‘Okay.’
When he reached her floor, he found that her front door was ajar for him. Inside, she was standing in front of the full-length mirror on her wardrobe applying the last of her make-up. Her dress shimmered in the glass. He shut the door behind him.
‘You’re going out,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To dinner with the girls. Then we’re going to a party at Noah’s.’
She put her lipstick down on her dressing table and looked at herself. There was silence.
‘You look lovely,’ he said. ‘I’ve brought you some flowers.’
She took them from him, awkwardly, without looking at him. ‘Thanks. They’re beautiful. I’ll put them in water.’
She didn’t sound as if she meant it. In her tiny kitchen, she filled the sink with water and left them there, not looking for a vase. Suddenly, she opened the drawer where she kept her bills and then shut it. Immediately, he knew what she was doing: searching for her cigarettes. It was one of her strategies, so called, for dealing with her addiction. She refused to buy cartons, only single packets of twenties, and sometimes found herself late at night without a cigarette. On these occasions, she tried to hang on. In her flat, she kept a spare packet salted away for those emergencies when her stamina gave out and she had to light up. Sometimes, when she hadn’t used it for a while, she forgot where this packet was hidden.
‘You’ll have some in your bag,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Where are you going for dinner?’
She had knelt down and was looking in the cupboard under the sink.
‘Claude’s,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask you because I didn’t think there was any chance you’d have the time.’
He had never liked going to expensive restaurants; he always thought of it as a waste of money. It was another difference between them. To Grace, money was something you spent. She shut the cupboard door and stood in front of the sink with her hands on her hips, not looking at him.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
‘I wanted to see you. I have time. Maybe we could go somewhere. If you want to go out, why don’t you let me take you out? Just you and me. You choose. Wherever you like.’
‘Maybe we could go somewhere. Why don’t I let you take me out?’ she repeated and then pulled open another kitchen drawer. She stood there looking down at it. ‘I wanted to see you last night and you didn’t have the time. Now you’ve got a couple of hours to spare for me and you just breeze in here like this and say that. The roses are supposed to make it all okay. That’s one way you can get your sex, I suppose.’
Harrigan was genuinely insulted. ‘Grace, I’ve never treated you like that. I think you should take it easy with what you say. I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately.’
‘You always are. You always will be. You’ll always have a really good reason why you can’t be here. Fine. I’m not going to ask you for one. The other night I thought, I can’t put myself through this again. Let’s just finish with it.’
‘I thought we were going to see it through until I had this investigation under control.’
‘That was before you didn’t ring me when I asked you to and before you gave me all this time to think about it. Nothing’s going to change. We might as well face up to that now.’
She pushed the kitchen drawer shut. A bag the same colour as her dress was on the table. He picked it up.
‘You’ll have some cigarettes in here. I’ll get them for you.’
‘No, don’t do that!’
It was too late. He took out not her cigarettes but a small old handgun. He put her bag back on the table and turned the gun over in his hand.
‘Do you carry this around with you all the time? Are you taking this to your party tonight?’
‘I’ve got a place in my car where I hide it,’ she said. ‘Give it back.’
‘You don’t have your car with you right now. Is this legal?’
‘What do you think?’
‘No wonder you didn’t want a gun when I offered you one the other day. You already had one. Why do you need this?’
‘You’re the one who said I needed protection. Anyway, aren’t you armed?’
‘Not at the moment. Don’t change the subject. You didn’t get this in the last few days. Why do you need it? Why do you need to have it in your car?’
‘It’s none of your business,’ she said, her voice growing angry. ‘Give it back.’
‘Not until you tell me why you’ve got it. Have you had this all the time we’ve been together? Because you thought you needed the protection. From me? Or from someone else? Do you think I wouldn’t protect you?’
‘How could you? You don’t have enough time to do that.’
This hurt him.
‘You tell me what this is about, Grace. I’m not leaving until you do.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that. You’re so used to telling people what to do. Give that back to me. It’s got nothing to do with you. I’m going out now and I need it.’ Moving suddenly and quickly, she reached to snatch the gun out of his hand.
‘Don’t do that! I am not going to fight with you over a gun!’
He felt himself losing control at some deeper level. He spun away from her, turning his back. He broke the gun down instinctively, shaking out the bullets, then with all the strength he had, he smashed it down on the floor tiles in her small kitchen alcove. It cracked with a noise that made him think it must have accidentally fired. It couldn’t have fired, he’d broken it down. It would be unusable now, the barrel cracked or damaged in some way, making it too dangerous to fire. Ammunition lay scattered where it had fallen. Her tiles were cracked and splintered. He turned to her. She was gaping at him.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘You get shot fighting over guns. Do you think I want to see you with a bullet wound in your head? One I put there? If that did happen, I’d probably feel like putting one in my own head!’
They stared at each other in silence. Then she took her cigarettes out of her bag and lit one.
‘No,’ she said. ‘That isn’t the reason, not for you to act like that. Why did you do that? Tell me.’
He looked down at the shattered tiles and then at her.
‘When I was eighteen, my father shot my mother. It was Cassatt’s gun, I’ve got it in my cellar. He’d had a run-in with a dealer on the docks and he’d shot him. He gave my father the gun to hide. My mother did what you just tried to do, take it out of his hands. He shot her in the face. Cassatt handled the investigation, he got my father off. When we were leaving the law courts, he turned me and said “Your father loved your mother, mate. You ought to realise that.” I hit him so hard, I knocked out one of his front teeth. I saw what my mother looked like when she died. I’m not going to live with another memory like that.’
She put her cigarette in an ashtray on the table and sat down with her face in her hands. ‘That’s why you went after him. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.’
‘You don’t have to say any more than that. This is as much as we’ll ever need to say about this ever again.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘Your turn, Grace. Tell me why you’ve got that gun.’
She picked up her cigarette and smoked with her eyes closed, shaking from head to foot. He had never seen her like this. He thought it was better that he didn’t try to touch her. She opened her eyes.
‘Someone used to stalk me once. He was sort of a boyfriend for a while. We broke up over ten years ago but he kept coming back. I got that gun-’ She stopped. ‘I got that gun after I came home from a party one night and he was waiting for me in the car park. He threw petrol all over me.’
Harrigan was silent. It was one of the few occasions in his life when he could truthfully say he was shocked.
‘I heard him say, “My lighter’s not working.” Something like that. I turned and ran. I wondered later if it was a joke but I don’t think it was. I locked myself in my flat and I sat under the shower fully dressed for hours just soaking myself with water. The next day I moved out of that flat and into this one. Then I got hold of that gun. That’s why I have it, in case he comes back.’