‘You can trust me, Dr Calvo,’ he said. ‘In fact, you can rely on me.’
‘Why do I need to rely on you? My understanding of this meeting is that we’re here to discuss your son. Does this mean you’ve changed your mind since the last time I saw you? If I recall, at that time I offered you a number of things and you refused them all. Are you now prepared to accept them?’
‘Like you said that first time we met, Dr Calvo, assuming we go ahead with those arrangements, you’d have expectations of me. There are a few matters in relation to those expectations I’d like to discuss. If you really do want my services, that is.’
He stopped. She gestured for him to go on.
‘My guess is, you know more about what’s going on right now than just about anybody else. I think you have a very good idea of why those people were shot up at Pittwater even if you don’t necessarily know who did it.’
‘We’re not here to talk about me, Commander.’ She shut him down with one of the iciest stares he had seen. ‘You’ve changed the subject. We’re here to talk about your son. Are you prepared to enter into an agreement with me concerning his future wellbeing?’
‘That depends. Andreas du Plessis kidnapped my son and put me through hell. Worse, he left my son to die of thirst in a long-stay car park. The deal was that my son came home alive. I want an answer from you. Whose idea was it to renege on the deal?’
‘I know nothing about those events and I don’t see what this has to do with me,’ she said. ‘But I will say that in business, you will almost certainly fail, and fail very badly, if you don’t keep your word once you’ve given it. If I give an undertaking, I always stand by it without exception.’
‘In other words, you’re washing your hands of your dirty tricks man.’
‘Why are you saying that to me? Are you recording this? This smells of entrapment, Commander. I have two bodyguards waiting outside. Should I call them in here? I know a great deal about you. It’s unwise for you to put me offside.’
‘I know quite a lot about you too, Dr Calvo. Have a look at this.’
From his wallet, he took a copy of the photograph of the couple and their child in a ruined city in 1946. She glanced down at it on the desk and then back at him. She said nothing and didn’t touch it.
‘My squad found this picture in Jerome Beck’s wallet when we found his body. You said that at the end of World War Two, your father was a displaced person. Was he ever in Dresden? It’s a long way from your childhood, isn’t it? Something for Beck to resent mightily. Is that what you were arguing about in the car park that night in June four-and-a-half years ago? You deal in DNA, Dr Calvo. We have Beck’s DNA. Would you like to do a match?’
Elena rested her elbows on her desk, her chin on her hands, looking at him. She was very still. Harrigan put the photograph back in his wallet.
‘My guess is, when Beck found out from his mother who his father really was, he went looking for him. Your father gave him a job. Everything I’ve heard about your father tells me he’s not the sentimental type. He must have found something for his long lost son to do. Something useful to the family firm. Whatever it was, it paid very well. That probably means it was something no one else was prepared to do. I think he went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo with du Plessis. They were working for your father. Whatever Beck was doing here, he was doing it for your father as well. That’s the key, isn’t it? Whatever program Beck was running at that research facility in north London, it was for your father. In this country, it was genetically modified crops that harm people in some way and the research was being done out at Campbelltown. Now, that’s not good publicity.’
She leant forward to speak.
‘In business, it’s never a good idea to use guesswork as a basis for a decision. It’s much better to work from factual information. I don’t think you have any means of backing up these bizarre theories.’
‘The contract would have given us that information if we still had it. What did Daniel tell me the morning I visited you? Every contract Abaris draws up records in detail who owns the patent rights and the intellectual property. That’s one of the reasons you wanted to get hold of it so badly, isn’t it? Except someone was thinking ahead of you. There’s still another copy out there somewhere. The killers have got it. You’ve got no leverage where they’re concerned.’
‘Are you telling me you do?’ she asked. ‘You don’t know who they are. I don’t think you have any way of finding out.’
‘Do you have a way of finding out? Do you have something to guide you that we don’t? A suspicion that you can’t quite shake off as impossible? Do you think they’re going to come after you? Is that why you have two bodyguards in a building as secure as the facility at Campbelltown? You do need me.’
‘If you don’t know who these killers are, what can you do for me? A bodyguard is more useful.’
‘In business,’ Harrigan said, ‘it’s a good idea to trust people who can offer you something no one else can. You just accused me of entrapment. There are two things you can do. You can trust me and give me what I want. Or I can walk out of here and run this investigation the way it should be run, the way I would usually run it. I can do that now Marvin Tooth is a dead man. Then one day, sooner rather than later, we’ll find your dirty tricks man and come knocking on your door. Then everything you’ve worked for will be on the line. You know that. You’ve moved heaven and earth to protect yourself already.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want du Plessis. No one does that to my son and gets away with it. I want him to pay personally for what he did to Toby. Organise that for me, Dr Calvo, and we both get what we want. Wouldn’t you call that a win-win situation?’
‘And after that?’ she said.
‘One step at a time,’ Harrigan replied.
‘How can I arrange to give you something I don’t have?’
‘I said I wanted you to trust me. You set it up, Dr Calvo. You set up a meeting and you give me the details.’
‘For any deal, there’s always a cooling-off period. I need twenty-four hours.’
‘The last time I spoke to you, you told me there was no time.’
‘I gave you time anyway, if you recall. You can do the same for me,’ she replied. She glanced at her watch and then at him. The intensity of her stare made him want to look away. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow morning first thing. Can we say this meeting is finished?’
‘If you call me tomorrow morning, what do we do? Do we meet here?’
‘Most probably, yes. I’m usually here on a Saturday.’ She pressed a button on her intercom. ‘Damien, would you come in, please?’
Almost immediately, Damien appeared.
‘Good afternoon,’ Elena said to Harrigan with a polite smile. ‘Damien, see the commander gets to his car. Make sure he gets there safely.’
Harrigan decided it was better to say nothing.
Damien didn’t leave until he had watched him drive out of the car park. At the next set of red lights, Harrigan turned off the wire. There was more space left on the tape. He would wear it again tomorrow. One step at a time. She was more desperate than he’d thought. Now he just had to wait and see if throwing the berley would work.
Harrigan didn’t go home. He drove to the Bondi Junction shopping mall where he went to the gents and took off the wire, locking it in his briefcase. The florist was about to close. He was just in time to buy Grace a dozen long-stemmed red roses before driving over to see her unannounced. He didn’t want to risk calling her first and have her tell him she didn’t want to see him. To his relief, she answered the buzzer.
‘Hi, Abbie, you didn’t have to come and get me. I’m not ready yet. I’ll buzz you in.’
Abbie was Abigail, Grace’s closest friend and a criminal lawyer with a fierce reputation.
‘It’s not Abbie,’ Harrigan said. ‘It’s me. Do you want to see me?’
There was the briefest of pauses.