The Labyrinth of Drowning (21 page)

‘There are other people involved,’ Clive replied angrily. ‘There’s surveillance, there’s finance, there’s IT. The police. And there’s you.’

‘But not on the front line. I don’t say Grace doesn’t handle it well. She does. But why go to that meeting in the first place?’ He turned to Grace. ‘I thought that yesterday. It’s exposing you too much. You met him on his turf. You shouldn’t have done that.
You’re the one with the perfect bargaining chip. He wants Narelle. Get him to meet you on your turf. Demand more of him than he’s giving you. Let’s get back to basics. What’s his motive? What is this thing he wants you to do? Shoot Narelle Wong dead for him? We’re letting him manipulate us, not the other way around.’

‘I haven’t asked for your opinion. But now that you’ve given it, this is a good time to make an announcement,’ Clive said to Borghini. ‘There’s been a change of arrangements. I’ve asked for you to be replaced as the police liaison officer. You won’t be required for this meeting.’

Borghini looked poleaxed. ‘Why?’

‘I’m finding you obstructive and difficult to deal with. It’s my decision who works on this investigation. You can leave. Now.’

Borghini threw up his hands, acknowledging there was no point in arguing, and stood up.

‘No.’ Grace spoke sharply. ‘We need a liaison officer. There’s no one here to replace Mark. He can stay until his replacement takes over.’

‘I have the authority here,’ Clive said.

‘Our agreement says it’s ultimately my call how I handle the undercover operation within the broad ambit of your directions. He stays until his replacement turns up or I execute my rights under the opt-out clause as of now.’

Clive was expressionless, staring at her. After a few moments, he gestured to Borghini, who sat down at the table again.

‘I guess I stay in that case.’

‘For now,’ Clive said. His cheeks were red and he took a few moments to regain his equilibrium. ‘This operation is in the balance. Tomorrow, when you deliver Narelle Wong, we’ll have people watching to see who she meets and where she’s taken. There’ll also be people ready to move in immediately. Now let’s have that note you took from her.’

Grace placed the note on the table and watched Clive pick it up. She was wondering what had really been in his mind when he had spoken to her earlier or even if she wanted to know. She knew she didn’t want to be in the same room with him by herself. She thought back over other operatives who had worked closely with
him. Orion’s secrecy meant those operations couldn’t be discussed. Small comments, the occasional raised eyebrow, were all she had to go on. Strange vibes and impossible demands were the last thing she wanted to deal with now; the operation was dangerous enough as it was. She was in the balance as well; she hoped Clive had the sense to realise that.

She left the motel with enough time to get home and collect Ellie before they both went to Paul’s book launch. Borghini followed her out.

‘Thanks for sticking up for me in there,’ he said.

‘No problem,’ she said with a tired smile.

‘I’ve got to say this to you. Your boss has lost sight of what this is really about. You know what he’s doing? He’s watching you. I don’t know why but he’s fixed on you and he’s putting you in danger. The first rule for any operation like this is that you protect your undercover officers as much as you can. But he’s putting you and this Griffin together and he’s watching you. I think he’s getting a kick out of it.’

Grace didn’t want to think about this.

‘The way things are set up I don’t see how I can back out now,’ she said. ‘Not until after tomorrow.’

Borghini looked back at the motel room, frowning. ‘After today, I’m not supposed to be involved any more. Jesus.’ He looked down at his feet. Grace couldn’t quite understand what was in his mind. ‘Give the boss my regards,’ he said. ‘He’s a decent man. He’s always done the right thing by me.’

Then he was gone, driving away into the afternoon traffic.

Grace got into her car. She held on to the fact that no one could stop her from walking away if she chose to. With a bit of luck, this would all be done with in twenty-four hours. Or she would have done all she could do and would have no choice but to bail out. Assuming nothing happened to her first.

H
arrigan’s retainer had emailed him a cache of information regarding Amelie Santos. She had found the private sanatorium in the Southern Highlands where Frank Wells had been born. Now closed, it had been famous, or infamous, in its day as a place where those who could afford it sent their daughters to have their illegitimate children out of anyone’s way. It had also offered a nursemaid service that cared for the babies until they were adopted out. The sanatorium had become a private psychiatric clinic in the 1970s and then gone out of business in the early ’80s. When the building was sold, the records had been sent to a social research archive in Canberra. While the hospital’s medical information had been destroyed long ago, its administrative records were available to researchers and a number of articles had been written about its history.

The dates of Amelie Santos’s admittance and discharge had been recorded in one of the hospital’s registers. She had arrived on a Monday morning and left four days later. A note next to her discharge read:
By taxi to station 11 am. Parents will meet at Central
. Harrigan’s research assistant had added the information that Amelie was most likely shielded during the birth. According to the testimony of several women who had given birth there—now mostly in their sixties or seventies, one in her eighties—a screen had been placed in front of their faces, and one remembered being
blindfolded. Amelie Santos might never have seen Frank, let alone held him. Only heard him before he was taken away.

Harrigan emailed back the name Loretta Griffin and the date 1977. A brutal attempted murder, the husband convicted and gaoled. There’d been a son by the name of Joel, by the look of it an only child. Any information she could find on any of them.

In the meantime, he’d been doing his own research into the Shillingworth Trust. The details were much as Lambert had already told him: a discretionary property trust with Tate and Patterson as its trustees and the beneficiary an otherwise unrelated company called Cheshire Nominees. The names of the company’s office holders were unknown to him, and he suspected that if he investigated them they would prove to be untraceable. The contents of the trust’s property portfolio were also no surprise. Among a number of commercial and residential properties, it included Fairview Mansions, the Blackheath house and Amelie Santos’s two other former properties at Duffys Forest and North Turramurra. Many of the properties were in less desirable parts of the city, leading Harrigan to speculate that the portfolio was a dump for dirty money. Distribute the management of properties among a range of agents and who would bother putting the pieces together?

Valuable information but still nothing to link his investigations to Joel Griffin or Sara McLeod. Shillingworth Trust must have bought the latter two properties when Medicine International sold them on. But why? What was so special about owning them that you’d go to all that trouble? If the trustees had a use for them, then he needed to find out what it was.

He checked the time and closed down his laptop. It was getting on and he had a long drive in front of him.

Duffys Forest, on the northern edge of the metropolis, was a part of Sydney Harrigan rarely visited. His travels north usually took him in a direction more to the west, on the freeway across the Hawkesbury River to the Central Coast, where Grace’s father lived in retirement and her brother and his wife ran a restaurant. This far-flung piece of Sydney suburbia, like its next-door neighbour Terrey Hills, was a peninsula in the bush, surrounded on three sides
by the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. It was almost rural, a home to riding schools and properties offering stabling and agistment for the much-loved horses of teenage girls. The blocks of land were large and still partially bush-covered; trees and scrub lined the narrow roads. He passed plant nurseries, a golf club, Buddhist temples, private schools and a gun club.

Like the house at Blackheath, the property he was seeking had a
For Sale
sign out the front. Inspections by appointment; price on application. The house was on the southwestern edge of the suburb at a lower level than the street, and apparently reached by a long driveway. A thick line of trees on the boundary, surrounded by a cyclone-wire fence, isolated it from the road. Entrance to the driveway was through a high, locked Colorbond gate. The other houses roundabout were not much different, with the occupiers clearly valuing their privacy. Ignoring your neighbours would be easy in this place.

Harrigan decided to risk it. He parked at a distance past the driveway where he would be out of sight of anyone arriving at the house. As well as being armed, he had brought along a few tools in case he needed to do some breaking and entering. He tossed his backpack over his shoulder and made his way towards the house, approaching it from the side via the next-door neighbour’s block of land. Their only front fence was a low wooden affair, while their house, which was built on higher ground, was some distance away and also surrounded by trees.

He followed the cyclone fence down a slope to the park boundary where the fencing stopped and the trees merged into the national park. He pushed through the scrub to the edge of an open grassy area at the back of the house. It was an older brick building, possibly dating back to the 1950s, and sprawled over the grounds. The grass near the back door had been kept mowed but the rest of the garden had been left to itself. Rusted white garden furniture was scattered among areas of taller grass and shrubs. A pair of brightly coloured crimson rosellas was bathing in an ancient stone birdbath filled after recent rain. It could not have been more peaceful.

Beside the house was a large garage of the same vintage. Readying for a stint of housebreaking, Harrigan pulled on a pair of
disposable gloves. He didn’t approach the house directly but stayed out of sight, moving through the trees on the boundary till he was close to the back of the garage where there was a door. He tried it and it opened. Inside there was space for at least two cars but at present none were there. Most likely, no one was home. Life without a car would be impossible out here.

There was no way into the house through the garage and Harrigan went out the way he had come in. Between the house and the garage was a cement pathway which had been kept reasonably clear. A high gate between the garage and the front corner of the house blocked the view to the road. He opened the gate and looked up the length of the empty gravel driveway to the locked gate. Again, there was no sign of anyone being here.

He went to the back door. It was secured by a deadlock, newer and much stronger than the old lock on the house at Blackheath. He didn’t attempt to break it, but walked along the back of the house, turning a corner, until he was looking at a small high window. It was the kind that winds open outwards and was just large enough to let him into the house. He dragged over one of the garden chairs and stood on it, finding himself looking into the laundry. There was a window lock on the inside, but the wooden window frame was rotten, the white paint peeling away. Whoever owned this house now wasn’t concerned with maintenance. He took a jemmy out of his backpack and began to force the window open. The rotten wood tore away, the glass cracked. All that was left was a section of the window frame, still secured in place by the window lock.

Harrigan lowered the barely intact, broken window to the ground. Soon he was letting himself down into dry, old-fashioned, twin laundry tubs. By the look of the room, no one had washed any clothes in here for a long time. The door was shut. He took out his gun and tried the handle cautiously. It was locked but the lock was old-fashioned and easy enough to pick. Soon he stepped into a small hallway leading to the back door. The house was completely silent. He walked through into the kitchen.

Unlike the house at Blackheath, this place was both liveable and lived in. It looked and smelled clean, although nothing appeared to
have been upgraded from Amelie Santos’s time. The fridge was old enough to date back to the 1960s. He opened it and saw some basic food and a bottle of wine stored inside. Washed dishes, including two wine glasses, stood in the dish rack on the draining board. They were dry and had been for some time.

Listening for every sound, Harrigan moved from the kitchen into a dining room. There was no sign of anyone using this room. He opened a top drawer in the sideboard. Tablecloths, linen serviettes, place mats. In the next drawer, silver cutlery. Someone was using the house, but all they had done was move in on top of what was already here without changing anything. They ate and possibly worked and slept here, but it was no home.

He went through to the living room, where the windows looked out onto the front garden. Thickish, good-quality net curtains, now grey with dust, covered these windows. The room was shadowed but not so dark that it was difficult to see. In here, there was an atmosphere of complete abandonment. On a cabinet stood a photograph of Amelie Santos, probably from when she was in her early forties. She was dressed to ride, her cheek pressed up against her horse’s. Her smile was one of real happiness. Scrawled across the picture were the words
Buster and me
. It was covered in dust. Placed here more than fifty years ago, now meaningless to anyone and presumably ignored by whoever still came here.

Moving carefully, Harrigan walked down a hallway past several bedrooms. A quick glance into one of them told him that two people slept in one bed. It had been left unmade, the doona tossed back, the sheets disordered. A change of clothes for both a man and a woman were thrown over a chair. On the end of the bed there was a compact bundle of women’s clothes, a dress and underwear, all carefully folded.

Something about them caught his attention and he walked in to look at them more closely. He realised they were new, still folded as if they had just come out of their package. Waiting for someone to put them on for the first time. He found himself thinking of the woman who might wear them. The sight of them disturbed him, but why he couldn’t say. He looked around the bedroom. It had a stale smell. He left the clothes where they were and walked out.

The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was clean and useable. The make-up and the electric razor on the vanity unit showed that both a man and a woman had washed there, although perhaps not that morning. He went back outside. There was a set of double doors next to the bathroom. He opened them and found himself looking into a large linen cupboard, an old-fashioned one, the kind you could step inside. The sheets and towels must have dated back to Amelie Santos’s time. He glanced up. There was a manhole cover above his head. He closed the doors and moved on.

Then he smelled something: bleach. A little further past the bathroom was what appeared to be the fourth bedroom. There was an outside lock on the door and fittings for a padlock. He opened it. The room was shadowed and it was only possible to see by the light that came through the doorway. It was a small, bare room with white-tiled walls. There had once been a window but it was boarded over. There was nothing in there except a cheap two-litre plastic container of hospital-grade bleach against one wall. It was a secure room. The whole house was built of double brick and the door was thick wood. A place to wait until someone came for you.

He stepped inside to look more carefully. The room had a foul atmosphere. He looked down at the floor, which was bare wood. The boards were stained with patches of liquid discoloration. He squatted down to look at them more closely. You’d need a chemical analysis to know what had caused those markings.

Harrigan was staring at the floor when he saw a hairline cut in one of the boards close to the door. At the threshold to the room, he saw a notch in the same floorboard, just large enough for someone to get their finger into. You could only reach it when the door was open. Glanced at quickly, it looked like a natural flaw in one of the boards.

He levered it up and found himself looking into a cavity under the floor. He took his torch out of his backpack and shone it into the hole. There was a black bag inside, the kind used for carrying a laptop computer. He reached in and pulled it out. Beneath it was a briefcase. Harrigan took this out as well. Then he replaced the floorboard and carried both back into the living room where he placed them on the coffee table.

There were two main compartments to the black bag, each holding a slender laptop. Other smaller compartments had a range of portable hard drives and a number of flash drives. He took them out and looked them over. Each was labelled with a letter but there was no sign of any written records. He opened one of the laptops and turned it on. It asked for a password. Harrigan sat thinking. He typed in
Griffin
but the system responded with the message
Details unknown
. He turned the laptop off and closed it.

The briefcase was locked and there was no way he could guess the combination. He forced it open, pretty much destroying it in the process, to find it packed with neat bricks of American dollar bills. He took them out one by one and counted them. Used hundreds and fifties. Quite a nest egg. You could live very well anywhere in the world on this, for quite some time.

Harrigan suddenly realised that he was so absorbed in looking at these things, anyone could have walked up to him unnoticed. He looked up quickly but there was no one there. The room was empty. What to do with what he’d found? He put the laptops and portable drives back into the black bag and closed the briefcase again as best he could. He had already disturbed the chain of evidence. Assuming he was prepared to admit that he’d broken in here, it could be argued by a defence counsel that he’d compromised what was there, even planted these things. If he took them with him, it was theft.

He thought for a few moments and got to his feet. Collecting a chair from the dining room, he took it down to the linen cupboard where he stood on it and pushed open the manhole cover. Then, one after the other, he pushed the black bag and the briefcase as far into the roof cavity as possible. Let them wonder where they were.