The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  He drove to Blackheath to visit the real estate agent. A franchise of one of the major chains, they had a large office on the main street. Amelie Santos’s house was listed as property of the week. House and furnishings included. Panoramic view of the Grose Valley. Some simple repairs and a coat of paint will return this beautiful Victorian house to its former glory. Large block with excellent potential for expansion. Harrigan went inside.

  ‘This is quite amazing,’ said the real estate agent, a conservatively dressed older woman wearing an ugly sky-blue suit, who met him with a motherly smile. ‘That property only went on the market yesterday and we’ve already had so many enquiries. We’re having an open day this Saturday so please do come along. It’s a unique purchase, a piece of history really.’

  Possibly she could talk prospective buyers into any sale she liked, simply because she appeared so harmless on the surface.

  ‘Maybe you could give me an indication of what the reserve might be,’ Harrigan said.

  She named a figure that ensured no one who could be described as a battler would be bidding at the auction.

  ‘Any chance of a private viewing?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘The owners are going to be there over the next few days to take some things out of the house. We’ve been asked not to let anyone in till Saturday.’

  ‘What sort of condition is it in?’ he asked, curious to hear how she might describe it.

  ‘It’s a deceased estate and hasn’t been lived in for several years now. It needs a good clean and an airing out. Structurally it’s very sound, though it will need painting. We’re sending some cleaners in this Friday, just to spruce it up a little.’

  ‘Is there any reason the owners are selling right now?’

  Trusts of any sort were useful tools for money laundering, another reason why Shillingworth might acquire a property then leave it to rot. Perhaps the agent had this in her mind when she answered him.

  ‘I think they judged the market as right for the sale. Property prices are easing a little and there are more buyers around than there used to be. It’s all above board. We’ve spoken with the trust’s legal representative, a Mr Griffin.’

  ‘Joel Griffin?’

  ‘Yes. Do you know him?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him. Thanks.’

  He left to make the long drive back to Sydney. He would be late. When he was a little closer to the city, he would phone Grace and let her know when he would be home. He welcomed the drive, it gave him time to think. What was Joel Griffin doing involved in this? Why would he be a party to the sale of assets from a secretive trust? Just his name brought another dimension of threat to Harrigan’s investigations.

  In the mess of information he had, one name stood out: Shillingworth. Shillingworth Trust led to the Ponticellis, to Eddie Grippo at Four Square Real Estate. There, the connection became shadowy. The best he could say was that there was one. A question for Eddie: do you know Joel Griffin? If Griffin did have a connection to the Ponticellis, this was the first Harrigan had heard of it. Was his intelligence so bad? Or was the connection an occasional one, not much mentioned? And why sell Blackheath now? Forget market conditions. Whatever the reason, the trustees, Patterson and Tate, whoever they really were, had decided it was time to move on. Would other assets, such as Fairview Mansions, come up for sale? Another question for Eddie.

  Then there was the line back to Frank Wells, to his adoptive mother’s niece, Jennifer Shillingworth, the woman with access to Salvation Army adoption records, the one person who could have known who Frank’s real parents were. A woman who, thirty-five or more years ago, hadn’t been above trying on the odd scam herself. In a time before changes to the adoption laws, she might well have known people who were desperate enough to buy that kind of information. If this speculation were true, then, as Frank Wells himself had said, she was the most likely source of the documents an otherwise unknown Ian Blackmore had sent to him four years ago.

  Ignoring the road rules, Harrigan picked up his mobile and sent an SMS to his retainer. He had already asked her to track down the Shillingworth woman but still he texted: Find me Jennifer Shillingworth as a first priority and forward me any information you already have ASAP.

  She’s dead. The instinctive words came into Harrigan’s mind even as he sent the message. It remained to be seen if his expectation was on the money. Maybe someone had eventually bought that information from her. There were only three people who could have known it was for sale in the first place, let alone want to buy it: Frank, Janice and a young Craig, watching his parents fight. Frank hadn’t wanted to know and Janice was dead. Maybe after she’d left Frank, she had gone on about it to her son, the way she had to her husband. Maybe when she was drunk, banging it into his head. If only your father had found out who his parents were, maybe we’d have some money now. We wouldn’t be so broke. It fitted with the woman he’d read and heard about.

  But supposedly Craig was dead too. Harrigan smiled to himself. Death was a perfect alibi. It gave you the space to do whatever you wanted. You could coerce property out of an old and vulnerable Amelie Santos and, in some strange twist of humour, put it into a trust named after the woman who might well have led you to her in the first place. But why wait until four years ago to chase it up? What had been the catalyst? Because Amelie Santos was old and could be expected to die soon? You turn up out of nowhere and introduce yourself to her as her grandson and heir even though she’s never seen you before. Would she even let you in? See you as other than a threat? And what could she be to you, other than a victim to exploit? Someone to cajole, charm, threaten and, with the help of your partner, finally terrorise?

  But you couldn’t announce yourself to her as Craig Wells. If you’d killed off your old identity by murdering someone else in your place, there’d be no room for you to resurrect yourself. Once Craig Wells was dead, he had to stay dead and you couldn’t bring him back to life. But you wouldn’t have to. Amelie Santos couldn’t have known her son’s name. You could give yourself any name you liked, say your father was dead to keep him out of the picture, and then try to get whatever you could out of your victim. In the way of family resemblances, maybe you even looked something like your grandfather.

  Thinking this over, it occurred to Harrigan that perhaps all those years ago Jennifer Shillingworth might possibly have also approached Amelie Santos. If she had, then presumably the doctor, like her son, Frank, had sent her on her way, saying she didn’t want to know. And then later, when the laws were changed and adoption records became accessible, it was only to the family members. In that case, the only recourse for someone who had expunged his existence as Craig Wells was the original one: bribery. You go back to the woman who wanted to sell the information in the first place and ask her if she still wants to make a deal. Hadn’t Frank told him that Jennifer Shillingworth had already made copies of the documents? Maybe they’d been just locked away in a drawer somewhere, waiting.

  Then there was the woman at the centre of this, Amelie Santos, the seemingly innocent vortex for all these connections. The strangeness of sifting through the paper remains of her patients’ old lives had left Harrigan with a sense of bleakness. Amelie Santos could have kept her child. Despite the circumstances of her marriage, she had still been a married woman in a time when that had mattered. Her father had had the means to support them both. Even in those days, with his help she would have been able to become a doctor as well as raising her son. Instead, that part of her life had been obliterated, except for the pieces of paper she had kept for herself from the child patients she could not save, a lifetime’s worth of grief and loss. For Amelie Santos, did pieces of paper detailing a patient’s name and history replace what had been lost in the flesh? Were they like fetish objects filling a vacuum, things that were fixed in time and could not grow older? Perhaps she’d had no choice in relinquishing her son. Had her father or mother told her it had to happen, regardless? Or had the father of her child hurt her so much,
she had rejected their son herself? If he had, why keep his name? No way to know now.

  In all these shadows, Amelie Santos wasn’t the only obsessive figure. Someone had wanted what she had so much they had tracked her to her nursing home, deceived a woman they’d had no other interest in to assist them, and then presumably threatened and frightened an aging woman to get hold of it. Had they known at the time they were also acquiring the identities of the dead? Or had there been another reason for their actions and those records were only a bonus? Were they the same people who had tried to kill Amelie Santos in the first place?

  With a chill, Harrigan realised that it was only their failure to murder Amelie Santos that had allowed them to acquire the Blackheath house. Whoever had attacked her that morning must simply have wanted to kill her. If they’d succeeded, the Blackheath house would have gone to Medicine International along with the rest of her estate. Presumably the organisation would have sold it on, the way they had her other two properties. But why kill someone as harmless as a woman in her late eighties if there was no prospect of material gain? In her own way, wasn’t she as much a victim in this as other people? Harrigan answered his own questions: because she wouldn’t give you what you wanted. You’d have to believe you had a right to it; so much so that you hated her enough to want to kill her when she wouldn’t give it to you.

  It was still all speculation; nothing but shadows and guesswork. Time for home and sanctuary, Harrigan thought, negotiating the gridlock of Sydney’s commuter traffic.

  Grace had cooked dinner; the smell of the food greeted him when he opened the door. He kissed her and picked up Ellie. It was like walking into comfort. Then Grace slipped away from him back to the stove.

  ‘Hungry?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  He couldn’t judge her mood. She did things too carefully, put plates on the table as if they might break as she set them down. Was too quiet, too patient, with Ellie, her eyes excluding anything else as she helped her to eat, as if there was only the spoon and her daughter’s mouth. Ellie’s small fingers shredded still further the pieces of fish Grace gave her to eat. Grace wiped her fingers clean with a smile but still seemed distant. When she talked to him, she was trying hard to pay attention. The food was good, very good; but her mind was not there.

  ‘What’s up, babe?’ he asked when Ellie was in bed and they were alone.

  ‘Just work,’ she said, the way she always did.

  She turned away, got up from the table and was gone again into wherever she was in her head. He watched her clear the dishes away and tidy the kitchen. She smiled at him and went into the lounge. Soon after, music filled the room. She appeared in the doorway.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you want to dance? Come on. Let’s dance.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah. Why not?’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  In the living room, he slipped his arms around her and they danced to the slow music. She seemed to need it, to relax against him. She was slender and her body was warm in his arms.

  ‘What’s the music?’ he asked.

  ‘Art Tatum with Benny Carter.’

  She often played these musicians.

  ‘It’s good,’ he said.

  ‘It’s wonderful.’

  He held her a little closer.

  ‘What do people say about us?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know and I don’t care,’ he replied. ‘People will say anything. It’s meaningless.’

  She smiled and seemed to come back to him. There was just the moment, the clean and beautiful music. In his mind, he had a fence around this space, one no one else could break through. Outside of it, everything dissolved as being neither here nor there, almost not in existence. This was the centre of things, here. Nothing else mattered.

  When they went to bed that night, they made love. Later, she slept under the weight of his arm. They had always slept close together. With his other lovers, they had each tended to drift to opposite sides of the bed. Tonight, when they were both in a waiting space where the future was impossible to judge, their presence felt like a refuge for each other and they slept more deeply and peaceably than they could have expected.

  15

  The next morning in the meeting room, there was a third seat at the table, so far empty.

  ‘Borghini’s late,’ Clive said.

  ‘The traffic’s bad,’ Grace replied.

  ‘He’d better be here when Griffin calls.’

  Her mobile lay on the table. She stared at it. I’m drowning in other people’s blood and I don’t know where any of this is taking me. Everywhere is a dead end.

  ‘I want some information,’ she said.

  Clive didn’t speak but motioned for her to go on.

  ‘There have been three deaths besides Jirawan’s. Everyone we want to talk to gets removed. We might as well be at war—’

  ‘We are at war.’

  ‘I want to know what this operation is really about.’

  He leaned too close towards her, the way he always did. ‘Are you thinking of bailing out?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘This is the crucial phase. I need to know if I can rely on you.’

  ‘Then answer my question,’ she said.

  ‘It’s very well timed because we’re getting to the point where you need to know. Does the Ghost network mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a name we’ve given to a significant financial brokerage for various criminal and terrorist organisations in the Asia–Pacific region. We don’t know if this entity is run by one person or several or the identities of those people involved. They launder and shift very large amounts of funds on a regular basis. Recent investigations have identified Sydney as both a source of funds and a staging post for the network. What information we have suggests the main broker is an Australian. Three months back, we received information from the Thai police that they had established a connection between an import–export business in Bangkok run by a Peter Sanders and that network. At the time Sanders was trying to get out of the business and he approached the police with an offer of information in exchange for protection for him and his family. Shortly after this, he was found murdered and his wife, Jirawan, was missing. Our investigation indicates that his offer was leaked to his murderers. Obviously they had their informants in the police.’

  ‘Why send Jirawan here?’ Grace asked. ‘Why not just kill her?’

  ‘I think Jon Kidd gave us the answer to that yesterday. Sanders almost certainly owed the network money. They don’t like leaving a debt unpaid. Not one that’s owed to them.’

  ‘Was she an innocent bystander?’

  ‘She could well have been. There’s no indication she was involved in the business. The Sanders import–export business was also associated with Angela and Robert McLeod, entrepreneurs who have done a lot of business in Asia and China over the years. They have many very significant contacts in that part of the world. Sara McLeod is their daughter, which made it very interesting when her name came up yesterday.’

  ‘Are they suspects? Is this network some kind of cartel they’re running?’

  ‘Our finance people began checking them out once we were advised of their connection to Sanders. It’s early days yet and their business interests are extensive, but our initial analysis is that the main McLeod business is legitimate. As we get more information, we may change our minds. But it may well be the source of the contacts the Ghost network has used in the past to establish itself.’

  ‘The Ghost network is a parasite on their business?’

  ‘Yes. Which makes Sara McLeod’s connection even more interesting. She’s the link.’

  ‘What role is Griffin playing in this? He keeps talking about his client,’ Grace said. ‘Does this client actually exist?’

  ‘That’s something you have to find out. At the moment, he’s shaping up as the central figure in this. We’ve already
searched his unit in Bondi Junction. It’s nothing more than a shell. He goes there to sleep and change his clothes probably. He’s a very hard man to pin down. He seems to have almost no past and very limited means of support, despite the fact that he obviously has money. You just have to look at his car. All of which makes him a good candidate for our target. What we want now, what’s central to the success of this operation, is access to the network’s business records. Obviously, they’re computer-based. We need to know where they are. Those records are at the centre of this and they’re probably the last things we’ll find. But somehow we have to get our hands on them. So far, Griffin is our best chance to do that.’

  ‘What about Narelle Wong? Is her family connected?’

  ‘There’s no indication of that. But she’s a dual citizen. Her ID could be very useful to some other member of the network who wanted to move freely around the Asia–Pacific region, including coming here. She’s the perfect victim for that scenario. From what Kidd had to say, it’s not the first time the network have supplied their clients with new identities.’

  ‘Who’s her boyfriend? Griffin?’

  ‘Possibly. That’s something else you have to find out.’

  ‘You haven’t told Borghini any of this,’ Grace said.

  ‘I will brief him later today, as much as he needs to know. If we can dismantle this network, it will be a significant blow to a number of very dangerous organisations that depend on it for funds.’ He leaned forward again. ‘I am telling you this on the understanding that you will tell no one whatsoever outside of the operation about it. That means no one.’

  ‘I understand that.’

  Briefly they were silent. Then there was a knock on the door and Borghini walked in.

  ‘Morning. Sorry I’m late. I’ve been working. Check this.’

  He tossed on the table a photofit of a big man, roughly dressed, with a hard face and dark hair, followed by a mug shot.

  ‘One Mick Brasi. Standover man for the Ponticellis. You know who they are?’