The Labyrinth of Drowning by Alex Palmer Read Free Book Online

compartments; no one was allowed to know what the next person was doing. It had reached a level where operatives didn’t share even the most trivial pieces of information. People muttered that this was Clive’s way of making sure there was no one to challenge him. Grace agreed with this opinion; it was the oldest tactic in the world. But aside from that was his attitude to her. He was always trying to get under her skin, to play games with her feelings. She wondered if she was imagining it, but there seemed to be a touch of obsession in his treatment of her, as if he couldn’t leave her alone.
    Even today, he’d sat on the news about Newell throughout their meeting, a meeting he had deliberately drawn out. Perhaps it was his way of getting rid of her; he had driven out other operatives since he’d arrived. Whatever his ultimate aim, he’d succeeded in putting the question in her mind. Did she want to do this kind of work any longer?
    At the heart of Grace’s life there were cracks, events that marked the time before and after happiness. She had grown up in New Guinea where her father had been a defence attaché at the Australian High Commission. Her life had been spent happily between boarding school in Brisbane and time with her family, including her brother, Nicky, to whom she was still very close. Her childhood lived in her memory as time spent in a magical place. In her mind she could still see the landscapes she had grown up in, all of which had an intense beauty. But when she was fourteen, her mother had died in a little less than twenty-four hours from a rare form of cerebral malaria. Grace had once believed that nothing in her life could match that heartbreak, not even if her father or her brother died. She knew now that losing either Paul or Ellie would be as bad.
    Her father had ceased to be Brigadier Kep Riordan with the High Commission in Port Moresby and had come back to Australia to raise his two children as best he could, on the Central Coast of New South Wales, where he’d been born. There Grace ran wild, falling in with a group of older kids who stole cars and took them for joy rides. She remembered one night shouting at the driver to gofaster and faster, so much so that she’d spooked him. She’d been scouring away the emotional pain, almost killing herself in the process. It was only her father’s efforts that had kept her out of the children’s courts.
    Finally, barely sixteen, she had left school and home for Sydney and found herself singing in pubs when she was too young to drink in them. From there, she started singing for a group called Wasted Daze, a name she thought suited her. They were a group of young men who were as lost as she was. They’d toured the east coast of Australia, always heading north, camping out on beaches, too poor to do much more than buy beer and takeaway food. Grace had liked the life. She liked the open road with no destination at the end of it, just the vanishing point on the horizon. The immediate impression of each day had become a good enough substitute for happiness.
    Then Chris Newell walked into their lives. It wasn’t so unusual; they seemed to pick up stray people as they drove around in their rusting Kombi van. They were in northern Queensland by then, playing at the local pubs in a district where the main industry was growing sugar cane. Occasionally they met Newell socially; he always had dope to sell. Then one day the owner of a pub where they’d played refused to pay them; Newell told the man he’d better if he knew what was good for him. He paid with a bonus. After this, Newell offered to manage them as far as it went. They accepted the offer, but they were all, including Grace, too naïve and casual in the way they did things.
    She and Newell became an item, not for very long, a couple of months at most. By the end of this short time it was clear to everyone that Newell was a controller who liked tormenting people. They’d also discovered he was