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

told me he hasn’t got that long to go. He’s playing around with dying too now. I can say to him, hey, Dad it’s you and me now. We’re both at the same game. How do you feel about that?’
    Her voice was shaking.
    ‘And your mother took you to this woman.’ Graeme tapped the piece of paper. ‘And she helped your mother and your father hide from the world what he had done to you. Because that is what this woman is. Someone who has no conscience. Let me tell you what happened to you in there, Lucy, in that clinic — and let’s give it its true name, a Hellhole. She raped you once more. That’s what happened to you there. An evil, evil thing.’
    The words entered her memory, fixing themselves as unconditional and unshakable truth, as tangible to her as the scrap of paper she always carried with her. The images of her memory converged. The fixed injury impressed onto her by her father — still felt, to the point that she wanted sometimes to scrub away her skin — coalesced into its parallel remembrance, the entry of steel into her vagina.
    ‘Yeah. That’s exactly what she did. You don’t know what happens in there. They hook you up, she cleans you out — it’s like you’re fucking nothing. And no one cared. They didn’t give a shit. How could she do that?’
    Lucy had taken back the scrap of paper and begun folding it up, compressing it. Her actions were repetitive, compulsive. She did not cry.
    Relief was spilling through her, her heart had opened out. She felt a strange lightness, an intoxication. Her mouth was open, her breathing sharp and shallow, breath that did not get down into her lungs.
    ‘Do you know what she said to my mum when we were driving away? She came out after us — Mum said she almost ran her down in the car park. Do you know what she said?’ She was staring at the piece of paper that she had folded small. ‘About me. She said to my mother, she can’t have sex for a fortnight. I thought, fuck you. No one is ever coming near me again, I don’t care what you say. I was gone after that.
    As soon as I got home and I could get out of there. I was gone.’
    ‘Let me have that piece of paper, Lucy,’ he said to her gently. ‘You can trust me with it. I promise.’
    She held it, her hands still shaking, feeling that to give it away was to give up some essential piece of herself. Even so, she handed it to him as he had asked.
    ‘You’ve got to be careful with that,’ she said. ‘The second time I was there, at that clinic, I took it. It’s to remind me that’s when I said, I’m out of here, I’m gone for ever. You can’t lose it.’
    ‘I will be careful with it. This is a very precious piece of paper, Lucy.
    Wait here for me. Trust me.’
    After he had gone, she lit another cigarette. Her hands continued to shake. When he came back, he placed a file on the table and took out of it a photograph of a woman’s face, scrawled with the word
    ‘Murderer’ and splashed with a translucent red dye.
    ‘This is her, isn’t it?’ he asked.
    ‘Yeah, it is.’
    He smoothed out the torn paper and attached it to the photograph on the file, then set the documents between them.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘this piece of paper is very important. You see, Lucy, this woman and you, you are connected. And that connection is indissoluble. This is her fate, Lucy, this scrap of paper. This paper is her crime against you, against God, against the world, and it is also her fate.’
    He spoke as though they were two old friends who had always understood each other and who alone knew the real truth. He tapped the stains on the photograph.
    ‘Do you see the blood on this woman? This is your blood. She can’t escape you now because you know what she is. A mass murderer. A serial killer. You are one of her survivors. You can accuse her. You can stand up before the world and say, this woman is my murderer.
    Someone who is paid to kill and takes pleasure in it. Someone who smiles each time another victim