The Labyrinth of Drowning

reading Toby’s written replies would have had only the detached half of what had been communicated between them.

‘I don’t think she can read that yet, mate,’ Harrigan said.

She will. Where’s Grace?

‘She’s fine. At work. How are you?’

I’m good. What about you?

‘I’ve got something I want to talk to you about but it’s a tough subject.’

Shoot. I can deal with it.

‘It’s your mother. Before you ask, she hasn’t been in contact. If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s fine by me.’

She never will. Or when she’s so old, it won’t matter. I can talk about it. Why?

‘It’s to do with a job I’m working on. Two cases. In one, a son killed his mother. The second concerns a man who was adopted out pretty much as soon as he was born. He had a hard upbringing-his adoptive parents abused him, particularly the mother. My judgement is he turned into an abuser himself. When he found out about his real mother, it hurt him like hell. She was a rich woman who’d left him nothing.’

Did she know where he lived? If he was adopted out immediately, she might not even have known what his name was or where she could find him.

‘That’s true. But that hasn’t made any difference to how he feels.’

Why did this other guy kill his mother?

‘She was an alcoholic, she seems to have had one casual affair after the other. As far as I can tell she didn’t seem to care much about her son’s welfare. I think his father abused him as well. She either didn’t believe her son when he told her or she didn’t care.’

Is the guy who killed his mother the son of the man who was adopted out?

‘Yes.’

Why do you want to talk about it?

‘I’m trying to get into these people’s heads. What are the drivers that would make someone do that?’

Hatred. You’d have to feel that.

‘You don’t.’

No. I don’t hate my mother. I don’t want to hurt her. I guess if I met her I’d be angry. Sometimes I am angry with her but there’s too much in my life for me to think about that all the time. Do you think she thinks about me?

‘I think she has to. She knows I stayed with you. And she knows you’ve got a good mind. She made enough enquiries to find that out. Maybe that’s what she relies on to forgive herself. Whatever it is she feels.’

I don’t think about her too much if that’s what you’re asking me. You’ve always been there. But there’s a gap. Disappointment. That’s what I feel. I wish it had been different because what my mother did, I think that was just a waste. I wish she had been here but she wasn’t and there’s nothing I can do about it.

It was a long way from disappointment to enough loathing to carry out a murder. Toby had always had the rest of the extended Harrigan clan to rely on as well: Harrigan’s two formidable older sisters and their families, all of whom had accepted Toby as one of their own. Ellie, bored, climbed down from Toby’s lap and began to explore the room. Harrigan gave her toys to play with where he could keep an eye on her.

You shouldn’t worry about me, Dad. When you’re like me, you’ve got to be practical. I know what I can do. That’s what I concentrate on. My mother’s like anybody else who can’t handle me. They don’t come near me. Why should I care? It’s my body. I deal with it. With help.

It was afternoon tea time. Harrigan helped both his older and his younger child eat. Ellie would grow up to feed herself and to walk and talk easily. Unless some miracle cure was discovered, some unique stem cell therapy that could transform him, Toby would never be able to do any of these things. The coloured, flashing, electric shadows of the computer monitor were his lifeline; his good hand connected his mind to the screen and gave him a voice and the tools to be part of the world. To help him physically he had his therapist, the exercise programs that prevented muscle wastage, and the regime that washed, fed and medicated him, saw him into his wheelchair and got him to his university classes, where again he was treated as one of their own. There were worse lives; Frank Wells’s for one.

Harrigan was on his way home with Ellie, tired and a little grumpy in her safety seat in the back of the car, when Grace rang.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be late. There’s been a development in our operation. I probably won’t be there before Ellie goes to bed.’

‘That’s okay, babe. I’ll look after her. I guess you can’t tell me what this is about.’

‘No, I can’t. Maybe you’d better eat without me.’

‘All right. I’ll see you when you get here. Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine. I’m not in any danger.’

‘I hope not. Take care, okay?’

‘I will. You too. See you.’

Not in any danger. He remembered what he’d said to her: We’ll take it day by day, I won’t ask questions. He was doing this for Grace, for the two of them, not for Clive or even Orion. He just had to keep that in mind.

Later, when Ellie was asleep, Harrigan went into his study and turned on his computer. Working in this room quietened his thoughts. He looked at the bookshelves lining one wall and saw the old pair of boxing gloves he kept on one of the shelves. Once, when he was about twenty, he’d tried to make a career as a boxer but hadn’t been light enough on his feet to be successful. Then, not much more than two years later, he’d become a father, pretty much by accident. When Toby was born, his world had changed and he’d had to find regular work to support his son. He still loved boxing, still went to the fights and still worked out. These days he had more time to do it and was fitter than he used to be.

On another wall, prints of works by the Spanish artist Goya were on display. Harrigan had discovered Goya’s work when he was overseas on secondment to the Australian Federal Police. He had a vivid memory of walking into the Prado in Madrid and seeing Goya’s Black Paintings. Their savage and bizarre satire spoke strongly to his experiences of dealing with the lunacy people inflicted daily on themselves and each other. If asked, Harrigan would have said these surreal representations of humanity were all too exact. This was what people were like: they were as mad as this, as plagued by delusions and demons; their actions as futile, as ugly and as murderous as Goya had painted them to be. After this he had begun to collect books and reproductions of the artist’s work. The paintings eased Harrigan’s mind; it was a relief that someone knew as much as he did, not just about human evil, but how it actually looked when you met with it. This was its real face and it was nightmarish.

Reaching up to the shelf nearest his desk, Harrigan took down a facsimile of Goya’s series of etchings Los Caprichos, a catalogue of human folly and vice, venality and deceit. He opened the book to the sixth print. It had the caption: Nobody knows himself. In the foreground, a masked man seemed to bow to a masked woman, both dressed as if they were at a masquerade ball. He seemed to want something from her, to search her face for some response; but her thoughts were unreadable. Perhaps she smiled but who knew what her smile might mean. Other shadowy figures, both grotesque and menacing, watched from the soft, dark wash of the background. All deceive, the text continued, and do not know themselves. Harrigan wondered if the print portrayed where he and Grace were themselves right now.

He left these shadows and began to search through those on the net. He sent an email to a retainer of his, a university student who found carrying out research for Harrigan a more rewarding job than waiting on tables. He had several subjects for her tonight: Amelie Santos, Ian Blackmore, Jennifer Shillingworth, Camp Sunshine charity. As an afterthought he added the name of the sanatorium in Frank Wells’s letter. If the baby had been sent from there to his adoptive parents, then that must have been where the birth had taken place. Anything she could find out about any of them. Normally he would also have asked her to check out the Shillingworth Trust, but if the Ponticellis were involved, he didn’t want her anywhere near them. He would do that himself.

He had just pressed ‘send’ when his phone announced an SMS message. When he opened it, he saw a