1

If I had wings, I could fly away. Grace Riordan improvised the lyric and the music in her head, infinitely sad. More often there’s no way out, she thought. The Thai woman, the one with no name, had only gone so far. From the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in the southwest of the city to the dry soil and sandstone rocks of northern Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. Under trees that gave off the sharp, antiseptic smell of eucalyptus, she lay with the back of her head broken open against the ground. The floodlights set up by the police cast a monochrome glare over the woman and the surrounding bushland.

Grace was used to death; it was part of the work she did in law enforcement. But sometimes you met with something that brought you to a stop; where the reality was too powerful for you to brush it aside. The woman’s dress, flimsy and girlish, was partly torn away, the fabric thickened with blood. The torn pieces clung to her, held in place by the belt left around her waist, seeming strangely obscene. Not only the back of her head but also her legs and arms, which were small, almost delicate, had been smashed. Her face and torso were covered with the marks of the beating she must have thought would never stop, not while she was living. Someone had broken this woman down piece by piece until she might not have been human and then left her here for someone to find. Seeing her was like walking into a glass wall.

The woman’s eyes were still open. Grace met the blank gaze. She stood up, her hand bunched as a fist at her mouth for a few seconds. She had to take photographs, it was standard operating procedure.

‘Where are her shoes?’ she asked.

‘Who knows? But she must have run quite a distance. Her feet are in bad shape.’

The man who answered her, the local command’s senior detective sergeant, was stocky with a black, pencil-thin beard. Mark Borghini. She hadn’t heard of him before.

‘Who found her?’

‘A married couple who live about a kilometre away in North Turramurra, out with their kids for a night-time walk. They heard something crashing through the bush. The wife thought it was a dog. Then they found her.’ He looked down at the body. ‘They probably disturbed the killer. I think she was beaten and assaulted somewhere else and tried to make a run for it.’

The pathologist arrived, Kenneth McMichael, his technicians following him like acolytes.

‘My God,’ he said, kneeling and studying the dead woman’s head. ‘Who did this?’ His huge frame dwarfed the small corpse.

‘Any idea of the weapon?’ Borghini asked.

‘Something very hard and heavy. That’s what it usually takes to smash the back of the head.’ McMichael was renowned for his withering sarcasm.

‘Thanks, mate. I could have worked that out for myself.’ Borghini stepped away from the woman’s broken body, turning his back.

McMichael was frowning. ‘Someone’s given her a real beating. Not enough to kill but savage. You two have got your work cut out for you here. I often think you get to deal with the nicest people.’

Fist to skin. The sound, the shock. Dead-sounding when it connected. Crack, smack, instantaneous, so harsh. It was their strength—you should be able to stop them but you couldn’t. The thought: I’m going to die. Grace had not died. Her assailant had raped her.

‘Has she been sexually assaulted?’ she asked.

Something in her voice made both Borghini and McMichael turn to look at her.

‘You’ll have to wait for the autopsy to know the extent,’ McMichael said. ‘But there is one thing.’ He had a swab in his hand, which he brushed around and inside the woman’s mouth. ‘She was made to kneel before she died. I think this will be semen.’

‘Fucking arsehole,’ Borghini muttered.

My face was like that once, Grace thought. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The man who had beaten and raped her then carved a slow and careful cut into her neck. It was still there as a scar, a thin thread from her chin to her breastbone, a cut as much in her mind as in her body. Remember me, he’d said. Because I love you.

Past the pathologist’s shoulder, Grace could still see the woman’s face. Her dead eyes had taken hold of her. We wouldn’t let you go home and I told you we would protect you. And here you are.

Grace had met the woman a few days earlier, sent to interview her by her boss, Clive Smith. He’d watched her closely as he gave her the brief, a strange edge to his voice.

‘You’ve read the alert,’ he said. ‘A Thai woman, with very little English, twenty-eight, physically very small. Possibly brought to and held in Australia against her will. In other words, she fits the profile for Jirawan Sanders. I want you to interview her. Most of all, I want you to gauge her reaction to her present situation. Try to get a take on what kind of person she is. Is she susceptible to pressure? Can she be bought? When you’ve done that, I’ll make a judgement where we take this.’

‘If there’s an alert, why don’t we have a photograph of her?’ Grace asked.

‘You’ll have to take it from me that there’s none available.’

‘My information on this detainee is that she’s refused to identify herself except to say she’s Thai and she wants to go home. Assuming that she is Jirawan Sanders, I’d like to know why you’ve given me a direct order not to mention that name under any circumstances.’ Grace was careful to keep her voice even. She didn’t want Clive to know he was getting to her.

Clive smiled a little arrogantly. He was always smooth. He’d been given the job as director of operations at Orion while she was away on maternity leave, making him directly her superior—an unpleasant surprise waiting for her when she came back to her position as a field operative with the ultra-secretive intelligence-gathering organisation where she’d worked for the last five years.

Orion was run directly by the federal government and answered to no one but the attorney-general and the cabinet. Grace could quote its brief in her sleep: the investigation and extirpation of externally generated threats that could endanger the Commonwealth’s fabric and the lives of its citizens. Turned into action, this commonly meant that Orion undertook covert operations to counter the possibility of either terrorist activity or international criminal networks damaging the nation. It had draconian powers of surveillance, detention and arrest, which were often discussed in the media by worried commentators. Grace had taken a job here because she had thought she could make a difference, that she could do this work without damaging innocent bystanders. She had standards; she was here to save lives, not to coerce people or wrongly convict them. She wasn’t so certain about Clive’s motives.

‘That name has to stay classified under all circumstances,’ he was saying. ‘As to the operation, it’s my policy only to give operatives as much information as they need to do their work.’

‘I believe I need to know more,’ she replied, looking him in the eye. ‘This alert is listed as a code one. That means there’s an automatic stop on this detainee’s deportation for as long as we’re interested in her. That’s going to lead to questions and I have to be able to field them. Besides that, there wasn’t any information given about why we’re interested in this Jirawan Sanders in the first place, or why it’s so urgent we find her. Given she’s Thai, presumably Sanders is her married name. Where’s her husband? What’s his involvement in this? If my interview with this detainee is going to be useful, don’t I at least need some basic biographical information?’

Clive smiled at her again. He was somewhere in his mid-fifties, with well-preserved features and an unshakeable sense of calm. This calm was genuine ice and it repulsed her. Emotion was only useful when it was being manipulated, something he did with finesse. Even the way he told everyone to call him by his first name seemed a pretence at openness. She shouldn’t let her feelings affect her judgement so much. He came with the territory; by necessity it was a cold-blooded profession. But her dislike was too deep. Whether he had another life, any kind of lover, a partner perhaps, even children, she didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

‘You know how to think,’ he said, patronisingly, as if she had passed a test.

‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?’ she replied, manufacturing a professional smile of her own.

‘Then you don’t need to keep talking to me. There’s nothing you’ve raised in this meeting that you shouldn’t be able to handle. Go and see her. Then come back and tell me how she reacts. I think this discussion has gone on long enough.’

Clive wasn’t someone you argued with for too long. She’d left his office quickly and made her way to the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, where the woman was being held as an illegal immigrant. She’d been picked up in the city on George Street outside the concourse to Wynyard railway station at midnight four days ago, with no identification and only the clothes she’d been wearing. She’d refused to cooperate with the police, and they’d sent her to Villawood, not knowing what else to do.

Four people had been present for the interview: the Thai woman; Grace; the interpreter; and a Department of Immigration official, Jon Kidd. He was the officer in charge of the woman’s case, and senior enough to have the necessary security clearance to deal with Orion. A short man, he was expensively and meticulously dressed, his leather shoes brushed to an almost mirror finish.

The Thai woman was tiny. Eye to eye, the first quality Grace saw in her was fear. It sat on her delicate frame as if it would break her. After that first terrified glance, she refused to look at Grace or the interpreter again, her eyes sliding sickly to the door, begging for a way out. Too often, like the reflex action of someone trapped, she looked at Kidd and then away, as if she was even more frightened of him. He didn’t meet her eye but instead stared at Grace.

‘Tell her not to be so afraid,’ Grace said. ‘We can give her protection if she needs it.’

The reply was brief tears, almost laughter.

‘There’s no such thing,’ the interpreter translated awkwardly, clearly embarrassed. ‘You can’t help me.’

‘I thought we were here for a meaningful interview,’ Kidd said sarcastically. ‘Why are you telling her things like that?’

‘This woman is terrified.’

‘I can see that. Ask your questions and go. Clearly you’re frightening her.’

‘I would have said she’s just as much frightened of you.’

‘She has no reason to be. We want to deport her, which is what she wants as well. You’re just getting in the way,’ Kidd said. ‘Finish and let her go.’

‘I want a name.’

‘Nothing,’ the interpreter said. ‘She has no name.’

‘That’s not true. We all have a name.’

‘Not her. She’s wiped it out.’

‘Then I’ll find a way to give it back to her.’

Grace was shocked at herself. She was a professional; she didn’t say things like that. But by then the woman was weeping continuously and the words weren’t translated.

‘For God’s sake, finish it,’ Kidd said. ‘Let her go back to Thailand. That’s all you can do for her.’

Impossible, Grace thought. The machinery has started; it’ll grind us all down.

‘That’s the one thing I can’t do now,’ she said, maintaining composure. ‘You must know that. Ask her one more time to talk to me.’

‘She can’t,’ the interpreter said.

‘This is going to be all your fault,’ Kidd said ferociously in Grace’s ear after they’d left the room.

‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.

He looked at her with eyes bright with anger and accusation. ‘Whatever happens next…it’ll be your fault. Goodbye.’

Grace had carried the woman’s fear back to Clive. Fear and secrecy were poisons she couldn’t cure alone.

‘Terrified,’ she’d said. ‘Absolutely terrified. She’s acting like she expects to be murdered at any moment. And there’s something else—Kidd, the immigration officer. I think we should check him out. Given the way he acted today and some of the things he said to me, I’d question his motives. Apart from that, this woman acted as if she felt in danger from him.’

Clive stared at her for some moments. ‘That had better not be a wild accusation,’ he said.

‘I don’t make those calls lightly.’

‘Then get her out of there,’ he replied. ‘Now.’

But someone else had got there first. The information came through from Kidd himself: in the hour after Grace and the interpreter had left Villawood, the Thai woman had escaped while on her way to a medical appointment. Her whereabouts were unknown. Listening, Grace had to wonder if he was involved in any way. No one could get out of Villawood without help. But she had no grounds for putting the question directly to him, or not yet. Then, some thirty-six hours later, at 1:45 am, she got the phone call she’d been dreading.

I saw her before and after death, and now here on this cold, hard bed. It was several days later. Behind the glass partition at the morgue, Grace was watching the autopsy.

‘Subject has a very neat Caesarean scar,’ McMichael announced. ‘Very well done. She’s had at least one child at some stage. All right, let’s get started.’

Under the pathologist’s knife the most intrinsic of intrusions took place. It was the dead woman’s final nakedness. With scalp removed and skull opened, the body peeled back breastbone to pelvic bone, the Thai woman ceased to be human and became a series of parts. Jon Kidd was standing next to Grace; he drew in his breath sharply, swore, then walked out.

‘Get after him. We need him,’ Borghini said to his offsider, who left the viewing area immediately. He turned to Grace. ‘I thought he was her case manager. Didn’t he ask to be here?’

‘He’s not used to seeing the dead,’ Grace replied. ‘They get killed somewhere else.’

She caught her breath; her façade had almost cracked as well. Every morning before going to work, she coiled up her long dark hair to sit at the back of her head, then put on her make-up, pale foundation that turned her face into the china mask of a heroine from an ancient Japanese drama. Her work clothes made up the rest of her armour. It wasn’t an impenetrable disguise but it was usually enough to get her through. But she hadn’t known this woman had had a child.

Grace had that same scar. Just eighteen months ago her daughter Ellie had been brought into the world in that same way when, after Grace had been in labour for twelve hours, the baby’s heartbeat had dropped alarmingly. Paul Harrigan, her partner, carried in his wallet a photograph he had taken just after they’d first put the baby into her arms. Her hair was dark and messy against the white pillow, her face exhausted. Her long eyelashes brushed towards her cheeks as she looked down at Ellie, whom she seemed to be holding almost too tightly, the baby’s head resting on the crook of her arm. Ellie’s sparse hair clung in wet lines against her large and delicate head and her tiny crooked fingers were almost translucent.

There was no damp, newly breathing child or clean white sheets for this unknown woman on her metal bed. For the first time in her career, Grace was caught between two powerful emotions: fury at what had happened and the feeling that she might cry for the woman on the table.

‘What do we have here?’ McMichael said. ‘I think it’s a wedding ring.’ He held up the proverbial gold band in a pair of tweezers.

‘Mate,’ Borghini said, ‘we need that ring. Bag it up.’

‘She swallowed it,’ Grace said, shocked. ‘She wasn’t going to let her murderer take it away from her.’

The pathologist heard her over the intercom. ‘Thank you, Mrs Harrigan,’ he said furiously. ‘How else was it going to get into her oesophagus? She barely got it down. It must have hurt.’

‘She was brave then, wasn’t she? And for your information, my surname is still Riordan.’

For once silenced, McMichael went back to work. He didn’t speak again until he’d finished the autopsy.

‘Definite signs of sexual contact but not necessarily actual physical sexual assault,’ he said. ‘Terrified into compliance presumably. As expected, the swab revealed semen in the mouth. As for the weapon, some kind of hammer, possibly the back of an axe head. Whoever your murderer is, he’s clearly an evil bastard.’

‘One wedding ring.’ Borghini dropped the bag onto the meeting room table.

Grace picked it up. Inside was a thickish, eighteen-carat gold ring engraved with P&J 4ever against a background of two intertwined hearts. J for Jirawan.

‘Where did that come from?’ Jon Kidd asked.

‘Out of her gut,’ Grace replied, deliberately brutal. ‘She swallowed it, probably just before she was murdered.’

He stared at her, glassy-eyed with shock.

‘Did she have it with her in Villawood?’ Borghini asked.

‘No. How do we know it’s hers?’

‘Why else would she swallow it?’ Grace asked, watching him closely.

‘That ring is departmental property,’ Kidd said. ‘We have an obligation to return it to its rightful owners, which are this woman’s relatives. I need to take it back with me.’

‘No. In this case, this ring is evidence. It stays with the police.’

Kidd looked flustered. ‘That’s their decision, isn’t it?’ he said in a shaky voice.

‘Yeah, and like Grace says, it stays with us,’ Borghini said. ‘Now, we have a name. Coco. She was a sex worker at a brothel called Life’s Pleasures in Parramatta. A client rang the hotline. We’ve already interviewed him. You’re seeing him this afternoon, aren’t you?’ He spoke to Grace.

‘Yes, after I get back.’

‘Has anyone else rung in?’ Kidd asked.

‘Not yet.’

‘Then how do you know this information is accurate?’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ Borghini said. ‘We’re raiding the brothel tonight.’

‘You should have cleared it with the department before you made those plans. We need to be involved.’

Grace hadn’t taken her eyes off Kidd throughout the exchange. Why be so obstructionist, she wondered. Why try to take possession of the ring? Surely Immigration wouldn’t be bothered with finding its so-called owners, whoever they may be.

‘No, we don’t have to clear it with you,’ Borghini said. ‘This is a murder inquiry and we’re going in. Grace will be there. You’re welcome to come along as well. Now, I want some information. Coco, so-called, how did she get out of Villawood?’

Borghini was looking at Kidd with barely concealed contempt. In reply, Kidd opened his briefcase, an expensive leather item with combination locks. He took out two thick wads of paper, each secured with a bulldog clip. Grace accepted hers and began to flick through it.

‘You can thank my regional head for those—Coco’s file. That will tell you everything you need to know.’ He was staring at Grace, his expression accusing. ‘Orion rang the department and insisted I bring them. Presumably you don’t realise we have other things to do besides your photocopying.’

‘We’ve only got one interest in this,’ Grace replied, glancing up from the mass of paper. ‘Finding out who killed her. I’d be very surprised if you didn’t have the same aim.’

She watched the sudden jerk of fear in his face and again wondered whose side he was on.

‘Mate,’ Borghini pushed his wad of paper to the side, ‘I don’t have time for this bumf right now. Tell me the story.’

Kidd was staring at the table. He was white and shaking.

‘Coco, so-called,’ he said. ‘She refused to give us a name, she had a file number. All she wanted was to go home as soon as possible. She—’

He stopped, dropped his head into his hands.

‘Are you all right?’ Grace asked.

He looked up, sweat edging his hair. Without warning, he shot fury at her. ‘But then Orion turned up and made it very clear that wasn’t going to happen. Now she’s dead. In my opinion, you as good as killed her!’

‘Hey, hey. Watch it!’ Borghini said.

‘What did you say?’ The anger in Grace’s voice was like a whiplash.

‘If you’d just let her go home…’ He stopped.

‘Are you telling us she wouldn’t have been murdered if we had done that?’ Grace said. ‘Why? What do you know that we don’t?’

‘I’m just saying what the outcome is. I don’t see why I have to put up with—’

Like a man not in control of himself, he jerked to his feet and reached towards his briefcase as if to walk out of the room. He looked at each of them in turn with something close to panic on his face.

‘Sit down,’ Grace said, by now calmer. He stared at her. ‘I don’t want to call your department head and tell her you’ve just accused me of being responsible for Coco’s death. Or that you walked out on this meeting. Sit down.’

He sat.

‘You owe Grace an apology, mate,’ Borghini said.

‘I haven’t dealt with a situation like this before. I’m sorry. Believe me, I realise it’s not true.’

Oddly, he sounded as if he meant it, if only for those moments. Panic had given way to exhaustion.

‘Your apology’s accepted. We’ll say that’s finished with,’ Grace replied, her voice distant, under control.

‘All right, Jon. You chill out, we’ll move on,’ Borghini said, glancing from Grace to Kidd. ‘How did she get out?’

‘All detainees have to have extensive medical checks. That procedure’s been outsourced—government policy. The medical practice we use is at Parramatta. She and her guard were getting out of the car at the clinic when she made a run for it. There was a white Holden waiting nearby that picked her up. She’d been given a phone card at Villawood, which she’d used. Obviously she’d arranged this escape beforehand.’

Borghini’s offsider was a senior detective constable called Joe McBride, an older man with a lined face and a sprinkle of dandruff on his shoulders. He snorted sarcastically. Kidd gave him an angry glance.

‘We’ll trace those calls,’ Borghini said. ‘But that’s pretty sloppy work by whoever was guarding her.’

‘A guard and a driver were involved. Both women. Their details are on file. They were deemed negligent in their duty and stood down immediately. Their contracts have since been terminated.’

Grace found this document, close to the top of the mass of paper. An Arleen McKenzie, the driver, and a Sophie Jovanov, the guard. They lived locally to Villawood: Arleen in Fairfield and Sophie in Canley Heights. Both were in their thirties. Sophie was married with children; Arleen single.

‘What are you doing to protect these women from the media?’ she asked. ‘This is a hot news item. It was all over the airways when Coco’s body was found.’

‘On termination of their contracts they were required to sign a confidentiality agreement,’ Kidd said. ‘If they speak to the media, with or without a financial inducement, they will be sued and forfeit any money they may have been paid.’

‘You blokes mean business,’ McBride muttered.

‘We’ll need to speak to these women ourselves,’ Grace replied. ‘I’m not expecting anything to get in the way of that.’

‘You can talk to them as much as you like. I’ll doubt they’ll say anything that’s not already in the statement on file.’

Why? Did you write it for them? Perhaps her eyes said this. Kidd looked away and this time did stand and move away from the table.

‘Parramatta Police Station at six tonight,’ Borghini said. ‘See you then.’

Kidd nodded and walked out without speaking.

‘Ran from the guard and was picked up by a white Holden. What fucking bullshit!’ McBride said.

‘When we talk to those women, we can ask them what really happened,’ Grace said, gathering her things together, also readying to leave.

‘Yeah. Like who paid them and how much.’

‘Put it on the list of things to do. This is getting murkier by the minute,’ Borghini said. Then to Grace: ‘We’ll see you at six tonight. How’s the boss?’

Always, she was asked this question. Two years after he had left the police service, ex-Commander Paul Harrigan was still ‘the boss’ to almost all the police officers she met in her work. After eighteen years in the service, his name carried weight. More than one hopeful had taken her aside to ask if there was any chance Harrigan could give them the reference that would guarantee their next promotion.

‘He’s fine,’ she said. ‘Very busy. He has a lot of work.’

‘Does he like being a consultant? If he’d stayed on, he’d probably be Commissioner Harrigan by now. That’s what everybody was expecting.’

Borghini was watching her with a calculating look, but not one that seemed to want anything so self-serving as a reference. It was more like he was trying to find something out. Grace could have told him that Harrigan made far more money as a consultant than he ever had as a policeman, but it wasn’t Borghini’s business.

‘I don’t think he regrets it,’ she said neutrally.

‘You’d hope not. Why did he walk away? He never really told anyone.’

This was the other question people always asked her. Why had Harrigan gone when the top job was in his grasp? Fantastic rumours and conspiracy theories abounded, including the widely circulated gossip that Grace herself had forced him to quit as a condition of their relationship. The fact as he had told her was simple: it’s my life and I’ve had enough. But no one, not the police nor the media, wanted to believe anything so straightforward.

‘He’s said why,’ Grace replied. ‘I don’t have anything to add.’ She was about to stand up when McBride spoke.

‘What’s he been doing at Darlo Court House all week watching Chris Newell go down for murder?’

At the sound of this name, fear went through Grace to the pit of her stomach. Then she got to her feet.

‘That’s his work and it’s confidential. See you this evening.’

‘I hear he’s publishing a book. Justice Under the Law.’ Borghini’s statement stopped her at the door.

‘He is. It’s due out soon. You can buy it and read it if you want. See you later.’

‘Yeah. See you.’

She made a grateful exit from the building and began the drive to the nondescript building in Mascot that housed Orion’s offices. In the flow of traffic, her mind returned to the dissection room, to the marks on Jirawan’s body that had reminded her of the marks that had once covered hers. Chris Newell, now in the dock at Darlinghurst Court House, had been the one who had put them there, and then raped her, fifteen years ago when she was just nineteen.

When she’d heard that Newell, already in gaol for armed robbery, had been charged with the murder of a fellow prisoner, her first thought had been that this time he’d managed to kill someone. McBride had been spot-on: Harrigan was at Darlo Court House to see Newell go down for murder. After that first nightmarish attack, Newell had stalked and threatened her on and off through the years since. The worst incident had been not long before she met Harrigan. She’d come home late from a party to find him waiting for her in the car park of her apartment block. He had thrown petrol over her and tried to light it. The lighter failed, she ran for her life. The next day, she got hold of a gun to protect herself. Swore that if she saw him again, she wouldn’t hesitate. Not long afterwards, he’d gone down for armed robbery. He’d almost served that sentence and had been due for release within a few months. If he was convicted for murder, he would be out of her life for another twenty years, perhaps forever.

People assumed Grace did the work she did because of her father’s influence. Discipline, upholding the law. A duty to serve and protect. Her father was an army officer who had fought in the Vietnam War and been awarded the Military Cross, later retiring as a brigadier. These days, he worked as hard for peace as he had ever done for war. There was some truth in the theory—she had lived with her father’s ideals throughout her life—but when she looked in the mirror and saw her scar, she knew it was this thin thread that drove her. She felt it as a mental thing, a mark in her consciousness as well as on her body. No one should go through what I went through. A simple sentence that carried too much weight.