The Labyrinth of Drowning (26 page)

Harrigan walked inside. The silence felt loud, like someone shrieking for his attention. He looked at the empty walls, the bare wooden floor. In the far corner, the floor had caved in. He walked forward and looked down into the space between the broken boards. Pale in the shadows, the bones he saw were all too real. There were two of them. Lying on their sides in the dankness, bodies that had decayed to skeletons, looking as if they were about to be absorbed into the ground. Thin locks of dark hair still clung about their skulls, their teeth were scattered like seeds. One had its hand just in front of its face, the way children lie sometimes when they’re sleeping. Indifferently, efficiently, the insects had cleaned their bones and built their nests around their shreds of clothing. Whoever they were, these people had been here for a long time. They couldn’t be the source of the stench he smelled now.

In the torchlight he saw a line of ants near his feet. The busy column had cut a path through the muck on the floor towards the opposite corner of the room. He shone his torch on the column and followed it. A line visible through the dirt and leading past the windows that looked out of the front of the surgery. There were crude, broken marks on the floor where the boards had been roughly taken up and then laid back down again. He counted them as he walked. Four, making six with the two in the corner. One set of marks was newer than the others. Here the ants were disappearing into a crack in the floor, busily at work.

Someone had died here recently. Someone had stood out there in the waiting room facing the unimaginable before finding release in their own permanent silence. Harrigan stood over these makeshift graves and looked down with an instinctive respect for the dead. The silence no longer jammed in his ears. I’ve found you, he thought. You can lie quietly now.

Harrigan reached the other side of the fence with deep relief. The sunshine on his back, the sight of colour, the sounds of birds, brought him to life. He breathed clean air into his lungs. His phone was in one hand, his gun in the other. He was thinking, seeing a map of the suburbs roundabout in his mind. You could walk through the park from Duffys Forest to here. Probably there were
tracks you could take. If you knew what you were doing, knew the terrain well enough, you could make your own tracks. Make your own and choose your time. No one would see you. Make your victims walk from the white-tiled room there to here, both of you knowing what you were going to. From bolt hole to graveyard, it was a ritual carried out six times over the last ten or so years. Not so infrequent. An addiction.

He was weighing up the question of who to ring. Borghini was with the local command. It was his turf, he knew what he was doing and he wasn’t likely to be put off from doing his job.

Before walking up to the road, Harrigan sheathed his gun. The Mellishes still weren’t back from their birthday party; there was no sign of a Volvo deprived of its usual parking spot. But there was another car a little further up the street that he hadn’t seen before. He stopped just at the entrance to the Mellishes’ driveway and looked at it. Then he stepped away from the avenue of trees that sheltered the driveway from the rest of the street. Trees that would have hidden him from view if he had walked along there to get to his own car.

They came at him anyway, three of them, too quickly for him to avoid them or reach for his gun. He still had his phone, he had already punched in Borghini’s number. He hit the call button as they reached him. Ponticellis’ thugs. His phone was knocked out of his hands, skidding away. He fought them hard, dragging them further out onto the street where they had to be seen. He thought he heard a shout from someone else, not them, but by then he was face down on the ground. He felt the savage jab of a hypodermic needle in his thigh and then the world went black.

G
race drove through the quiet streets of Brooklyn feeling the eeriness of knowing that somewhere Clive’s surveillance teams were watching like patrons at a theatre where the action was real. The town was laid out in a long, narrow line along an inlet. It wasn’t much more than houses clustered along a single dog’s-leg road that eventually reached its dead end at a public jetty looking out at the main channel of the Hawkesbury River. By the time Grace reached the parking area close to the bay, it was getting dark and the place was almost deserted.

Sara was waiting, solitary in the dusk. She was dressed in jeans and a jacket and had her hands in her pockets. The bush-covered hills behind her tall figure were a hard, massive shape against the softening sky. On the water, the last of the light had taken on an iridescent, diamond-shaped patterning, rocking with the movement of the waves. Boats, small and large, were moored some distance out. Was Clive’s boat out there? He had said that it would be.

Grace walked up to Sara. She was pacing restlessly up and down.

‘You’re hours late. Where’s Narelle?’ she asked.

‘Did you set that up?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Joe Ponticelli. Did you set him on me?’

‘I said I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘First you change things. I’m told to come here to Brooklyn. And when I do, a motorbike with a pillion comes up behind me. In fact, it looks just like how Kidd got shot. They shoot through the passenger window. But they don’t get me, they get Narelle. I ran them off the road. I had a look. Joe Ponticelli’s dead. I wasn’t sure about the other one. If he wasn’t then, he probably is now.’

‘Where’s Narelle?’

‘Sleeping in the bush. She’s not going to wake up again. I had to go and wash as well.’

‘What about your car?’

‘I had to get rid of it. The one I’m driving now belongs to someone else.’

‘Then why bring it here? It’ll be traced. Did anyone see you?’

‘No! I’m more careful than that. Let’s get down to business. I’ve got the passport, the tape and I’ve got Narelle’s ID. I want to be paid.’

Sara looked at her and then around her into the dark, but there was no obvious sign of movement.

‘Is that her ID you’re carrying in that bag?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Let’s see it.’

‘No. Later. I’m owed a lot for this.’

Sara smiled arrogantly at her. ‘You’ll be paid in full, don’t worry about that. But that wasn’t supposed to happen. You never know who’s going to turn out to be unreliable, do you?’ She laughed softly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘They were watching you all the way from Liverpool. Joel might have trusted you. I wasn’t sure I did.’

It was only when Grace had to deal with them that her backup had told her they were there. Clive’s directions.

‘Why did they go after me? I was delivering Narelle. What’s the point of sabotaging that?’

Sara didn’t reply. She stared at Grace with an almost frightened expression on her face. Then she shrugged.

‘I don’t know. I just told them to watch you. And you killed him! God.’

‘It was a stupid thing to do,’ Grace said contemptuously. ‘Next time you want backup, pick someone who’s not a lunatic.’

Sara looked away. ‘We don’t have time to talk about this. Let’s go.’

‘Wait a moment. Where’s Joel?’

‘Out there somewhere.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘It will just have to be,’ Sara snapped.

‘No, it won’t. Where’s Joel and where are we going?’

‘For a boat ride. What else?’

‘I’m not getting on any boat until I know where I’m going.’

‘
Keep your voice down
.’

There was silence as Sara looked around. Her face was barely visible in the dark, her expression unseen. She stepped forward.

‘I’ll tell you where we’re going,’ she said in a whispered voice. ‘But no way am I telling you where Joel is right now. Do we trust each other or don’t we?’

‘Where are we going?’ Grace asked.

‘Cottage Point. It’s not far. Now let’s get a move on. We’ve wasted too much time.’

What if she took out her gun and arrested Sara now? But she still didn’t know where Griffin was. The surveillance teams would have heard everything that had been said. They could get to Cottage Point if they had to.
Are you going to follow me up the river, Clive
?
Fish me out
?

‘How do I get back from wherever we’re going?’

‘Joel will drive you. It’s all organised.’

‘All right,’ Grace said. ‘Let’s go.’

The sailing boat, named
Cottage Days
, was waiting at the pontoon. It was smaller and neater than Grace had expected.

‘Is it only you?’ she asked.

‘I know what I’m doing. This is what I do to relax. I sail. I know this boat, I’ve had it for years. I know the river. I love it here.’ Sara’s sense of relief was obvious in her voice. ‘You can just be yourself here. Get in, and do me a favour: don’t talk.’

Grace sat in silence while Sara cast off and, using the motor, guided the boat past the other vessels and out into the channel.
Stars covered the sky. This far from the city, it was possible to see out to other worlds. Sara turned off the motor and began to pilot the boat under sail. Then she started to laugh.

‘You killed Joe Ponticelli. Life has its twists and turns. Oh, what a joke that is.’

‘Why?’

‘You’ll find out.’

There was malice in her voice, almost childishly so.

‘Why didn’t you want me to talk?’ Grace asked.

‘Because I may not get to sail down this river again for a while after tonight and I want to enjoy it.’

‘Why? Are you leaving? Where are you going? I thought we were setting up a deal.’

‘Maybe you’ll be our Australian connection,’ she said mockingly.

They sailed on in silence for a short while. There was only the sound of the river, the presence of the forested hillsides and the soft, starlit sky. Sara had withdrawn, she was silent.

‘How long have you been sailing?’ Grace asked.

‘Since I was a kid. Don’t talk to me. I want to enjoy this.’

‘Why shouldn’t I talk to you?’

‘Because most people are fucking idiots and I’m not sure you’re not one of them!’

Grace waited. Sara was where no one could touch her, lost in the simple self-directed pleasure of what she was doing. Grace spoke, deliberately puncturing the emotion.

‘If you’re leaving, you’ll miss all this when you go, won’t you? There can’t be anywhere else in the world like this for you. Why do you have to go? Why can’t you stay here?’

Sara looked back at Grace, her expression shadowed.

‘It’s just the way things have to be,’ she said.

‘Is Cottage Point where you were going to bring Narelle?’

‘Do you think that would have been difficult? Elliot’s waiting for you at Cottage Point, Marie. Oh boy, let’s go. I want to see him as soon as I can.’

Sara imitated Narelle with too much savagery for Grace to laugh.

‘You just called her Marie.’

‘That’s her name when she’s with Joel.’

There was silence. Sara was staring out at the water.

‘You and Joel are an item,’ Grace said after a while. ‘Did it bother you when he spent time with Narelle?’

‘No,’ Sara replied. ‘Any more than it would bother me if he spent time with you. That’s what you want, isn’t it? It’s not just the money. You want him.’

Grace wondered why she found this so offensive when it had been part of Clive’s strategy from the beginning. She had met it before; situations where other women assumed you were chasing after their partners when you had no interest in them at all. It had worked for her; it had helped persuade Sara she was genuine.

Sara laughed. ‘I knew it. He thought you were too standoffish. I told him you were just playing hard to get. You thought you were better than he was. I told him, just wait. She’ll be there for you. Like all the others.’

She. I’m sitting here in person. Why should you think I find him as compelling as you do
? But if she said she found him repellent her cover was gone.
All the others
. How many of them had there been? She kept silent. Sara smiled at her, scornfully.

‘Where did he meet Narelle?’ Grace asked.

‘At my parents’ place. Her and all the other wannabe actresses seeing who they can have sex with to get a part. Didn’t have a hope.’

And you just watched while he chatted up this little self-serving user, Grace thought, seduced her in your own parents’ house, and set her up as a gaoler and a fantasy pastime in a brothel you probably both owned. And you didn’t care. Not much.

‘Joel told me he’d known you since you were fifteen,’ Grace said.

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘He was your first boyfriend. That’s all.’

Your first boyfriend and you never shook him off. Some women don’t
. Sara was staring at her with hard-eyed condescension.

‘We understand each other. Something you can only see from the outside. You’ll never get anywhere near it.’

Grace thought how at that moment Sara sounded strangely like Narelle.

‘Where’d you meet him?’

‘At a camp I used to have to go to when I was a teenager. He was different. He saw things from the outside, the way I did. He was smarter than anyone else. We got talking and we knew we understood things other people didn’t.’

‘You still think that.’

‘I know it,’ Sara said.

‘Why’d you have to go to camp?’

‘Because my parents didn’t give a shit if I was alive or dead!’

Grace waited till the air cleared.

‘Do you get on better with them now?’ she asked bravely.

‘They’re useful.’ Sara spoke with a sense of superiority. ‘Joel taught me that. Use them. He told me, if they don’t care about you, just use them. From everything they’ve got, take what
you
want. Drain everything you want out of them. We did just that.’

Again, Grace waited.

‘You’ve never had sex with anyone else,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to.’

‘What if you did?’

‘No! Why would that happen? You really don’t know Joel. You don’t know what he is.’

Why would I want to know what you know?

‘Do you take him sailing?’

‘He doesn’t like the water.’

‘Does he mind if you go sailing? Or does he think you shouldn’t do things he doesn’t like you doing?’

‘Sailing is just something I do,’ Sara said, angrily.

‘You’re rich.’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’

‘You had money, but Joel taught you other ways to make more money. So you went and did it. Whatever he wants you to do, you go and do it. Except this. Sailing. But now you have to leave that behind as well.’

Sara’s head jerked back in a dangerous way. ‘You don’t know anything about us. I’ve learned from him all my life. The first years we were together, they were amazing. He taught me what you can do if you want to.’ She smiled in the strangest way, barely visible in
the light. ‘I’d never had a high like that before. No one else would have shown me those things. You just don’t know. Compared to him, you’re just like Narelle. A nothing. Now you can just shut up.’

Grace felt her gun against her ribcage, glad it was there.
Did you hear that, Clive
?
I’m walking into a meeting with two very dangerous people. You’d better be there
.

They turned into Cowan Water. The steep waterside hills of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park closed in on them. Then the lights of the tiny suburb were in view. Situated on the banks of Cowan Creek and surrounded by bush in the heart of the national park, it was an isolated, if beautiful, place. From here, the lights of Sydney were a pale glow in the night sky. Soon the boat slid quietly up to a mooring place. There was a dinghy moored nearby. They got into it and Sara rowed them to the private jetty of a three-storeyed house, the last in the short line of buildings on the water’s edge.

There was a light shining dully over a door not far from the jetty; otherwise the house was in darkness. Before they went inside, Sara turned and looked around at the water, the hills surrounding them, and the sky.

‘What are you doing?’ Grace said. ‘Saying goodbye to
Cottage Days
? We’re not coming back here then.’

‘Just keep quiet,’ Sara hissed, an edge of tears in her voice. ‘Sound carries.’

She let them both in, switching on the lights to a spacious rumpus room. The décor, from the ’70s, looked old and kitsch. Under other circumstances, the house would have had a comfortable, holiday feel, the kind of place where you could kick your shoes off. There was no sign of Griffin.

‘Is this where you were bringing Narelle?’

‘Check that room over there.’

Grace walked up to a door with a lock on the outside. She looked back over her shoulder but Sara hadn’t moved.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m not coming after you.’

It was a small room with one window, too small to get out of and too high to reach. The walls were brick, the door solid wood. Once you were locked in here, there would be no way out until someone opened the door.

‘What was going to happen to her in there?’

‘You were going to shoot her.’

‘I was?’ Grace said.

‘I was going to strip her and then I was going to watch. She was going to cry and beg for mercy and I’d say, too bad, Elliot doesn’t love you any more. But she’s already dead. We don’t have to do that.’

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘It’s the one you’re carrying. You are carrying one, aren’t you?’

‘Why me?’

‘Proving yourself to Joel. Oh, he thinks you’re genuine and I’m beginning to think you are too. But that’s what you were going to do to prove it.’

No, I would have had to arrest you and take you in. The operation would have been aborted
. Grace shut the door and once again felt the security of her gun against her ribs.

‘There’s no Narelle. What are we doing here now?’ she asked.

‘Just wait.’

Sara took a mobile out of a drawer, turned it on, sent a quick message, then turned the phone off again and put it in her pocket.