against her horse’s. Her smile was one of real happiness. Scrawled across the picture were the words
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
The briefcase was locked and there was no way he could guess the combination. He forced it open, pretty much destroying it in the process, to find it packed with neat bricks of American dollar bills. He took them out one by one and counted them. Used hundreds and fifties. Quite a nest egg. You could live very well anywhere in the world on this, for quite some time.
Harrigan suddenly realised that he was so absorbed in looking at these things, anyone could have walked up to him unnoticed. He looked up quickly but there was no one there. The room was empty. What to do with what he’d found? He put the laptops and portable drives back into the black bag and closed the briefcase again as best he could. He had already disturbed the chain of evidence. Assuming he was prepared to admit that he’d broken in here, it could be argued by a defence counsel that he’d compromised what was there, even planted these things. If he took them with him, it was theft.
He thought for a few moments and got to his feet. Collecting a chair from the dining room, he took it down to the linen cupboard where he stood on it and pushed open the manhole cover. Then, one after the other, he pushed the black bag and the briefcase as far into the roof cavity as possible. Let them wonder where they were.
He had closed the cupboard doors and was standing with the chair in his hand when he realised that he’d left the door to the white-tiled room open. He went to close it, stopping to look at the empty room in front of him. People had almost certainly died in there. Killers kept souvenirs. Who knew what else there was in this house? It was getting to the point where he would have to take his information to the police, regardless of what Orion would do.
He closed and was able to relock the laundry door. Once outside, he wedged the broken window back into place as best he could. Then he returned the chair to its place in the overgrown garden. Judging by the length of the grass, nobody came out here very much. Probably they wouldn’t notice that the chair had been moved. Not until they discovered what was missing and began to look around.
The sun was warm and the overgrown garden, with its sounds of bird calls and a soft wind in the trees, seemed dreamlike in its peaceful, bright greenness. Shillingworth Trust was using this house as a bolt hole. It was a good place to be if you didn’t want anyone looking over your shoulder. Or if there was someone in the white-tiled room you wanted to attend to. Given the amount of money in that briefcase, someone would be back here for it soon enough. The best outcome would be if the police were waiting for them when they got here.
There was one last place for him to go: the surgery at Turramurra. He would do that tomorrow morning. Then he would call the police, regardless of Orion’s protocol. Would twenty-four hours make much difference? He could only hope it wouldn’t.
Now he had to get back home himself. He had his book launch to go to.
He was driving down Mona Vale Road when his mobile rang.
‘Harrigan? It’s Eddie.’
Good, Harrigan thought. Contacting Eddie Grippo had been next on his list of things to do.
‘What’s the word?’
‘That place you were asking about the other day, Fairview Mansions. It’s being sold. Went on the market yesterday.’
‘Who are you dealing with?’
‘Some lawyer called Joel Griffin.’
‘Do you know him?’ Harrigan asked.
‘He’s done work for the family in the past. That’s all I know about him.’
‘Any other news?’
‘No, that’s it.’
‘I want to see you,’ Harrigan said.
‘Shit, mate. If anyone sees me with you, I’m fucking dead.’
‘Tomorrow morning at nine. There’s a hotel in Tempe, the Royal Exchange. I’ll be waiting for you in the back room. Don’t worry, it’s private. No one will see you there.’
‘I’ve got to work.’
‘I’ve got things to do too, mate. Be there. I’ll be waiting.’
By the time he got home, Grace was there with Ellie, changed and ready to go. His daughter ran to him as usual and he swung her up in his arms.
‘She’s had her dinner,’ Grace said, ‘and Kidz Corner made sure she had an extra nap this afternoon. We’ll see how she goes tonight. I’ve got her dressed in her party frock. Doesn’t she look pretty?’
Grace looked tired but the smile was real. She had on a light dusting of make-up and her hair was brushed out. She had dressed herself as she did whenever they went out, with a touch of style, colours that showed the delicacy of her skin.
