The Labyrinth of Drowning hag-3

by Alex Palmer

  According to the neighbours, once Craig had left school, he had spent very little time at home. When he had turned up, he was better dressed than they remembered him being in the past. No one had any idea what he’d been doing with himself. When asked, Janice had brushed off the question with a stock answer: he’s keeping himself busy somehow.

  The detective had tracked down Craig’s father, Frank Wells, who lived in Sydney in Brighton-le-Sands. His marriage to Janice had ended ten years earlier. Despite its brutality, the story of the murder left him unmoved. His only comment was that his ex-wife had been a slut and he had no way of knowing whether Craig had been his son in the first place. Why should he care?

  At a dead end and having no real evidence to present to the coroner, the detective was forced to let the case go. But it troubled him that there was seemingly nothing in existence that could have identified who Craig Wells had actually been and what he had done in the preceding three years. It seemed that somehow he must have made money. Had he been the source of the cash Janice had used for her dental treatment? If so, why kill her? Or had he been making sure that she would be identified? How to explain Craig’s own teeth? If the body wasn’t Craig’s, how could such an identification be made, unless the substitution of Craig Wells’s identity with somebody else’s had started long before the murder?

  The detective brought this puzzle to Harrigan, who had given him a sympathetic hearing. The cold-case team had examined the evidence but there had been nowhere to go with it. Harrigan had respected the detective’s instinct but on the information available there was nothing they could do. The files had gone back to the archives.

  Harrigan looked at the pictures of the murder scene: a shabby room in a rented house. Even without a body, the scene had a grimy quality, a sense of thoroughgoing despair. The amount of blood, the bone on the carpet, told a story of cruelty. In contrast to its physical savagery, the story on paper was too neat. He understood the doubts of the first investigating officer. For someone prepared to kill, it would have been possible back then to place a substitute in the front seat of the car and burn the body past recognition. After that, you could disappear and no one would come looking for you. Everything he had read indicated lengthy premeditation, careful planning.

  Even if this scenario was accurate, the question still remained: what had made Craig Wells decide to kill in the first place? Other people had drunken, sluttish mothers but didn’t choose to kill them. Harrigan thought, if only briefly, of how he’d not been able to fire a second bullet at his own father. Wouldn’t it have been easier to walk out and never come back? And why should he think this was the same Craig Wells who had used the address of a refugee Somali family to register his car? It was too puzzling a coincidence, particularly with Eddie Grippo and his connections to the Ponticellis prowling in the background. Mohammed Ibrahim’s story of his missing niece was another strange and troubling thread he could not ignore.

  Harrigan put the documents back in the box and closed it. He wouldn’t be able to see Toby today as he’d wanted to. It was already time to pick up Ellie.

  He went home first and disarmed, locking his gun in its usual place in the safe.

  When he got to Kidz Corner, he called on Kate. She met him with a smile.

  ‘The police sent an officer around,’ she said. ‘A very smart young woman from the police station up at Balmain. She’s my contact. If that car turns up again, I call her right away. She takes it from there. She says she’ll have people down here very quickly.’

  ‘All under control then,’ he said, relieved. ‘That car may not come back. We may have scared it off for good.’

  ‘Hope so.’

  He went to collect Ellie. She ran to him and he scooped her up. She laughed and put her arms around him.

  ‘Hello, princess. Did you have a nice day? Of course you did. Come on. Daddy will take you home and Mummy will be there soon.’

  After the events of the day, this was a cleaner place to be. He carried his daughter out to his car, relieved to be finished with it all.

  8

  Grace got home not long after they did. She walked in the door smiling, but her smile was strained and there were lines of tension around her eyes. She went and disarmed, then gave Ellie a hug.

  ‘Hi, baby. Mummy’s home early. We’re going to have tea soon. How are you? Don’t I love you.’

  ‘How are you, babe?’ he asked, when he kissed her.

  ‘Oh, it’s just work,’ she said.

  Just work. Given what she did every day, that could have covered just about anything. Something with a nasty kick had happened today, he could tell that, but it might be a long time before he found out what it was.

  He kept his information to himself until after Grace had put Ellie to bed. He listened to her singing their daughter to sleep, thought how soft and almost sad her voice sounded at a distance. When she came back down, he had made coffee for her and poured whisky for himself. She smiled at him and sat down. He thought she probably wasn’t aware of how quiet she’d been all night. In the last few hours she had hardly spoken two words to him. She liked to talk: about Ellie, small details of life, gossip about family or friends, particularly hers-the sorority as they called themselves, high-flying female lawyers who worked and partied hard. He had taken her away from that life. ‘Are you bored?’ he’d once asked her. ‘Not yet,’ she’d replied with that arch look she had. ‘I’m happy,’ she’d added. ‘I never expected to be that.’ Why did he always feel that doubt, that she might not be? All those years he’d spent on his own; the impress of that loneliness was still there and still strong.

  ‘Is she asleep?’ he asked.

  ‘Snug as a bug,’ she replied with a smile.

  ‘I have some information for you.’

  ‘I’ve some for you. Did you want to start?’

  ‘The white Camry that was here last night. It followed me and Ellie to Kidz Corner this morning. Kate told me it’d been seen there a number of times before and she’d already got the rego. It was in the name of someone called Craig Wells. Does that name mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, I’ve never heard it before. Do we need to move Ellie? She won’t like it if we do.’

  ‘Trev organised an officer to check it out today. She’s on call if that car comes back. It’s safe up there. I’ve looked it over. Don’t forget Kidz Corner has its own security.’

  She looked away, her face drawn with worry. ‘I don’t want Ellie to be bothered by this kind of thing. I just ran wild when I was young. I wish she could.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘But the world’s not the same. I traced the car but it took me to an address in Lakemba where they’d never heard of Craig Wells. The twist is that I once dealt with a cold case where the victim had that name, but whether there’s a connection I don’t know. But I did find one connection today we can’t ignore. The real estate agent managing the unit is Eddie Grippo. He used to work for Tony Ponticelli senior and now he’s managing their properties. We put him away for grievous bodily harm. He’s just got out. It might be all these incidents have nothing to do with Newell; it’s the Ponticellis looking to get their own back.’

  ‘Why now? Wasn’t your involvement with them years ago?’

  ‘You’d have to look inside Tony Ponticelli’s head to know what’s really going on in there. He’s got Alzheimer’s; apparently he’s losing it. It might be he wants to settle a few personal scores with me before he goes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Tony’s first wife died when he was about fifty. She had cancer. He married again, this twenty-something. They had two children, a boy and a girl. She couldn’t deal with the life. She left Tony and took the boy. Went into hiding to get away from him. He kept the girl, Bianca. It was before I met you and after we finished our operations against him. I don’t know why but she came after me.’

  ‘Are you saying you had an affair? Sleeping with the enemy? That’s dangerous.’ She smiled at him. ‘Didn’t it bother t
his woman that you were trying to put her father in gaol?’

  ‘I think that’s why she did it. She was getting at him. It was only a brief thing between us. Tony’s a vain man. She was like him. She thought she was more important than she was.’

  ‘To you?’ Grace asked.

  ‘To everything. Yeah, me as well. She was like a spoilt kid. She kept trying to attract attention to herself. The company she was keeping, she was way out of her depth. I told her that. She just laughed. No one was going to hurt her because she was Tony Ponticelli’s daughter. She ended up raped and murdered. They dumped her by the Cooks River. We never found who did it. There was no information.’

  ‘Bianca Ponticelli. I remember the case. It was when I was studying criminology, we talked about it. Does Tony Ponticelli blame you?’

  ‘For a while he was going around saying I had a personal vendetta against him. I’d let whoever killed her get away and I was covering up for them. Then he backed off.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The tax office went after him for tax evasion. He didn’t have time to think about me. It depends on what this has turned into in his head. He was always unpredictable and he’s still dangerous. He can get things done if he wants to.’

  ‘It’s a potent mixture,’ Grace said. ‘His daughter and you undermining his business.’

  It was on the tip of Harrigan’s tongue to say there was one other thing as well, but he kept it to himself. He would have preferred to tell her but judged it better if he didn’t. She had too much on her mind.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she was asking him.

  ‘She was there. She was making the offer. She was attractive. Sometimes you can spend too long alone.’

  She looked at him with a half-smile. ‘I’ve had affairs like that too.’

  They were silent. Grace rubbed her forehead.

  ‘Can we really leave Ellie at Kidz Corner? How do we know this car won’t come back?’

  ‘Where else is she going to go? If anything happens, the officer’s on call and Trevor’s people will be there like a shot. Kate’s always got her eyes open. I’m finding out who’s behind this. You can trust me. I’ll protect us.’

  ‘I do trust you. I always have.’ She looked around. ‘We could be happy. Why don’t they just leave us alone?’

  ‘People aren’t like that.’

  At that moment her face was almost disfigured with strain. ‘I’m going to have to tell Orion that the Ponticellis may be behind whoever’s stalking us.’

  ‘That’s okay, babe. You can do that. I don’t mind.’

  She was silent again. Then: ‘Something’s come up at work.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to do a covert operation. I’ve said I will.’

  ‘You didn’t talk to me first?’

  ‘It’s an important operation. I couldn’t walk away. Clive wants to talk to you about it first thing tomorrow morning. With me there. I’m sorry about that. I hate having him involved in our lives like this but I have to.’

  ‘What’s the operation about?’

  ‘That’s what we have to talk about tomorrow.’

  ‘How much danger is there?’

  ‘I’ve been promised full backup and I have an opt-out clause if I decide I can’t handle it.’

  ‘What exactly do they want you to do?’

  ‘Nothing I couldn’t tell you about if it wasn’t for the secrecy involved.’

  ‘That’s nice to know,’ he said, beginning to feel angry. ‘That’s three questions I’ve asked you and not one straight answer.’

  ‘I can’t give you one, not until tomorrow’s meeting. That’s the condition Clive has laid down. If I break it, he’ll take me off the job. You can trust me too, you know.’

  ‘I do. But I don’t trust Clive.’

  ‘He’s got his own agenda. But this is a job I want to do as well.’

  ‘Don’t forget us.’

  ‘I never stop thinking about you or Ellie,’ she said. ‘You mean too much to me.’

  That night, when he asked her if she wanted to make love, she said she was too tired, even though he judged she was less tired tonight than she had been last night. He felt her tense in his arms and let it go. In a matter of a few days the world had changed. They could be happy if people would leave them alone. That wasn’t going to happen. But he was ready for anyone out there, and if they meant business, so did he. Tomorrow, after he’d spoken to Clive, he was going searching for a few answers. He went to sleep with some sense of security, if only because he knew his gun was in reach if he needed it.

  The next day was a very early start for them both. It wasn’t much after seven when Harrigan dropped Ellie off at the childcare centre. She was cranky and unhappy at having her routine upset.

  ‘I’ll come and get you this afternoon, princess. Don’t you worry,’ he said. ‘If we can, we’ll go and see your brother.’

  Grace was ahead of him. She must have been at work for half an hour when he pulled up at Orion’s entrance. The guard was expecting him and let him through. Harrigan had been here twice before: once for a security clearance when he and Grace had set up house together; and a second time when Clive, new to his job, had insisted on going through the process all over again. While Harrigan had dealt easily enough with the questions, he’d left wishing that Grace worked for someone else. The man was a cold-blooded manipulator, someone who played games for the kick he got out of it.

  He was waiting for Harrigan in one of the rooms Orion used when they interviewed members of the public, all of which were on the perimeter of the building. Given what the meeting was about, Harrigan wondered why Clive hadn’t asked him into his office. He did have a top-secret security clearance, given to him by Clive himself.

  ‘Where’s Grace?’ he asked, after he’d sat down.

  ‘She’ll be here,’ Clive said. ‘What has she told you about this?’

  ‘She’s been asked to undertake a covert operation. That’s it.’

  Clive was pleased with this. ‘You’re aware that this organisation can’t give you any more information than that.’

  ‘Is that what this meeting’s about? For you to tell me I can’t be told anything?’

  ‘It’s a dangerous operation and secrecy is paramount. I want your cooperation in every way.’

  ‘First tell me what that actually means,’ Harrigan said.

  ‘Your partner has advised me you’re being stalked. I had an email from her this morning saying the Ponticellis may be behind it.’

  ‘I can’t be absolutely certain of that but it’s a possibility we shouldn’t discount.’

  ‘And you’re investigating these incidents.’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘I want you to stop as of now. I understand you can call on the services of the New South Wales police to protect you and your daughter if you need to. I want you to do that. My people will handle the phone call and the other matters.’

  Harrigan was silent for a few moments.

  ‘What right have you got to tell me I can’t protect my wife and daughter?’ he asked in his neutral voice. It was the first time he’d ever called Grace his wife. He didn’t know where the word had come from, but, sitting opposite Clive, he knew he meant it.

  ‘Anything that affects your partner’s identity as an operative could endanger the success of this operation and her physical safety.’ Clive emphasised the word partner. ‘Our legislation allows me to direct you not to interfere. There are penalties for ignoring that directive, up to a maximum of seven years’ gaol. I’ve sent out a protocol to the New South Wales police. If you contact them as a result of any personal inquiries you may make, they have to notify me.’

  Harrigan wanted to laugh when he heard this but suppressed it. Clive might react vengefully. He sat quietly, looking him in the eye. Eventually Clive could no longer meet his gaze and looked away.

  ‘Why should my investigating these incidents interfere with your operation?’ H
arrigan asked. ‘How can they possibly be connected?’

  ‘Under the circumstances you qualify as a wild card. I’m not going to allow any possibility, however remote or unlikely, to disrupt this operation.’

  ‘Grace still isn’t here,’ Harrigan said.

  ‘She will be,’ Clive replied.

  ‘Why do you really not want me to track down whoever’s stalking my wife and daughter?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ Clive said.

  ‘No, you haven’t. What you’ve just given me is your justification, but it’s not the reason. You said this mission is dangerous. Where does that leave Grace?’

  ‘With every possible resource available to protect her. I’m also going to request that on no account are you to ask her any questions about this operation. I don’t want any more pressure put on her.’

  For an answer, Harrigan took out his mobile and rang her.

  ‘Where are you?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  ‘I’m here in public meeting room two waiting for you, babe. Where are you?’

  ‘What are you doing there? I thought this was going to be in Clive’s office.’

  Harrigan looked at Clive. ‘No. Clive didn’t want to see me in his office. We’ve been here for quite a while.’

  ‘No one told me. Give me five, max.’

  Harrigan put his mobile away, still watching Clive closely. The Orion man was angry.

  ‘Don’t take this out on Grace,’ Harrigan said.

  ‘I don’t do that.’

  Not much you don’t.

  ‘You don’t intimidate me,’ Harrigan said in a matter-of-fact voice.