The Tattooed Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

slid through his fingers. He thought of Cassatt’s death mask. The man’s preserved skin, his shrunken face, merged into one with the colour of the sand.
    Harrigan had always seen the occasion of his near murder as a fixed point to which one day, in the event of his real death, he would be forced to return. A gunshot was a final sound. In his dreams, he waited to hear the single shot that in life had never been fired. He knew that as soon as it was, nothing would save him and he would die. Each time he had this nightmare he fought his way out of it, feeling that he was surfacing from his grave.
    Cassatt’s capacity to corrupt his life spread further than his nightmares. Harrigan was one of a number of people (so he guessed) who would have lain awake these last two months wondering who had their hands on the contents of Cassatt’s safety deposit box; questioning what would happen to their lives if those contents were ever made public. He grinned sardonically. He was stuck on the same old carousel. After all these years he was still running after his old enemy.
    The pervasive heat broke through his thoughts. His shirt clung to his back with sweat. He stood up, catching a faint breeze from the sea, the promise of some coolness from an easterly wind. Its cleanness was a good medicine after a long and bizarre few hours but he’d still had enough. He drove back out onto Pittwater Road under an evening sky that was softening to an infinite blue, thinking of home and sanctuary.

3
    H arrigan stopped off at Cotswold House, the private facility near the water’s edge at Drummoyne where his son lived. Toby’s mother had abandoned him to Harrigan when he was a baby and then walked out of both their lives. One way or another, Harrigan had cared for his son ever since. As a father, he had learnt that each child has its own particular smell, something in the skin. He thought that blindfolded he would know his son by his smell and the touch of his hair. Toby was a part of himself, fundamental to his happiness and the holder of possibilities he couldn’t have let die at any time.
    Susie, the manager, was outside at the barbecue. Toby had lived in places like this all his life. This was the best of them; Harrigan had made sure of that.
    ‘I guess I’m too late,’ he said. ‘Looks like the party’s over.’
    ‘I’m afraid it is. A while ago now.’
    ‘I’ll go in and see Toby in that case.’
    ‘He’s asleep, Paul. Today really took it out of him. I don’t think we should wake him, I’m sorry. He had a great time though. He said to say good night if you came back.’
    ‘When did Grace leave?’
    ‘Half an hour ago. She was sitting with Toby before he went to sleep. They’re very fond of each other.’
    ‘I’ve missed everybody. Thanks, Susie. I’ll see you. I’ll be round tomorrow.’
    ‘I’ll tell Toby. Good night.’
    He walked out into the warm night air. There could have been few worse times to have received a call like today’s than at this afternoon’s barbecue. The entire extended Harrigan family had been there to celebrate Toby’s eighteenth birthday, a milestone he was never expected to reach. Harrigan’s two formidable older sisters had arrived in convoy with their numerous noisy offspring and partners. Grace had spent most of her time deftly sidestepping their shamelessly intrusive enquiries about her relationship with him. ‘Thanks for throwing me to the wolves,’ she had said to him sotto voce when he left. Toby, who couldn’t speak easily, had signed to him, You always do this. Harrigan had felt their mutually accusing gaze follow his every step to his car.
    You always do this. Always walk away. After a while, people got tired of it and walked away from him. It was an old story.
    He drove home under the glitter of the streetlights, reaching his two-storeyed terrace in Birchgrove not so long afterwards. The upstairs iron-lace veranda shone like a piece of silver trim; the pale, almost ash-pink