Alex Palmer - The Labyrinth of Drowning

‘I’ll take Ellie up to Kidz Corner if you like,’ Grace said. ‘I can do it on my way to work. What are you going to do today?’

‘Since I don’t have to be in court, I’ll make a few calls. I’ve got some digging to do. If I have time, I’ll go and see Toby this afternoon. I’ll take Ellie.’

When he had been with the police and saw sights like the one he’d seen yesterday, he had gone to see his son to recover. Being with Toby connected him to what mattered.

‘She’ll like that,’ Grace said, and picked her daughter out of her highchair. ‘Come on, sweetie. We’ll clean you up and then we’ll go, okay?’

Her phone rang. Harrigan picked it up for her. ‘Clive,’ he said.

She set Ellie on the floor and, taking the phone, walked out of the room. Not long afterwards, she was back.

‘Something’s happened,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go now. Can you…?’

‘Yeah, I’ll look after things. When will you be back?’

‘I don’t know. I think I’m in for a long day.’

She was frowning. Probably she didn’t know how disturbed she looked.

‘Take care, babe,’ he said.

‘Always do. You too.’

Harrigan and Ellie waved her goodbye at the door.

‘Gone,’ his little daughter said.

‘Don’t worry, princess. She’ll be back. Let’s get ready. We have to go as well.’

Ellie’s childcare centre was near Birchgrove Primary School, far enough from the house to be a useful walk. Harrigan carried her on his back in her harness. When they were almost there, she started to tug playfully at his hair. ‘Take it easy, princess,’ he said with a grin. ‘That’s me on the other end.’ She giggled and he turned his head to look up at her. Then, with a feeling like a cold tap on the shoulder, he turned completely and saw a white Toyota Camry with tinted windows edging along the street not far past the corner behind them. It was the same car from last night; it hadn’t been there just moments ago.

Harrigan was carrying his daughter but he also wanted the car’s numberplate and began walking back quickly to get it. Immediately the Camry backed out the way it had come and drove at speed up the cross street. By the time he reached the corner, it was out of sight, vanished in the narrow tree-lined streets and laneways.

His next thought was to get Ellie where she would be safe. Kidz Corner was close, too close if they were being stalked. The converted duplex offered its clients security and privacy and had its own discreet security officer. Numbers of the children who went there were the sons and daughters of the very rich or the actors and writers who lived along the deepwater frontage of Louisa Road. Harrigan was none of these things but, like them, he wanted his child protected.

As soon as he’d set Ellie down to play, he went to see the owner, Kate, a big, capable woman, in her office. She knew his history and had still offered Ellie a place. It was another reason he was prepared to pay the hefty fees to make sure his daughter was safe.

‘Have you noticed a white Toyota Camry hanging around here lately?’ he asked. ‘Not the most noticeable of cars, I know.’

‘We always keep an eye out for that sort of thing. Yes, we have, several times now. We thought it might be paparazzi. Why?’

‘I don’t think it’s paparazzi. It may have been stalking me and Ellie here. I scared it off. Can you get me the rego if it comes back?’

She grinned, opened her diary and handed him a piece of paper. ‘We only offer the best service here. Mac got that the last time it turned up. He was watching it on the CCTV. If it turned up again, we were going to call the police. What do you want us to do?’

Harrigan had contacts among his former work colleagues who had offered him protection should he need it. He was careful about calling in the favour, not wanting to wear out his credit. This situation was different.

‘I’ll ring them myself when I get home. I’ll get them to call you and work out a time to come over and talk to you and Mac.’

‘Not a problem. I’ll be waiting.’

Harrigan left, looking at the high brick walls at the front of the centre, the secure gate, the intercom watched by CCTV where you announced yourself when you collected your child. It was a long way from the freedoms of his own childhood when he had roamed the Balmain peninsula at will. All his mother had asked of him was that he be home in time for tea. But the world had changed; the tough, poor, working-class suburb he had been born into over forty years ago no longer existed. His life had no resemblance to the life his parents had lived. The area, on the harbour and close to the city, with its nineteenth-century terraced houses and mansions, was so completely gentrified they would not have felt at home here.

Someone was letting him know they were out there, they could get to him. They knew his home phone number, his daughter’s childcare centre. They were prepared to get into his garden, to make him think his house might be insecure. And maybe, somehow, they might even have been the ones following Grace last night. Someone who liked to play mind games. Among his old inemies, that didn’t narrow the field very much. He would make inquiries, contact old informants. See what they could tell him. He had always relied on himself. Too often, other people let you down when it mattered most.

Whatever you’re trying to do to us, whoever you are, don’t think it’ll be easy. Don’t think you’ll get anywhere near us. With this promise to whoever was stalking him, he went home.

Grace thought it strange that the bright Sydney sunlight should seem so full of shadows. Clive’s phone call had broken the pleasure of the morning, the respite with her family before she started work. ‘There’s a dead woman waiting for you. Jacqueline Ryan.’ A sentence spoken as if it were a blunt instrument. He’d sent a team to the Royal Hotel to pick Ryan up but they’d arrived too late. She was already dead from a gunshot wound.

‘Why do I need to go?’ she’d asked him. ‘Presumably the team can give you all the information you want. What can I add to it?’

‘I want your judgement on the scene. Borghini’s there. He’s waiting for you. He wants to talk to you about your meeting with her. You’d better get going.’

You want me to see it. You want to shock me. Because you think I’m emotionally involved? Is that it? She crossed the white concrete arc of the Gladesville Bridge over the Parramatta River, the water glistening in the sun, going over the same ground as the night before. Boats in the nearby marina were moored in rows like white, lozenge-shaped seeds in a pod; the green of surrounding suburbs edged the water.

By now Paul would be walking their daughter to her childcare centre. There was no one she trusted more than him. They should be safe enough; just as all three of them were safe enough inside the house. But when people threatened you from outside, sanctuaries became like prisons; places where you were locked inside your head. Her mind rejected the possibility that the man watching their house last night was Newell. It was too soon, if nothing else. Wouldn’t the people who had sprung him see it as too dangerous for him to show himself? But fear ran in parallel with her reasoning. Newell was a ghost in her head. He was her own fear, never exorcised; a fear that was waiting its time, reasserting its control over its rightful territory, the way it was now.

There was no time for these kinds of thoughts. She was working. She couldn’t guess Clive’s motives but she could protect herself. When she drove into the hotel’s car park, filled with police cars, she was in role. She was no longer the woman who’d wanted to cry for Jirawan. From here on in, she would be hard-faced. Lynette was going to be just a body. Not the edgy, tired, trapped woman from last night-a woman caught in something bigger than she was-but someone who’d ceased to be, who wasn’t able to feel. If I see it any other way, I won’t be able to deal with it. I’ll break down . Maybe that was what Clive wanted: for her to break. She couldn’t let it happen.