Harrigan put the documents back in the box and closed it. He wouldn’t be able to see Toby today as he’d wanted to. It was already time to pick up Ellie.
He went home first and disarmed, locking his gun in its usual place in the safe.
When he got to Kidz Corner, he called on Kate. She met him with a smile.
‘The police sent an officer around,’ she said. ‘A very smart young woman from the police station up at Balmain. She’s my contact. If that car turns up again, I call her right away. She takes it from there. She says she’ll have people down here very quickly.’
‘All under control then,’ he said, relieved. ‘That car may not come back. We may have scared it off for good.’
‘Hope so.’
He went to collect Ellie. She ran to him and he scooped her up. She laughed and put her arms around him.
‘Hello, princess. Did you have a nice day? Of course you did. Come on. Daddy will take you home and Mummy will be there soon.’
After the events of the day, this was a cleaner place to be. He carried his daughter out to his car, relieved to be finished with it all.
8
Grace got home not long after they did. She walked in the door smiling, but her smile was strained and there were lines of tension around her eyes. She went and disarmed, then gave Ellie a hug.
‘Hi, baby. Mummy’s home early. We’re going to have tea soon. How are you? Don’t I love you.’
‘How are you, babe?’ he asked, when he kissed her.
‘Oh, it’s just work,’ she said.
Just work. Given what she did every day, that could have covered just about anything. Something with a nasty kick had happened today, he could tell that, but it might be a long time before he found out what it was.
He kept his information to himself until after Grace had put Ellie to bed. He listened to her singing their daughter to sleep, thought how soft and almost sad her voice sounded at a distance. When she came back down, he had made coffee for her and poured whisky for himself. She smiled at him and sat down. He thought she probably wasn’t aware of how quiet she’d been all night. In the last few hours she had hardly spoken two words to him. She liked to talk: about Ellie, small details of life, gossip about family or friends, particularly hers-the sorority as they called themselves, high-flying female lawyers who worked and partied hard. He had taken her away from that life. ‘Are you bored?’ he’d once asked her. ‘Not yet,’ she’d replied with that arch look she had. ‘I’m happy,’ she’d added. ‘I never expected to be that.’ Why did he always feel that doubt, that she might not be? All those years he’d spent on his own; the impress of that loneliness was still there and still strong.
‘Is she asleep?’ he asked.
‘Snug as a bug,’ she replied with a smile.
‘I have some information for you.’
‘I’ve some for you. Did you want to start?’
‘The white Camry that was here last night. It followed me and Ellie to Kidz Corner this morning. Kate told me it’d been seen there a number of times before and she’d already got the rego. It was in the name of someone called Craig Wells. Does that name mean anything to you?’
‘No, I’ve never heard it before. Do we need to move Ellie? She won’t like it if we do.’
‘Trev organised an officer to check it out today. She’s on call if that car comes back. It’s safe up there. I’ve looked it over. Don’t forget Kidz Corner has its own security.’
She looked away, her face drawn with worry. ‘I don’t want Ellie to be bothered by this kind of thing. I just ran wild when I was young. I wish she could.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘But the world’s not the same. I traced the car but it took me to an address in Lakemba where they’d never heard of Craig Wells. The twist is that I once dealt with a cold case where the victim had that name, but whether there’s a connection I don’t know. But I did find one connection today we can’t ignore. The real estate agent managing the unit is Eddie Grippo. He used to work for Tony Ponticelli senior and now he’s managing their properties. We put him away for grievous bodily harm. He’s just got out. It might be all these incidents have nothing to do with Newell; it’s the Ponticellis looking to get their own back.’
‘Why now? Wasn’t your involvement with them years ago?’
‘You’d have to look inside Tony Ponticelli’s head to know what’s really going on in there. He’s got Alzheimer’s; apparently he’s losing it. It might be he wants to settle a few personal scores with me before he goes.’
‘Like what?’
‘Tony’s first wife died when he was about fifty. She had cancer. He married again, this twenty-something. They had two children, a boy and a girl. She couldn’t deal with the life. She left Tony and took the boy. Went into hiding to get away from him. He kept the girl, Bianca. It was before I met you and after we finished our operations against him. I don’t know why but she came after me.’
‘Are you saying you had an affair? Sleeping with the enemy? That’s dangerous.’ She smiled at him. ‘Didn’t it bother this woman that you were trying to put her father in gaol?’
‘I think that’s why she did it. She was getting at him. It was only a brief thing between us. Tony’s a vain man. She was like him. She thought she was more important than she was.’
‘To you?’ Grace asked.
‘To everything. Yeah, me as well. She was like a spoilt kid. She kept trying to attract attention to herself. The company she was keeping, she was way out of her depth. I told her that. She just laughed. No one was going to hurt her because she was Tony Ponticelli’s daughter. She ended up raped and murdered. They dumped her by the Cooks River. We never found who did it. There was no information.’
‘Bianca Ponticelli. I remember the case. It was when I was studying criminology, we talked about it. Does Tony Ponticelli blame you?’
‘For a while he was going around saying I had a personal vendetta against him. I’d let whoever killed her get away and I was covering up for them. Then he backed off.’
‘Why?’
‘The tax office went after him for tax evasion. He didn’t have time to think about me. It depends on what this has turned into in his head. He was always unpredictable and he’s still dangerous. He can get things done if he wants to.’
‘It’s a potent mixture,’ Grace said. ‘His daughter and you undermining his business.’
It was on the tip of Harrigan’s tongue to say there was one other thing as well, but he kept it to himself. He would have preferred to tell her but judged it better if he didn’t. She had too much on her mind.
‘Why did you do it?’ she was asking him.
‘She was there. She was making the offer. She was attractive. Sometimes you can spend too long alone.’
She looked at him with a half-smile. ‘I’ve had affairs like that too.’
They were silent. Grace rubbed her forehead.
‘Can we really leave Ellie at Kidz Corner? How do we know this car won’t come back?’
‘Where else is she going to go? If anything happens, the officer’s on call and Trevor’s people will be there like a shot. Kate’s always got her eyes open. I’m finding out who’s behind this. You can trust me. I’ll protect us.’
‘I do trust you. I always have.’ She looked around. ‘We could be happy. Why don’t they just leave us alone?’
‘People aren’t like that.’
At that moment her face was almost disfigured with strain. ‘I’m going to have to tell Orion that the Ponticellis may be behind whoever’s stalking us.’