The Labyrinth of Drowning (3 page)

The driver of the four-wheel-drive got out and shot into the prisoner’s car, smashing the glass. He was wearing a balaclava. ‘Open it!’ he yelled at the driver. The back door on the intact side was opened and the gunman shot the driver at point-blank range. One of the guards, clearly wounded, was pushed out onto the road, Newell tumbling after him. Dragging some kind of cutter out of his pocket, the gunman cut the handcuffs that joined the two men together.

Then it was all over. The driver of the four-wheel-drive and Newell were on the back of the two motorbikes, roaring out of sight.

Harrigan and Griffin got to their feet. Griffin’s sunglasses had been knocked off in the fall and had landed some distance away on the footpath. He went and got them before brushing himself down. He touched his lapel. ‘I’ve lost my badge.’ His face and voice were calm. ‘Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!’ he said, sounding almost like a schoolboy. ‘Trigger-happy people. They really like using their guns.’ He matched his words with the feigned action of shooting at the people lying on the road.

‘Are you okay, mate?’ Harrigan asked, wondering if the reaction might be shock.

‘I’m fine. There’s my badge.’ He bent down and picked it up. ‘The pin’s broken.’

‘Wait here for the police,’ Harrigan said. ‘They’ll want your statement.’

Griffin looked at Harrigan. His eyes showed no emotion. ‘Don’t call me mate,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you worried about your client?’

‘Why should I be? You’d have to say his troubles are over.’

Harrigan would have said they were just starting but he didn’t have time to talk to Griffin any longer. He ran to the scene through
the chaos of stopped traffic. Passers-by were getting shakily to their feet. When he reached the prisoner’s car, he saw the driver clearly dead, one guard lying seriously wounded on the road and the other bleeding and unconscious in the back. There was another dead man at the wheel of the escort car, while his partner was sprawled on the road, wounded and bleeding, unable to move.

A man shouted over the ruckus. ‘I’m from St Vincent’s, we’ve got help coming. Stay calm.’

‘I’m a doctor,’ a woman called and hurried to the wounded man lying on the road by the escort car.

Harrigan returned to the prisoner’s car to help the two wounded men there. ‘We need another doctor over here and quickly,’ he yelled back. Around him, car horns rose to a blaring cacophony. On what should have been a quiet autumn day in Sydney, all hell had broken loose.

C
race sat facing a largish man at a small table in the bright room; a video camera was recording their meeting. There were no windows in the room; its brightness came from the overhead lights and the bare white walls and floor. The man was reading over the fine print on a form he had just filled in. He looked up at Grace; she smiled professionally.

‘If you’re happy to agree to all this, Doug,’ she said, ‘I need you to sign here and here.’

He half-smiled in return, with a touch of embarrassed egotism at finding himself the centre of attention. ‘Will I really go to gaol if I tell anyone I’ve been here or even that I know this place exists?’

The sound of their voices was sharp in the bright clarity of the room. He wore light-sensitive glasses which seemed to have become fixed in a permanent, very pale blue colour, giving him the look of someone wearing sunglasses unnecessarily.

‘Do you want anyone to know what we’re going to discuss here?’ she asked in reply.

He shook his head. He had heavy features and looked older than his thirty-nine years. The form said he was a married man with three children, and that his wife was a part-time commerce teacher at the local Catholic high school. He worked as a middle-ranking
public servant for the state government. A family without much spare cash after the mortgage, car and private school fees had been paid. The last person who’d want his wife to know he regularly visited a brothel called Life’s Pleasures.

‘I’m only here because Coco’s dead,’ he said. He didn’t look at Grace. ‘She had to be illegal. When you went and saw her, she’d freeze up. The last time I saw her, she was curled up on the bed, really tense. I walked out. I asked Lynette if I could see one of the other girls instead. It just wasn’t fun.’

‘Who’s Lynette?’ Grace said.

‘The receptionist. She said I could swap if I wanted to. I didn’t have to pay again.’

‘Was there any other reason you thought Coco might have been illegal?’

‘Her English wasn’t very good. I thought if you were here legally, you’d have to have some English. And she was new. She started just a couple of months ago.’

‘Why did you keep seeing her?’ Grace prodded gently.

‘No one’s going to know?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Passing on this information would be a criminal offence.’

The reassurance seemed to help. He held his hands together on the table, looking ahead. His face went red.

‘You didn’t have to wear a condom,’ he said.

‘I don’t think you told the police that,’ Grace said quietly.

‘I didn’t trust them to keep their mouths shut.’

Orion had given him a paper-thin sense of safety where he could reveal himself. His sense of guilt must have weighed on him every night before he went to sleep.

‘Were there any other workers you didn’t have to wear a condom for?’ Grace asked.

‘No. Not that I knew about anyway.’

‘You weren’t worried about your health? Or your wife’s?’

‘Marie said Coco had regular health checks. Me and my wife don’t have sex that often. She doesn’t seem to like it much.’ His voice was flat.

‘Who’s Marie?’

‘
Miss
Marie Li. The manageress.’ He drew quotation marks in the air. ‘She hasn’t been there that long. She’s mainly decorative. Lynette’s the one who makes things happen.’

‘Except in this case,’ Grace said.

‘Lynette said Coco wasn’t anything to do with her. I should always talk to Marie about her.’

‘How did you hear about Coco in the first place?’

His face was still red. ‘It was on the net. They’ve got a website.
Ask Marie for something special
. I thought I’d see what it was.’

‘How often do you visit?’

‘Once a fortnight. I build up my flexitime at work and go before I come home.’

‘How do you pay?’

‘Cash.’

Doesn’t your wife notice the money? She must know
.

‘What sort of an establishment is it?’

‘Well run. It’s got a lot of girls, a spa. It’s private.’

‘Private?’

‘You don’t have to walk in off the street. You’d know what I mean if you went there.’

‘Were there any other workers there from overseas?’

‘Oh yeah. I’ll tell you what, they’re beautiful girls. I know men who go there just for them. There’s an African girl—she’s out of this world. But you have to pay extra, a lot extra. Coco and the other girls, you didn’t.’ He looked away, his heavy body seeming to be weighed down. ‘Is that it? I should get back to work.’

‘One last question. Did Coco ever wear any jewellery when you saw her?’

‘She didn’t wear anything.’

‘No rings?’

‘Nope.’

She glanced at his left hand. He was wearing his wedding ring. Did he take it off before he visited? Not a question to ask.

‘Thank you, Doug. That’s all. You will have to wait until the transcript’s printed out because you have to read and sign it as an accurate record. But that won’t take very long.’

‘My family’s not going to hear about this?’

Grace shook her head. ‘No. That’s a promise. Shall I get Carol outside to get you a coffee?’

‘Yeah. White, one sugar.’

‘It’s on its way.’

Grace left quickly. She had another meeting, in a room much deeper into the centre of the building, where Clive was waiting for her. She’d already sent him a brief summary of her morning’s work.

In contrast to the noise outside—the aircraft flying overhead and the daily clamour of the city’s traffic—this room had a quietness that ate sound. Again there were no windows but this time the lights were muted. Grace sat down without speaking a greeting. The table was often bare; its function was to serve as a barrier between them, something to lean on. Today Clive had brought a folder with him; this meant he had plans of his own.

‘What did our informant have to say?’ he asked.

‘A bit more than he told the police. You didn’t have to wear a condom when you had sex with Coco. The brothel put out a teaser on the net for clients. Which means our informant also surfs the net.’

‘We’re not interested in his tastes. Are there any other workers there with that same job description?’

‘He didn’t know about them if there were.’

‘Is this man telling the truth?’

‘Oh, I think so. It’s cost him a lot to come forward. He’s the perfect informant for us. All he wants is complete secrecy, particularly from his family.’

‘His wife really doesn’t know?’

‘Of course she knows,’ Grace replied briskly. ‘She probably knows down to the last cent what he spends. And whatever he says, he probably knows exactly how much she’s prepared to tolerate. It’s the lack of a condom she won’t know about, and that’s what he doesn’t want her to find out. He’d be in the family court the next day.’

Clive smiled with scorn and turned his attention to her interim report.

‘It’s interesting what you have to say about Kidd from this morning’s meeting.’

‘There’s a possibility of corruption here,’ she said. ‘If Kidd was involved in this woman’s escape in any way, that’s a weakness we need to identify.’

Clive was looking at her distantly. He had a red-covered document in his hand. ‘Is it only that? I’d say you haven’t forgiven him for saying you were responsible for Coco’s death. In the meantime, read that. When she supposedly escaped, I decided we should follow your judgement and have a good look at this Mr Kidd. That’s what the finance people came up with.’

His comment had caught her off guard, wounding her a little. She flicked open the dossier on Jon Kidd. A single man in his late forties and a long-term employee with the Department of Immigration, based at their Parramatta offices. Once a wealthy man, his financial records indicated a constant and substantial drain of money over the last three years, including the sale of shares and investments, culminating in a 100 per cent mortgage on his house in Mosman, where he lived with his mother. There was also a large personal loan with his car, a Mercedes, as surety. Previously he had been a regular visitor to Thailand and Cambodia and, until recently, a generous donor to orphanages in Bangkok and Phnom Penh. Those trips had stopped in recent months, presumably due to a lack of funds.

‘Looking at his travel records, he mainly preferred the Cambodian orphanage,’ Clive said, ‘but he still spent time in Thailand.’

‘What did he do with these children from the orphanages?’ Grace said. ‘Take them away on holiday with him? Whatever it was, he doesn’t do it now. He’s almost bankrupt. He’s being blackmailed.’

‘Bled dry,’ Clive agreed. ‘I’ve directed our IT people to trace his computer traffic and, if they can, to hack into his own computer. I’ve also put out a “don’t touch” order on him just in case any other agency knows about his existence. The Thai woman’s escape was interesting. An act of desperation if ever I saw one, and Kidd was the person best placed to make it happen. I want to know if he is in fact responsible and what’s behind it.’

‘Does this mean we’ve decided once and for all that Coco is Jirawan Sanders, as the initials on her wedding ring would suggest?’

He leaned over the table towards her. Grace sat upright, preventing herself from drawing back. ‘Did you at any time tell Jon Kidd or the police that we were seeking a woman of that name?’

‘No, of course I didn’t.’

‘Then this is for you.’ He pushed a photograph across the table. It was sourced from Interpol and labelled as top secret. The Thai woman, Coco, was sitting at a table somewhere shyly smiling for the camera. The name underneath the image was Jirawan Sanders.

‘You had a photograph after all,’ Grace said in a neutral voice. ‘Why didn’t we just take her out of there? And why couldn’t you tell me you knew who she was?’

‘I had no reason to believe she wouldn’t be safe in Villawood. I didn’t want to broadcast just how interested we were.’ He smiled again. ‘This is the first significant job I’ve given you. I had no way of knowing I could trust you. I wanted you to prove that I could.’

‘I’ve worked for Orion for five years. You had no basis for assuming that I couldn’t be trusted with classified information.’

‘I wanted to know if you were competent. It’s turned out you are.’

Grace sat for a few moments not trusting herself to speak.
You as good as killed her
. Kidd had said that to her. Orion, via Clive, had as good as killed Jirawan Sanders by looking to finesse for advantage instead of acting in the most straightforward way. In that moment, it became crucial to Grace that she saw this through and found whoever had murdered the Thai woman.

‘Can we call her Jirawan in that case?’ she asked, her voice calm.

‘If you think that’s necessary. What I want you to do at the brothel tonight is to see if you can confirm our informant’s information. See if there’s anyone there who might have acted as this woman’s gaoler. And watch Kidd. See what he does. Does he know or is he known to anyone there? Any detail you can pick up. We’re already monitoring his phone calls.’

‘What’s our relationship with the police on this?’ she asked. ‘So far, they’re running it as a murder investigation with me as an observer. Are we going to bring them into this operation? They must be wondering why we’re still in there.’

‘Not just yet. If we’re watching Kidd, I don’t want them getting in the way. Right now, I want to know how you’re feeling about this job. My judgement is you’re emotionally involved.’

‘No, it’s just another a job.’

‘No, it’s not. Not this time.’

He looked at her silently. The tension in the room made her sit rigidly in her chair. She hated it here where there was no place to hide. Things said in this room could be as intimate as those said between her and Paul but without the warmth or the connection. Clive knew almost as much about her as Paul did. The biographies of all his officers were secured on his hard drive, variables that might affect someone’s work.

‘You’re not the woman I was expecting to meet when you came back from maternity leave,’ he said finally. ‘From everything I’ve heard about you, I’d say you lost a skin or two in that time. Your personal life has taken a lot of hours recently, which I’ve accommodated at our inconvenience. In this profession, your work comes first. But I’m still going to keep you on this operation.’

‘What made you decide that?’ she asked, managing to keep her anger out of her voice.

‘Let’s assume Kidd is corrupt and being blackmailed. His security clearance means he knows you’re an agent with Orion. If the person who has him on a string also knows you’re from Orion, they might come looking for you. Let’s find out.’

‘Wouldn’t it be more likely they’d give me as wide a berth as possible?’

‘Think of that escape. A desperate act. Wouldn’t they want to try and find out exactly what we know?’

‘I’m the bait, you mean. For what? I still have no information on what this operation’s really about or who or what the target is.’

‘When you need to know, you’ll be told. I don’t think that time has come yet. But I can tell you this is a very significant operation. Being involved in this way would be quite a feather in your cap.’ He tossed this cliché at her as if it were a hook.

‘How much danger would that scenario put me in?’ she asked.

‘You’d have full backup. My judgement is you’re still professional enough to deal with it.’

‘Is this a direction from you?’ she asked. ‘And if it is, is there any agreement to support it? Normally when this kind of arrangement is made, there’s a written agreement and a set of directions on how to proceed.’

‘That’s a refusal.’

‘No, it’s a request for clear, written directions.’

‘Then we’ll see what happens first. In the meantime, you stay assigned to this operation under my direction.’

Again, he opened his folder. This time, he spread out a series of photographs. Jirawan in the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Photographs Grace had taken herself.

‘There’s something else I think we should discuss,’ Grace said, keeping her irritation under control. ‘Given this woman is Jirawan Sanders, what about her husband? Is he missing? Or is he dead?’

Clive looked up from the photographs. ‘He’s dead. Peter Sanders. He was an Australian who ran an import–export business in Bangkok, which is where he met this woman. That’s the last piece of information I’m going to give you right now.’