The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  Griffin leaped sideways, feinted with the knife, then stumbled backward off balance, falling and twisting one leg. The spanner missed.

  Sara tore herself out of Grace’s grip with enough strength to knock her backward. She leaped onto Harrigan’s back and began to claw at his eyes. Griffin got to his feet, scrabbling for his knife. Harrigan dragged at Sara with one hand, pulling her hair, swinging around. She clung on. Then he swung away, falling back heavily against the car, knocking the breath out of her. She lay in the dirt, gasping.

  Harrigan still had the spanner. Griffin had the knife. They circled each other, Harrigan with one eye on Sara. He was between Griffin and the car.

  Grace had picked herself up. Find the gun. It’s over here somewhere. Find it.

  ‘You always put her in the front line, don’t you,’ Harrigan said, contempt in his voice. ‘You get women to do your dirty work. What does that make you? A pimp.’

  Sara was dragging herself to her feet. Grace scrambled in the dark. Griffin said nothing.

  ‘You want to get to your car, don’t you?’ Harrigan said. ‘That’s why you’re coming at me. You want to make a run for it. That’s you. You’re a coward.’

  Griffin’s face was dead. There was no reaction in it to any of Harrigan’s taunts. He was choking on blood in his nose and trying to breathe through his mouth at the same time. Suddenly he took out his car keys and threw them to Sara. Still shaken, she missed catching them and they landed in the dirt.

  ‘Get them! Start the car,’ he shouted, but Harrigan ran between her and the keys, still holding the spanner.

  ‘We can get him,’ Griffin said. ‘You and me. We can.’

  Both of them moved towards Harrigan as if to come at him from each side.

  ‘Get the keys!’ Griffin shouted at Sara.

  ‘Come near me and I’ll use this spanner on you,’ Harrigan said.

  She hesitated, her mouth open.

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘Yes, I will. What are you doing sending a woman to do your work? Face up to it yourself. Put your knife down and fight me man to man. You don’t want to do that, do you? You wouldn’t have an advantage.’

  Sara jumped forward, stopped. Harrigan laughed at her.

  ‘Always in the front line. People see you but not him. He hides where no one can see him. What a cheap piece of shit he is.’

  She ran at him again, just a little, stopped. Griffin suddenly raced for the keys. A bullet cracked in front of him. Everybody froze. Grace walked forward carrying her gun.

  ‘Kneel down,’ she said. ‘Both of you. Get down in the dirt. Now.’

  Her voice was unrecognisable with anger.

  ‘She won’t fire,’ Griffin said, but his voice was shaking.

  ‘Oh yes, I will. Get down!’

  They knelt.

  ‘This isn’t happening,’ Sara said, and began to cry.

  Harrigan walked over to Grace, always keeping an eye on the two people kneeling on the ground. There was a quick glance between them, small emotional electricity communicated.

  ‘Are you all right, babe?’

  ‘I’m okay. What happened to your shoes?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Like mine.’

  Other than the one quick glance, she hadn’t taken her eyes off Griffin and Sara.

  ‘He’s got a mobile. It’s in the Camry’s glovebox,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll get it.’ He turned to walk to the car.

  ‘Eat dirt,’ Grace said. ‘Both of you. Eat it!’

  Harrigan stopped and turned. ‘Babe—’

  She wasn’t listening. ‘If there was shit, I’d get you to eat shit. But there’s only dirt. Now eat it!’

  ‘No,’ Sara said.

  ‘Why not? You’ve done much worse things than that. Eat it!’

  Harrigan spoke softly in Grace’s ear. ‘Just keep them under control, babe. That’s all you need to do. Do this and you’ll lose control.’

  ‘He’s made me kneel in the dirt. He wanted to cut my throat and burn us alive. He said that people always crawl, they always cry. Well, now you can eat some dirt!’

  Griffin reached down, scooped up a handful of dirt and began to eat it, his face expressionless. Sara put her hands over her eyes.

  ‘Eat it,’ Griffin said to her, his voice a monotone.

  ‘I got my one last sail in,’ she said. And then: ‘I’m not eating dirt for you.’

  With a single fluid movement she was on her feet and running screaming at Grace, her face distorted into the Medusa’s mask. She leaped forward into the air. Grace fired but at the same time a second crack resounded in the night, both bullets catching Sara as she fell forward into nothing, a long resounding scream closing behind her into silence. Then she lay on the ground, dead.

  There was a shout. ‘Police! Don’t move!’

  Harrigan turned to look up the fire trail. Groups of uniformed and plain-clothes officers were hurrying down the slope towards them.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he heard Grace say and turned to look. Griffin had tried to get to his feet. The blood had stopped flowing from his nose and had stained his clothes. He looked from Sara to the police and then sat back on his heels. He said nothing. The police surrounded him.

  Grace dropped her gun down, then disarmed it in one movement.

  ‘I didn’t need to do that,’ she said. ‘They just needed to sit there.’

  The same thought was in Harrigan’s mind but he didn’t give voice to it. He looked at the blood on her neck.

  ‘You’re only human, babe,’ he said.

  Mark Borghini appeared out of the dark and walked up to them. ‘Boss, Grace. You okay? Sorry we didn’t get here sooner.’

  ‘We’re alive. That’ll do. Thanks, mate,’ Harrigan said, and they shook hands.

  ‘If you’re here,’ Grace said, ‘where’s my backup?’

  ‘Behind us. We’ve been with you since Duffys Forest but we lost you coming down here. Lucky we saw the car lights.’

  Still holding her gun, Grace walked over to the prone figure of Sara McLeod.

  ‘Which bullet was it? Yours or mine?’ she said.

  ‘Our marksman shot one. I know you shot another. The autopsy will tell us. Don’t worry about it.’ Borghini was dismissive. ‘She was a mad dog. I don’t have a problem with it. I’ll see if I can get the two of you some shoes. You look like you need them.’

  ‘Mine are in his car,’ Grace said. ‘In the back.’

  She was still staring down at Sara McLeod. The bullets had hit her body. Her face was intact but there was no peace in it, even in death. Had she killed her? She did have a problem with it.

  Harrigan was with her. ‘She was running at you. She wanted you to kill her,’ he said.

  ‘But I didn’t want to do it. They got me to do what they wanted. They brought me down.’

  ‘No, they didn’t.’

  ‘You were very brave. Congratulations.’

  They both turned to see Clive standing close by. They hadn’t noticed him approaching.

  ‘Where were you?’ Grace said. ‘I called you three times to get me out.’

  ‘We’re here now. You should have trusted us. We’ve got our fish and he’s still alive. We can interrogate him. It’s been a very successful operation.’

  He was looking over to where Griffin was still kneeling on the ground, the police around him. Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he stood up. As he was led away, he didn’t once glance towards Sara on the ground.

  ‘What we have to do now,’ Clive said, ‘is find his records and his money.’

  ‘Check in the roof cavity at Duffys Forest. There’s a manhole in the linen cupboard,’ Harrigan said, watching Clive with barely controlled anger.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I put them there.’

  ‘That building’s due to go up in smoke. It could be burning by now,’ Grace said.

  ‘We moved in and secured it as soon as you left.’

  ‘You were
there,’ she said. ‘You let Griffin drive away with me. Why didn’t you intervene at the house? I gave the call.’

  ‘The job wasn’t finished. He might have led us to those records, which we’re now told are still in the house.’

  ‘I gave the call for you to get me out. When we left, I had no wire. You couldn’t hear me, you couldn’t know what was going on. We were flying blind.’

  ‘We knew he was going to take you somewhere else. We needed to know where. I told you, you should have trusted us. We were there, we’re here now, and we’ve got you out. We weren’t going to let you die. I’ll be in touch about a debrief.’

  As he turned away, he stopped to look at Harrigan. ‘Your partner’s a very brave woman.’

  ‘I could have told you that years ago.’

  ‘Take my gun,’ Grace said. ‘I don’t want it. It’s needed for ballistics anyway.’

  Clive took the firearm and walked away.

  ‘He didn’t keep his side of the bargain,’ Grace said. ‘He left me there just in case I gave him something more. I’ll never trust him again.’

  A uniformed officer walked up to them carrying two pairs of shoes.

  ‘The DS sent these over. These are yours, miss. And for you, boss—a pair of thongs. Sorry. That’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘They’ll be fine. Thanks.’

  With some relief, they put the shoes on.

  ‘Do we have to stay?’ Grace said. ‘Can we go? We shouldn’t be needed tonight. I want to see Ellie.’

  ‘They might need to photograph your neck,’ Harrigan replied. ‘I’ll ask. We won’t be able to take our car, but there may be someone here who can give us a lift.’

  They turned to each other. She gave an exhausted half-smile and he put his arms around her. They hugged, hard and long. Harrigan looked over her shoulder and saw Clive watching them. Then the spymaster turned away into the night.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and they walked away. They walked past the car where Griffin sat, but he was staring ahead. If he saw them, their existence didn’t seem to register. His face was completely empty, as if there was nothing in him, no thought, no emotion.

  ‘He’s got your picture,’ Grace said. ‘The one you took of me when Ellie was born. It’s in his pocket.’

  ‘Does he now?’

  Harrigan walked away and found Borghini. A little later, Borghini and two uniformed officers went over to the car.

  ‘Could you just step out, Mr Griffin? Just for a moment, thanks. We need to check your pockets.’

  Griffin did. After a short search, one of the uniformed officers handed Borghini a photograph. He nodded, walked back to Harrigan, who had returned to Grace, and handed it to him.

  ‘There you go,’ he said, and walked away.

  Much later, a police car took them to Harrigan’s older sister’s house where Ellie was sleeping. They had called Ronnie earlier and she was waiting for them.

  ‘She took some settling down but she’s asleep now. I told her Mummy and Daddy would be here soon. She seemed okay with that. So, big little brother,’ the diminutive woman said, giving Harrigan a sharp-eyed glance, ‘what have you been up to?’

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘We just want to go home.’

  Grace picked Ellie up from the bed. The little girl rubbed her sleepy eyes and put her arms around her mother’s neck.

  ‘Hello, chicken. Mummy and Daddy are here. We’re going home. How’s that?’

  I have you back, Harrigan thought. Safe at last.

  25

  Borghini asked Grace and Harrigan if they wanted to watch when his people interviewed Griffin. The interview they attended was one of a series. Grace went as a private individual, not as an official representative; Orion’s protocols excluded her from any questioning they would do. She went not out of curiosity but to try to diminish his ghost in her own mind, to convince herself that he was where he could do them no harm.

  In all, a small group of about five people, including an official observer from Orion, were watching when Griffin was brought into the interview room with its one-way glass wall. Borghini was also there, as an observer. He had passed this interview over to a trained interviewer from headquarters and a profiler. Griffin was accompanied by his lawyer, a well-known, highly skilled and expensive practitioner. Harrigan, remembering Griffin’s skill as a barrister, wondered what directions he had given his counsel. He was dressed in prison overalls and sat with his arms folded, seemingly detached from the situation. His business as a criminal banker was still under investigation by Orion and there was only limited information available on that side of his activities. Six bodies had been found at the Turramurra house. Two were at least ten years old. Some were men, some women.

  ‘My client wishes to advise you that he will be conducting this interview and his defence under the name of Joel Griffin,’ Griffin’s lawyer said.

  The statement was made at the start of every interview.

  The police interviewer began the process. ‘We do have irrefutable DNA evidence that your client was born Craig Wells, son of Frank and Janice Wells.’

  ‘Be that as it may, it’s been many years since he adopted the name Joel Griffin. That’s what he calls himself now.’

  ‘All right, Joel. Just for context, let’s go over the chronology of your life after your mother was killed. You left the country as Joel Griffin almost immediately and went to Asia with Sara McLeod and her parents. During your time in Asia you worked in the McLeods’ import–export business. After several years, you went with Sara McLeod to Britain. You didn’t return to Australia until the mid-1990s. Is that correct?’

  ‘Joel has already acknowledged he spent that time out of the country,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘During that time in Britain you attended the University of London where you completed a law degree. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, my client admits to that.’

  ‘The murders we’re investigating began to occur once you returned to Australia.’

  ‘My client denies any knowledge of those murders.’

  ‘Our investigations have found six bodies in the surgery at Turramurra previously owned by a Dr Amelie Santos. We believe her to be your natural grandmother. Is that correct?’

  The lawyer glanced at his client.

  ‘The evidence has established that so I think we can move on,’ he said when there was no acknowledgement from Griffin.

  ‘With Sara McLeod, you owned that building as trustees of the Shillingworth Trust, under the names of Nadine Patterson and David Tate.’

  ‘Joel has made no admission on that.’

  ‘We have a positive identification of Sara McLeod as Nadine Patterson, and we have in our possession passports in those names showing photographs of Sara McLeod and your client.’

  ‘Joel still wishes to make no admissions on that subject.’

  ‘We’ve established the identities of the victims. Placing them in order of their deaths so far as we can tell, they are: Jennifer Shillingworth, Stan Wells, Ian Blackmore, Elliot Griffin, father of the actual Joel Griffin, Kylie Sutcliffe and Nadifa Hasan Ibrahim. Can your client confirm that for us?’

  ‘My client has no information to give on that subject. He’s made that very clear. He denies any part in their murders.’

  ‘Joel, you’re aware that we’ve searched all properties associated with the Shillingworth Trust and also the McLeods’ residences at Palm Beach and Cottage Point. We’ve located numbers of items belonging to the victims and also photographs and videos of you and Sara that were taken at the time of the murders.’ The police interviewer’s voice was calm. ‘The photographs place you both as present and active in all these murders. There’s also sufficient evidence to identify you and Sara McLeod as the murderers of Jirawan Sanders.’

  ‘My client still denies all knowledge.’

  ‘Does Joel want to speak for himself?’

  Griffin shook his head. The profiler spoke next.

  ‘Joel, let’s talk about your grand
mother, Dr Amelie Santos. When did you first find out about her?’

  Griffin looked at her and spoke for the first time. ‘Amelie Santos was a woman who owed me money.’

  ‘Why did she owe you money?’

  ‘The point is, if you owe someone money, you should pay them. If you don’t, then you’re at fault.’

  ‘She was at fault,’ the profiler repeated. ‘Did you tell her that? Did you go and see her at her house in Blackheath?’

  ‘She knew she owed me money,’ Griffin said.

  ‘How did she know she owed you money?’

  Griffin looked at his lawyer.

  ‘I’m doing this under instruction from my client,’ the lawyer said and took an envelope out of his briefcase. It was old and yellowing. From it the lawyer took and placed on the table a copy of the letter from the Salvation Army identifying Frank Martin Wells as the son of Amelie and Rafael Santos.

  ‘She already had that,’ Griffin said. ‘She’d had it for years. I had to pay for it.’

  ‘Presumably Amelie Santos had to pay for it as well,’ the police interviewer said. ‘This is the information you bought from Jennifer Shillingworth. Am I correct?’

  ‘If you check the envelope, you’ll see the stamps are from the late 1960s, early ’70s,’ Griffin’s lawyer said. ‘Dr Santos must have obtained that information illegally and then declined to act on it.’

  Watching, Harrigan thought that of all the people involved in this, the one with the most clear-sighted understanding of Dr Amelie Santos had been her son, Frank. She didn’t want me. She didn’t even give me a name. Just this once, all those years ago, she seemed to have made a tentative step towards finding him, but had then, for whatever reason, drawn back.

  ‘Joel, are you saying that your grandmother knew all along who her son was?’ the profiler asked.

  ‘She had that letter. She must have done.’

  ‘But how could she know who you were? You were Joel Griffin by then, not Craig Wells.’

  ‘She knew she owed me money as soon as she opened the door.’

  ‘You went and saw her in the house at Blackheath. She recognised you. Did she let you in?’

  ‘She came outside. She said, I don’t want to see you. She wouldn’t even talk to me.’