The Easy Sin (6 page)

Malone and Sheryl sat silent. Listeners learn more than talkers.

Monica turned to them: “She always wanted to get away from here, from the time she was in high school. Now she's got my girls talking like her—”

“Don't blame me, they've got minds of their own. You'd of got outa here if it hadn't been for Clarrie—”Her voice had slipped, she sounded exactly like her sister.

“Clarrie,” Monica told the two detectives, “he's my husband. She never liked him—”

“That's not true—he was just—just—” She flapped a hand.

“Yeah, he was
just
. He never had any ambition, he never looked beyond the end of the street. But he was—he is
solid
. He's a pastrycook,” she was talking to Malone and Sheryl again, “he works in a baker's shop in Campbelltown. He's good and solid and he loves me and the girls—” Suddenly she buried
her
face in her hands and started to weep.

“Oh shit!” said Kylie and dropped to her knees and put her arms round her sister. “I'm sorry, sis. Really.”

The room seemed to get smaller; Malone felt cramped, hedged in. He was no stranger to the intrusion into another family, but the awkwardness never left him. He waited a while, glanced at Sheryl, who had turned her head and was looking out the window. Then he said, “Get dressed, Kylie. We'll take you back to town.”

She hesitated, then she pressed her sister's shoulders, stood up and went out of the room without looking at Malone and Sheryl.

Sheryl said, “Monica, did she ever talk to you about Mr. Magee?”

Monica dried her eyes on her sleeve, sniffed and, after fumbling, found a tissue in the pocket of her apron. “Not much.”

“She say anything about him being kidnapped instead of her?”

“She laughed. We both did. But it's not something to laugh about, is it? The maid dead, and that. God knows what's happened to him. You find out anything yet?”

“We're working on it,” said Malone; you never admit ignorance to the voters. “She ever talk to you about how much he was worth? And now it's all gone?”

Monica raised her eyebrows. She would have been good-looking once, Malone thought, but the years had bruised her. He wondered how tough life had been for her and Clarrie and the girls. Wondered, too, how much she had envied Kylie.

“It's all
gone
? He's broke? I read about him once or twice, he wasn't in the papers much, but I'd see his name and because of Kylie . . . He was worth
millions
!”

“All on paper,” said Sheryl.

Monica laughed, with seemingly genuine humour, no bitterness at all. “Wait till I tell Clarrie. He'll bake a cake—” She laughed again; she was good-looking for a moment. “He won't be nasty, he's not like that, but he'll enjoy it. He's not worth much, but it's not paper, he brings it home every week—” She
shook
her head, then said, “What's gunna happen to Kylie?”

“I don't know.” Crime victims had to be dropped out of one's knowing. It wasn't lack of compassion. It was a question of self-survival.

“I don't mean in the future, I mean right now.” She was shrewder than he had thought. “Will she be in—” She hesitated, as if afraid of the word: “—in danger? I'd hate to think I'd let her go back to that—”

“We'll take care of her, there'll be surveillance on her. Eventually—” He shrugged. “Is she strong?”

“Too strong. She's always known what she wanted.”

“What was that?” said Sheryl.

“Money, the good life, all that sorta stuff. That's the way it is these days, isn't it?” She said it without rancour, resigned to a tide she couldn't stop. “I see it in my own girls and their friends—”

Malone changed the subject: “Where are your parents?”

“Dead, both of them. Ten years ago, when Kylie was seventeen. Dad went first, a stroke—he was a battler, always in debt, it just got him down in the end. Mum went two months after, like she'd been waiting for him to go and didn't want to stay on. Both of ‘em not fifty. They were like Clarrie and me. Kylie never understood that, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Malone. “But you've got your girls.”

“Sure,” she said. “But for how long?”

Then Kylie came back. Malone, who wouldn't have known a Donna Karan from a K-Mart, recognized that she would always dress for the occasion: any occasion. Her dress was discreet, but it made the other two women look as if they had just shopped at St. Vincent de Paul. In Monica's case, he felt, the contrast was cruel.

But it seemed that the cruelty was unintentional. Kylie kissed her sister with real affection. “Say goodbye to Clarrie and the girls for me. I'll call you.”

“Look after yourself,” said Monica.

“
Sure,” said Kylie and one knew that she would. Always.

Sheryl picked up the suitcases and Kylie looked at Malone. “Is that how it is in the police force? The women carry the bags?”

“Only Detective Dallen. It's part of her weights programme.”

He grinned at Sheryl and went ahead of her and Kylie down the garden path. Behind him he heard Kylie say, “How can you stand him?”

He was out of earshot before Sheryl replied. He went across to Detective-Constable Fernandez, who got out of his car as he approached. “There'll be no need for further surveillance. I'll call your commander and put it on the computer. We're taking Miss Doolan back to town.”

Fernandez looked past him. “She doesn't look too upset, sir.”

“Like I told you, that's Miss Doolan.”

Fernandez nodded. “They'll always be a mystery to me, women.”

“Never try to solve them, Paul. You might be disappointed.”

He went along to his own car. Sheryl had put the suitcases in the boot and she and Kylie stood waiting for him.

“Kylie, did Errol ever wear gloves?”

“You mean in winter, against the cold?”

“No, medical gloves, surgical ones. Did he have a hand condition, dermatitis, something like that?”

“God, no, nothing like that. He had beautiful hands, too good for a man, almost like a woman's. Why?”

“Oh, something's come up. Righto, Sheryl, can you find your way back to town?”

“We just head north, sir. We'll hit either Sydney or Brisbane.”

Serves me right for being a smartarse with a junior rank
.

They drove Kylie Doolan back to Sydney. She sat in the back of the car looking out at the passing scene with eyes blank of recognition or nostalgia. She had drained Minto out of her blood.

III

“Before we take you back to your unit—”

“Apartment. Not unit.”

“Apartment, unit, flat,” said Malone. “What's the difference?”

“Size. Location,” said Kylie. She could sell real estate, he thought. She could sell anything, including herself. “If I'd stayed in Minto, I'd be living in a flat. Or a unit.”

“Righto. Before we take you back to your
apartment
, I think we might drop in at I-Saw's offices. Where are they?”

“In Milson's Point,” said Sheryl, chopping off a road-rager trying to cut in on her. They have a whole building there.”

He might have guessed it; Sheryl always did her homework. “Milson's Point? When my wife and I were first married we lived in Kirribilli, the other side of the Bridge. In a unit.”

“He's a real card, isn't he?” Kylie said to Sheryl. “Okay, let's go to I-Saw.”

“Who dreamed up that awful bloody name?” asked Malone.

“Is it any worse than Yahoo, Sausage, names like that?” She was defensive of I-Saw; after all it had kept her in luxury. “It was a game in the early days, dreaming up smartarse names. There were four- letter ones that almost got on to the companies' register.”

“It's no longer a game,” said Sheryl, taking the car over the Harbour Bridge.

“No,” said Kylie and was abruptly silent.

Milson's Point was another of the original grants to early settlers; modern-day developers wince at the luck of James Milson. He was a farmer from Lincolnshire, who, to his credit, couldn't believe his own luck. Today the Point and its neighbour, Kirribilli, are the most densely settled area north of the harbour. The ghost of James Milson occasionally stands on the Point, beneath the grey rainbow of the bridge, and looks across at the city skyline. Standing behind him, more solidly fleshed, are developers and estate agents wondering how much higher they can push property prices.

Errol
Magee had had the sense not to call his building I-Saw House. It had a number, was twelve storeys high and stood between two high-rise blocks of units—excuse me, apartments. Other high-rise buildings ran down to the water's edge, a wall of cliff. Gulls cruised the upper storeys as if looking for ledges on which to nest.

Sheryl, true to her training, parked in a No Standing zone. The three of them got out of the car and went into the building and up to the executive floor. There was no one in the lobby and no one in the lifts. Malone had the abrupt feeling that he was entering a shell.

The executive floor was like none that Malone had ever been on. A receptionist lolled in a chair behind a desk on which were two computers. Behind her were empty work-stations, yards from which the horses had bolted. In the far distance two men sat behind a long table.

“Can I help you?” She was in her early twenties, jeans and a plaid shirt open almost to her belt. She was pretty but appeared to have done everything she could to avoid the label. “Oh, it's you, Kylie! Hi.”

“These are the police, Louise. Who's in today?”

The girl looked over her shoulder towards the far distance, then turned back. She hadn't risen. “Just Jared. You want to see him?”

“No,” said Malone, “she doesn't want to see him. I do, Inspector Malone. Now do you think you could stir yourself and tell Jared we're here and that I'm not a patient man? Right, Detective Dallen?”

“Oh, boss,” said Sheryl, “you have a terrible temper. Better do what he says, love.”

The girl looked at Kylie as if to say,
Where'd you dig up these two
? Then she got up and sauntered down towards the end of the room.

Malone looked at Kylie. “Are they all like that who work in IT? Rude and laid back?”

For the first time since leaving Minto she smiled. “No. But she's a mathematical whiz, she's not really the receptionist. The girl they had had manners.”

“Where's she now?” Malone looked around. “Where's everybody?”

Kylie shrugged, the smile suddenly gone. She's more worried than she's letting on, thought Malone.

Then
Louise, the mathematical whiz, came back. “He'll see you.”

Malone, Sheryl and Kylie travelled the huge floor, walking between the work-stations that, empty, looked like stylized roofless caves. As they came to the end of the room the two men at the long table stood up.

The taller of the two men came round the table and put out his hand. “I'm Jared Cragg.” It sounded more like a rock-heap than a name, but Malone, who remembered the good old days of Clarrie and Joe and Smithy, kept his face expressionless. He couldn't imagine this soft-faced, slimly built man being called Craggy. But the soft paw was much firmer in its grip than he had expected. “It's about Errol? Oh, this is Joe Smith.”

Malone couldn't believe his luck; he shook hands warmly with Smithy. “Yes, it's about Mr. Magee.”

“Well, basically, he's a bastard.” Cragg couldn't have been more than thirty, but he looked as if his last ten years had been flattened and stretched like strudel dough. His eyes were tired and disillusioned, they had none of the spark of the New Economy. “Have you caught him yet?”

“Caught him?”

“Well, he's basically done a bunk, hasn't he? He knew who was coming in today. Mr. Smith is from Ballantine, Ballantine and Kowinsky. The receivers.”

Smith was middle-aged in every way: dress, looks, demeanour. He made Cragg in his dark blue shirt with button-down collar and no tie, his off-white cargo pants and his trainers look like an over-the-hill teenager. But he was good-humoured, as if he had decided that was the only way to combat the depression of throwing businesses out on the street.

“My men are down in the finance department,” he said. “When we came in this morning all Mr. Cragg's staff just up and left, as if we'd come to fumigate the place. No offence, Mr. Cragg. It's the way we're always greeted.” He smiled as if to show it was water off a platypus' back. “One gets used to it.”

“It's a regular business, receivership?” said Malone.

“Like cremation,” said Smith and smiled again.

“
Who ordered the cremation?”

Smith hesitated, but Malone's look told him: don't hedge, mate. “The Kunishima Bank. They're Japanese, from Osaka.”

“And what have you found?”

“It's too early to say,” said Smith, hedging. “But the losses are considerable, otherwise we wouldn't be here.”

Malone looked back at Cragg. “What do you think happened to Magee?”

Cragg ran a pondering hand over his head. His hair was cut to such a short stubble that it looked like dust; Malone waited for him to look at his hand to see if any had come off. He, too, was hedging. “Well, basically, from what I read in the papers, the joke on the computers about a ransom for Kylie—” He nodded at her as if she were no more than a prize doll on a sideshow stall.

Malone wondered who had told the media about the messages on the computers. “You don't want to believe everything you read in the newspapers. So you think he killed the maid on his way out, just as an afterthought?”

“No!” Kylie up till now had remained silent in the background. “Errol wouldn't hurt a fly—”

“He's hurt three hundred workers,” said Cragg. “All of them downsized without, basically, any redundancy pay. He's a bastard,” he repeated.