The Easy Sin (9 page)

“G'day, Mr. Malone.” Blackie Ovens had been a stand-over man, an iron-bar expert, who had worked for Jack Aldwych for almost fifty years, one way or another. He was now valet, butler, chauffeur and general handyman to the old retired criminal boss. “The boss ain't here. He goes in once a week to the office, to talk with Jack Junior.”

“How is he, Blackie? I haven't seen him in almost a year.” He and the old crim were almost friends, as cops and criminals often are, but never social friends.

“He's getting old, Mr. Malone. But ain't we all? He's really slowed down, spends all his time reading. Reading books. He sent me out the other day to buy—whatyoucallthemthings? Bookmarks. Like he used to send me out once to buy bullets. Don't tell him I said that.”

“You know me, Blackie. I've never grassed on a mate in my life.”

“We're mates?”

“We are now, Blackie. Phone him and tell him I'm coming. They still in the AMP Tower?”

“Yeah. Up there with all the respectable ones.” He laughed, dry as wind on dust. “Makes you laugh, don't it?”

“Not in Sydney, Blackie.”

He hung up, left Sheryl and Paula Decker with Kylie Doolan and walked round the quay, along the colonnade under the expensive restaurants where IT millionaires once, and some still did, dined, and up the hill, past the Police Museum where he had once worked when it had been a police station, to the AMP Tower. This end of town was where most of the city's tallest buildings had been erected; buried beneath them, somewhere down there in the foundations, were the colony's beginnings. Jack Aldwych sat in his office forty-five floors and several basement floors above the ghosts of crims of long ago. The ghosts never bothered him, as Malone well knew.

“
Scobie, I'd begun to think you'd forgotten me!”

“Never, Jack. I've got framed running sheets on you on my office wall. Hello, Jack,” he said to Jack Junior and shook hands with both men. “Still a great view from here.”

“We deserve it,” said Aldwych, but his smile was self-mocking rather than smug.

Landfall Holdings, which covered a multitude of companies and several sins, occupied the whole of this floor. This corner office, that of the managing director Jack Junior, had a view of the harbour that made the view from Magee's apartment look like a small postcard.

The receptionist, an elegant brunette who was the granddaughter of one of Aldwych's old brothel madams, brought Malone coffee and gave him a smile that her grandmother would have charged him for.

“Thanks, Valerie. How's your grandmother?”

“Fine, thanks, Mr. Malone. She's in a nursing home, reminiscing with some of her old clients.” She widened her smile to include all three men and went out.

“A treasure,” said Aldwych. “Just like her grandmother. So what can we do for you, Scobie?”

“Seven or eight years ago, Jack, maybe nine, you had a run-in with a Japanese bank, the Kunishima Bank.”

“What a memory,” Aldwych said to his son; then he looked back at Malone. “That in your running sheets on me?”

“No, Jack. I'm just relying on memory. They were a bit suspect at the time, weren't they?”

It was Jack Junior who answered: “Yes. But they've established a steady reputation since then. They work quietly, no blowing their own trumpet.”

“What's their main business?”

“Investment. They're also into venture capital. This is something to do with I-Saw, right?”

“You're as sharp as your old man,” said Malone.

“I taught him,” said Aldwych and for a moment actually looked like a proud father. Which would have shocked some of his old colleagues and some cops. “What's on your mind?”

“
They've sent the receivers into I-Saw.”

“That's no surprise,” said Jack Junior.

“What else is on your mind?” Aldwych had been a successful crim because his mind had always been two steps ahead. Which was why, having turned respectable, he was so far ahead that no one could accurately guess his wealth.

Malone always liked dealing with the old man; at cricket he had always enjoyed bowling to a formidable batsman. “We're not sure whether Errol Magee, of I-Saw, was kidnapped or whether he's pulling a scam. That's just between us, okay?” He trusted Aldwych, who could have run any intelligence organization, but he wasn't sure about Jack Junior. Honesty, and Jack Junior had the reputation of being honest, can breed leaks. “But whoever's behind it, whether it's Magee or someone else, they're asking five million ransom. They suggested the Kunishima Bank might come good.”

The two Aldwyches looked at each other, then the father looked back at Malone and shook his head. “No way, Scobie. They wouldn't bail out Buddha.”

“Why?” said Malone and tried to look innocent, no mean feat for a Homicide cop. “The
yakuza
still run it?”

“As I said, what a memory.”

“Jack, I worked on that case eight or nine years ago. They were just getting started, but we knew the
yakuza
had something to do with them. They're much more respectable now, right?”

“Yes,” said Jack Junior. “But the
yakuza
still runs them. It's their money behind the bank.”

Out on the harbour there was a faint bellow of protest from a ferry as some idiot on a water-sled shot across the front of it. A window cleaner abseiled down outside, like a suicide who had changed his mind and was trying to slow his dive.

Then Malone slowly nodded his head. “You rich buggers really know how to complicate things.”

Aldwych grinned. “Not us, Scobie. I thought you blokes would of known.”

“Fraud probably does. Homicide, we don't go looking for extra worries. Have the
yakuza
gone
in
for stand-over stuff out here?”

“Not the way they do, or used to do, in Japan. They don't pack company AGMs and threaten shareholders,” said Jack Junior. “Nothing like that. But yes, behind scenes we've heard they apply pressure.”

“And Securities and the A-Triple-C haven't enquired into them?”

“If they have, none of it has got into the media.”

“These blokes are sophisticated, Scobie,” said Aldwych. “And rich. Some bloke wants to shoot his mouth off, they either make him disappear or they buy him off. Either way, he disappears.”

“Would they buy Errol Magee, pay the ransom?”

“I doubt it,” said Jack Junior.

“Have you had any dealings with them?”

It was a delicate question and Malone did his best to ask it delicately. Once again the two Aldwyches looked at each other, then Jack Junior said, “They approached us once when they heard about a project we had going. We said no.”

“Politely,” said Aldwych with a grin.

Malone took his time, observing the two men. They were both handsome, the father more ruggedly so: he had been scarred by razor, club and bullet. Jack Junior was smoother, immaculately dressed, expensively barbered. There was no mistaking their relationship, but Aldwych had got older, even somehow smaller, since Malone had seen him last. Or was it that the old man had lost the menace he once had? For twenty years he had boasted he had retired but not reformed and one had been prepared to believe him. But now he looked—
soft
? Malone wondered.

“Can you give me the name of someone to see at Kunishima? Someone with clout.”

“Mr. Okada.” Jack Junior had hesitated a moment, but his father had nodded at him. Aldwych might have retired, but he was still the boss. “He's not
yakuza
, but he knows where the money comes from.”

“Is he likely to open up on Mr. Magee?”

“
Good luck, Scobie,” said Aldwych and in his smile there was a hint of the gang boss he had once been. “You could read my face when we ran into each other—”

“Like an open book, Jack.”

“It's not like that with a Japanese face. Good luck.”

II

Malone stood outside the AMP Tower for almost five minutes before he took out his mobile and rang Clements at Homicide. “Meet me outside the Aurora building in twenty minutes. We're going to talk to a man at the Kunishima Bank.”

“You told me I was to stay off the case—”

“I need you, mate, you're the finance expert.” He explained what he had learned in the last half- hour.

“Do we mention the
yakuza
if we're getting nowhere with this Mr. Okada?”

“Let's see how we go.”

He walked up Macquarie Street, past the brass plates of hundreds of doctors whose consulting rooms looked out on the Botanic Gardens; you could stand by a window and be told you had six months to live and look out on the greenest spot in the city where life came out of the earth year after year after year. He found a bench and sat on it, soaking up the sun. It would never have occurred to him to spend the time having a coffee; his throat and taste buds were never as dry as his pocket. Starbucks would never have come to Australia if there had been a nation of abstainers like him.

Clements arrived within twenty minutes in an unmarked car. He parked it in a No Parking zone, the Police Service's refuge, and walked back to where Malone sat waiting for him. “You think we're gunna get anything outa this Okada guy?”

“We've come up against dead-ends so far. Another one won't make any difference.”

“Now you're about to be promoted, are you losing your—what's the word?—
enthusiasm
for this case? You'd rather leave it to me?”

“
I'll let you know,” said Malone, non-committedly.

The Aurora complex is a Renza Piano-designed project that stands where a black glass block, known as the Black Stump, had once stood. The Black Stump had housed government departments, or their senior officers; the State Premier's office had been on an upper floor. There Malone had begun the journey that had taken him to London to arrest the Australian High Commissioner for murder and where he had met Lisa. As he passed through the doors of the Aurora building the Celt in him sensed the past, like fog on the terracotta walls of the foyer.

The Kunishima Bank had two floors high up in the building; it never had to worry about hoi polloi coming in off the street to make a deposit or complain about bank fees. The receptionist was Japanese, though not a geisha; she was as smart and modern as Valerie at Landfall Holdings. She was polite but firm: “Mr. Okada never sees anyone without an appointment.”

“Miss,” said Malone, equally polite, “this is a police badge I am showing you. Now tell Mr. Okada we'd like to see him right away,
immediately
, or all hell is going to break loose.”

Her look was as dead as a blank computer screen; then she turned and went into an inner office. “All hell is gunna break loose?” said Clements. “I must remember that one.”

“I heard a TV cop say it the other night.”

The receptionist was gone for several minutes and Malone started to become impatient. Clements picked up a business magazine from a side table and leafed through it. “It says here, globalization is the new imperialism. History just repeats itself, it says.”

“Everything repeats itself,” said Malone, who believed it.

Then the receptionist came back, gave him and Clements a small bow and said, “Mr. Okada will see you.”

Mr. Okada was a Westernized Japanese. He was short and broad with thinning black hair, like a splintered helmet. He wore a double-breasted blue suit, a white shirt and, though Malone didn't recognize it, an Oxford University tie. With him were two other men, both small and thin and immaculately dressed. Real bankers, thought Malone, and wondered which one was the man from the
yakuza
. For he
was
sure that was the reason for the delay in seeing him and Clements.

“This is about Mr. Errol Magee?” Okada came straight to the point, but with a smile. He had lively eyes that suggested he might have a sense of humour, but he wasn't going to start joking, not yet. Malone hadn't expected him to be so blunt, but maybe he had become Australianized as well as Westernized. Circumlocution was not a local habit, except with politicians. “You have found him? Safe, I hope?”

“No, Mr. Okada,” said Malone and looked at the other two men.

Okada smiled again. “Forgive me. Mr. Nakasone and Mr. Tajiri.”

The two men were not thoroughly Westernized; they bowed, faces impassive. Malone almost bowed in return, but checked himself and just nodded.

“No, we haven't found Mr. Magee yet. We aren't even sure if he was kidnapped or arranged the kidnapping.” He waited for a reaction, but there was none.
You can't read a Japanese face
. . . He went on, “There was a call from a woman this morning, asking for five million dollars ransom. We don't know whether she is part of a kidnap gang or whether she is in collusion with Mr. Magee. She suggested you should be approached for the ransom.”

The impassive faces cracked. There was merriment from Okada and even Nakasone and Tajiri smiled. “Oh, Inspector—” Okada got his merriment under control. “Our bank—ransom Mr. Magee? Why?”

“The woman must have got word from someone. Mr. Magee, maybe?”

All five men were seated, on opposite sides of a large desk; like delegates at an international conference. This was a corner office, like Jack Junior's, with a view over the Botanic Gardens and out to the heads of the harbour. It was not furnished Japanese style: there was thick carpet on the floor, the desk was big and heavy with a leather top, the chairs leathered with comfort. Only the Japanese prints on the walls suggested Okada might pine for home.

“Mr. Okada—” Clements spoke for the first time: taking up the bowling. “We're from Homicide—”

“Homicide?” All three looked puzzled.

“
Yeah, Homicide. You heard or read about the murder of Mr. Magee's maid?”