Alex Palmer - The Labyrinth of Drowning

‘Are you there?’ the operative asked.

‘Yes. I don’t know what that was about. Whether it was someone’s idea of a joke or if someone was following me from my op. Can you report it? And make my request for a team to pick up Jacqueline Ryan urgent. Just in case they were following me all the way from Parramatta.’

‘Will do.’

She hung up. She was shaky, tired.

When she turned off Darling Street and was on her way down the hill, she noticed a car behind her. It was still with her when she reached Snails Bay. As she was backing down the steep driveway of her house, the car passed her, turning into Wharf Road. It was a red Saab, a car she’d often seen speeding up the street. She turned off the ignition and sat looking around her. Everything was peaceful. Maybe no one was out there and she could just relax.

Could she tell Paul what had just happened or was it work? No, it was work. Another secret between them. At least she was home, she thought, looking at the lighted windows with relief.

In the silence of the house, Harrigan, standing by Ellie’s open doorway, could hear only the quiet breathing of his daughter while she slept. If Grace were home, she’d have put on some music; the jazz she loved so much, singers and musicians he’d never heard of before he met her. She sang their daughter to sleep in her own soft, slightly throaty voice. Other than in the shower, it was almost the only time she sang these days. He liked her voice and wished she would sing more. ‘One day I’ll join a choir,’ she’d told him. ‘Whatever you want,’ he’d replied, wanting her to be happy, even now not quite able to believe that she could be happy with him.

When she wasn’t here, he preferred silence. Tonight, after what he’d seen just a few hours ago, this silence mixed with the sound of Ellie’s breathing gave him a sense of cleanness. He had fed and bathed Ellie, settled her to bed and read her to sleep. She had curled up on the pillow with the promise that her mother would be there in the morning. Each of these things worked against the pictures in his mind of the dead and wounded men he had seen that day. He was yet to find out if the memory would reassert itself like some malignant intrusion.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen that kind of thing before. Often enough when he’d been with the police, he’d looked cold-bloodedly at the dead, dealt in a detached way with the living, and then worked as hard as he could to find who’d done the killing. Throughout, other people did the grieving. He’d hoped he had left all that behind. He had come home this afternoon with a sense of sickness that was new to him.

Downstairs, he poured himself a whisky. Grace didn’t drink and because of that he didn’t drink much himself. Tonight he needed alcohol to ease his thoughts. He went upstairs again and into his study, a plain room at the back of the house that looked down onto his long, narrow strip of land to Snails Bay on the inner harbour. This was where he collected his thoughts, where he worked. Joel Griffin had left almost as bad a taste in Harrigan’s mouth as the killings he’d witnessed. What did Griffin know about either Grace or him? And what did he need to do about it?

He googled Griffin’s name and waited to see if anything new might come up from the last time he’d gone searching. There was one fact he hadn’t thought much about before: Griffin hadn’t qualified in Australia. He’d got his degree at the University of London seventeen years ago and been admitted to the bar in Australia when he had returned to the country in the mid-1990s. Qualifications gained overseas were too convenient to Harrigan’s mind. Maybe they were genuine, maybe they weren’t. But if his qualifications were fake, Griffin, as a fraud, was better at his work than any number of lawyers Harrigan knew to be genuine. At best, this fragment of information only proved where he had been seventeen years ago and when he had come back to Australia.

The information he couldn’t find was also interesting. Griffin was a lone wolf, listed as an individual only, not connected to any particular legal firm. Unlike some other practitioners, there was no photograph attached to his contact details. This wasn’t so very unusual, but it fitted the man’s elusiveness. Harrigan phoned the number given for Griffin’s office and was answered by a recorded message, the kind preinstalled on any readily available answering machine. There was nothing to identify that you were leaving a message for Joel Griffin, barrister. He hung up without leaving his details.

After a moment’s thought, he googled again-not Griffin, but himself and Grace. On a few occasions their photographs had made it to the gossip columns of various media websites. Grace called it her fifteen seconds of virtual fame. Harrigan studied the photographs one after the other. On none was her scar visible.

He heard her car outside and went down to the kitchen, relieved that she was home. Despite the lateness of the hour he had waited for her before eating, caught in his own thoughts and occupied with his daughter’s needs. Then Grace was there in the doorway, smiling. As he always did, he touched her face and then kissed her. He knew the real face under the make-up, the feel of her skin, her mouth. He knew her, the emotions she kept hidden, her body, better than anyone.

‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘I’m okay. It’s nothing I haven’t dealt with before. We need to talk about it.’

‘I’ll get changed and put my gun away. Is Ellie asleep?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Maybe I won’t look in on her. I might wake her up.’

‘The door’s open. You can look in.’

When she came back downstairs, the transformation was complete. The real woman had appeared. Her long dark hair was out on her shoulders, her make-up was gone. The drab pants suit had been changed for jeans, a yellow T-shirt and socks. She curled up cross-legged on a chair.

‘Put your gun away?’ he asked.

Both he and Grace had an unbreakable rule that they never wore their firearms in their daughter’s presence, even if they were concealed. Harrigan had a licence for a firearm for his personal safety and kept a handgun and ammunition in a safe in his study. Grace, whose work allowed her to keep her gun with her at all times, locked hers in there as well when she was home.

‘It’s where little children’s hands can’t get to it. I did look in on her. She’s fast asleep. She’s got your hair. It’s so beautiful. When we cut it, I’m going to keep some.’

Harrigan put the meal on the table-food Grace had cooked on her days off, his interest in kitchen matters reaching no further than setting the microwave and turning it on.

‘Newell, babe,’ he said. ‘Is he going to turn up here?’

Could Newell really be so mad? The fear was like living in shadows where you couldn’t distinguish real from false. Had it been him on her tail tonight? It depressed her that she couldn’t talk to Harrigan about it.

‘It’d be lunacy,’ she said instead. ‘Every police officer in New South Wales must be out there looking for him. He won’t be able to show his face anywhere. How did it happen?’

‘It was a setup. Someone must have been paid to make sure Chris Newell was there at that time and they could get to him. If that includes either of the drivers, they’re both dead now. They can’t tell anyone anything. I was talking to Joel Griffin when it happened.’

‘Why him?’

‘He wanted to see me. He knows about you and Newell, babe. He knows about your scar and how you got it. He was trying to blackmail me. Kept fishing to see what I was prepared to give him.’

Grace looked as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She put down her fork, covered her face for a few seconds.