The Tattooed Man by Alex Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

it, mate.’
    Cassatt’s voice stopped, the tape continued in silence. Harrigan rewound it and took it out. Grace sipped warm soda water.
    ‘That’s a voice from the grave,’ she said, her own voice shaking a little. ‘Is everything on that tape true?’
    ‘Every word. And now someone out there has everything that was in Mike’s safety deposit box. They’ve got their hands on my life and there’s no way I can know who they are. Until they ring me up and tell me they want something from me.’
    She shook another cigarette out of the packet and lit it. He watched her gathering calm. She was like this, never clingy or brimming with overdone sympathy.
    ‘Whoever has it, it’s not the Tooth,’ she said. ‘If he had any of that evidence in his possession, let alone this tape, you’d be out of a job right now.’
    Harrigan smiled dryly. Grace had her own unpleasant memories of encounters not only with Marvin but with his son as well, including an attempt by the two of them to drive her out of her job while she’d still been with the police. Baby Tooth, as Marvin’s boy, Sean, was known, was also a serving police officer. On a fast track through the ranks, he owed his promotions solely to his father’s patronage.
    ‘What evidence is there left from Eddie Lee’s murder?’ she asked. ‘Any DNA? Can they tie you in?’
    ‘There’d be enough. We’ve still got the clothes he was wearing. It wouldn’t be hard to get a match.’
    ‘How would you protect yourself if any of this did get out?’
    ‘Do what everyone does. Deny everything. Get a good lawyer.’
    ‘It wouldn’t save you,’ she said. ‘Maybe you wouldn’t go to gaol for being an accessory but the publicity would finish your career for good. Did you say anything to anyone at the time?’
    ‘No. If I had, it wouldn’t have mattered who my father was. Right now, I’d be a little pile of bones for the fishes somewhere off South Head.’
    Grace shivered. ‘Don’t say that, not even as a joke. Why didn’t you go after them later when they almost killed you? Why not accuse them? Take them to trial.’
    ‘Because no one would have supported me. My reputation would have been dragged through the mud. I’d have been hounded out of the force and put under so much personal pressure it would have wrecked my life. I’d walked away alive. That was as much as I could expect and I knew it.’
    ‘But why stay in the job? You could have done something else. Didn’t you have your law degree by then?’
    This was a question Harrigan wasn’t prepared to answer, even to himself.
    ‘Why should I let them chase me out?’
    She drew on her cigarette and didn’t reply. They sat in silence for a few moments. Her smoke curled in the air.
    ‘What a story,’ she said. ‘The Ice Cream Man invites you into his life. Drinking bucketloads of beer in stinky clubs and fucking bored sex workers who couldn’t care less whether you’re alive, dead or a rubber dick. Why would you want to live like that? It’s so nowhere.’
    Harrigan had never heard the feared Ice Cream Man brushed aside with so much uncompromising female disdain. It made him laugh from deep inside until the tears came down his cheeks. A naggingtension was resolved; his personal nightmares might have disappeared into the air with the grey wisps of her cigarette smoke.
    ‘Was it really so funny?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes, it was.’ He grew serious. ‘That’s not the end of it. I’ve asked Trev to keep me briefed on what’s happening with this investigation. I have to, Grace. If the Ice Cream Man’s involved, I have to know where this job is going.’
    Suddenly there was a hint of tears in her own eyes, angry ones.
    ‘Do you? I knew when you went up there today, it wasn’t just going to be for one afternoon. What did you say? We’ll be on leave together. Nothing will get in the way.’
    ‘You heard the news. There’s a federal government minister involved. I can’t just walk away.’
    ‘But you