Harrigan and Grace - 01 - Blood Redemption by Alex Palmer

darkness, cutting out the sound and sight of the outside world.
    A painted Christ was projected onto an ancient film screen at the back of the auditorium. Beams of light from the projection illuminated the slow circling fall of specks of dust. In the unlit room, the figure’s face and garments were luminous and seemed to float above the tiny stage, with hands held out in blessing towards the watcher. White plastic chairs were set in concentric circles in the middle of the auditorium, centred underneath its gaze.
    Lucy’s heart beat more quickly as she looked around her. She took off her backpack and placed it on a chair. Then the door next to the stage opened silently and Graeme, dressed in black trousers and a grey striped shirt, came into the room.
    ‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘I have been so worried about you. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to see you at all today. I heard it all on the radio. Congratulations. I can’t say it enough: I am so proud of you, I am so very, very proud of you. I knew you had the courage, I knew you could do it. But how are you? You are coping? You do know that now you’ve done this, you’ve nothing to fear?’
    He had been walking towards her with his hands held out to take hold of hers, but something in her face made him stop where he was.
    ‘How am I? I’m fine, Graeme! I just shot two people and I killed one of them, but beside that, I’m just fine. How do you think I am?’
    The fury of her emotion came up from a depth of revulsion she only now acknowledged.
    He sounded shaken as he replied. ‘You were brave, Lucy. You were very, very brave. You did what had to be done.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    She began to move restlessly through the circles of chairs.
    ‘Yeah, I was brave. You always say that. I am always so fucking brave.’
    She stopped and kicked over a chair and then another and another.
    They clattered against the wall. The preacher watched her, unmoving.
    ‘Just so fucking, fucking brave. You know what? There was some kid there. I don’t know who he was, her kid or something, I don’t know, but he was watching me. He saw everything I did. And nothing’s changed, has it? I thought it would. You said it would. You said everything would change. I’d just feel relief. I’d feel … clean. Well I did, maybe for five minutes, I felt like, yeah, I’m glad I did it. But I don’t feel that any more.
    And nothing’s changed. Nothing. The world’s just rolling on and I don’t feel any different. No, that’s not true. I feel like shit!’
    ‘Lucy …’ he moved towards her slowly, ‘you must calm yourself.
    You’re upset, of course you are. An action like this asks so much of you. And it is unpleasant. There’s nothing to rejoice about in carrying out a task like this, no one said there was. But it is a cleansing process and it has to be done —’
    ‘You stop right there, Graeme!’
    He did stop and she saw his face briefly distort with a passing flash of anger. She registered the emotion with surprise.
    ‘I said that to Greg, you know? I said to him, it had to be done. And I did it. And you know what he said to me?’ She laughed. ‘Bullshit.
    That’s what he said. They put you away for ever for things like this.’
    She stopped to draw breath. In her mind, she saw the Turtle’s electronic words: That’s just a wall u put up Nothing real. She closed her eyes.
    ‘They will never find you, Lucy,’ the preacher was saying. ‘Never.
    No one’s ever going to tell them who you are. Except for Greg himself, perhaps. I have no idea why you had to tell him so much about this in the first place. I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t. Greg is in my charge, Lucy, the government has made him my responsibility. He may be your friend but I know him. How do you know he won’t bring the world in here?’
    ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You don’t know him better than I do. There’s no one in the world I’d trust more than Greg, because, you know, we’re one