There was a touch of distance in her voice.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I got what you wrote and it’s been acted on. We’re talking to Edwards tomorrow.’
She didn’t reply.
‘Are you there?’
‘I’m still here. Where are you?’
‘At home. I’m waiting for a call to tell me what they want in exchange for Toby.’
‘Do you think it’s the same man who shot at me and tried to kill you?’
‘I’m sure of it. He’s Elena Calvo’s dirty tricks man.’
‘At the launch, she said to me the next time I saw you I should give you her regards. All the time she seemed to be really saying, you’ll never see him again.’
‘I didn’t ring you. I was weighed down. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s how you live. You’re always weighed down. You take everything on.’
He almost said: who else is going to?
‘You don’t have to do that. There’s no need for you to be responsible for everything and everyone,’ she went on, as if she had heard his thoughts.
‘I’d ask if you wanted to come around, but I’m in one of those places you say doesn’t have any light or air,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to talk to you and it’s not a good place for anyone else to be. I just wanted to say I was thinking about you.’
There was a pause. She didn’t ask what he was going to do when someone did call. She was too discreet for that, and she knew the answer already.
‘You’ll handle this in the best way, whatever happens,’ she said instead.
‘I’ve got to wait for their call, Grace. I’ll ring you.’
‘I guess you will. See you.’
He sat in his study with the gifted mobile in front of him. It was an old model, one that looked like it was due to be thrown away. Goya’s prints looked down on him but his feelings were too raw for him to look back at them. He had a hard, dark ache at his heart that displaced every other thought or feeling. It held him in his chair almost unaware of the night hours passing. Then at about 1 a.m. the sound of the mobile startled him. He had received a text message: a mobile phone number. He packed a bag with the tape and the CD and left the house.
He drove to Parramatta Road before dialling the number in the text message. His call was answered almost immediately.
‘Harrigan,’ he said.
‘Where are you, man?’
‘On Parramatta Road, heading west.’
‘You’re already on the road. Have you got what I want? You tell me what it is.’
‘A tape and a CD. Do you have my son? Where is he?’
‘He’s out there somewhere. It’s a big city. You could look for a long time before you found him. I’ve got a question for you. Did you copy the tape?’
‘No. There were things on it I didn’t want duplicated.’
The man laughed.
‘Your old friend talk about you, did he? I know a lot about you, man. I can guess some of the things he said.’
‘You’ve got what was in his safety deposit box,’ Harrigan said.
‘I have. It was good for a laugh. I could make a little money out of some of the things I found in there and not just from you,’ the voice replied.
‘Where’s my son?’
‘I’m not going to tell you that now. You have to keep your side of the bargain first. I have to know no one’s coming after me. Because if you take me in, I’m not going to tell you where he is. You can catch me and he can die. Then he can rot where he is.’
‘No one’s going to come after you.’ Except me. ‘Where do you want these things?’
‘I’ll give you a street address. It’ll take you to a warehouse. On the door, there’s a locked metal mailbox. You drop the tape and the CD inside and you go away.’
‘How long do I have to wait before you tell me where he is?’ Harrigan asked.
‘Until I’m sure no one’s coming after me.’
‘You’ve got my word.’
‘Is that good for anything? You’ll hear.’
The address was out past Parramatta. Harrigan recognised it as the area where they’d found Cassatt’s burnt-out car. It was a long drive across the western spread of the city. Once he reached the freeway, it seemed to last forever. The air was cooler but still tainted by the day’s traffic fumes. There was occasional traffic but the cars speeding alongside him under the yellow lights only increased his sense of isolation.
His street directory took him to a decayed industrial area, not far from the site where they had found the Ice Cream Man’s car. The streets were lined with deserted and locked premises, their windows boarded up. Peeling posters were slapped in layers on corrugated-iron walls. Rubbish had collected in the gutters. It was poorly lit, no one was around. Harrigan found the mailbox as he’d been told. The only feeling in his mind was the necessity of it all. He dropped the tape and the CD into the box and went home. By now it was almost three.
The drive back felt as interminable as the drive there. He took out his mobile and was about to ring Grace when she called him, her name appearing on the display monitor.
‘I was about to call you,’ he said.
‘I just got home. I wanted to know what was going on.’
Harrigan thought, at least she’s not with someone. He avoided saying directly what he’d just done.
‘The thing most on my mind is that I have to trust someone who tortured and killed a man. How can you do that?’
‘Whoever he is, he has all the control,’ she said in a tone that suggested she understood him. ‘What’s happening now?’
‘Nothing. I’m waiting.’
‘When do we see each other?’
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Trust me.’
‘You always ask people to trust you. I’ll see you.’
When he reached Birchgrove, his exhaustion was so profound he was able to sleep. Very late in the morning, he woke and went to check his email and his answering machine. There was nothing. The day stretched forward like an empty space. He realised he was frozen at the heart, in the grip of the black dog that prevented him from speaking to people outside of the necessities. He couldn’t even pick up the phone to call Grace; he didn’t know how to frame the words. If he tried to speak to her, he wouldn’t be able to breathe.
Later on that day, he drove to Millennium Forensic Laboratories where he asked to speak confidentially to the head scientist who was also the owner: a man in his forties who had grown tired of waiting for promotion in the forensic laboratories of the police force.
In the quiet sterility of the laboratory, the scientist, his hands gloved, laid out on the benchtop the crop specimens Harrigan had given him. They became hothouse plants, espaliered on a device stretching out their facets for display.
‘Do I really need gloves to handle these?’ the scientist asked.
‘For the tobacco you do,’ Harrigan replied. ‘A friend of mine sustained a significant injury handling that tobacco.’
‘They look so ordinary. These must be among the most widely grown crops in the world.’
Harrigan considered what these pieces of plant matter were worth, one way or another: the Pittwater killings, Freeman’s and Cassatt’s murders, his son’s abduction, the cost of bulldozing into the ground what had once been a huge investment of money.
‘My information is they’re anything but ordinary. What I want you to tell me is what’s different about them,’ he said.
‘Can you tell me the source of the specimens?’
‘I can’t give you that information, I’m sorry,’ Harrigan said.
‘Have they been genetically modified?’
‘Almost certainly.’
‘Is there any specification, any research information, about these crops available from any source?’
‘I’m afraid not. That’s one reason I want a full analysis of their properties.’
‘Are these the only specimens available?’
Ever cautious, Harrigan had kept back a portion of each of the plants.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘If we destroy them, then they’re gone.’
‘I don’t want you to destroy them,’ Harrigan said. ‘I need to know enough about them to possibly track the owners of the intellectual property and the patents.’