Then there was the line back to Frank Wells, to his adoptive mother’s niece, Jennifer Shillingworth, the woman with access to Salvation Army adoption records, the one person who could have known who Frank’s real parents were. A woman who, thirty-five or more years ago, hadn’t been above trying on the odd scam herself. In a time before changes to the adoption laws, she might well have known people who were desperate enough to buy that kind of information. If this speculation were true, then, as Frank Wells himself had said, she was the most likely source of the documents an otherwise unknown Ian Blackmore had sent to him four years ago.
Ignoring the road rules, Harrigan picked up his mobile and sent an SMS to his retainer. He had already asked her to track down the Shillingworth woman but still he texted: Find me Jennifer Shillingworth as a first priority and forward me any information you already have ASAP.
She’s dead. The instinctive words came into Harrigan’s mind even as he sent the message. It remained to be seen if his expectation was on the money. Maybe someone had eventually bought that information from her. There were only three people who could have known it was for sale in the first place, let alone want to buy it: Frank, Janice and a young Craig, watching his parents fight. Frank hadn’t wanted to know and Janice was dead. Maybe after she’d left Frank, she had gone on about it to her son, the way she had to her husband. Maybe when she was drunk, banging it into his head. If only your father had found out who his parents were, maybe we’d have some money now. We wouldn’t be so broke. It fitted with the woman he’d read and heard about.
But supposedly Craig was dead too. Harrigan smiled to himself. Death was a perfect alibi. It gave you the space to do whatever you wanted. You could coerce property out of an old and vulnerable Amelie Santos and, in some strange twist of humour, put it into a trust named after the woman who might well have led you to her in the first place. But why wait until four years ago to chase it up? What had been the catalyst? Because Amelie Santos was old and could be expected to die soon? You turn up out of nowhere and introduce yourself to her as her grandson and heir even though she’s never seen you before. Would she even let you in? See you as other than a threat? And what could she be to you, other than a victim to exploit? Someone to cajole, charm, threaten and, with the help of your partner, finally terrorise?
But you couldn’t announce yourself to her as Craig Wells. If you’d killed off your old identity by murdering someone else in your place, there’d be no room for you to resurrect yourself. Once Craig Wells was dead, he had to stay dead and you couldn’t bring him back to life. But you wouldn’t have to. Amelie Santos couldn’t have known her son’s name. You could give yourself any name you liked, say your father was dead to keep him out of the picture, and then try to get whatever you could out of your victim. In the way of family resemblances, maybe you even looked something like your grandfather.
Thinking this over, it occurred to Harrigan that perhaps all those years ago Jennifer Shillingworth might possibly have also approached Amelie Santos. If she had, then presumably the doctor, like her son, Frank, had sent her on her way, saying she didn’t want to know. And then later, when the laws were changed and adoption records became accessible, it was only to the family members. In that case, the only recourse for someone who had expunged his existence as Craig Wells was the original one: bribery. You go back to the woman who wanted to sell the information in the first place and ask her if she still wants to make a deal. Hadn’t Frank told him that Jennifer Shillingworth had already made copies of the documents? Maybe they’d been just locked away in a drawer somewhere, waiting.
Then there was the woman at the centre of this, Amelie Santos, the seemingly innocent vortex for all these connections. The strangeness of sifting through the paper remains of her patients’ old lives had left Harrigan with a sense of bleakness. Amelie Santos could have kept her child. Despite the circumstances of her marriage, she had still been a married woman in a time when that had mattered. Her father had had the means to support them both. Even in those days, with his help she would have been able to become a doctor as well as raising her son. Instead, that part of her life had been obliterated, except for the pieces of paper she had kept for herself from the child patients she could not save, a lifetime’s worth of grief and loss. For Amelie Santos, did pieces of paper detailing a patient’s name and history replace what had been lost in the flesh? Were they like fetish objects filling a vacuum, things that were fixed in time and could not grow older? Perhaps she’d had no choice in relinquishing her son. Had her father or mother told her it had to happen, regardless? Or had the father of her child hurt her so much, she had rejected their son herself? If he had, why keep his name? No way to know now.
In all these shadows, Amelie Santos wasn’t the only obsessive figure. Someone had wanted what she had so much they had tracked her to her nursing home, deceived a woman they’d had no other interest in to assist them, and then presumably threatened and frightened an aging woman to get hold of it. Had they known at the time they were also acquiring the identities of the dead? Or had there been another reason for their actions and those records were only a bonus? Were they the same people who had tried to kill Amelie Santos in the first place?
With a chill, Harrigan realised that it was only their failure to murder Amelie Santos that had allowed them to acquire the Blackheath house. Whoever had attacked her that morning must simply have wanted to kill her. If they’d succeeded, the Blackheath house would have gone to Medicine International along with the rest of her estate. Presumably the organisation would have sold it on, the way they had her other two properties. But why kill someone as harmless as a woman in her late eighties if there was no prospect of material gain? In her own way, wasn’t she as much a victim in this as other people? Harrigan answered his own questions: because she wouldn’t give you what you wanted. You’d have to believe you had a right to it; so much so that you hated her enough to want to kill her when she wouldn’t give it to you.
It was still all speculation; nothing but shadows and guesswork. Time for home and sanctuary, Harrigan thought, negotiating the gridlock of Sydney’s commuter traffic.
Grace had cooked dinner; the smell of the food greeted him when he opened the door. He kissed her and picked up Ellie. It was like walking into comfort. Then Grace slipped away from him back to the stove.
‘Hungry?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’
He couldn’t judge her mood. She did things too carefully, put plates on the table as if they might break as she set them down. Was too quiet, too patient, with Ellie, her eyes excluding anything else as she helped her to eat, as if there was only the spoon and her daughter’s mouth. Ellie’s small fingers shredded still further the pieces of fish Grace gave her to eat. Grace wiped her fingers clean with a smile but still seemed distant. When she talked to him, she was trying hard to pay attention. The food was good, very good; but her mind was not there.
‘What’s up, babe?’ he asked when Ellie was in bed and they were alone.