The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  Shortly afterwards, Griffin appeared in the foyer.

  ‘Joel Griffin,’ he said. ‘We haven’t met before but I’ve heard about you. Hi.’

  ‘Paul Harrigan. What can I do for you?’

  They shook hands as they introduced themselves. Griffin had a disconcertingly weak grip; as if the touch of someone else’s hand was distasteful to him. His clothes were of good quality and had a tailored look, appearing more pricey than a part-time, cut-rate barrister should have been able to afford. A small badge was pinned to his lapel: Gromit, the dog from the Aardman Wallace and Gromit animations, who reads Engineering for Dogs while saving his accident-prone owner from disaster. Griffin saw Harrigan looking at it.

  ‘I’m a fan,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Yeah, they make me laugh.’

  Face to face, Griffin was more impressive than in the courtroom. In his early forties, he was solidly built and his colouring was unusual: very pale skin, black hair and blue eyes. He was tall enough to look Harrigan in the eye and did so almost unblinkingly.

  ‘Would you mind walking out with me while we talk?’ he said. ‘I need to get a taxi on Oxford Street.’

  ‘Not a problem. I was going that way myself,’ Harrigan replied.

  ‘You’re a consultant these days,’ Griffin said.

  ‘That’s right. I advise individuals and companies how to manage their security and also how to control their legal affairs. It’s all on my website.’

  It would have been more accurate for Harrigan to say he advised people on how to protect themselves from both the law and the police. This was a definition he kept to himself.

  ‘I’ve checked your website.’ Griffin spoke without sociability. ‘You’ve done work for any number of people. State and federal governments, private companies. Important companies, some very large ones. You’re a solicitor. It even says you’re proficient in Indonesian. You must make a lot of money.’

  Harrigan ignored the jibe. Bizarrely, there seemed to be almost a touch of envy in Griffin’s tone. ‘I spent some time in Indonesia a number of years ago when I was on secondment with the Australian Federal Police. I learned the language while I was there. Why?’

  ‘That’s a lot of firepower for someone who’s interested in this trial,’ Griffin said. ‘You’ve been here every day so far. Is there someone you’re advising who’s asked you to watch this case so closely?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question first. You must know who your client is and the kind of people this case is connecting you to. Are you representing Newell on your own or are your services being paid for by someone else? And do those people want to know why I’m here?’

  Griffin laughed. ‘No, Sam Nguyen’s not paying me. In fact, everyone from Chris’s past is running for cover as fast as they can. I don’t think he realises how alone he is. But you’ve got connections of your own, to the police obviously. Maybe they’re at work here.’

  You have done your homework, Harrigan thought.

  ‘Does this mean you’re doing this case pro bono?’ he asked.

  Griffin hesitated before replying. ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘Then you can ignore the fact that I’m here. It’s got nothing to do with anyone.’

  Griffin didn’t like the rebuff. There was a slight flush in his face when he spoke again.

  ‘There’s another side to you that’s not on your website,’ he said. ‘There’s any number of newspaper articles out there. Years of dealing with Sydney’s crime bosses while people asked what your connections to those bosses really were.’

  ‘Exactly what they should have been. Straight as a ruler. Is that something you want to discuss in court?’

  ‘You’re the man who didn’t want to be Police Commissioner. That’s not something everyone can boast about. And then there’s your partner as well.’

  ‘She’s got nothing to do with this. You’d be a fool to think she did.’

  ‘One thing I’m not is a fool,’ Griffin said.

  ‘Then don’t talk like one, mate,’ Harrigan replied calmly.

  Griffin looked at him, his expression as if the shutters had come down. There might have been nothing in his mind. They had reached Oxford Street and were standing just outside the court house’s dark-honey sandstone gateway. Harrigan again asked himself how much this man might know. If Griffin thought he had a case for blackmail, he would tell him soon enough. Maybe it was time to take the offensive.

  ‘I’ve checked you out too,’ he said. ‘You don’t have a high profile. No one knows much about you at all. There are times in the past when you might as well have been living in Greenland. Why did you take Newell on, particularly pro bono? Did you think there was something in this for you?’

  ‘I thought he needed good representation. There’s a lot of interesting information in Chris’s head. Some of it’s pretty scrambled but you can usually sort out what’s true and what’s not.’

  ‘You’d want to be very careful with anything he told you,’ Harrigan replied, a man offering friendly advice. ‘Given the people he mixes with, you’d probably end up putting your head in a noose. The best thing you could do is keep it to yourself.’

  ‘I’ve seen pictures of your partner online,’ Griffin said. ‘You and her together. She’s a very attractive woman. But she’s got a scar. You can just see it in the pictures. It runs from here to here.’ He touched his chin and then the top of his breastbone. ‘It must have been a nasty cut.’

  Harrigan took a step forward, close enough to Griffin to have taken hold of him by the collar if he’d wanted to. He pointed a finger in his face. ‘You involve yourself in my affairs and you’ll be picking up the pieces for a long time afterwards. You remember that and you mind your own business as of now. Because I’ve got nothing for you. Not now, not ever.’

  ‘You care about her, don’t you? Why else would you be here? Even if you haven’t married her. And there’s your daughter. You’d care about her too, wouldn’t you?’

  Harrigan dropped his voice. ‘You’re one step away, mate. Say another word…’

  Griffin moved back. He smiled and put on a pair of wrap-around sunglasses. Now Harrigan was looking at his own reflection.

  ‘You want to know what’s in it for me? Chris is my client and I’m defending him. Simple as that. It’s a pity he won’t cooperate with me. If he did, he might be out of gaol before the end of the year. But there he is right now. On his way back to Long Bay.’

  Harrigan turned. Two unmarked police cars had appeared in convoy at the intersection of Oxford Street and Darlinghurst Road. The first was an escort car; the second carried Newell sitting between two plain-clothes officers. They were waiting to turn left onto Oxford.

  ‘What are they doing here? Why didn’t they ask for a van to take Newell back?’ Harrigan said.

  Griffin made no reply.

  As the cars made the turn, two motorbikes came roaring alongside them. The riders shot first into the cars’ tyres then into the cars themselves before slaloming out of the way. The cars slewed dangerously. A heavy four-wheel-drive broke through the lights and rammed into the car carrying Newell, smashing it halfway onto the pavement, causing the passers-by to run. The escort car had skewed to a stop at a dangerous angle across the road, blocking both lanes.

  One motorbike rider had shot into the escort car while the second fired at people around the scene, keeping them at bay. Pedestrians hit the footpath. Harrigan dragged Griffin to the ground. Bullets echoed around them.

  The driver of the four-wheel-drive got out and shot into the prisoner’s car, smashing the glass. He was wearing a balaclava. ‘Open it!’ he yelled at the driver. The back door on the intact side was opened and the gunman shot the driver at point-blank range. One of the guards, clearly wounded, was pushed out onto the road, Newell tumbling after him. Dragging some kind of cutter out of his pocket, the gunman cut the handcuffs that joined the two men together.

  Then it was all over. The driver of the four-wheel-drive and Newell were
on the back of the two motorbikes, roaring out of sight.

  Harrigan and Griffin got to their feet. Griffin’s sunglasses had been knocked off in the fall and had landed some distance away on the footpath. He went and got them before brushing himself down. He touched his lapel. ‘I’ve lost my badge.’ His face and voice were calm. ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!’ he said, sounding almost like a schoolboy. ‘Trigger-happy people. They really like using their guns.’ He matched his words with the feigned action of shooting at the people lying on the road.

  ‘Are you okay, mate?’ Harrigan asked, wondering if the reaction might be shock.

  ‘I’m fine. There’s my badge.’ He bent down and picked it up. ‘The pin’s broken.’

  ‘Wait here for the police,’ Harrigan said. ‘They’ll want your statement.’

  Griffin looked at Harrigan. His eyes showed no emotion. ‘Don’t call me mate,’ he said.

  ‘Aren’t you worried about your client?’

  ‘Why should I be? You’d have to say his troubles are over.’

  Harrigan would have said they were just starting but he didn’t have time to talk to Griffin any longer. He ran to the scene through the chaos of stopped traffic. Passers-by were getting shakily to their feet. When he reached the prisoner’s car, he saw the driver clearly dead, one guard lying seriously wounded on the road and the other bleeding and unconscious in the back. There was another dead man at the wheel of the escort car, while his partner was sprawled on the road, wounded and bleeding, unable to move.

  A man shouted over the ruckus. ‘I’m from St Vincent’s, we’ve got help coming. Stay calm.’

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ a woman called and hurried to the wounded man lying on the road by the escort car.

  Harrigan returned to the prisoner’s car to help the two wounded men there. ‘We need another doctor over here and quickly,’ he yelled back. Around him, car horns rose to a blaring cacophony. On what should have been a quiet autumn day in Sydney, all hell had broken loose.

  3

  Crace sat facing a largish man at a small table in the bright room; a video camera was recording their meeting. There were no windows in the room; its brightness came from the overhead lights and the bare white walls and floor. The man was reading over the fine print on a form he had just filled in. He looked up at Grace; she smiled professionally.

  ‘If you’re happy to agree to all this, Doug,’ she said, ‘I need you to sign here and here.’

  He half-smiled in return, with a touch of embarrassed egotism at finding himself the centre of attention. ‘Will I really go to gaol if I tell anyone I’ve been here or even that I know this place exists?’

  The sound of their voices was sharp in the bright clarity of the room. He wore light-sensitive glasses which seemed to have become fixed in a permanent, very pale blue colour, giving him the look of someone wearing sunglasses unnecessarily.

  ‘Do you want anyone to know what we’re going to discuss here?’ she asked in reply.

  He shook his head. He had heavy features and looked older than his thirty-nine years. The form said he was a married man with three children, and that his wife was a part-time commerce teacher at the local Catholic high school. He worked as a middle-ranking public servant for the state government. A family without much spare cash after the mortgage, car and private school fees had been paid. The last person who’d want his wife to know he regularly visited a brothel called Life’s Pleasures.

  ‘I’m only here because Coco’s dead,’ he said. He didn’t look at Grace. ‘She had to be illegal. When you went and saw her, she’d freeze up. The last time I saw her, she was curled up on the bed, really tense. I walked out. I asked Lynette if I could see one of the other girls instead. It just wasn’t fun.’

  ‘Who’s Lynette?’ Grace said.

  ‘The receptionist. She said I could swap if I wanted to. I didn’t have to pay again.’

  ‘Was there any other reason you thought Coco might have been illegal?’

  ‘Her English wasn’t very good. I thought if you were here legally, you’d have to have some English. And she was new. She started just a couple of months ago.’

  ‘Why did you keep seeing her?’ Grace prodded gently.

  ‘No one’s going to know?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Passing on this information would be a criminal offence.’

  The reassurance seemed to help. He held his hands together on the table, looking ahead. His face went red.

  ‘You didn’t have to wear a condom,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think you told the police that,’ Grace said quietly.

  ‘I didn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut.’

  Orion had given him a paper-thin sense of safety where he could reveal himself. His sense of guilt must have weighed on him every night before he went to sleep.

  ‘Were there any other workers you didn’t have to wear a condom for?’ Grace asked.

  ‘No. Not that I knew about anyway.’

  ‘You weren’t worried about your health? Or your wife’s?’

  ‘Marie said Coco had regular health checks. Me and my wife don’t have sex that often. She doesn’t seem to like it much.’ His voice was flat.

  ‘Who’s Marie?’

  ‘Miss Marie Li. The manageress.’ He drew quotation marks in the air. ‘She hasn’t been there that long. She’s mainly decorative. Lynette’s the one who makes things happen.’

  ‘Except in this case,’ Grace said.

  ‘Lynette said Coco wasn’t anything to do with her. I should always talk to Marie about her.’

  ‘How did you hear about Coco in the first place?’

  His face was still red. ‘It was on the net. They’ve got a website. Ask Marie for something special. I thought I’d see what it was.’

  ‘How often do you visit?’

  ‘Once a fortnight. I build up my flexitime at work and go before I come home.’

  ‘How do you pay?’

  ‘Cash.’

  Doesn’t your wife notice the money? She must know.

  ‘What sort of an establishment is it?’

  ‘Well run. It’s got a lot of girls, a spa. It’s private.’

  ‘Private?’

  ‘You don’t have to walk in off the street. You’d know what I mean if you went there.’

  ‘Were there any other workers there from overseas?’

  ‘Oh yeah. I’ll tell you what, they’re beautiful girls. I know men who go there just for them. There’s an African girl—she’s out of this world. But you have to pay extra, a lot extra. Coco and the other girls, you didn’t.’ He looked away, his heavy body seeming to be weighed down. ‘Is that it? I should get back to work.’

  ‘One last question. Did Coco ever wear any jewellery when you saw her?’

  ‘She didn’t wear anything.’

  ‘No rings?’

  ‘Nope.’

  She glanced at his left hand. He was wearing his wedding ring. Did he take it off before he visited? Not a question to ask.

  ‘Thank you, Doug. That’s all. You will have to wait until the transcript’s printed out because you have to read and sign it as an accurate record. But that won’t take very long.’

  ‘My family’s not going to hear about this?’

  Grace shook her head. ‘No. That’s a promise. Shall I get Carol outside to get you a coffee?’

  ‘Yeah. White, one sugar.’

  ‘It’s on its way.’

  Grace left quickly. She had another meeting, in a room much deeper into the centre of the building, where Clive was waiting for her. She’d already sent him a brief summary of her morning’s work.

  In contrast to the noise outside—the aircraft flying overhead and the daily clamour of the city’s traffic—this room had a quietness that ate sound. Again there were no windows but this time the lights were muted. Grace sat down without speaking a greeting. The table was often bare; its function was to serve as a barrier between them, something to lean on. Today Clive had brought a folder with h
im; this meant he had plans of his own.

  ‘What did our informant have to say?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit more than he told the police. You didn’t have to wear a condom when you had sex with Coco. The brothel put out a teaser on the net for clients. Which means our informant also surfs the net.’

  ‘We’re not interested in his tastes. Are there any other workers there with that same job description?’

  ‘He didn’t know about them if there were.’

  ‘Is this man telling the truth?’

  ‘Oh, I think so. It’s cost him a lot to come forward. He’s the perfect informant for us. All he wants is complete secrecy, particularly from his family.’

  ‘His wife really doesn’t know?’

  ‘Of course she knows,’ Grace replied briskly. ‘She probably knows down to the last cent what he spends. And whatever he says, he probably knows exactly how much she’s prepared to tolerate. It’s the lack of a condom she won’t know about, and that’s what he doesn’t want her to find out. He’d be in the family court the next day.’

  Clive smiled with scorn and turned his attention to her interim report.

  ‘It’s interesting what you have to say about Kidd from this morning’s meeting.’

  ‘There’s a possibility of corruption here,’ she said. ‘If Kidd was involved in this woman’s escape in any way, that’s a weakness we need to identify.’

  Clive was looking at her distantly. He had a red-covered document in his hand. ‘Is it only that? I’d say you haven’t forgiven him for saying you were responsible for Coco’s death. In the meantime, read that. When she supposedly escaped, I decided we should follow your judgement and have a good look at this Mr Kidd. That’s what the finance people came up with.’

  His comment had caught her off guard, wounding her a little. She flicked open the dossier on Jon Kidd. A single man in his late forties and a long-term employee with the Department of Immigration, based at their Parramatta offices. Once a wealthy man, his financial records indicated a constant and substantial drain of money over the last three years, including the sale of shares and investments, culminating in a 100 per cent mortgage on his house in Mosman, where he lived with his mother. There was also a large personal loan with his car, a Mercedes, as surety. Previously he had been a regular visitor to Thailand and Cambodia and, until recently, a generous donor to orphanages in Bangkok and Phnom Penh. Those trips had stopped in recent months, presumably due to a lack of funds.