Alex Palmer - The Labyrinth of Drowning

Marie was smoking quickly, a packet of cigarettes and a gold lighter close to her hand. There was no ingrained smell of stale cigarette smoke in the flat; if there had been, it would have disturbed the ambience, the smell of the flowers. If Marie lit up at other times, she must have had to go outside. No more than in her early twenties, she was stylishly attractive with a resemblance to Gong Li herself. Her eyebrows were finely curved, her mouth shaped full with red lipstick. Iridescent red tints in her black hair matched her rose-coloured fingernails. Her hands were shaking badly and she seemed unable to sit completely still.

‘Who’s this?’ she asked, her face showing more confusion and fear than anger.

Borghini gave the standard reply to that question. ‘Grace Riordan, one of my officers. I’ve already shown Marie a photograph of Coco and told her she’s dead,’ he said to Grace. ‘I’ve also told her we have information that she was a worker here. She denies that. She also says she’s never met the brothel’s owners and doesn’t know who they are.’

‘Lynette handles all that kind of thing,’ Marie said. ‘She deals with the accountants. I’m the hostess. That’s all I do.’

‘You’re the manager,’ Borghini said.

‘The hostess,’ she replied sharply. ‘It might be called manager but it really means hostess. I make people feel at ease. I’m better at that than Lynette.’

Grace sat down. Marie lit a cigarette from the end of the one she was just finishing. Jirawan’s photograph, taken at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, lay on the table.

‘Where did you get this information about this girl?’ Marie asked. ‘Whoever it was, they must have been mistaken. I don’t know her. She’s never worked here.’

‘Our informant knew your receptionist’s name,’ Borghini said.

‘Maybe he’s been a customer here. He might have a grudge against us.’

‘So if I go downstairs and ask Lynette about Coco, what’s she going to tell me?’

‘That she’s never seen her here and she’s never heard of her.’

‘And the workers?’

‘The same!’ Marie’s voice had an edge of panic. ‘She was never here. I don’t know why you keep asking me. Where did this information come from? What was this informant’s name?’ She spoke with a modified Australian accent, giving her speech a strained, artificial, up-market gloss.

‘That information is confidential,’ Borghini said.

‘We don’t even know who’s accusing us. That doesn’t seem very fair.’

‘Who were you expecting tonight? You got the champagne out for someone.’

‘That’s none of your business!’ She almost shrieked this, theatrically.

‘I think you’ll find it is,’ Borghini replied. ‘Whoever he is, he hasn’t turned up.’

‘My private life is my affair. It’s got nothing to do with this.’

Grace’s gaze went past Marie to a plain-clothes officer heading towards them from the hallway that presumably led to the bedrooms. He whispered in Borghini’s ear.

‘Okay,’ Borghini said. ‘If you don’t mind, Marie, we’ll just stop there for the moment. There’s a room in your flat I want to have a look at.’

She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I don’t have anything to hide. This is my home and I don’t like you being here but I don’t have anything to hide. Which room is it?’

‘The one beside the linen cupboard.’

‘There’s nothing to see in there. I’ll show you.’

Marie rose to her feet. She was slender, and wearing a red silk cheongsam set off by very high stiletto heels. Kidd fell into step behind her. They all followed her down the hallway past the main bedroom-a large room furnished with a king-size bed and soft rugs, including one that seemed to be a genuine tiger’s skin. The windows were covered with heavy drapes. They stopped outside another door.

‘Is this the room you’re interested in?’ she said. ‘I can’t see why.’

Furnished with a single bed, it was small and spare and lacking the gaudy luxury of the rest of the flat. There was no window and the door had a lock on the outside.

‘Why do you need a lock on this door?’ Borghini asked. ‘Do you lock anyone in here?’

‘No, of course I don’t. That lock was here when I moved into this place. I don’t use this room. Go inside and look at it if you want to. It’s not such a terrible place. It has heating and an en suite.’

Grace stepped into the room. The surfaces seemed free of dust and there was the same faint smell of artificial air freshener as in the room downstairs. There would be nothing in here, not even a hair. A place with no exit, except to another room downstairs which also had no way out. She returned to the hallway.

‘It’s very clean for a room you never use,’ she said to Marie. ‘Have you cleaned it recently? It smells of air freshener.’

‘I like things clean.’

Grace glanced at Borghini. He was standing back a little, watching; a slight nod said she should go on.

‘You like things clean?’ she said. ‘Is this a maid’s room? A place for someone who cooks and cleans for you?’

‘I do my own cooking. I like to cook.’

‘Then who does your cleaning? Whoever slept in there?’

‘No one slept in there.’

‘Then who cleaned it last and when? It must have been recently. You can smell the air freshener. Why do you need to clean and put air freshener into a room no one uses?’

‘I don’t know. I…’ Marie stopped, not knowing what to say.

Another of Borghini’s people appeared in the hallway. ‘Something else you need to see,’ she said to him quietly.

In the main bedroom, an ornate Chinese cabinet stood open on the dressing table. Beside it was a shiny, silver-edged mirror, a razor blade with a silver edge matching the mirror’s and a thin silver straw, similarly decorated. The silverwork was delicately, intricately made.

‘We found those in the cabinet,’ the officer said.

‘Are these yours?’ Borghini asked Marie.

‘No. I don’t know what they are.’

‘If they’re not yours, can you tell me how they might have got here?’

She shook her head dumbly. She had tears in her eyes.

‘Perhaps someone put them there. A visitor who didn’t like me. I don’t know.’

‘We found this as well,’ one of the other plain-clothes officers said. He was holding a black silk pouch peeled open to reveal several broken lumps of cocaine in a plastic bag. It looked like a stash kept for personal use.

Grace glanced around the room once more. On the dressing table were vases of white roses mixed with smaller flowers, dark blue in colour. A silk and lace negligee lay thrown over a chair, waiting for someone to slip it on. The negligee was for two to enjoy; the cocaine seemed to be only for one. And not Marie.

‘Marie, why don’t you take a seat back out in the kitchen?’ Borghini said. ‘We’ll keep looking through here and then we’ll need to ask you some more questions. I’m afraid we’ll be keeping you for a while yet. Maybe you’d like to have a cup of coffee while you’re waiting. We’ll get to you as soon as we can.’

‘Can I call someone? I want to call someone.’

‘Who do you want to call?’

‘In these circumstances, who do you think?’ Kidd said. It was the first time he’d spoken. ‘Your family. A lawyer.’

‘I’ll call my brother,’ Marie said. ‘Can I do that?’

Grace wasn’t certain who she was asking.

‘You can do that if you want to,’ Borghini told her. ‘But I’m going to ask you not to leave the premises. If you go and sit down now and make your call, we’ll keep searching in here. I’ll send someone to look after you.’

Marie turned to leave the room. She bumped against the uniformed policewoman as if she hadn’t seen her, then glanced around confused. She saw Kidd and looked away. The policewoman guided her out.