The Labyrinth of Drowning

by Alex Palmer

  ‘Did you ever go into the house?’

  ‘When they took her away.’

  ‘She later gave it to you,’ the profiler said.

  ‘She knew she owed it to me.’

  This seemed to be as close as Griffin could get to admitting he was her grandson. The depth of resentment in his voice reminded Harrigan of Frank Wells. The bitch! She left me nothing! Resentment decades old. The one point on which father and son were in agreement.

  ‘Joel,’ the police interviewer said, ‘you started burying people at Dr Santos’s surgery in Turramurra years before you first visited her. That was before she told you she didn’t want to know you. You were using her surgery while she was still alive, still its owner. Why?’

  Silence. Griffin looked down at the table. He was almost smiling.

  ‘There’s no point in that question,’ his lawyer said. ‘Joel has no admissions to make.’

  ‘As soon as you got back to this country, Joel, your grandmother was already in your mind,’ the profiler said. ‘You started to do things that were associated with her in a very negative way.’

  ‘As I’ve said, there’s no point in those questions. Joel has nothing to say.’

  ‘Why did you wait four years before you went and saw her? Why not see her as soon as you came back to Australia? That’s when you found out who she was.’

  ‘I wanted to see her before she died. She was getting old.’

  ‘You wanted to make sure she put you in her will before she died. Were you watching her?’ the profiler asked.

  ‘No. I do things in my own time,’ he replied.

  ‘After your mother, Janice Wells, Jennifer Shillingworth was your second victim. Whose decision was it to kill her? Yours or Sara’s?’

  ‘There’s no proof that Joel killed his mother,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘Jennifer Shillingworth was your first victim when you came back. Why did you kill her?’

  ‘When I do business with someone,’ Griffin said after a few moments, ‘I always stick to the deal I’ve made. Once I’ve settled on a price, I never ask for more money.’

  ‘Jennifer Shillingworth wanted more money. Is that what you’re saying?’

  Silence.

  ‘Why did you use her name for the property trust you set up? Because she led you to your grandmother? Or because she tried to get money out of you? Was this your way of putting her in her place?’

  Silence.

  ‘Your next victim after you came back to Australia was Stan Wells. He was your father’s brother. Why did you kill him?’

  Silence.

  ‘The first thing you do when you come back to Australia after years away is find out who your grandmother is, and then carry out a killing that will cause your real father genuine grief,’ the profiler said. ‘Those are things Craig Wells would do, aren’t they? Not Joel Griffin.’

  ‘I’m not Craig Wells.’

  ‘For all your killings you used an axe you stole from your father. Everything you do seems to lead back to your real family. Have you ever really left home, Joel? You’ve travelled the world, but aren’t you still back in that little house on Bay Street?’

  ‘You don’t know the places I’ve been,’ he replied.

  ‘You never killed your father.’

  Griffin looked down at the table and this time he did smile. ‘Isn’t he already dead?’

  ‘You made your grandmother the centre of this,’ the profiler said. ‘You buried your victims in her surgery. The young women who worked for you at Life’s Pleasures said they were there to work for Amelie. You used her home as a base for your murders. You called your property trust after the woman who found her for you and whom you then killed. Why?’

  Silence.

  ‘You and Sara met at Camp Sunshine,’ the profiler said. ‘You were both fifteen.’

  ‘Joel has already agreed with that statement,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘You planned the real Joel Griffin’s death from that time, didn’t you? Sara started seeing him. She paid for him to get his teeth fixed but he didn’t know it was under your name.’

  ‘That allegation is pure speculation,’ the lawyer said.

  ‘No, there’s sufficient evidence to support it,’ the police interviewer replied. ‘We also have Joel’s own dental records. They date back to when he was fifteen. Given that DNA testing has established his identity as Craig Wells, we can state that he was using Joel Griffin’s identity while the real Joel was still alive.’

  ‘Sara knew from the start what you were planning,’ the profiler said. ‘You planned it together.’

  ‘She liked being with me. She said it was exciting. She said there was only us in the world.’

  ‘She was in love with you.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘You’re fascinated by identity, aren’t you?’ the profiler said. ‘You used the medical records you found in Amelie Santos’s garage to sell new identities to other people. You used them for yourselves. You even used them when you were extorting Amelie Santos’s Blackheath house from her. It was like having a second self you could draw on whenever you needed to do something. Like being invisible. And you sold several of those IDs to women who then worked gratis at Life’s Pleasures in payment. You even murdered one of them who refused to keep her side of the bargain. You used the names of your victims. It seemed to be almost a way of keeping them alive. You even brought Craig back to life. Or is that your way of keeping your victims prisoner? A way of going back to what you did to them? You bring them back to life. You murder them again.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why did you kill Elliot Griffin, Joel?’ the police interviewer asked. ‘Did he believe you were his son and try to seek you out? Did he want money? Why not just tell him he’d made a mistake? How could he connect you to his son?’

  Silence.

  ‘Or did he remind you that you weren’t who you said you were?’ the profiler asked. ‘You were killing your old self all over again when you killed him. Because you really aren’t Joel Griffin. You’re Craig Wells.’

  Griffin looked her directly in the eyes. Watching, Harrigan thought he saw her flinch.

  ‘This is who I am,’ he said. ‘If someone comes to you and says, you’re not who you say you are, then, whether they want money from you or not, they’re drinking your blood. I don’t put up with that from anyone no matter who they are.’

  ‘Are you making a threat, Joel?’ the police interviewer asked quietly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Elliot Griffin found you and wanted money,’ the interviewer continued after a pause. ‘That’s what you’re saying. And because of that you killed him.’

  Silence.

  ‘Are you obsessed with the past, Joel?’ the profiler said. ‘You seem to have to keep worrying at it. Punishing it. You keep trying to obliterate it and then you keep bringing it back to life. Isn’t that like being on a treadmill?’

  ‘I was finished here,’ Griffin said. ‘I was leaving. I wasn’t coming back.’

  ‘Don’t you like Sydney? This is where you were born. Why come back after all those years if it hooked you back into the past?’

  ‘I never wanted to come back here. That was Sara’s idea.’

  ‘Why did she want to come back?’

  ‘She was homesick. She didn’t like the weather in London. She wanted to go sailing again.’

  ‘So you came home.’

  ‘She was going to get on a plane without me. It meant I had to move the whole business here.’

  ‘Are you the main driver of the business, Joel?’ the police interviewer asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re a very skilled financier.’

  ‘I’m good with money. I know how to make it work.’

  ‘Money’s important to you.’

  ‘Money is real. When everything else is finished, there’s always money,’ Griffin said.

  ‘Financial analysis has identified the companies Santos Associates and Cheshire Nominees as ultim
ately owned by you and Sara McLeod. Everything you own, you own jointly with her. You both shared your money. That’s a statement of commitment, isn’t it?’ the profiler said. ‘You owned in common. You killed people if they wanted money from you or didn’t pay you. But you and Sara shared every cent you had.’

  Silence.

  ‘So when she wanted to get on a plane home, you couldn’t let her do that. You couldn’t kill her either. You had to go with her.’

  Silence.

  ‘You couldn’t leave her. She knew everything about you.’ The profiler spoke almost gently. ‘Knew you as Craig and Joel. Was your lover as Craig and Joel. Helped you kill your mother and Joel Griffin. The first police on the scene that night passed a motorbike coming towards them with a rider and a pillion. That was the two of you, wasn’t it? How were you feeling? Exhilarated? You were only eighteen, the both of you.’

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ Griffin replied.

  ‘It’s almost like you both stayed back there, when you were eighteen. You kept doing it over and over again. But it began to wear out. And you started fighting with each other.’

  ‘She’s dead,’ Griffin said. ‘If she’s dead, then the past doesn’t matter. It’s finished. It was finished anyway.’

  ‘Are you grieving for her?’

  Harrigan leaned forward. Griffin looked completely detached.

  ‘Everyone dies,’ he said. ‘Don’t you know that?’

  ‘You needed her because she was the other half of you as a murderer and you can’t get rid of that self. You like to kill. It eases your mind in some way, doesn’t it? What’s left now she’s gone? The money?’

  ‘There’s no point in questions like that or these speculations,’ the lawyer said. ‘My client has already said he has no admissions to make on any of these subjects.’

  ‘There’s always money.’ Griffin spoke simultaneously with his lawyer, then turned his head away from his questioners towards the one-way glass.

  He couldn’t know it but he was looking directly at Harrigan and Grace. His eyes seemed empty of expression, his face dead. Grace looked away and stood up.

  Harrigan glanced at Borghini and all three of them left the viewing area.

  ‘Every time we talk to him, it’s like that,’ Borghini said. They’d gone to a nearby shopping centre to have coffee. ‘I’ve sat opposite him, and sometimes before the interview starts he’s normal. He’ll talk to you. As soon as we start, he’s gone. It’s like he’s turned off a switch in his head. After that, nothing reaches him. He hasn’t said a word about Sara McLeod. Unless you ask him directly, he won’t talk about her. They were together for how long? Since she was fifteen. She was forty-three when she died. Nothing. Not even goodbye.’

  ‘He’s a sick man,’ Grace said. ‘There’s nothing else to say.’

  ‘How did you know to be at Duffys Forest?’ Harrigan asked.

  ‘Police work. I tried to tell your boss but he wouldn’t listen,’ Borghini said, looking to Grace. ‘When we found Jirawan Sanders, we checked for any possible related incidents in that locality. A neighbour, Adrian Mellish, had reported hearing a scream from the surgery about a month ago. We checked the ownership of the building. It belonged to Shillingworth. We checked further, found the house at Duffys Forest. If you track where Jirawan Sanders was found, it’s on a path between the two. We were working to get a search warrant for the Turramurra building when I got your call, boss. Except that when I answered it you weren’t there. Then we get another call a couple of minutes later saying a man’s been kidnapped. When we get there, we find your phone and Mellish tells us you were there looking at the house. We go in and find this graveyard. I didn’t know where they’d taken you so I thought, okay, I’ll put a team at Duffys Forest just in case. Lucky I did.’

  ‘Did you tell Orion any of this?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Oh yeah. I called them in straightaway.’

  ‘When did they get to Duffys Forest?’

  ‘We went there together, which was about half an hour before Griffin arrived. They were calling the shots, saying when we should and shouldn’t move. We moved too late in my opinion. They stayed too far back.’

  Grace said nothing.

  ‘I think that squares things, mate,’ Harrigan said. ‘You don’t owe me any favours.’

  ‘Not a problem, boss. Just doing my job.’

  Grace was silent for some time while they were driving home.

  ‘What did you mean when you told Mark he didn’t owe you any favours?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘I guess you’ll tell me.’

  ‘His birth name’s Vincenzo Ponticelli. He’s Bianca’s brother.’

  ‘Did she tell you?’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t think she could have told anybody else because otherwise he’d probably be dead by now. They see him as a traitor. He’s got no loyalty to any of the family. He saw old man Ponticelli beat up his mother and worse. When she ran, she went to Perth and married again. Mark took his stepfather’s name and grew up there, a long way from any of them. He came back here about five years ago when he married a Sydney girl. I went and saw him, wanted to know if he was straight or bent. But he’s as straight as they come.’

  ‘No one’s put the faces together? Him and his father?’

  ‘Apparently, he looks more like his mother. I don’t think they’ll stay here. It’s too close for comfort for him.’

  ‘Does anyone else know?’

  ‘Just you. It was the best thing about this operation for me. Knowing he was there for you to rely on.’

  ‘I almost wish I hadn’t sat in on that interview,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I found out anything. He didn’t answer any questions. It was their words; they did all the talking.’

  ‘He’ll never tell us anything. He’ll just live in his head till he dies. Lucky him.’

  ‘Whatever else I do, I’m going to forget about him,’ Grace said. ‘Once this is all over, it’s going to be like he never existed. I’m promising myself that.’

  Proving she was nothing if not thorough and reliable, Harrigan’s retainer sent him one last piece of information by email. She had found a picture of Rafael Santos in a newspaper from the early 1930s. He had made it to the society pages, attending a debutante ball somewhere in the eastern suburbs.

  Mr Rafael Santos is visiting our shores from far-away Argentina where he is in the cattle business. ‘I am hoping we can establish commercial ties between our two great nations,’ he told our journalist. ‘In the meantime, I am enjoying your wonderful hospitality and your beautiful harbour. And the ball, of course.’

  Harrigan studied the photograph. A handsome man who looked more like his grandson than his son. He looked at the date. A little less than ten months before Frank Wells had been born. Did Rafael Santos meet Amelie Warwick at the debutante ball, ask her to dance? Did she think she was in love? Did he care for her? Or was he just someone with an eye for the main chance? Did he panic when he realised what he’d got himself into? Or did he meet with such hostility from her parents that he ran anyway, rather than live like that? Or was he just a conman, someone who’d never been anywhere near Argentina, a chancer living on his wits who did what he had to do before making a run for it?

  Nothing in this photograph could answer any of Harrigan’s questions. He didn’t even save it. He deleted it and sent his retainer a request for her invoice. Time to let the past go. It had done enough damage.

  Meanwhile, it was time to collect Ellie from Kidz Corner. He left the house, pleased to be doing something ordinary.

  The quiet room hadn’t changed since the last time Grace had sat in there. The debriefs were finished, the reports had been made, the evidence collated. Clive had asked her to see him today. This suited her; she was ready to talk to him now. He smiled at her when she sat down, his papers in front of him. She was also carrying a folder.

  ‘I want to congratulate you again,’ he said. ‘Griffin’s arrest is a very important dev
elopment. We now have a map of most of his network. He was very skilled with finance. He ran a slick and effective operation.’

  ‘He has a good mind,’ Grace said. ‘Pity he used it the way he did.’

  ‘I’m authorising you to be paid a bonus and I’m also giving you a pay rise. You’ve earned it.’

  He smiled. She didn’t smile back.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I have another offer as well.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m looking to recruit a number of people to be my 2ICs. I’d like you to consider taking up one of those positions. I can’t do this job forever and someone has to take over when I go. This is your chance to put your hat in the ring.’

  ‘What would that involve?’ she asked. ‘Me working closely with you on a regular basis? Long hours?’

  ‘The hours would be more demanding, but you’ve got your partner to look after your daughter for you. Yes, you would be working closely with me. That’s the point. But it is a step forward in your career.’

  ‘I shot a woman that night.’

  ‘The autopsy showed that it was the police marksman’s bullet that killed Sara McLeod, not yours.’

  ‘I still shot her. I’m not sure I ever want to do that again.’

  ‘In this position, you won’t have to,’ Clive said.

  ‘Someone else does the dirty work.’

  ‘You handled that situation very well. Whatever you think, you have a great deal of potential. Maybe you’d like time to think this over.’

  ‘No, I’ve already done my thinking,’ she said, and, opening the folder she’d brought with her, took out an envelope. ‘This is my resignation. I’ll complete any outstanding tasks, I’ll be available for debriefings and court appearances as required, but I want to leave by the end of the month.’

  ‘Why?’ Clive asked, suddenly angry, suppressing it quickly.

  ‘It’s all in there.’

  ‘I don’t think the real reason will be there. People don’t put those things on paper.’

  ‘That night there were two things you didn’t do. I asked you to ring Harrigan. You didn’t.’