Harrigan and Grace - 01 - Blood Redemption by Alex Palmer Read Free Book Online

smell, all the stench that is the world’s corruption.’
    She shrugged again, surprised, uncertain how to reply.
    ‘And you are out there, Lucy, because the world is shit, as you call it?’
    ‘Yeah, I am,’ she said, very softly.
    Her cigarette was finished again. She rubbed her eyes before lighting another. There was a pause and she began to talk as she rarely did.
    ‘I get sick of being out there though. You get hungry. I don’t stay out there all the time now, I come and go. I get rooms to live in, sometimes I can get the dole. And I work too. I’ve had jobs. Even me.’
    She laughed cynically. ‘But you know how I mostly live? I steal. It’s the only thing I am good at. I’ve never been caught. I get tired though. I keep thinking, why am I out here, what am I going to do now?’
    There was silence as she smoked.
    ‘In the end I just go back there. I keep going back because there isn’t anywhere else. I think that really is where I’m supposed to be.’
    ‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Lucy. Why are you so badly hurt? What happened to you?’
    He seemed to speak out of genuine concern. Lucy had a test for people who said they were concerned for her, she knew how to prove they were liars. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and took out a small plastic wallet which contained a square of shiny dark blue material. She unwrapped the material and placed on the table a torn scrap of letterhead.
    Because of this. Because this was the day. When she had thought, this is the end of the world for me, they can’t do this to me any more.
    ‘You really want to know about me?’ she asked. ‘Okay. You look at this. And you go and work it out. If you know so much.’
    She pushed the piece of paper towards him and he picked it up.
    ‘You be careful with it,’ she snapped.
    Her words, deliberately cryptic, were intended to make it clear to him that he couldn’t know, he couldn’t understand. No one could; it was knowledge privileged to her. No one could have the gall to pretend they knew. She looked at him. Go on. I dare you. I just fucking dare you.
    He smoothed the torn paper flat onto the table. A scrap Lucy had ripped from a doctor’s note pad when no one was looking. Dr Agnes Liu. MB, BS (Syd.), FRACOG, MRCOG. The Women’s Whole Life Health Centres Inc.
    ‘I know this woman,’ he said eventually. ‘I know her very well.’
    ‘You can’t.’
    ‘But I do, Lucy. Why shouldn’t I? I know what this woman is, better than most. But not, I think, better than you. She’s an abortionist. A murderer. And someone took you to her, didn’t they? You didn’t go yourself. Someone took you there for the slaughter, Lucy. Because that’s what it was. A dual murder. You and your child. Isn’t that what happened?’
    His clear eyes had become almost expressionless as he spoke to her.
    She had nodded, unable to speak at first. She thought that she was feeling nothing.
    ‘My mother. Dragged me there. Twice. Didn’t even tell me where we were going. The first time they sent me on to hospital because I had this miscarriage right there in the reception. The second time round I worked out for myself what was going to happen.’
    It was as much as she could say to begin with. He waited for her to continue. She spoke again, quickly, her words tripping over each other, as unstoppable and irretrievable as the gush of opened veins.
    ‘It was my dad. Did it to my little sister as well. Tried to anyway. I couldn’t stop him. Stevie did though. He’s my brother. He’s not as big as Dad so he didn’t help me. But when I left and he worked out what Dad was trying to do to Mel, he said he couldn’t handle it. He knocked Dad right out of the door, said he’d kill him if he touched her. He told me Mum just stood there with her mouth open. Dad’s a coward, you know. He never went near Mel again.’
    Lucy laughed with relief as she talked.
    ‘Do you know my dad’s got cancer now? Did I tell you that? Stevie