The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  Her mind kept her driving under control but it didn’t stop her fear from growing. The bike came closer; it seemed to be letting her know it was there. She turned on her phone and rang the Orion control centre.

  ‘I’m fairly certain I’m being followed,’ she said. ‘A bike, small. I can’t see any registration and I’ve got no description of the rider.’

  ‘Where from?’

  ‘I first noticed it coming over the Gladesville Bridge. I’m on Victoria Road coming up to Darling Street where I’m turning left. It’s accelerating, coming up beside me, swerving in close.’

  ‘Take evasive action now.’

  ‘It’s gone,’ she said.

  Suddenly the road was clear. The rider had swerved in dangerously towards her car, then sped past her through the orange light at the intersection of Victoria Road and Darling Street. She hoped her voice hadn’t sounded panicky; it seemed as if it had.

  ‘Are you there?’ the operative asked.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what that was about. Whether it was someone’s idea of a joke or if someone was following me from my op. Can you report it? And make my request for a team to pick up Jacqueline Ryan urgent. Just in case they were following me all the way from Parramatta.’

  ‘Will do.’

  She hung up. She was shaky, tired.

  When she turned off Darling Street and was on her way down the hill, she noticed a car behind her. It was still with her when she reached Snails Bay. As she was backing down the steep driveway of her house, the car passed her, turning into Wharf Road. It was a red Saab, a car she’d often seen speeding up the street. She turned off the ignition and sat looking around her. Everything was peaceful. Maybe no one was out there and she could just relax.

  Could she tell Paul what had just happened or was it work? No, it was work. Another secret between them. At least she was home, she thought, looking at the lighted windows with relief.

  5

  In the silence of the house, Harrigan, standing by Ellie’s open doorway, could hear only the quiet breathing of his daughter while she slept. If Grace were home, she’d have put on some music; the jazz she loved so much, singers and musicians he’d never heard of before he met her. She sang their daughter to sleep in her own soft, slightly throaty voice. Other than in the shower, it was almost the only time she sang these days. He liked her voice and wished she would sing more. ‘One day I’ll join a choir,’ she’d told him. ‘Whatever you want,’ he’d replied, wanting her to be happy, even now not quite able to believe that she could be happy with him.

  When she wasn’t here, he preferred silence. Tonight, after what he’d seen just a few hours ago, this silence mixed with the sound of Ellie’s breathing gave him a sense of cleanness. He had fed and bathed Ellie, settled her to bed and read her to sleep. She had curled up on the pillow with the promise that her mother would be there in the morning. Each of these things worked against the pictures in his mind of the dead and wounded men he had seen that day. He was yet to find out if the memory would reassert itself like some malignant intrusion.

  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen that kind of thing before. Often enough when he’d been with the police, he’d looked cold-bloodedly at the dead, dealt in a detached way with the living, and then worked as hard as he could to find who’d done the killing. Throughout, other people did the grieving. He’d hoped he had left all that behind. He had come home this afternoon with a sense of sickness that was new to him.

  Downstairs, he poured himself a whisky. Grace didn’t drink and because of that he didn’t drink much himself. Tonight he needed alcohol to ease his thoughts. He went upstairs again and into his study, a plain room at the back of the house that looked down onto his long, narrow strip of land to Snails Bay on the inner harbour. This was where he collected his thoughts, where he worked. Joel Griffin had left almost as bad a taste in Harrigan’s mouth as the killings he’d witnessed. What did Griffin know about either Grace or him? And what did he need to do about it?

  He googled Griffin’s name and waited to see if anything new might come up from the last time he’d gone searching. There was one fact he hadn’t thought much about before: Griffin hadn’t qualified in Australia. He’d got his degree at the University of London seventeen years ago and been admitted to the bar in Australia when he had returned to the country in the mid-1990s. Qualifications gained overseas were too convenient to Harrigan’s mind. Maybe they were genuine, maybe they weren’t. But if his qualifications were fake, Griffin, as a fraud, was better at his work than any number of lawyers Harrigan knew to be genuine. At best, this fragment of information only proved where he had been seventeen years ago and when he had come back to Australia.

  The information he couldn’t find was also interesting. Griffin was a lone wolf, listed as an individual only, not connected to any particular legal firm. Unlike some other practitioners, there was no photograph attached to his contact details. This wasn’t so very unusual, but it fitted the man’s elusiveness. Harrigan phoned the number given for Griffin’s office and was answered by a recorded message, the kind preinstalled on any readily available answering machine. There was nothing to identify that you were leaving a message for Joel Griffin, barrister. He hung up without leaving his details.

  After a moment’s thought, he googled again—not Griffin, but himself and Grace. On a few occasions their photographs had made it to the gossip columns of various media websites. Grace called it her fifteen seconds of virtual fame. Harrigan studied the photographs one after the other. On none was her scar visible.

  He heard her car outside and went down to the kitchen, relieved that she was home. Despite the lateness of the hour he had waited for her before eating, caught in his own thoughts and occupied with his daughter’s needs. Then Grace was there in the doorway, smiling. As he always did, he touched her face and then kissed her. He knew the real face under the make-up, the feel of her skin, her mouth. He knew her, the emotions she kept hidden, her body, better than anyone.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m okay. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. We need to talk about it.’

  ‘I’ll get changed and put my gun away. Is Ellie asleep?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t look in on her. I might wake her up.’

  ‘The door’s open. You can look in.’

  When she came back downstairs, the transformation was complete. The real woman had appeared. Her long dark hair was out on her shoulders, her make-up was gone. The drab pants suit had been changed for jeans, a yellow T-shirt and socks. She curled up cross-legged on a chair.

  ‘Put your gun away?’ he asked.

  Both he and Grace had an unbreakable rule that they never wore their firearms in their daughter’s presence, even if they were concealed. Harrigan had a licence for a firearm for his personal safety and kept a handgun and ammunition in a safe in his study. Grace, whose work allowed her to keep her gun with her at all times, locked hers in there as well when she was home.

  ‘It’s where little children’s hands can’t get to it. I did look in on her. She’s fast asleep. She’s got your hair. It’s so beautiful. When we cut it, I’m going to keep some.’

  Harrigan put the meal on the table—food Grace had cooked on her days off, his interest in kitchen matters reaching no further than setting the microwave and turning it on.

  ‘Newell, babe,’ he said. ‘Is he going to turn up here?’

  Could Newell really be so mad? The fear was like living in shadows where you couldn’t distinguish real from false. Had it been him on her tail tonight? It depressed her that she couldn’t talk to Harrigan about it.

  ‘It’d be lunacy,’ she said instead. ‘Every police officer in New South Wales must be out there looking for him. He won’t be able to show his face anywhere. How did it happen?’

  ‘It was a setup. Someone must have been paid to make sure Chris Newell was there at that time and they could get to him. If that includes either of the drivers, t
hey’re both dead now. They can’t tell anyone anything. I was talking to Joel Griffin when it happened.’

  ‘Why him?’

  ‘He wanted to see me. He knows about you and Newell, babe. He knows about your scar and how you got it. He was trying to blackmail me. Kept fishing to see what I was prepared to give him.’

  Grace looked as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She put down her fork, covered her face for a few seconds.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she said.

  ‘It hasn’t happened yet.’

  He reached over and took her hand. She held on to him, squeezing hard, then let go.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ she asked.

  ‘That he could go jump. If he tried anything funny, he’d regret it.’

  She picked up her fork again. The mood had changed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so angry.

  ‘He can put it all over the front page of the Telegraph if he wants to. I wouldn’t give him the time of day.’

  ‘We’re giving him nothing,’ Harrigan said. ‘What’s he going to do? If he puts it out there, he’s in breach of client confidence. What’s that going to do for his reputation? If he does, I’ll go after him through the Bar Council.’

  ‘If it does get out, it’ll affect me at work. Clive won’t like it.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him about it?’

  ‘No,’ she said eventually. ‘He might take me off what I’m working on and I don’t want that. I don’t have to tell him everything. My life’s my own.’

  ‘How was it today?’

  She shrugged, frowning. Her work was beginning to affect her, he thought. Grace, at ease, put other people at their ease, laughed and made him laugh. The woman who liked to dress up and go out and enjoy herself was another self to the one who dressed so plainly for work. When she was under pressure, she changed; she put on a hard, excluding shell. He knew that Newell was partly to blame for that cold barrier being there, but that didn’t help things. He didn’t want her to become like that again, the way she had been when he’d first met her. He wanted her light-hearted and full of sparkle again, the way she had been these last few years.

  ‘It was okay,’ she said. ‘I think I achieved something so that was good. Do you know a Mark Borghini? He’s my contact with the police. He asked about you.’

  ‘Mark? Yeah, I know him. He’s not exactly Mr Tactful but he’s good value. That’s good for you, babe. You can rely on him. What did he want to know?’

  ‘Just how you were.’

  He waited but she seemed to have nothing else to say. He let the subject pass. Knowing Mark Borghini was her contact made him feel better about the work she was doing.

  ‘This escape—it’s madness,’ she said. ‘The police are going to find whoever’s behind it, sooner rather than later because they’ll put everything they’ve got into it. And when they do, those people will end up dead.’

  ‘It’s suicide,’ Harrigan agreed. ‘Makes no sense to me at all. Whatever’s going on, we don’t want anything to do with it. Or Griffin. He’s a strange fish. He told me he was representing Newell pro bono.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘As far as I can tell, for the information in Newell’s head. Maybe that’s how Griffin makes his money. Extortion.’

  ‘It won’t work with us,’ Grace said.

  ‘No way.’ There was a pause. ‘You’re tired, babe.’

  ‘Yeah. Let’s go to bed.’

  As they were clearing up, their home phone rang: a private unlisted number they gave out only to friends and family. Grace glanced at Harrigan.

  ‘For you?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know who it could be at this time of night.’

  ‘Could be Nicky, I suppose. He can call this late.’

  Her brother ran a restaurant on the Central Coast and sometimes rang at the end of his working day to chat to her. She picked up the phone, putting it on speakerphone.

  ‘Hi there,’ she said, cautiously.

  A woman began to laugh, softly and maliciously. ‘Grace,’ she said and laughed again.

  Grace turned off the speakerphone but left the line open, then picked up her work mobile and called the Orion control centre. ‘I have an anonymous call on my home phone right now. The caller said my first name, then began to laugh.’ She glanced at the phone. ‘They’ve just hung up. Can you trace that call and log the time and date, please? Thank you.’

  ‘Why do you think that call’s related to your work?’ Harrigan asked when she’d finished.

  ‘I don’t know for sure. But I was followed home from my op tonight.’ She took a breath, knowing this simple confidence was breaking the rules. ‘All the way to Darling Street by someone who wanted me to know they were there. Whoever they were, they were trying to frighten me.’

  ‘Are you supposed to tell me that?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was it Newell?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He couldn’t know I’d be there at that time.’

  Harrigan reflected that he often didn’t know where she was or what she was doing either.

  ‘Is that what this operation is?’ he asked. ‘Dangerous?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You should have told me, babe. I need to know if you’re in danger. It’s not just me. There’s Ellie as well.’

  ‘I know that. I never stop thinking about it. Since Clive’s been there, it’s been impossible,’ she said. ‘You can’t tell anyone the simplest thing.’

  ‘He’s a control freak. Forget him. It’s late.’

  They went to bed and, in defiance of the phone call, made love. Grace’s thought was that she needed this to feel human, needed the comfort. Just to let the physical pleasure cleanse her of what had happened that day and bring her back to herself. She felt the warmth of his body and was never more at ease with herself.

  Harrigan thought of this as his fundamental territory; something he had that no one else could touch. If everything else was gone, this exclusiveness would still exist between them. This closeness was a refuge for them both, somewhere they needed no disguises and where no one could threaten either of them. The room, like the house, was their own world, safe, inviolable. Later, he lightly traced out her face.

  ‘You’re lovely,’ he said. ‘You have a face like the Madonna.’

  ‘And what kind of face does she have?’

  ‘Like yours. Clean. Dark, beautiful eyes.’

  ‘She’s more peaceful than me, she must be. I’m not a peaceful person.’

  ‘I just want you the way you are,’ Harrigan replied.

  Harrigan woke in the early morning feeling a deep sense of unease. He couldn’t go back to sleep; the phone call had jangled him too much. By the radio clock, it was 3:15 am. After a while he got up, pulled on his tracksuit and went to check the house. First, he looked in on Ellie. Her long, dark-fair hair was tousled over the pillow. She turned over just after he looked through the open doorway but kept on sleeping. Very quietly he shut the door in case she should wake and hear him moving around. He stood in the darkness of the hallway, thinking.

  His house was secure; his history with the police made that essential. He had a drawerful of death threats against him and his family, some more lurid than others. It wasn’t only criminals who wanted him harmed or dead; there were police, some still serving and some not, who had scores to settle with him. There were bars on his windows, security doors on all the entrances, and an alarm system installed. There was a number to ring at police headquarters if he or his family needed protection. His car was always parked in the single locked brick garage, the only one there was room for on his block. Grace’s car was kept behind the locked gate at the front of the house. The wall that ran between his garden and Birchgrove Park was higher than he would have liked but he had no choice. Maybe one day, when people were dead or had worn out their passions, these locks and bars could go, but not now.

  He went downstairs and checked the doors, front and back, includin
g those that led out onto the deck. The old exotic trees that had been planted in the backyard decades ago were beginning to die. Soon they would need to be replaced. Their mostly bare branches were black against the pale glow of the city lights in the night sky. In this partial light, he saw two possums, mother and offspring, sitting on the rail of the deck, silhouettes against the lighter shadows. Suddenly they were gone. Harrigan tensed, waiting, but saw no one.

  Throughout much of his life, on and off, Harrigan had lived in this house. Originally, it had been an inheritance from his aunt when he was fifteen, held in trust until he was of age. A single, church-obsessed woman, she had left it to him as an insult to his father, her brother, whom she’d hated. It had been left to her by an uncle, who’d also disapproved of his father, adding to the depth of the bitterness between them. Family loathings had given him an enviable address. The Harrigans had lived on the Balmain peninsula for several generations but, other than the uncle, they had never owned a house. His father had been a wharfie who had drunk and gambled too much and, until they had come here, Harrigan had grown up in rented accommodation near White Bay.

  The house wasn’t only his home. It was memory and experience, each room reminding him of the events, some of them violent, that had shaped his life.

  Harrigan had another child from a long-ago marriage, Toby, who was disabled with cerebral palsy and had always had to live in care. His mother had abandoned both him and Harrigan almost as soon as he’d been born and then disappeared from their lives. Now Toby was a twenty-year-old university student studying pure mathematics. His body kept him in a wheelchair but his mind ranged freely. Harrigan had built the room in which he now stood—during the day, a large, light-filled space—for his son, combining the two smaller rooms that had once been here. It was a place for Toby to come in his chair and feel at home. But he had not only been creating a space for his son. Harrigan had been expunging the past, in its place building something he valued, something that had meaning for him. Once these walls had been painted a drab green. One night, when he was eighteen, he had seen his mother’s blood splashed all over that green paint, when his father had fatally shot her in the face.