Alex Palmer - The Labyrinth of Drowning

He followed the cyclone fence down a slope to the park boundary where the fencing stopped and the trees merged into the national park. He pushed through the scrub to the edge of an open grassy area at the back of the house. It was an older brick building, possibly dating back to the 1950s, and sprawled over the grounds. The grass near the back door had been kept mowed but the rest of the garden had been left to itself. Rusted white garden furniture was scattered among areas of taller grass and shrubs. A pair of brightly coloured crimson rosellas was bathing in an ancient stone birdbath filled after recent rain. It could not have been more peaceful.

Beside the house was a large garage of the same vintage. Readying for a stint of housebreaking, Harrigan pulled on a pair of disposable gloves. He didn’t approach the house directly but stayed out of sight, moving through the trees on the boundary till he was close to the back of the garage where there was a door. He tried it and it opened. Inside there was space for at least two cars but at present none were there. Most likely, no one was home. Life without a car would be impossible out here.

There was no way into the house through the garage and Harrigan went out the way he had come in. Between the house and the garage was a cement pathway which had been kept reasonably clear. A high gate between the garage and the front corner of the house blocked the view to the road. He opened the gate and looked up the length of the empty gravel driveway to the locked gate. Again, there was no sign of anyone being here.

He went to the back door. It was secured by a deadlock, newer and much stronger than the old lock on the house at Blackheath. He didn’t attempt to break it, but walked along the back of the house, turning a corner, until he was looking at a small high window. It was the kind that winds open outwards and was just large enough to let him into the house. He dragged over one of the garden chairs and stood on it, finding himself looking into the laundry. There was a window lock on the inside, but the wooden window frame was rotten, the white paint peeling away. Whoever owned this house now wasn’t concerned with maintenance. He took a jemmy out of his backpack and began to force the window open. The rotten wood tore away, the glass cracked. All that was left was a section of the window frame, still secured in place by the window lock.

Harrigan lowered the barely intact, broken window to the ground. Soon he was letting himself down into dry, old-fashioned, twin laundry tubs. By the look of the room, no one had washed any clothes in here for a long time. The door was shut. He took out his gun and tried the handle cautiously. It was locked but the lock was old-fashioned and easy enough to pick. Soon he stepped into a small hallway leading to the back door. The house was completely silent. He walked through into the kitchen.

Unlike the house at Blackheath, this place was both liveable and lived in. It looked and smelled clean, although nothing appeared to have been upgraded from Amelie Santos’s time. The fridge was old enough to date back to the 1960s. He opened it and saw some basic food and a bottle of wine stored inside. Washed dishes, including two wine glasses, stood in the dish rack on the draining board. They were dry and had been for some time.

Listening for every sound, Harrigan moved from the kitchen into a dining room. There was no sign of anyone using this room. He opened a top drawer in the sideboard. Tablecloths, linen serviettes, place mats. In the next drawer, silver cutlery. Someone was using the house, but all they had done was move in on top of what was already here without changing anything. They ate and possibly worked and slept here, but it was no home.

He went through to the living room, where the windows looked out onto the front garden. Thickish, good-quality net curtains, now grey with dust, covered these windows. The room was shadowed but not so dark that it was difficult to see. In here, there was an atmosphere of complete abandonment. On a cabinet stood a photograph of Amelie Santos, probably from when she was in her early forties. She was dressed to ride, her cheek pressed up against her horse’s. Her smile was one of real happiness. Scrawled across the picture were the words Buster and me . It was covered in dust. Placed here more than fifty years ago, now meaningless to anyone and presumably ignored by whoever still came here.

Moving carefully, Harrigan walked down a hallway past several bedrooms. A quick glance into one of them told him that two people slept in one bed. It had been left unmade, the doona tossed back, the sheets disordered. A change of clothes for both a man and a woman were thrown over a chair. On the end of the bed there was a compact bundle of women’s clothes, a dress and underwear, all carefully folded.

Something about them caught his attention and he walked in to look at them more closely. He realised they were new, still folded as if they had just come out of their package. Waiting for someone to put them on for the first time. He found himself thinking of the woman who might wear them. The sight of them disturbed him, but why he couldn’t say. He looked around the bedroom. It had a stale smell. He left the clothes where they were and walked out.

The bathroom, like the rest of the house, was clean and useable. The make-up and the electric razor on the vanity unit showed that both a man and a woman had washed there, although perhaps not that morning. He went back outside. There was a set of double doors next to the bathroom. He opened them and found himself looking into a large linen cupboard, an old-fashioned one, the kind you could step inside. The sheets and towels must have dated back to Amelie Santos’s time. He glanced up. There was a manhole cover above his head. He closed the doors and moved on.

Then he smelled something: bleach. A little further past the bathroom was what appeared to be the fourth bedroom. There was an outside lock on the door and fittings for a padlock. He opened it. The room was shadowed and it was only possible to see by the light that came through the doorway. It was a small, bare room with white-tiled walls. There had once been a window but it was boarded over. There was nothing in there except a cheap two-litre plastic container of hospital-grade bleach against one wall. It was a secure room. The whole house was built of double brick and the door was thick wood. A place to wait until someone came for you.

He stepped inside to look more carefully. The room had a foul atmosphere. He looked down at the floor, which was bare wood. The boards were stained with patches of liquid discoloration. He squatted down to look at them more closely. You’d need a chemical analysis to know what had caused those markings.

Harrigan was staring at the floor when he saw a hairline cut in one of the boards close to the door. At the threshold to the room, he saw a notch in the same floorboard, just large enough for someone to get their finger into. You could only reach it when the door was open. Glanced at quickly, it looked like a natural flaw in one of the boards.

He levered it up and found himself looking into a cavity under the floor. He took his torch out of his backpack and shone it into the hole. There was a black bag inside, the kind used for carrying a laptop computer. He reached in and pulled it out. Beneath it was a briefcase. Harrigan took this out as well. Then he replaced the floorboard and carried both back into the living room where he placed them on the coffee table.

There were two main compartments to the black bag, each holding a slender laptop. Other smaller compartments had a range of portable hard drives and a number of flash drives. He took them out and looked them over. Each was labelled with a letter but there was no sign of any written records. He opened one of the laptops and turned it on. It asked for a password. Harrigan sat thinking. He typed in Griffin but the system responded with the message Details unknown . He turned the laptop off and closed it.