The Easy Sin (18 page)

“
He could be smothered—Jesus, that's all we want! Three bloody corpses! Get him outa there. Put a hood on—I'll get outa sight till you've got him in the boot of the Toyota. Go on, move!”

“What we gunna do with him?”

“I dunno. Get him outa there and into our boot.”

Errol Magee was only semi-conscious; another half-hour and he would have expired. Corey, wearing a blue hood, carried him over to the Toyota and put him in its boot, taking off Magee's hood at the last moment. Then he slammed the lid down and leaned on the car, his legs hollow again.

Darlene observed the scene with sick wonderment. A man in a blue hood carrying another man in a hood from the boot of a police car to that of another private car. She wished that it was a nightmare and not reality.

She walked across to Corey, drew him away from the car, out of earshot of Magee in the boot. “I've wiped everything in the cop's car that you might of touched, including the boot. Take that shirt off and we'll throw it away somewhere. And this—” She held up the wrench, looked at the bloodstain on its head and grimaced. Then, with a visible effort she gathered herself and him together. “Okay, let's go and see Mum.”

“What use will she be?” All he wanted was to get away from this whole business. “She talked us into all this. Her and Chantelle.”

“You got any other suggestions?”

He looked across at the police car. From where he stood it looked empty; but he knew it was full of total bloody disaster. He sighed, from the bottom of his belly, and said, “No, let's see what they have to say. They're the brains.”

Darlene looked at him at that, but said nothing.

They drove out of the bush and five kilometres up the main road Darlene pulled the car off the tarmac. Corey went into some scrub and buried Constable Haywood's shirt and the wrench. He came back to the car and, not talking to each other, they drove on to St. George's Hospital.

Darlene went in and brought out Shirlee. Phoenix was still in a coma, the only one unworried.
He
lay under his nest of tubes, more innocent than he had ever been or ever would be, if he lived.

Shirlee was already planning, even as Darlene told her what had happened: “Corey will have to go back to the cottage, pretend he never left there. He'll—”

“Bugger that.” Corey got out of the car. The car park was almost full and he had had trouble finding a space. “That's the first place they'll come looking—”

“Exactly,” said his mum. “We'll drop His Nibs off at our house and Darlene can stay with him. You and me'll go down to the cottage and when the coppers come we'll say you never saw Constable What'shisname—”

“Mum,” said Darlene, another planner but still learning, “who stays with Pheeny? It'll look suspicious, nobody with him while he's still in intensive care. They'll think we're bloody heartless—”

“Yeah, you're right—Didn't your mother tell you not to stare?”

She was looking across the roof of the car at three children, two boys and a girl, all aged about eight or ten, sitting in a Toyota Nimbus with the windows down, staring intently at the Briskins as if watching a TV soap. “We're not staring,” said the girl, more cheek than a bare backside, “we're just looking.”

Then there was a faint yell from the boot of the Briskins' car. Shirlee looked sharply at Darlene. “What's that?”

“It's Errol,” said Darlene, keeping her voice low, seeing the ears on the three heads in the Nimbus standing out like antennae. “We better get outa here.”

So the three of them got back into the Toyota, drove out of the car park; the three kids in the Nimbus waved them goodbye, then thumbed their noses. Corey took the car on a leisurely tour of the nearby streets while they discussed their plans.

“We can't take him back home, not in daylight. Old Mrs. Charlton, she's always at her window watching what's going on. She'd be out, hanging over the fence, before we'd got His Nibs into the house. No, we gotta take him back down to the cottage. We'll keep him there till midnight, then we'll bring him back up here to home, smuggle him in while Mrs. C's asleep. Darlene, you stay with Pheeny, keep in
touch
with us.”

“On the mobile?”

“Yeah, sure. Just don't mention Mr. Magee, that's all.” Then she looked at Corey, silent behind the wheel. “What got into you? You turning out to have something of your father in you?”

“Dad never done in anybody—”

“Only by accident, he didn't. He always carried a gun . . .” She arranged her thoughts, and theirs, neatly: “All right, it's all arranged. We get on to Chantelle, tell her there's been a hiccup—”

“A hiccup?” said Darlene in the back seat.

“Don't quibble. There's been a hiccup, but His Nibs is still alive and we want the ransom for him. By five o'clock tomorrow at the latest.”

“I was supposed to call the Kunishima Bank today—”

“It don't matter. They're not gunna run away.”

“What happens if I-Saw or the Kunishima Bank don't come good? I was supposed to call I-Saw—”

“Don't be pessmistic,” said the general.

“Holy Jesus!” said Corey, blind with pessimism and despair, and had to brake sharply to avoid running down a small girl on a pedestrian crossing. The little darling stopped, stared at him, then gave him the middle finger salute and walked on.

In the back seat Darlene lay back, laughing a little hysterically.

Corey and Shirlee dropped Darlene back at the hospital and drove south again, back to the cottage. When they took Magee out of the boot of the Toyota, he was once again only semi-conscious. Corey slung him over his shoulder, carried him up into the cottage and into the third bedroom and strapped him in the chair again. Magee opened his eyes, dull as smoked glass, and gazed at Corey as if he didn't recognize him.

Corey slapped him gently on the cheek, shook him. “Come on, sport, snap outa it!”

Magee twitched in his bonds, as if trying to stir up the blood in himself.

Corey
was wearing his blue hood. “Sorry we been carting you around like this, but blame your mates. We thought we had a deal on the ransom, but they reneged on it.”

“I don't fucking care any more.” Magee found his voice, a growl that sounded as if it had been buried for a long time.

“Come on!” Corey tried to sound jovial; but didn't feel that way. “Where's your fucking capitalist spirit?”

Magee was slowly coming back to normal; or near normal. “What do you think you are? You're out to make money. Five million. That's not pension stuff.”

For the first time in several hours Corey grinned, behind the hood. “It is for me, sport. You want a leak or anything?”

“Not yet. I'd like a beer, a light one.”

Corey laughed this time; the hood fluttered like a mask about to crumble. “You're on your own, Errol. I'll get you a beer, but it's a VB, not a light one. That okay, sir?”

“Up yours,” said Magee. “Yeah, a VB.”

Out in the kitchen Corey said, “What do we do with him if the cops come?”

“You better gag him,” said Shirlee. “Case he hears ‘em and starts yelling. What're you doing?”

“Getting him a beer.”

“You're spoiling him.”

“Yeah. Fucking ridiculous, ain't it?”

“Wash your mouth out.”

The police sergeant and another constable arrived at seven-thirty in the last light of the day. The sun had gone down beyond the escarpment and there were no shadows, just the diminishing light. The timber back beyond the house was losing its shape, the trees merging into each other, a dark grey wall. Down in front of the house, beyond the road, the timber there had some pale-trunked eucalyptus that still reflected a little light, like thin ghosts waiting for the nights.

Corey, at his mother's instructions, had been waiting out on the front verandah for the police
that
he and she knew would come. As soon as he saw the police car coming up the road, its headlights already on, he got up and walked unhurriedly, but like a gaited two-legged horse, down to the front gate. Shirlee had come out on to the front verandah, but stayed there, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“You got some word on my brother?” Corey tried to sound natural. He stepped carefully round a mud patch, noting out of the corner of his eyes that the wallow of mud across the other, wider gate showed only the tracks of one car, the Toyota. “I mean, we ain't heard anything—”

“No,” said the sergeant, “it's another matter. Did Constable Haywood come up here this afternoon?”

“Constable Hay—Oh, the young guy with you this morning? No. Was he supposed to?”

“He said he might.” The two policemen, the younger man standing behind the sergeant, were almost po-faced in their seriousness. “You been here all afternoon?”

“All the time. Me mum come back about an hour ago. When she left, me brother was okay, still unconscious but okay. Me sister's staying with him.” Every word made the Briskins sound like a tightly- knit family, battlers to the core. “When I seen you coming . . . Why are you looking for your mate?”

“We're not looking for him,” said the sergeant. “He's been found. Dead, from a wound in the head.”

“Jesus!” Corey shook his own head, as if it had been clouted. “How'd it happen? Where?”

“We dunno where it happened or how. We thought you might of seen him up here and he'd told you where he was going next.”

“I'm sorry, mate, I can't help you. This is gunna upset me mum when I tell her—she's got a lotta time for you guys.” Feeling more confident, he was letting his tongue get away from him. He pulled back: “I dunno I oughta tell her. Not while she's worrying about me brother.”

The sergeant looked up towards Shirlee on the verandah, now barely discernible in the gloom. “No, don't mention it. Tell her, I dunno, tell her I was introducing Constable Gilchrist here, he's new to our station. Case you wanted any help. Tell her that. Thanks, anyway, for your help.”

“I didn't help at all, Sarge. And I'm sorry about your mate.”

“
Yeah,” said the sergeant, getting back into the car. “So are we.”

The junior officer swung the car round and they drove away, disappearing round a bend in the road. Corey stood staring after them, feeling no lift in his spirits. He felt like a swimmer in the surf who knew the waves would keep coming, getting bigger and bigger. The moon came up above the timber and a flying-fox scratched a line across it, defacing it for the moment. He turned and walked back up towards the house while a night-bird called from the timber, up where his father lay buried.

“What did they want?” asked Shirlee.

“Nothing to worry about, Mum.”

The rest of the night dragged till midnight. Then they woke the dozing Magee, put him in the boot of the Toyota.

“Where the fuck are we going now?”

“Wash your mouth out,” Shirlee told him from inside her hood.

They drove up to Hurstville and the three bedroomed house in a quiet street. They smuggled Magee, who had been gagged again, into the house and tied him to a bed in what was Darlene's room. Darlene was at home, waiting for them.

“Pheeny's still unconscious, but they say he's improving. They'll call if there's any change. What do we do now?”

“Go to bed,” said Shirlee, all of a sudden looking tired and (Darlene thought with shock) old. “Tomorrow's the last day.”

“The last day for what?”

“We'll see,” said Shirlee and said nothing more.

In the morning they heard the news on the radio that Errol Magee's girlfriend, Kylie Doolan, was also missing.

III

Malone waited in the foyer of the I-Saw building for Daniela Bonicelli. He had to wait longer
than
he had expected, but he was a patient man. She stepped out of the lift after twenty minutes, pulled up sharply when she saw him.

“Waiting for me?”

“Who else, Daniela?”

Again there was no coquetry. “I saw you eyeing Mrs. Magee.”

“No more than I was eyeing you and Louise.”

“Are you going to offer me protection?”

“Against possible kidnapping? No, Daniela. I'm with Homicide, we come in after the event.” He was using the big club this morning
. Pull your head in, Malone
. “I don't think you're in any danger, Daniela. Not unless there's something you haven't told me about?”

“Such as?”

“Did you go and see Mr. Magee at his apartment a coupla weeks ago?”

She looked at him, then looked away. She was carrying a bottle of spring water; she unscrewed the cap and took a swig. Behind her Malone saw four other women, all with the statutory accoutrement of mobile phone and bottle of spring water. No one under the age of thirty, apparently, drank tap water any more. Ecstasy tablets were washed down with spring water; intestines had to be cleaned, though minds might be fogged. He waited till Daniela had capped the bottle again. But his patience was now beginning to wear thin; perhaps he should ask for a swig of spring water to cool him down. At last Daniela looked back at him.

“Yes, I did. I forget which day, I went there one morning when the place was clear. When Kylie wasn't there.”

“What for? I thought you and he had finished that sort of thing.”

“I didn't go there for
that
. I wouldn't have gone to bed with Errol again for—how much is the ransom supposed to be? Not for any money. I went there because I'd heard a whisper that things were much worse than we'd been told.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“
Not to worry. The bastard!” He waited for her to take another swig at the bottle, but evidently she needed something stronger than water. “He said they were negotiating for a Japanese company to come in and bail them out.”

“You believed him?”

“Well, yes and no. I believed him because I
wanted
to. Errol could be very convincing . . . But when I got back here to the office—” She nodded over her shoulder—“I knew we were finished.”