The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  The private entrance Doug had mentioned, a badly lit doorway, led to a flight of stairs next to a service elevator. A short climb took them to the brothel’s open doorway on the first floor. As soon as they walked in, two men waiting in deep armchairs rose to their feet and melted out of the entrance like smoke. They would have disappeared downstairs at speed if they hadn’t been stopped by the police and asked for their names and addresses.

  Borghini had organised the raid well—a straightforward exercise without histrionics. He presented his warrant card and the legal papers at the reception desk and sent his people to search the premises in an orderly way. Kidd, last through the doorway, stood in the background, watching. Already the receptionist, an older woman with a solid build, dyed blonde hair and wearing a fashionable off-the-shoulder red number, was on the phone.

  ‘I’m just ringing Marie,’ she said with a professional smile. ‘She has a flat on the top floor, she’s there now. I’m sure she’ll be down in a moment.’

  ‘We know where she lives,’ Borghini replied. ‘I’ve already sent some people upstairs to talk to her. But go ahead. You can tell her I’ll be up to see her as soon as I’ve sorted things out down here.’

  Officers moved along the hallways knocking on doors, announcing themselves. ‘We have reason to believe there may be illegal immigrants working on these premises,’ they repeated with each knock. ‘Could you come out to the reception desk now with your personal identification ready, please? Thank you.’

  Clients began to appear in the hallways in various states of dress. Their IDs checked, they disappeared with the same speed as the men in the reception area earlier. Once out of the rooms, the workers sat in a communal kitchen, smoking and occasionally chatting. Some looked nervous but most seemed bored or irritated as they presented their IDs to the various officers on demand and were interviewed. Grace looked them over but saw no sign of the exotic workers Doug had described earlier that day. So far everybody was just another citizen.

  It wasn’t the look of the brothel—much of which had an air of the suburban, of polyester chic—but its size that interested Grace. Whoever owned it was on to a good thing, and whoever had set it up in the first place had had money to invest. So far, that side of the business had proved to be a maze. Both Orion and the police investigation had identified the owner as a company, Santos Associates. Attempts to track down that company’s office holders had led nowhere. Calls to their phone numbers went unanswered, and when the company’s premises were visited no one was there. The brothel’s accounts were handled by a company called Stamfords, who actually did exist and whose people were being interviewed. They had confirmed one fact: all the money Life’s Pleasures made was automatically transferred offshore.

  The brothel itself was large enough for Jirawan to have been hidden away in one room while business went on as normal in the rest of the place. Each room had a theme, a colour, a fantasy for whatever taste. The erotic paintings had the commercial look of pneumatic sex, while the mirrors on the walls and ceilings made her wonder why people so enjoyed watching themselves.

  At the end of one corridor there was a fire door. Grace opened it to see the landing of a bleak, cement fire stair. She opened the door of the room closest to the exit. It was a little more spare than the others she’d seen, but it was serviceable and could be locked. It held a faint smell of air freshener gone stale. Grace climbed the fire stairs to the fourth floor. The fire door opened onto what seemed to be a private hallway laid with a length of red carpet. Not far from the fire exit a uniformed police officer stood outside an open doorway. Miss Marie Li’s apartment, with a direct line to the most discreet room in the brothel. Grace decided it was time to introduce herself.

  She walked into a room where someone had let their imagination take a different turn altogether from the pay-as-you-go fantasy downstairs. It was softer, a place where all negativities were expelled. Close the door behind you and you left the grey Parramatta streets below for some much more romantic place. Even so it had a fake quality, a chinoiserie such as you might find in a 1930s Hollywood film set where the action was supposedly situated in the exotic colonial Far East. The Art Deco furnishings, the drapes in period prints, the light fittings, the potted palms, the decorated screens, even the wallpaper, were a loving recreation of the time; elegant, richly coloured and luxurious.

  The room was filled with a sweet, fresh, but still almost overpowering odour. On the tables roundabout stood vases of cut flowers: red, white, lilac and yellow roses, deep blue irises, lilies. An ornate sideboard was covered with an array of orchids in heavy gilded metal pots. The flowers bloomed in every shade of colour merging to deeply variegated textures, one patterned almost like leopard skin. Downstairs, the clients paid by the half-hour to the hour; here the fantasy could go on for as long as anyone wanted.

  A smaller room off the main lounge had been set up for entertainment and was dominated by a large, flat screen. There were shelves of DVDs: silent and 1930s films, Hollywood musicals—Chicago, Singing in the Rain and Camelot. Along one wall were framed photographs of famous former love goddesses: Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe: their dresses and their blonde hair shimmering under lights. A photograph of the actor Gong Li, exquisite in a gold cheongsam, hung alongside them. Grace saw a DVD of one of her films, Shanghai Triad, sitting on the top of the DVD player.

  The sudden and pervasive smell of cigarette smoke caught her attention. She moved towards the kitchen, a room with gleaming stainless-steel fittings and pale granite bench tops. There were signs of interrupted food preparation on one of the benches: an array of dishes usually found on a yum cha menu and a bottle of vintage Pol Roger champagne in an ice bucket with two champagne flutes beside it. Borghini was sitting with Marie Li at the table, a uniformed policewoman with them. The rest of his team were searching the apartment. Jon Kidd was already there, leaning against the bench and watching everything.

  Marie was smoking quickly, a packet of cigarettes and a gold lighter close to her hand. There was no ingrained smell of stale cigarette smoke in the flat; if there had been, it would have disturbed the ambience, the smell of the flowers. If Marie lit up at other times, she must have had to go outside. No more than in her early twenties, she was stylishly attractive with a resemblance to Gong Li herself. Her eyebrows were finely curved, her mouth shaped full with red lipstick. Iridescent red tints in her black hair matched her rose-coloured fingernails. Her hands were shaking badly and she seemed unable to sit completely still.

  ‘Who’s this?’ she asked, her face showing more confusion and fear than anger.

  Borghini gave the standard reply to that question. ‘Grace Riordan, one of my officers. I’ve already shown Marie a photograph of Coco and told her she’s dead,’ he said to Grace. ‘I’ve also told her we have information that she was a worker here. She denies that. She also says she’s never met the brothel’s owners and doesn’t know who they are.’

  ‘Lynette handles all that kind of thing,’ Marie said. ‘She deals with the accountants. I’m the hostess. That’s all I do.’

  ‘You’re the manager,’ Borghini said.

  ‘The hostess,’ she replied sharply. ‘It might be called manager but it really means hostess. I make people feel at ease. I’m better at that than Lynette.’

  Grace sat down. Marie lit a cigarette from the end of the one she was just finishing. Jirawan’s photograph, taken at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, lay on the table.

  ‘Where did you get this information about this girl?’ Marie asked. ‘Whoever it was, they must have been mistaken. I don’t know her. She’s never worked here.’

  ‘Our informant knew your receptionist’s name,’ Borghini said.

  ‘Maybe he’s been a customer here. He might have a grudge against us.’

  ‘So if I go downstairs and ask Lynette about Coco, what’s she going to tell me?’

  ‘That she’s never seen her here and she’s never heard of her.’
/>   ‘And the workers?’

  ‘The same!’ Marie’s voice had an edge of panic. ‘She was never here. I don’t know why you keep asking me. Where did this information come from? What was this informant’s name?’ She spoke with a modified Australian accent, giving her speech a strained, artificial, up-market gloss.

  ‘That information is confidential,’ Borghini said.

  ‘We don’t even know who’s accusing us. That doesn’t seem very fair.’

  ‘Who were you expecting tonight? You got the champagne out for someone.’

  ‘That’s none of your business!’ She almost shrieked this, theatrically.

  ‘I think you’ll find it is,’ Borghini replied. ‘Whoever he is, he hasn’t turned up.’

  ‘My private life is my affair. It’s got nothing to do with this.’

  Grace’s gaze went past Marie to a plain-clothes officer heading towards them from the hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms. He whispered in Borghini’s ear.

  ‘Okay,’ Borghini said. ‘If you don’t mind, Marie, we’ll just stop there for the moment. There’s a room in your flat I want to have a look at.’

  She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I don’t have anything to hide. This is my home and I don’t like you being here but I don’t have anything to hide. Which room is it?’

  ‘The one beside the linen cupboard.’

  ‘There’s nothing to see in there. I’ll show you.’

  Marie rose to her feet. She was slender, and wearing a red silk cheongsam set off by very high stiletto heels. Kidd fell into step behind her. They all followed her down the hallway past the main bedroom—a large room furnished with a king-size bed and soft rugs, including one that seemed to be a genuine tiger’s skin. The windows were covered with heavy drapes. They stopped outside another door.

  ‘Is this the room you’re interested in?’ she said. ‘I can’t see why.’

  Furnished with a single bed, it was small and spare and lacking the gaudy luxury of the rest of the flat. There was no window and the door had a lock on the outside.

  ‘Why do you need a lock on this door?’ Borghini asked. ‘Do you lock anyone in here?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t. That lock was here when I moved into this place. I don’t use this room. Go inside and look at it if you want to. It’s not such a terrible place. It has heating and an en suite.’

  Grace stepped into the room. The surfaces seemed free of dust and there was the same faint smell of artificial air freshener as in the room downstairs. There would be nothing in here, not even a hair. A place with no exit, except to another room downstairs which also had no way out. She returned to the hallway.

  ‘It’s very clean for a room you never use,’ she said to Marie. ‘Have you cleaned it recently? It smells of air freshener.’

  ‘I like things clean.’

  Grace glanced at Borghini. He was standing back a little, watching; a slight nod said she should go on.

  ‘You like things clean?’ she said. ‘Is this a maid’s room? A place for someone who cooks and cleans for you?’

  ‘I do my own cooking. I like to cook.’

  ‘Then who does your cleaning? Whoever slept in there?’

  ‘No one slept in there.’

  ‘Then who cleaned it last and when? It must have been recently. You can smell the air freshener. Why do you need to clean and put air freshener into a room no one uses?’

  ‘I don’t know. I…’ Marie stopped, not knowing what to say.

  Another of Borghini’s people appeared in the hallway. ‘Something else you need to see,’ she said to him quietly.

  In the main bedroom, an ornate Chinese cabinet stood open on the dressing table. Beside it was a shiny, silver-edged mirror, a razor blade with a silver edge matching the mirror’s and a thin silver straw, similarly decorated. The silverwork was delicately, intricately made.

  ‘We found those in the cabinet,’ the officer said.

  ‘Are these yours?’ Borghini asked Marie.

  ‘No. I don’t know what they are.’

  ‘If they’re not yours, can you tell me how they might have got here?’

  She shook her head dumbly. She had tears in her eyes.

  ‘Perhaps someone put them there. A visitor who didn’t like me. I don’t know.’

  ‘We found this as well,’ one of the other plain-clothes officers said. He was holding a black silk pouch peeled open to reveal several broken lumps of cocaine in a plastic bag. It looked like a stash kept for personal use.

  Grace glanced around the room once more. On the dressing table were vases of white roses mixed with smaller flowers, dark blue in colour. A silk and lace negligee lay thrown over a chair, waiting for someone to slip it on. The negligee was for two to enjoy; the cocaine seemed to be only for one. And not Marie.

  ‘Marie, why don’t you take a seat back out in the kitchen?’ Borghini said. ‘We’ll keep looking through here and then we’ll need to ask you some more questions. I’m afraid we’ll be keeping you for a while yet. Maybe you’d like to have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.’

  ‘Can I call someone? I want to call someone.’

  ‘Who do you want to call?’

  ‘In these circumstances, who do you think?’ Kidd said. It was the first time he’d spoken. ‘Your family. A lawyer.’

  ‘I’ll call my brother,’ Marie said. ‘Can I do that?’

  Grace wasn’t certain who she was asking.

  ‘You can do that if you want to,’ Borghini told her. ‘But I’m going to ask you not to leave the premises. If you go and sit down now and make your call, we’ll keep searching in here. I’ll send someone to look after you.’

  Marie turned to leave the room. She bumped against the uniformed policewoman as if she hadn’t seen her, then glanced around confused. She saw Kidd and looked away. The policewoman guided her out.

  ‘I think that might be it for me tonight,’ Grace said. ‘This isn’t my field.’

  ‘No problem.’ Borghini dredged up a smile, presumably pleased to have her out from under his feet. ‘Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow? I’ll let you know how we finished up here and what we’re going to do next.’

  ‘I’ll do that, thanks.’

  Passing the kitchen, she saw Marie sitting at the table, crying while she tried to call a number on her phone. The policewoman sat with her, watching. Kidd, following Grace, went back to his place leaning against the bench. Grace guessed he wanted to listen to whatever Marie Li was going to say on the phone. Ignoring Clive’s instructions to watch him, she walked out of the flat, feeling his eyes on her back.

  Downstairs in the reception area, some of the workers were readying to leave. The police had finished their questioning. There was a low buzz of conversation. Lynette, the receptionist, was sitting at the desk flicking half-heartedly through a magazine. Grace went over to her.

  ‘Lynette,’ she said. ‘Is that who you are?’

  ‘I’ve already told the police that. Who are you?’

  ‘Grace Riordan. I’m with the police.’

  Lynette looked up at her, polite but ungiving. She was older than Grace had thought, at least fifty. They were interrupted by a chorus of ‘Night, Lynette,’ as the workers left, moving in a small group past the reception desk.

  ‘You take care out there,’ Lynette called back, watching the women out the door before turning back to Grace. ‘What do you want? I’ve already given you people all my details.’

  ‘You look like a professional to me,’ Grace said. ‘You’ve been in this business a lot longer than Marie Li, haven’t you? You were doing this when she was in nappies. Now she’s your boss. Do you like that situation? Or do you have to do things you’d normally never do under any other circumstances?’

  The woman said nothing, only stared. Grace saw the same fear in her eyes that she’d seen in Marie Li’s.

  ‘Take this,’ she said and offered a card that had nothing on it but a phone number. />
  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A contact number. Put it away out of sight.’

  The card disappeared into Lynette’s bag. ‘I thought you were with the police.’

  ‘I want to show you something. This is Coco after we found her.’

  Grace slid a photograph across the desk: Coco lying in the scrub in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

  ‘Oh, Christ.’ Lynette closed her eyes and covered her mouth.

  Grace picked up the photograph and put it back in her bag. ‘I want to know who did that to her. Who is she, and where did she come from?’

  Lynette still had her eyes closed. She shook her head.

  ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘Yes, you have. Don’t think anyone believes you when you say that. And don’t think this is going to go away. We’re going to keep coming back and we’re going to keep asking questions. You’re going to be asked to come in for questioning and that questioning is going to go on for hours. We’re going to talk to all your workers. Some of them will have seen something. Besides that,’ Grace said, ‘you saw Coco in that picture. Think about the people who did that. How do you know they won’t see you as a weak link? And if they do, what are they going to do about it? Do you want to trust them? Or do you want us to offer you some protection?’

  ‘I can’t talk to you here,’ Lynette said, barely audibly.

  ‘But she was here.’

  The woman had folded her arms close about herself and was staring down into her lap. Very faintly, she nodded.

  ‘If you want to talk to me in complete privacy, with a promise of complete confidentiality, you can ring that number any time you like. No one has to know you’ve called me. Just ask for me by my first name. If you’re a witness, we may be able to get you immunity. If you need protection, we’ll arrange it.’

  The woman looked up, shaking her head, her mouth slightly open. Her make-up seemed old and her eyes were moist as if she might cry. At that moment, Kidd walked into the reception area and came up to the desk.

  ‘What are you two talking about?’