The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  13

  By ten in the morning, Grace was walking in Parramatta Park near the pavilion, not far from the Macquarie Street gatehouse. It was a clear, sunny day and the light gave a yellow wash to the grass and the trees beyond. She had left her car in the parking area and seen a sleek, grey Mercedes already parked there. She knew this was Kidd’s car; or more accurately these days, the finance company’s. While she walked, a cyclist cruised slowly along the path in front of her. Nearby, a couple were strolling casually across the grass. They spread out a blanket and sat down, seemingly for morning tea. Her backup was in position. Then she saw Kidd, sitting on a bench waiting for her. She stopped for a few moments. I am not myself. I want everything this man has to give because in my own head I have nothing. Whatever he says, it doesn’t matter to me. Remember that.

  She went to meet him. When she sat down beside him, he didn’t speak. He had his hands folded in his lap. It was an odd look.

  ‘How are you, Jon?’ she said sweetly. ‘Nice of you to take some time off work to see me.’

  He spoke without looking at her. ‘I don’t want to spend any more time than I have to talking to you. Would you get to the point?’

  ‘What sort of person are you?’

  ‘What sort of person am I? What sort of person are you?’

  ‘Someone who doesn’t go around organising for young women to be sent to their deaths. Particularly one as nasty as Jirawan had.’

  ‘I don’t know that name.’

  ‘Yes, you do. This is for you. Have a good look at it.’

  She handed him the same photocopy of Jirawan’s passport that she had shown Narelle Wong. He looked at it for some minutes, then folded it up and very calmly gave it back to her.

  ‘I’ve never seen it before and I’ve never heard of Jirawan Sanders.’

  ‘You must recognise that woman.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But this is the first time I’ve known her name.’

  He sounded as if he was telling the truth.

  ‘Well, Jon, that’s too bad. I was about to offer you that passport back if you wanted it. And if you were generous enough, I wasn’t going to go around telling people exactly how you spend your holidays when you visit those orphans in Phnom Penh and Bangkok. You know the orphanages I’m talking about. You go there every year, twice sometimes.’

  ‘You’re the one with the corrupt mind, not me. I don’t have anything to hide.’

  ‘Have a look at these before you say that.’

  She handed him an envelope containing the photographs taken from his computer. His mouth seemed to grow thinner as he flicked through them. He leaned back on the bench and closed his eyes. The pictures slipped from his hand and fell to the ground. She picked them up, and put them back in her bag.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think anybody else will either.’

  ‘I’ve given those children things they would never have had otherwise. They have toys, they go to school. They have good clothes and they eat every day. I’m not a monster. I’m nice to them.’

  ‘Spare me the violins,’ Grace said. ‘What I want to know is, do we have a deal?’

  ‘Where did you get those pictures?’

  ‘Why should I tell you that?’

  He looked at her so sharply and with such outright fear that, even in role, she was shocked.

  ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You got those pictures from Orion. Otherwise you’d be dead.’

  ‘Does it matter where they came from? I’ve got them. It’s my call what happens to them. Do you want to be a known paedophile, Jon? Do you want to be hounded out of town everywhere you go by people baying for your blood?’

  He was silent. Then he leaned forward with his head in his hands, crying. She looked away. It was obscene to watch that kind of desperation. He stopped crying and stared at the ground for a few moments, then sat up. No more tears; he had the strangest smile on his face.

  ‘If you want to play this game, then tell me what you want,’ he said, in a voice that sounded oddly unconcerned. ‘Money? Because I don’t have any.’

  Grace didn’t like his tone. If this was a game, there was something disturbing about his tactics. For a few seconds she weighed up how she should handle this, then stayed with the plan she had agreed on with Clive.

  ‘Yes, I’d like money but that’s not my first priority. What I really want is in on your scam.’

  ‘What scam?’

  ‘Those foreign workers at Life’s Pleasures. Don’t tell me you don’t take a cut of what they make. Bet it’s a lot more than Lynette got. I’d like part of that money, thanks.’

  ‘I don’t get a cent and I don’t have a cent,’ he replied in a colourless voice.

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish!’

  ‘I don’t. No one pays me. You have to realise that the people who control me have pictures just like yours. I pay them and I keep paying them. I’ve told them there’s a limit to what I have. Do they want me to sell my kidneys on the net? They just keep saying, give me more. They don’t understand people. What happens when people get desperate.’ He was leaning forward. Then he closed his eyes again. ‘I’m so tired.’

  ‘Who’s they?’ Grace asked, hiding surprise at the openness of his confession. ‘These people bleeding you?’

  He looked up at her. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘If you won’t do business with me, maybe I can deal with them.’

  He laughed from somewhere deep down and closed his eyes again. He didn’t move or speak; he seemed to have withdrawn completely.

  After a few moments, Grace spoke again. ‘Those workers don’t get paid a cent, do they? Why do they do it?’

  ‘As far as I can work it out, they’re paying off the costs of a new identity. My job is to find them. I review a lot of visa applications. It’s always women who will never get a visa no matter what they do, either for themselves or someone they want to bring over here.’ He was staring ahead. ‘After I’ve found them and referred them, the department never sees or hears from them again. They just disappear off the radar. What I have to do then is make sure we never follow them up. I’ve even destroyed files.’

  ‘How many women?’

  ‘Half a dozen over three years.’

  ‘That’s not very many.’

  ‘No. I’ve thought that too.’ He was speaking as if they were colleagues at a departmental meeting, discussing policy, not people’s lives. ‘Obviously I know what I’m sending these women to. I’ve been told that to make sure I pick the right women. But it’s a lot of effort for a few people. All I can think is that they like doing this. They like breaking people down. With me, it’s money. They grind it out of me. With these women, it’s sex. They have to do it. They may not want to but that’s just too bad.’ He frowned. ‘It’s the kick. It can’t be anything else. They like controlling people. It must be an addiction.’

  ‘Who’s they?’ Grace repeated.

  He smiled at her, broadly, savagely. ‘The people you want to do business with.’

  Again, silence.

  ‘Where do you refer these women?’ she asked.

  He was still looking at her. Given the situation, and the surreal feel that seemed to have attached itself to their conversation, she couldn’t judge his expression. It seemed almost businesslike. He glanced around the park. It was peaceful, domestic, with the sound of distant voices and occasional bird calls.

  ‘There’s a place in Parramatta Westfield—the Portal. An immigration self-help business. The department’s been dealing with it since it opened four years ago. As far as the department knows, it’s completely above board. I’ve sent whole families there. They help with their English, tell them how to start a business, advise on how to get citizenship. I tell these women the Portal will be able to help them and usually they’re so desperate they go over there right away.’

  ‘Who was the last woman you referred?’

  ‘A young Somali woman. Nadifa Hasan Ibr
ahim. Very, very beautiful. She desperately wanted a visa for her brother. That wasn’t very long ago.’

  ‘She broke her bargain. She never turned up at Life’s Pleasures.’

  ‘Then she’s probably dead,’ he said in a neutral voice. ‘They wouldn’t tolerate someone not keeping their side of a bargain.’

  ‘Don’t you take these women over to Life’s Pleasures?’

  ‘No. The other night was the first time I’d been inside.’

  ‘Marie Li knew you, Jon.’

  ‘She’d met me once before, when I picked up that young Thai woman from the back door one night. The one whose passport you showed me.’

  ‘Jirawan,’ Grace said. ‘How does she fit into this?’

  ‘She wasn’t one of the women I referred. I can only guess they brought her there themselves. Why, I can’t tell you. They could have been punishing her for some reason. If they thought she owed them money, they might have been making her work it off. From my own experience, I’d say that’s the most likely scenario. They get very upset if they don’t get every cent they think is owed to them. Even the smallest amount.’

  Again, the ordinariness with which he spoke was surreal.

  ‘They put this Jirawan in the boot,’ he said. ‘Marie Li and her gorilla. All I could do was what I was told.’

  ‘You didn’t know her?’

  ‘No, I was just told to go and pick her up and deliver her.’

  ‘Deliver her where?’

  ‘I wasn’t told that. I was to receive instructions on my mobile. I didn’t do it. I let her go with a train fare in her hand. It was all I could do for her. I told you, I’m not a monster, I do have a conscience. That’s what they don’t quite get—that people have free will. They think they can squash it out of you. They were very angry with me that night. Now I’m going to have to pay for doing that. It’s just how they work. It would never occur to them that I might try and get back at them somehow.’ He laughed strangely.

  A tall woman of indeterminate age, dressed in a tracksuit and with her hair tucked up under a cap, jogged towards them. She stopped at a bench some distance away and began stretching exercises. Kidd’s eyes followed her. He stared at his feet and laughed again.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. They’ll eat you alive and enjoy it.’

  ‘Who are these people? How do you know them?’

  ‘They’re people I met in Thailand once. They had pictures. Since then they’ve had a lot of fun letting me know who they are and what they do. My own fault. I thought I could buy them off. What I finally realised was that someone must have found me for them. I was what they wanted. Someone who worked for the Department of Immigration. You see, these women aren’t the only ones they sell identities to. They bring other people into the country under false IDs. Criminals. People who want to hide. But once people are here, they have to stay hidden. I smooth things over, make sure no questions get asked, that sort of thing. Warn them if I have to.’

  ‘The way you warned them that Life’s Pleasures was being raided,’ Grace said. ‘And that I was an agent with Orion.’

  ‘Yes. Both those things. When you’re caught in a vice, you can’t see anything except what’s immediately in front of you. I can’t eat any more. I can’t swallow, or hold any food in my stomach. At the moment, every minute I live is just the next minute I’ve got to get through.’

  ‘Give me their names.’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ he replied. ‘The way it’s working out, I think they’ll find you.’

  ‘What were they doing in Thailand?’

  ‘Business of some kind. I got the impression they had connections with the expat community in Bangkok. I think they’re probably involved in extortion, money laundering, that sort of thing. I’m certain it isn’t drugs.’

  ‘Do you know the name Peter Sanders?’ she asked.

  ‘Who’s that? This Jirawan’s husband? No.’

  ‘You say you have a conscience,’ Grace said, ‘but you still organised Jirawan’s escape from detention.’

  ‘Yes, I told them when her medical appointment was. Every day when I wake up, it’s the first thing I think about.’

  He was staring into the distance, at the people walking and the slow traffic on the roads in the park. Then he looked at Grace. Oddly, for those few seconds he seemed almost relaxed.

  ‘Either you’re a cheap blackmailer or this is a sting of some kind,’ he said. ‘It’s a sting, isn’t it? You’re after them.’

  ‘No, Jon. You’ve got something to give and I want it. Even if it’s only information. I can turn that into money if I have to. You must have a contact. Tell me who you refer these women to.’

  ‘Sara McLeod,’ he said. ‘She’s one of the “they”. She runs the Portal. Why don’t you go and introduce yourself? She’s just over there, doing her exercises. Now, she’s a strange woman.’

  Grace prevented herself from glancing in the woman’s direction. ‘In what way?’

  He gave her an angry and provocative stare.

  ‘You call me a paedophile and you say I’m sick. Well, she’s sick too, they both are. You should see it. She’ll do anything for him, things you wouldn’t believe. Meanwhile, he’s off with any other woman he can get his hands on. But he can’t leave her. They’re always clawing at each other but they can’t separate. I don’t know how long they’ve been together but it must be a long time. I’ve known them for three years now. They do everything together, and I mean everything. When Jirawan was killed, she would have been part of it. That’s just as sick as anything you can lay on me. But you didn’t know who she was. You can’t have got those pictures from them. I think that whatever you say, this is a sting. Do you know what they told me when I said I was meeting you?’

  Grace shook her head.

  ‘They wanted to know all about you. Could you be bought? I told them, yes, you could. You were just a cheap blackmailer. But I don’t think you are. I lied to them. And I’m very sure they believed me.’ He laughed softly. ‘They think you can be their puppet. Just like me.’

  He smiled triumphantly, then got to his feet and walked quickly away down the path. She followed him. A motorbike was approaching. He saw it and began to jog towards it.

  ‘Get away from me,’ he said.

  ‘We haven’t finished, Jon.’

  ‘Yes, we have. Get out of here. Go on! Go away! Now!’

  He pushed her hard enough to wind her and knock her to the side of the path. She stumbled and almost fell. Righting herself, she saw the motorbike heading towards him. He began to run down the path as if to meet it. The bike swerved just as it reached him. There was a pillion rider on the back. Kidd stopped and flung his arms out wide. There was a popping noise, shots, and Kidd went down. The bike was gone at speed.

  There was a suspension in time and then screams began to come from a distance. A man with his children rushed them in the opposite direction. Other people, including a group of middle-aged walkers, stood transfixed, gaping.

  ‘Kidd is down, shot from a motorbike,’ Grace said to her wire. ‘I have to go. I need someone to think I have to run away from his murder. Tell my backup to follow the woman jogger who was exercising near us.’

  She turned and looked back where she and Kidd had been sitting. Sara McLeod was walking quickly towards the gatehouse. Grace’s car was parked in the same direction and she hurried towards it, passing Sara at speed. She didn’t look back. In the car park, she sat in her car for a few moments, long enough to see Sara walk past to a black Porsche. Grace left it to her backup to get the registration number and drove away quickly, just as she heard police sirens in the near distance.

  Adrenalin had kept her going till now. It ebbed out and left her shaking and sick. Had that been real? Had it happened or had she imagined it? It had almost been like watching a cartoon, except that someone had died. Her thoughts were caught in this circle when her phone rang. It was Clive.

  ‘Your backup’s
got you in view. You’re being followed by a black Porsche,’ he said.

  ‘Sara McLeod.’

  ‘We have the name. I’ve got people on it now. Double back. She’ll try and follow you by the looks of it. Make it look like you’re covering your tracks but don’t lose her. Go to Westfield at Parramatta. Find somewhere to have a cup of coffee. See what happens. She might approach you.’

  ‘Kidd wasn’t assassinated. He committed suicide,’ she said.

  ‘It was his choice.’

  ‘He wanted to talk even before I got there. Listen to what he said. He was ready to confess. We put that final pressure on him. If we’d gone about this another way, offered him protection, he might have cooperated.’

  ‘We have his information. That’s what matters. Now go.’

  As Clive had said, Sara McLeod stayed with her all the way to the Westfield shopping plaza at Parramatta. Grace parked on the second floor of the multi-storeyed centre and looked around. The black Porsche cruised in behind her, apparently looking for a parking spot. Grace left her car and walked slowly out to the concourse to find a café. Surrounded by bright lights and hurrying people, the full impact of the morning hit her. She felt giddy on her feet.

  She looked around. Sara McLeod had followed her out with no attempt at disguise. As soon as Grace was sure the woman had seen her, she went into the women’s toilets and was sick. They would hear that on the other end of the line. Clive would hear it. Too bad. She washed her face and refreshed her make-up. The pale mask looked back from the mirror. This isn’t who I am. This is just a skin I can peel off when I go home. I am not a cheap blackmailer. I’m not someone who wants other people to die.

  Straightening her backbone, she walked out to the concourse again and found a coffee shop with tables set outside where she could be seen. This time, she didn’t see Sara. Instead, the full range of Sydney’s population passed by: giggling girls in headscarves; African women in clothes whose radiant colours were even more vibrant against their black skin; men in traditional Muslim dress; Australians generally from any background, immigrant and indigenous, going about their business. She thought that here she could disappear into the crowd and feel anonymous; it would ease her mind.