Three pictures had been attached to the email. Harrigan didn’t look at these immediately but went to the website. The words They gather for the feast flashed on screen again. The first image took his breath away. In sharp colour, the dead sat at the table on the patio at Pittwater, assembled for a meal they would never eat, Cassatt at the head as if presiding over them. He heard Grace draw her breath in sharply.
‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Is that what you saw? How did you recognise him?’
‘Intuition. We looked at his left shoulder, he had a tattoo there. Why send this out? What’s the point?’
‘Is that man with the glasses Jerome Beck?’
‘Yeah, that’s him. Will anyone else recognise him now? Is that the point?’
He went to the next photograph. Cassatt lay in his unidentified grave, recently dead. In the narrow trench, his face and body, just recognisable, were shockingly marked.
‘Someone worked him over before he died and they weren’t gentle,’ Harrigan said. ‘What did they want? And why tell the world like this? If you’re going to splash it all over the net, why not tell us where his grave was as well?’
‘They can’t want you to know. It’s like advertising,’ she said. ‘Or reality TV. They want us to think it’s real life. Except that it’s artificial from the beginning.’
‘Whoever did that to Mike must have buried him as well. They have to know where his grave was. Whoever that person is, they’ll know someone was looking over their shoulder while they were doing it.’
‘Why wouldn’t this be from the person who killed him?’ Grace asked.
‘I think it’s more likely it’s not,’ he said after a few moments’ thought. ‘This is someone telling us what they want us to know. Someone wants us to see a connection between the killings at Pittwater and Mike’s murder. Killers usually keep things secret. These people want this out there.’
‘Then it’s also a message for Cassatt’s killers, whoever they are. Someone’s on to them.’
The third photograph showed Cassatt in this same grave in the mummified state he’d been in at the table at Pittwater. The narrow confines cradled him like a child.
‘Before and after,’ Harrigan said. ‘We saw you bury him and now we’ve dug him up and taken him to Sydney for a meal with the dead. Who are these people?’
‘Twisted,’ Grace said. ‘You’d have to be. I’m going to have a shower. I need to wash seeing that away.’
Harrigan opened the other two emails. Each was identical to the first. The commissioner’s came with the concise message: Please phone. His son had written: Isn’t this where you went yesterday, Dad? These pix are everywhere, they’ve been posted all over the place. People are putting them up on their own websites. Sicko.
Thanks, mate, Harrigan typed in return. Sorry about yesterday, see you today if I possibly can.
He picked up the phone and made his call.
‘Paul,’ the commissioner said, dispensing with greetings. ‘Have you seen the email?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s gone to every media outlet in the country. Some newspapers have managed to get those pictures out on the street already. That’s bad enough. But if you check the Sydney Morning Herald online, you’ll find there’s media speculation this investigation may already be compromised as a result of Cassatt’s body being found at the scene.’
‘How is that possible?’
‘According to them, the Ice Cream Man may have had evidence implicating a serving senior police officer in the Edward Lee murder. This senior officer may wish to protect himself by impeding the investigation.’
‘Is this alleged senior serving police officer named?’
‘Of course not. The paper isn’t planning on being sued. The journalist is very clearly referring to the various rumours connecting you to Cassatt-’
‘There is no truth whatsoever in those rumours,’ Harrigan snapped, wondering why fate had to do this to him.
‘I didn’t say there was. But I won’t have it said that, under my command, this service is subject to the same degree of corruption that existed with Cassatt.’
‘I’m not aware anyone is saying that.’
‘I don’t intend to give them the chance. I discussed the matter with the special assistant commissioner. Marvin advises that you should stand down from your position as commander during this investigation. However…’ The commissioner drew breath. Harrigan, awaiting the axe, sensed a reprieve. ‘Senator Edwards phoned a short while ago. He wants to meet with the senior officers managing this investigation, including you. You impressed him yesterday. He was very insistent that you be involved. Can you be here in an hour?’
Harrigan smiled mordantly to consider that, purely by circumstance, he’d managed to avoid one of Marvin’s more outrageous gambits.
‘I’ll be there,’ he replied. ‘Are you asking me to break my leave?’
‘Not as such. I’m asking you to make yourself available as needed. I would expect that from all my executive officers. You will be conducting yourself as though you have nothing to hide.’
‘I have no reason to do otherwise, Commissioner.’
There was a pause. ‘There’s something else you need to know. I received an anonymous parcel this morning. It contains a dossier that appears to be from an intelligence-gathering organisation. It’s relevant to this case.’
‘Someone sent this to you?’
‘With a note that says: Read this and it will explain who Jerome Beck is. I’ve discussed it with Marvin. He thinks it’s a hoax. I don’t share that opinion. It appears the senator also received a copy of this same dossier but a day sooner than we did. That’s what he wants to discuss with us.’
‘Strange happenings, Commissioner,’ Harrigan replied.
‘Yes, unfortunately. In an hour.’
Harrigan put the phone down, reflecting that there was no mistaking the commissioner’s priorities. He went and found Grace in the bathroom where she had finished showering and was brushing out her hair.
‘They want you to go in, don’t they?’ she said.
‘In an hour. They want me to talk to the minister. I don’t have a choice. I have to go.’
‘Of course you don’t have a choice. You can’t ring them up and say I’m not coming in, my girlfriend won’t let me.’
‘You’re a lot more to me than just a girlfriend.’
She put her hairbrush back down on the vanity. Small items indicating her presence had begun to appear in his house. A bottle of her perfume on the dressing table in his bedroom; a cream silk chemise tossed over a chair; a brightly coloured packet of tampons in his bathroom cabinet.
‘But you’re still going in. You still don’t have a choice. It’s not whether either of us likes it. It’s the fact that you don’t have a choice.’
He didn’t like where she was taking this.
‘According to God, those pictures are everywhere,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘They’ve even made it to some of the newspapers this morning. It’s too much for his sensibilities.’
‘I’ll get dressed and go and get them. We should see this.’
By the time Grace came back from the corner store, he had showered, shaved and dressed and was eating a quick breakfast. She spread the papers out on the table. The headlines were ghoulish enough: Ice Cream Man’s body found in House of Death. There were photographs of Harrigan as the head of the task force together with colour pictures of Nattie Edwards’ gaudy house at Pittwater. A school photograph of Julian Edwards when he could have been no more than thirteen covered the Daily Telegraph’s front page. Harrigan could almost hear the sub-editors salivating.