The Easy Sin (26 page)

“He's back. Errol Magee. Sheryl's just called me. She's calling in someone from the strike force. They can talk to him first. You and I can see him in the morning.”

“Where is he?”

“At his apartment, he arrived there ten minutes ago. Sheryl says he appears to be okay. His girlfriend and his wife are there. And Sheryl and Paula Decker. He's got more company than I'd think he'd want. See you in the morning.”

Malone hung up and crawled back into bed. Lisa asked sleepily, “What's happening?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Errol Magee's just come back from the dead.”

III

Shirlee and Darlene had called in at the hospital on their way home. Phoenix had been moved out of intensive care and was now in a ward with three other men. He was still swathed in dressings and he had one leg in a cast held up on a pulley; he looked like a small white shark that had been hooked and landed. Shirlee and Darlene sat down on either side of the bed.

“It's all over,” said Shirlee in her softest voice, leaning towards Pheeny's only exposed ear.

“What's all over?” Pheeny had never had a soft voice, it had been given him for use in football crowds and in a steel foundry.

“S-sh,” said Darlene, shaking her head and moving her eyes from side to side to indicate the other patients. Two of them, old men, appeared to be asleep or dead, but the third, a young Mediterranean, was wide awake and looking at Darlene with bold interest that suggested he was not in hospital for impotency.

“The business,” said Shirlee. “It's finished. All over.”

It
was no effort for Pheeny to look puzzled; it came naturally. “What the fuck—sorry, Mum. What you talking about?”

Darlene thought: do other kidnappers hold their conferences in coffee bars and hospital wards? “Our mate Errol—”

Light dawned through the dressings; Pheeny's mouth fell open. “Holy shit! Why?”

“Complications,” said Shirlee. “But don't you worry, we'll handle it.”

As if he's going to get out of bed, broken leg and all, thought Darlene. She was fast becoming fed up. She had always been sensible about dreams. You took them out, enjoyed them for a while, then put them away again; they were never durable. “Look, do we have to talk about it
here
?”

“We owe it to him,” said Shirlee, being motherly. “Has Mr. Bomaker been in to see you again? The lawyer?”

“No,” said Pheeny. “Are we gunna ditch that, too? Not sue the bitch put me in here?”

“No,” said Shirlee, “that's our Number Two priority.”

“Our Number One priority now,” said Darlene and stood up. “Go back to sleep, Pheeny. Dream about Mr. Bomaker and the class action.”

She waited while Shirlee found an exposed space to kiss Pheeny. “Look after yourself, love.”

Even Pheeny looked puzzled by the advice.

As she passed the leering young man in the bed opposite, Darlene, sour as a lemon, paused. “You're outa luck, mate. I'm a dyke.”

“What did you say to him?” asked Shirlee as they went out of the ward.

“I told him I was a lesbian.”

“You're not, are you? Oh migod!”

“Wash your mouth out,” said Darlene and smiled at two ambulance men as they wheeled in a woman in labour.

Shirlee stopped by the mother-to-be, patted her hand. “Good luck, dear. It's always worth it.”

“Forget it,” said the woman. “This is me ninth.”

Darlene
went out of the hospital laughing.

Back home they gave Corey the bad news.

“Thank Christ,” he said to their surprise. “It's been nothing but a fuck-up since we started.”

Shirlee was past washing out mouths; she was bitterly disappointed. She had had her secret plans for her share of the ransom money. She would sell this house, buy an apartment in a retirement village up on the Central Coast, join the lawn bowls club, meet up with a widower with a comfortable income, put the life of crime behind her, be neat and respectable. And put behind her, too, the ghost in the timber up behind the house at Minnamurra.

“It's getting too dicey,” said Darlene. “There's something called the
yakuza
. Chantelle told us about it.”

“The
yakuza
? Jesus, I've read about them. They're after him?”

“They've gotta find him first. And us.”

“Okay, we get rid of him.” Corey sighed. “I think I'll be glad to get back to work. I'll go in tomorrow, tell ‘em me back trouble's over. When do we get rid of him?”

“We'll drop him somewhere tonight,” said Darlene.

“What about Chantelle?”

“She'll be at his flat waiting for him, to welcome him home. She's gotta do that, so's the police won't be suspicious. Then she's going back to London. Incidentally, she hates Chantelle as a name.”

“I always did, meself.”

Shirlee was sniffy. “You think I should of waited till you'd all grown up before I named you? Got your own choice? What would you of called yourself?”

“Bert. Or Fred.” He grinned at her, felt for a moment like kissing her. He was so fucking relieved the kidnapping, the whole business, was over.

“I'm hungry,” she said, “waddya you want for dinner?”

“It'll be His Nibs' last supper,” said Corey, who had once attended Sunday school. “Let's give him a good send-off. He told me he liked French cooking.”

“
He'll get what's in the fridge. You're getting too matey with him.”

Corey thought about it. “Yeah, maybe. We could of picked worse to kidnap.”

“Like a rock star or one of them rap stars with the foul mouths?” Darlene grinned at her mother. “You'd of loved cooking for one of them. She'd of fed soap to Eminem.”

Errol Magee got grilled sausages, mashed potatoes, green beans and what was left of the upside-down cake with whipped cream. He was appreciative. “This isn't bad.”

“I'll tell the chef,” said Corey through his hood. “Sport, we're letting you go, later on.”

Magee stopped eating. “Why?”

“Things've got complicated.”

“The police on to you?”

“No, nothing like that. They haven't a clue who we are. Neither have you, right?”

“Is that a threat?”

“Errol, sport—” Corey studied the man whom he was still trying to understand. A successful man, a millionaire forty times over. “How much were you worth when things were going well?”

“On paper? About two hundred and fifty million. But it's all gone.” The taste of the food for the moment turned sour in Magee's mouth. “The world, the IT world, that was all it was for a while. Paper.”

Corey himself had never thought in terms of success; the word wasn't in his vocabulary. You battled from one day to the next and if today was better than yesterday, you were ahead. But ahead of what? He had never given any consideration to that.

“You've still got that forty million, though.”

Magee went back to eating. “I told you, that's all bullshit. You let me go, I'm going back to bankruptcy. You're going to forget the ransom, all that shit?”

“All of it, sport. You go scot free.”

Magee stopped eating, suddenly relaxed. It was maybe a little premature; nonetheless he felt he could trust this guy. Trust had never been one of his weaknesses, but you had to use it occasionally.
“
When?”

“Later.”

“Do you have to keep me trussed up like this till then?”

The smile was apparent even under the blue hood. “Errol, did you ever trust the other guy till the deal was signed and delivered?”

Magee, too, smiled. “What business are you in, other than kidnapping?”

Corey stood up. “Ladies underwear.”

Magee laughed, totally relaxed now. “You and I must have a drink when this is all over.”

“Yeah,” said Corey and went out of the room with the dinner tray.

At midnight Shirlee, Darlene and Corey, all hooded, came back into the bedroom. Corey gently woke Magee, who had dozed off. “Time to go, sport.”

Magee blinked, came awake. “Where are you going to let me go? Not out in the fucking bush, I hope.”

“Wash your mouth out,” said Shirlee, but it was automatic now, she no longer cared.

“You'll find that out when we dump you,” said Corey. “I'm gunna have to strap your hands behind your back and gag you, too. We can't have you yelling your head off.”

“You don't have to do that. Trust me—”

Shirlee's laugh inside the hood was a cackle; she hated the thought of letting him go. “Mr. Magee, I'm not the trusting sort. I've had too much experience . . .”

She had continued to argue against letting him go. She could see her fortune going out the door, dreams disappearing as if Darlene and Corey had abruptly shaken her awake. They had been adamant. For the first time that she could remember, they had taken charge. Later, in bed, she would be surprised at her anger at them.

Corey was moving around Magee, pulling back the waist on his jeans, the collar of the football jumper.

“What're you doing?” Magee was now on edge, fearful of a change of plans at the last moment.

“
Relax, Errol. I'm just checking there's no names on the jeans and the jersey. Laundry marks. When we say goodbye, sport, it's gunna be forever.”

“I never send anything to the laundry,” said Shirlee; she, too, was on edge. “They never wash anything as well as I do.”

“Okay, I'm looking for dry-cleaning marks. No, you're clean, sport. You can make a comeback in a Souths' jersey. The only one they probably will make.”

The veteran rugby league club had been dropped from the local competition after decades of involvement and a court case was pending. A small war was going on; so far the UN had not been asked to intervene. Errol Magee had as much interest in it as he had in wars in the Congo or Chechnya.

“We should put him back in the blue dress he was wearing when you picked him up,” said Shirlee, still shirty.

“Don't put it like that,” said Corey, grinning inside the hood. He was feeling much better now things were under way to get out of this mess. He still had pangs of guilt about what had happened to Magee's maid and the cop Haywood, but eventually, he hoped, he would turn the back of his mind to them, too. “I didn't pick you up, did I, sport?”

“I don't know how else you got me here,” said Magee. “You—”

But Darlene was gagging him with some tape. “When you peel it off, Mr. Magee, rip it off quickly. It hurts less like that.”

Magee's eyes shone: it was hard to tell whether he was abusing her or thanking her for her concern. Corey hauled him to his feet.

“Behave yourself, sport, and in another twenty minutes you'll be free as a bird.”

“Free to spend all that money you have somewhere,” said Shirlee, getting in the last word.

All the lights were out in the house as Corey and Darlene took Magee, blindfolded and gagged, out the back door of
Emoh Ruo
and led him across to the Toyota in the garage. Shirlee took off her hood and stayed in the house, sitting down in the dark kitchen and suddenly, for the first time in years, bursting into tears. Dreams and greed are bedmates, of a sort.

Darlene
got into the back seat with Magee. She felt a mixture of excitement and relief; but she knew she would walk away with less emotion than the rest of the family. Except, perhaps, Chantelle, who, even when they were kids, had always been the cool one.

Corey gave the car a push, jumped in behind the wheel and they ran silently down the short driveway and out into the roadway. Corey swung to the right and they were halfway down the street before he switched on the engine. Mrs. Charlton, sound asleep, missed the street gossip item of the new century.

Twenty minutes later Corey pulled the car in beside a deserted park. He turned round in the front seat. “Good luck, sport.”

Magee felt something being pushed into his jeans' pocket. “What's that?”

“Cab fare,” said Darlene. “Fifty dollars. You've made more outa us than we made outa you.”

She laughed, kissed him on his blindfold, then pushed him gently out of the car. By the time he had freed his hands and pulled off the blindfold, the Toyota was just two red tail-lights disappearing into the distance like fireflies that had had their fun. He felt for the gag, hesitated, then ripped it off as the girl, whoever she was, had suggested. It hurt like buggery and he yelped.

Ten minutes later he was out on a road he didn't recognize and hailing a wandering cab. He fell into the back seat, a most un-Australian thing to do and which instantly aroused the suspicion of the driver, a Korean and still learning how to deal with the natives.

“Where are we?” asked Magee.

“Rocky Point Road.”

That meant nothing to Magee. “Okay, take me to the Garden Apartment. East Circular Quay.”

The Korean was also still learning the geography of Sydney: “Where's that?”

“Holy Christ!” said Magee, gave him instructions and lay back, all at once exhausted and wanting to cry with relief. He could hardly believe he was free, that the ordeal was over.

When the cab drew up outside the apartments in Macquarie Street, Magee handed the driver the fifty-dollar note and waited.

“No tip?” said the driver, who was also learning the necessary phrases of English. He was
learning,
too, that the average Australian, especially the women, had fists as tight as those of Kim Il-Sung.

“No tip,” said Magee. “Give me my change.”

There was no night concierge and Magee only then realized he had no key. He pressed the buzzer against his name on the board beside the locked doors. He kept his finger on the buzzer till a sleepy voice said, “Yes?”

“Kylie? Let me in!”

“This is Detective Dallen. Who's that?”

“Me, for Crissake! Errol Magee!”

When he got upstairs there were four women in night attire waiting for him. Kylie, Caroline and two women he had never seen before. One of them, Sheryl Dallen, as she introduced herself with Detective in front of her name, was holding a gun aimed at the front door, which had been opened by the other strange woman.