve heard her talking to him on the phone sometimes — ’
‘She’s phoned him?’
‘Yeah, quite a few times. Or he’s phoned her. At least I think it’s him. Graeme. Who else would it be? I don’t know what’s going on.
That’s the honest truth.’
‘Do you mind if I ask a question — Ian, Trevor? Do you mind, Mr Hurst?’ Harrigan asked, quietly neutral as usual, pulling back a chair.
‘No,’ Stephen said, shaking his head, reaching for another cigarette.
‘Your sister was a mess, you say, when you found her that night.
Did you ask her why she was in such a mess?’
‘No.’
‘You didn’t ask her any questions?’
‘I never ask Lucy questions. I haven’t for years.’
‘Your family ask a lot from you, Mr Hurst. Money. A car. All night out on the streets looking for your sister.’
‘It’s not only me. Ask Mel, they drink her blood too. Used to anyway, not any more.’
‘I notice you walk with a limp, Mr Hurst.’
‘I broke my kneecap when I was fifteen. It never healed properly.’
‘Did your father do that to you?’ Harrigan asked out of pure guesswork.
Stephen did not reply.
‘When did you realise your sister was a murderer?’
‘I didn’t know. You wouldn’t think that sort of thing about your sister. I didn’t know till this morning when she was leaving.’
‘Then why give her money and a car? Did you see something in yesterday’s newspaper that alerted you perhaps?’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘You did know. Why didn’t you do something?’
Stephen Hurst leaned his face on his hands, pushing his glasses awry. His cigarette dangled from his fingers. When he looked up, Harrigan saw that the edge of one side of his glasses had impressed a mark under his eye. The boy smiled bitterly.
‘I didn’t know. All I’m trying to do is keep things turning over here so Mel and me can walk away from this in one piece. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. What do you want from me? I don’t see what I can give you.’
‘I want to find your sister before anyone else gets added to the list of the injured and the dead, Mr Hurst. At the moment, I have more people on that list than I care for.’
‘I don’t know where she is. If I knew I would have told you that first thing.’
He drew on his cigarette again. Harrigan was pushing back his chair, standing up.
‘My officers will take your statement now. Thank you.’
‘You do that, do you? Come around and ask people those kinds of questions and then go away again,’ Stephen Hurst said, almost to himself, grinding out his cigarette.
‘No, Mr Hurst. I’m the one who has to cover all the angles regardless, because if I don’t, then I can’t do my job,’ Harrigan replied.
He walked out into the hallway in time to see Grace leaving a room, closing the door softly behind her. He smiled at her, she smiled back.
‘How did you go with the mother?’ he asked.
‘Listen to this,’ she replied quietly.
He listened at the door and heard the sound of a television set.
‘She’s got a portable in there,’ Grace said. ‘That’s what she wanted.
Tea, toast and the television set. Talking to her is like talking to nothing, she stares back at you like she’s a baby chicken. I think she made sure she had no idea what was going on.’
‘What about the girl?’
‘She’s out of it, the doctor’s given her a shot. She’s exhausted. I don’t think she would have had the time to know what was happening. Neither of them can tell us anything.’
‘Par for the course,’ he said, ‘no one here can. She’s given me the slip, Grace, by thirty minutes.’
‘What do you want me to do now?’
‘I don’t think there is much more you can do here. Do you want to take a cigarette break? Catch up with me a little later.’
‘Okay.’
Grace went and stood out on the edge of the ruined garden but did not light a cigarette, letting the cold air shift the odour of the house out of her nostrils. She braced her hands behind her head and felt the strength of the gathering wind. It was strong and icy and pushed her back as she turned from side to side, loosening the muscles in her neck and spine. A bank of black cloud was continuing to build on the horizon. On its patch of ground above the trees the house stood exposed before the full force of the weather.
The garden on the slope just below had already been searched and was not cordoned off. Grace walked down into the green shade, picking her way along the muddy paths. Dead flowers littered the ground, old rhododendron trees and camellias were massed together.
At the base of the slope, an ancient and decaying sleep-out stood near the edge of an escarpment. The door was open like a mouth. Grace looked inside but did not go in. The room was dark and smelled like a cave of moist earth and the windows were covered with cobwebs.
Are you in there? There could be no one in there, the area had been searched. The waiting quietness of the shadows felt like a trap about to close. Grace turned away to look out over the native forest in the national park and then heard a soft growl behind her. She looked and saw an ancient dog in the doorway to the sleep-out, snarling at her from the shadows.
‘You horrible mongrel,’ she said softly, ‘you don’t have to protect her now, she’s gone. I wouldn’t go in there anyway.’
The dog growled more loudly, more savagely. It moved forward, herding her towards the escarpment.
‘Go away. You don’t frighten me.’
The dog stood its ground, grinning yellow teeth. It moved forward again. Grace stood still where she was and then took a step to the side, towards the path to the house, staring it in the eyes.
‘You stay there, you just stay there.’
It was braced on its claws but as she moved slowly away it stayed still, watching her off. When she gained the pathway, she saw it relax its stance and then disappear back into the sleep-out. Grace walked back up the hill quickly, thinking that this was no place to be, it was dangerous, full of trapdoors and tripwires. No one would want to live here.
She found Harrigan in the hallway near the door to the lounge room, talking to Ian and Trevor. He signalled to her to join them, the others looked at her speculatively. Avoiding their joint gaze, she glanced through to the lounge room where a forensic team was working on the ruined television set.
‘There you are,’ he said, following her line of vision and then looking back at her again. ‘We’ve been tossing a few ideas around.
We’re shadow boxing with her so I’m going to make her dance for us a little. Do you want to talk to her?’
‘Out there in cyberspace, you mean? Is she still out there?’
‘Why don’t we find out? Why don’t you send her an email — give her Greggie’s last message. Quote it word for word. That’s what he wanted you to do.’
‘Who am I talking to? Lucy Hurst or the Firewall?’ she asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I should talk to the girl who’s protecting the world.’
‘Yeah. Go out looking for the Firewall. Okay, I’m staying on here for a little while longer but you can all go now. These two will take you back,’ Harrigan said, glancing at them. ‘I told them not to go without you.’
He walked away. Grace found herself watching him go.
‘Okay, Gracie,’ Ian said with a faint touch of sarcasm, ‘do you want to hop in the back?’
‘Would you mind if I drove?’
‘Careful, mate,’ Trevor said, ‘Gracie’s a speed queen.’
‘No, that’s okay,’ Ian said, handing her the keys and grinning at Trevor. ‘You can ride in the back. No smoking.’
‘Sure,’ she replied.
Driving was a relief. She reached the Pacific Highway quickly and zipped along through the traffic, letting the speed work the tensions out of her head. For a short time, they were silent.
‘That was a horrible place,’ Grace said after a while. ‘Why doesn’t she burn that place down while she’s about it? It needs it.’
Trevor laughed in the back.
‘Don’t give her any ideas, Gracie. You really think you want to talk to her?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know if that’s the right way to go. I don’t know how dangerous it might be.’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Who’s she going to kill next? You don’t want to be anywhere near the firing line,’ Ian said.
‘We don’t know that yet,’ Grace replied, a little bleakly.
‘She will, Gracie,’ Ian said to her, almost gently. ‘I hate to say it, but she will now she’s got started.’
‘What does Harrigan want you to do?’ she asked them.
‘Go and pick up the preacher. He wants the three of us to talk to him, whatever we’re going to get out of that,’ Trev replied.
They were silent again.
‘Okay, Graciekins,’ Trevor said suddenly, ‘enough of this pissing around. Where did you spend last night? You weren’t at Harrigan’s place, were you?’
‘What kind of a question is that? No, I wasn’t. I was in my flat. In my own bed. By myself. You are such suspicious-minded, nosy people.’
‘It’s what we do for a living,’ Ian said, helpfully. ‘You’re supposed to think that way too.’
‘I am not sleeping with Harrigan!’
‘I’m just saying what everyone else is saying.’ Trevor sounded defensive. ‘If you do want to fuck him, you might as well go ahead and do it now because everyone thinks you are.’
‘Trev, you are so crass!’
‘I’m just telling it like it is,’ he said, taken aback by her degree of anger.
Ian had been laughing but he stopped himself.
‘We believe you, Gracie,’ he said, wiping his eyes, ‘but I don’t know if anybody else will.’
She shook her head but did not reply. She sped up, driving too fast, feeling an unfocused sense of urgency. ‘Take it easy, mate,’ she heard Ian say after a little while and she did slow down, taking it quieter.
Why is life like this? she thought to herself. Outside, the sky held the threat of a deluge not quite delivered.