Alex Palmer - The Labyrinth of Drowning

‘No. There must be a memory in your head somewhere. Otherwise why were you so frightened of him?’

‘I met you to make a deal. We’ve made a deal and now I’m leaving.’

‘Answer my question or there’s no deal,’ he said.

‘I made one with Sara, if not with you.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who calls the shots. If I say it’s not on, then that’s the end of it. You don’t get any cash.’

This time, she was the one searching his face, trying to work out why he was asking her this. He really did want to know. It was the first time he’d shown any genuine emotion. He leaned forward, staring at her, almost impatient, his whole body in the grip of anticipation. She didn’t speak.

‘Tell me. What did you see?’ He was impatient.

Someone unrecognisable. Maybe you could paint those eyes but not describe them .

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘It was like looking into the dark.’

He sat back, watching her. Disappointment. Then detachment. All at once, she might have been a dressmaker’s dummy sitting there.

‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said in a distant voice. ‘It’s your hair I’m going to remember.’

‘I’ve got to get going. People will wonder where I am.’

He stood up. Another persona flicked into place, overlaid on the negative he had just shown her. The public Joel Griffin was back.

‘I’ll hear from you,’ he said. ‘I’ll need bank account details for the payment.’

‘I’ll get them to you. See you.’

She walked to her car at a normal pace; glanced back to see him watching her; waved in a simple way and drove away, resisting the desire to put her foot down, to speed. She was shaking but she held on. The only thing in her mind was the process of making her way safely through the traffic; it anchored her. She realised she could not tell Paul that Newell was dead. And he was. She was convinced of the truth of Griffin’s information. She had walked through a door into the strange taste of freedom, only to have it quickly replaced with the shock of her whole encounter with Griffin.

Her phone rang.

‘Your backup has you in view,’ Clive said. ‘You’re not being followed.’

‘I’m on my way to the motel.’

‘We’ll be waiting.’

This time the motel was close to Chatswood shopping centre. Grace parked outside the room. Before she went inside, she put her hair up in a simple knot.

Borghini was waiting with a cup of coffee. ‘For you. I reckon you need it. I noticed you like it strong.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, managing a smile and sitting down. Borghini stood watching her, his hands on his hips.

‘You’re a brave lady,’ he said.

Clive sat in the chair beside her, putting himself between them.

‘You did that very well. You held your nerve.’

‘Christ,’ Borghini said, taking his seat. ‘That guy’s a fucking murderer!’

‘He can lead us to our target,’ Clive said.

‘And what the fuck is that? What result do you really want?’

‘I’ve brought you into this much more than I would bring most people in. You can repay me by not asking questions like that. I’ll tell you what you need to know.’

Grace’s hair slipped out of its knot and fell onto her shoulders again. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said.

‘You can leave it out,’ Clive said.

She didn’t answer or even look at him. She went into the bathroom and locked the door behind her. Standing in front of the mirror, she needed to make sure she was really there. She took out her mobile. She wanted to ring Paul. She wanted to say, ‘It’s me. I’m here.’ Instead she put her phone away and redid her hair, then made sure her make-up was in place. The role-playing wasn’t over yet. There were hours to go before she went home, when her hair could come down the way she liked it to. No one touches me or my hair but you and Ellie, she said to Paul wherever he was. Then she went outside to get on with her work.

‘We have a deal with our targets,’ she said, sitting back at the table. ‘The question is, do I deliver Narelle Wong?’

‘Yes, you do,’ Clive said.

‘How do we stop her ending up dead?’

‘We’ll be following you every step of the way.’

‘After today, I’m very sure my anonymous caller the other night was Sara McLeod,’ Grace said. ‘That’s a dual connection between this operation and whoever was stalking us. Her and the Ponticellis.’

Borghini was sitting with his arms folded, watching. He leaned forward.

‘I know the boss has enemies. I know that includes the Ponticellis. With them, you’re dealing with people who don’t forget. I was trying to talk to you about this earlier. Is Griffin connected to them? What are his contacts? How did he know Chris Newell was dead? This whole thing smells. We’re not playing them. They’re playing us. They’re drawing you in to delivering this woman but is that going to get us any closer to what we’re trying to achieve?’ He turned just to Grace. ‘They trusted you, the two of them, just like that. Why? Everything Griffin says to you, it’s so fucking personal. You’re not stalking him. You just told us. They’re stalking you.’

‘Life’s Pleasures,’ Grace asked Clive. ‘Santos Associates owns it. Have we found out anything else about that company yet?’

‘We haven’t been able to locate any of its office holders,’ he said, ‘but given that its main business is money laundering, we’re very certain it’s part of the Ghost network. Life’s Pleasures is still operating but the building went on the market yesterday. As we know, all the income had already been moved offshore.’

‘Are they selling up the farm? Leaving the country?’ Borghini asked.

‘That’s a very likely scenario. They’re removing all witnesses, liquidating assets. They may well consider Grace to be their puppet, the way Kidd said. But it’s still a dangerous situation to have an organisation like Orion investigating them. Their safest course of action is to disappear overseas under assumed identities.’

‘Then Mark’s right.’ Grace was sitting with her arms folded, looking Clive in the eye. ‘They have another agenda. We’re playing their game.’

‘No, they’re playing ours.’

‘No one’s told them that,’ Borghini said.

‘We’re walking into something they’ve set up,’ Grace said. ‘We have to ask ourselves what it is. It’s my safety on the line.’

‘You have every resource I can put out there to rely on,’ Clive said. ‘The only way we can find out what they’re really up to is for you to go in deeper. We will not close down this network until we know its full extent. We don’t have anything like that information yet. If Griffin has a fix on you, then maybe he’ll reveal his connections. You have to keep getting closer to him. You can’t do anything that will make him back off.’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ Borghini said.

‘I can do it,’ Grace replied.

‘I didn’t say you couldn’t. I’m sure you can. That’s not the point.’

‘What we do is keep to our plan,’ Clive interrupted. ‘We plan Grace’s next meeting with Griffin.’

‘I’ve got some info first,’ Borghini said. ‘We’ve been checking out where Jirawan Sanders was found in Ku-ring-gai Chase. Standard police work but the results are interesting enough.’

‘Send me a written report,’ Clive said. ‘We don’t have time for that now.’

Borghini was silenced. Throughout the rest of the meeting he said almost nothing, but Grace saw him watching both her and Clive intently. She wondered if his role as the liaison officer was likely to be terminated soon. She would have kept him on but she had no authority. She reminded herself that she was here because she had made her own decisions and had her own aims in mind. But she would be sorry if Borghini was no longer there. No one else stood up to Clive the way he did. It was a pleasure to watch.