Harrigan was taking a catnap when a sleepy-eyed Trevor shook him by the shoulder.
‘The Firewall’s online,’ he said.
‘Is she talking to Grace?’ He said her name as just another of his officers.
‘No. She’s updating her website. Come and see.’
He followed Trevor into the computer room. The graveyard shift had already gathered there. Grace sat a little to the side, watching from where she was seated in front her own monitor. She did not seem to notice him.
‘Lookee here,’ Louise said, as he appeared, ‘this is the promised land.
It’s so pretty. This girl has so much talent, it’s a waste.’
The screen displayed a green slope of flowering trees leading down to a honey-coloured rock looking out over a wild forest. Small streams flowed down to become clear waterfalls over the rock, blue and white flowers grew in carpets underneath the trees. At the summit of the hill there was a small, glittering, turreted castle with wide doors and windows. Birds flew across the blue sky behind it.
‘I know that place,’ Grace said, ‘but it doesn’t look like that now.’
‘Where is it?’ Louise asked.
‘It’s her home,’ Trevor replied for Grace. ‘She’s tarted it up.’
‘It’s endgame, Lou,’ Grace added quietly.
Harrigan had pulled up a chair beside Louise. ‘Where’s she coming from?’ he asked.
Louise shook her head. ‘I’ve got a trace out but nothing so far. She’s just downloaded this. I don’t know what she’s doing now.’
‘She got a phone from somewhere,’ Ian said.
‘She’s met with the preacher,’ Harrigan replied. ‘He’s supplied her with one and who knows what else. At least she’s still alive to tell the tale.’
‘You put money on that, did you, Boss?’ Trevor asked with a grin.
‘No, mate, I didn’t think it was a very good bet at the time.’
‘She’s online,’ Grace said suddenly. She acknowledged Harrigan for the first time since he had come into the room: ‘But she’s not looking for me, she’s looking for your son. Will he be online now?’
‘I’m sure he is.’
He came and looked over her shoulder with everyone else.
Turtle, are you out there? Do you still want to talk to me? I’d like to talk to you.
Hi Lucy I’m here U are talking 2 me after all I’ve been waiting 2
hear from u I was hoping u would talk 2 me You know who I am now. You don’t have to call me the Firewall any more.
Want me 2???
No, I like you calling me Lucy. I’m still going to call you Turtle though. Do you mind? Will you forgive me for getting so angry with you? I’m sorry, Turtle, I felt so lost.
That’s ok I just wanna talk 2 u Where are u? Don’t tell me if u don’twant 2 Are u ok???
I’m all right. I’m really, really hungry. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.
That’s no good U have 2 eat soon
I’ve gone hungry before, I know what it feels like. My father died yesterday morning, Turtle. I was there when it happened. I saw him die and I didn’t feel a thing.
U don’t have 2 feel for him
But that’s it. I wish I could. I know what you’d feel if your father died.
That’s different That’s way different
I know that. That’s what I want to ask you about. Didn’t you tell me once he taught you how to talk?
‘Mate,’ Trevor spoke quietly to Harrigan, ‘is this okay with you?
We can do this more privately.’
‘This is work, Trev,’ Harrigan replied. ‘Just keep watching.’
He didn’t teach me 2 talk because I can’t really talk. I learned whatwords were from him. He always kept talking 2 me when I was ababy and he kept the radio on. He took me to see Auntie Ronnie andLyn all the time and they never do anything but talk. He just kepttalking words at me so I’d know what they were Why did he do that?
Coz they said I couldn’t have a mind. Because of the way I was.
He said, fuck u, I’ll show u he does. He got people to teach me toread, there’s special ways u can do that. Why?
Grace looked towards Harrigan, wondering how he could bear seeing this on the screen. He was watching her but it was impossible to know what was in his head. Her sense of loss was too strong for disguise. She turned away.
I just have to know, that’s all. Do you ever meet anyone he works with?
Sometimes Why????
What are they like? Are they like everybody else?
Just people Why????
I missed you, Turtle.
Me 2
Nothing was typed. The computer room was silent as everyone waited.
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.
‘Where were the security guards?’ he asked her. ‘My information was that this clinic was under twenty-four-hour surveillance.’
‘So was mine. Don’t know where they were, but they weren’t here, that’s for sure,’ she replied sharply. She glanced across the road. ‘Look at that mess, will you? They should put the scum who did that in gaol and throw away the key.’
‘If we hadn’t got here when we did, we’d have had deaths,’
Harrigan said. ‘You can tell them that at Area Command. You can tell them it came from me, personally.’
‘I will. No probs.’ She grinned with pleasure at the prospect and walked away.
On the other side of the road, all traffic was being diverted to the southbound lane and waved on its way by uniformed police. It was dawn, the morning snarl was beginning to build, already stretching towards the beach suburbs in the south and the city in the north. It grew light on a snake-like mess of fire hoses, burnt-out buildings still smouldering in the damp weather, and convoys of vehicles taking those left homeless to temporary shelter. Harrigan watched his team stop for takeaway coffee, saw Grace light a cigarette and roll her shoulders wearily. He wanted to speak to her but did not know what he could say. It was twenty-four hours since any of them had had any real sleep other than a stolen hour or two.
In the midst of this, he took a phone call from the surveillance team watching the Temple to hear that the preacher had arrived home on foot. He told them to leave the man alone and hung up, wondering what Fredericksen had done with his time between midnight and dawn, or what he might have been able to tell them about the scene surrounding him now. He was then surprised to take a phone call from the Commissioner’s Office. When he had finished talking, he went looking for Trevor.
‘I’ve got to take the car, mate. I’ve been summonsed by God, he wants to have breakfast with me. I’ll see you all back in town.’
‘Have fun, Boss. Don’t forget to say g’day to the Commissioner for me while you’re there. What does he want with us anyway?’
‘Who knows? I’ve been told it might take a while. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.’
Why did they want him? Presumably to explain why he had permitted a firebombing to occur in the middle of a state election campaign, not a very clever thing to do. He got into the car with the premonition that events were about to become more complicated than they already were. As he drove away, he saw a dark blue van come to a slow stop on the other side of the road near the blue and white ribbons.
Acme Security. We’re there for you. He looked at the car’s digital clock: seven forty-five a.m. Daylight hours. Welcome to the job, boys. Ask me for a reference one day.