by Jon Cleary
“American,” said Darlene, who knew the exchange rate. “Not Australian.”
Magee looked at them; but the hoods were blank. “You've gotta be kidding! I'm broke—skint—”
He was still sick with fear; but he was a good actor. He wouldn't tell them about the money hidden away overseas, not till they held a gun at his head and threatened to kill him. At the moment they were just talking a deal.
“Mr. Magee,” said Shirlee patiently, “you are worth seventy million dollars—”
“On paper,” said Darlene. “Australian.”
“Christ, that was twelve months ago! Don't you read the papers?” But he had forgotten. There had been only rumours, buried away in financial columns, nothing in the headlines. He began to regret his closed mouth. “My company is going into receivership—”
The two hoods turned towards each other. Then Darlene looked back at him. “We're not financial wizards, Mr. Magee, but do you expect us to believe you could lose that much money in twelve months?”
He was dealing with financial idiots; or anyway, infants. He could feel his fear subsiding; a little expertise can stiffen a spine. “Ladies—”
“Cut out the bullshit,” said Darlene.
Her mother's hood looked at her, but said nothing.
“Ladies, in IT—”
“What's that?” said Shirlee.
“Information Technology.” They were idiots, no doubt about it. “In IT fortunes were made overnight. On paper, that is. And the millionaires went broke overnight. Throats are cut every day of the week. They started cutting my throat three months ago.”
“Who's they?” asked Shirlee.
“I'd rather not say—”
“Mr. Magee,” said Darlene, “I know what you say is true, about all those paper millionaires. But I don't think you are one of them. But for the record, who's been trying to cut your throat?”
“Are you in the game? IT?”
“No. But I'm not dumb, Mr. Magee.”
He hesitated. It had disconcerted him to have these two women apparently running this kidnapping. He had felt threatened by the two silent men, but these two women, especially the older one, if she was the older one, had their own menace. He had never felt really safe with women, not with Caroline and the women between her and Kylie, but he had never felt threatened by them.
“The people who put up the venture capital. The Kunishima Bank, they're Japanese.”
“A bank is cutting your throat?” said Shirlee.
“Banks are expert at it,” said Darlene. “You mean, Mr. Magee, you've been playing funny buggers and the bank is foreclosing?”
“Something like that.”
“Not good enough,” said Shirlee and even beneath the hood one could see the jaw setting. “Someone's gunna pay for you, Mr. Magee. All the money you've been worth don't just disappear into thin air.”
“Mum, let me handle this—”
Mum? He'd been kidnapped by a gang run by Mum? If he got out of this alive, nobody would believe him; or they would laugh him out of town. He had lunched with Bill Gates, had sat with leading lawyers in London, Paris, New York; the PM here in Australia had once called him Errol, like an old mate. And now Mum and daughter (he wondered what her name might be) were holding him to ransom. He was a snob, but that had been his mother's fault. She had never let him call her Mum.
“Errol,” said Darlene, like an old mate, “someone is going to pay for you, so let's cut out the bullshit—”
“Wash your mouth out,” said the other blue hood.
“—and give us a name. What about your girlfriend Kylie?”
Somehow he managed a laugh. “She'd put me on her credit card—that's all she ever uses. I told you, I'm broke—”
“All right, you told us that.” Shirlee was losing patience. She had neatly planned everything, like a Christmas package, and now all the string was coming undone. “But it don't matter. You've got contacts, they've got money . . . I been reading about it, Big Business sticks together, it don't matter about the battlers—”
“You're battlers?”
“We won't be when we get the money for you,” said Darlene.
“Look, Big Business, as you call it, doesn't run a fund for kidnapped businessmen—” Then he shook his head, as if he had only just understood what he had said. “Call my office, see what they can do.”
“We'll do that,” said Darlene and she and her mother stood up. “You want some breakfast? Mum does nice sausages and bacon.”
His stomach heaved at the thought. “No, thanks. Just some yoghurt and coffee.”
“Where does he think he is?” snapped Shirlee and whirled out of the room.
Darlene checked the straps that bound him, then fingered his dress and jacket. “Versace?”
“Yeah. How'd you know?”
“I've been adding up what I'm gunna buy when we get the money for you. Try and get some sleep after breakfast.”
“Sitting up?”
“Imagine you're in economy class.” Behind the hood one could almost see the smile. “You'll be back in first class, Errol, soon's we get the money.”
II
“What do you know about a software firm, I-Saw?” said Malone at breakfast.
Tom paused as he was about to bite into his second piece of toast and home-made marmalade. He was a big young man, bigger than his father, with a good blend of his father's and his mother's looks. He had recently graduated with an Honours degree in Economics and a month ago had started with an investment bank at 35,000 dollars a year, almost half of what his father was earning after twenty-seven years service in the police. He was already an expert on world economics, on how to run the country and an authority on other experts. He was still young, God bless him.
“Are we talking about last night's murder?” said Lisa. “There is a golden rule in this house, in case you've forgotten. We don't talk shop at breakfast.”
Malone gave his wife what he thought of as his loving look. She was still beautiful, at least in his eyes, and had that calm command that was like oil on the family's occasional troubled waters. She wore no make-up at breakfast, was in shirt and slacks, always gave the appearance of being ready for the day.
“I am just trying to get some payback for all the years we've supported him—” He looked again at his son. “What do you know about I-Saw?”
“I wouldn't put money into it,” said Tom. “In fact, people are taking money out of it, if they can find suckers to buy their shares. Have been for some time. It's dead.”
“What killed it?”
“Hard to pin down. Too much ambition, not enough capital—it could be a dozen reasons. Errol Magee's not everyone's favourite character. Sometimes he's seen at the right places, but he never gives interviews or makes statements. There's virtually nothing about him on the internet, him personally, I mean. Everyone's heard of him, but no one knows him.”
“Except his girlfriend. And his wife.”
“He has a wife?” Lisa looked up from her Hi-Bran.
“What's happened to the golden rule?”
“Don't beat about the bush. You made a mistake, mentioning a girlfriend and the wife in one breath.”
“Never misses out on gossip,” Malone told his son. “Righto, he has a wife no one suspected, least of all the girlfriend. She flew in yesterday from London. Mr. Magee was expecting her, but forgot to tell the girlfriend.”
“What's she like?” asked Lisa.
“Who?”
“Both of them.”
“We're breaking the golden rule,” said Tom, grinning.
“Shut up,” said his mother. “What are they like?”
“Good lookers, both of them.” Then Malone took his time. A man should never rush into explaining other women to his wife. He would have to explain that to Tom at some later date. “They're out of the same mould, I think. Both calculating, but the wife would have the edge. More experience.”
“You must have spent some time sizing them up,�
� said Lisa, like a wife.
“Actually, I hardly looked at them. I made all that up.” Then he looked at Tom: “What are the women like at the bank?”
“Calculating,” grinned Tom. “I'm still looking for a woman with some mystery to her, like you told me—”
“He told you that?” said Lisa.
“You're still a mystery to me,” said Malone.
“Glad to hear it. Hurry up with your breakfast. It's wash day.”
Late last year she had given up her job as a public relations officer at Sydney's Town Hall and since then worked three days a week as a volunteer with the Red Cross. Claire, their eldest, was now married with a baby son and Maureen was living with a girlfriend while she picked and chose her way through a battalion of boyfriends. Tom, devoted to his mother's cooking, still lived at home, though there were nights when he didn't come home and his parents asked no questions.
“Find out what gossip you can about I-Saw,” said Malone.
“Am I on a retainer?” Tom was fast becoming an economic rationalist, a bane of his father's.
“I'll shout you a night out at Pizza Hut.”
“Investment bankers don't go to Pizza Hut.”
When Malone was leaving for the office Lisa followed him to the front door. “Any more on the promotion? You said nothing last night.”
“It's going through.” He wasn't enthusiastic about it. “I got a hint I'll be skipping a rank. How does Superintendent Malone strike you?”
“I'll get a new wardrobe.”
“There's a summer sale on at Best & Less.”
She kissed him tenderly. There are worse fates than a tight-fisted husband.
Malone drove into Strawberry Hills through an end-of-summer morning. The traffic was heavy, but road rage seemed to have been given a sedative. He was a careful driver and had never been a hurrier; he acknowledged the occasional but fading courtesy of other drivers and gave them his own. The day looked promising. He would turn the Juanita Marcos murder over to Russ Clements and relax behind his desk, mulling over the future.
He parked in the yard behind the building that housed the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit and sat for a while in the car. In another month he would no longer be Inspector Malone, but Superintendent Malone. He would no longer be the co-ordinator of Homicide, but moved to a desk in Crime Agency at Police Central.
Strawberry Hills, named after the English estate of compulsive letter-writer Horace Walpole, though it had never looked English and had never grown strawberries, indeed had nothing to it but this large nondescript building in front of him, suddenly seemed like Home Sweet Home. In Homicide, whether here or in other locations—and the unit had been moved around like an unwanted bastard—he had spent most of his police life. It had not always been enjoyable; homicide officers were not sadists nor masochists. There had been times when he had wanted to turn away, sickened by what he had to investigate. But to balance that there had been the solving of the crimes, the bringing to justice those who had little or no regard for the lives of others. He hated murder and had never become casual about it. It was part of life and had to be accounted for.
As a superintendent in Crime Agency he would be at least one remove from it, maybe more.
He went up to the fourth floor, let himself in through the security door and was met by Russ Clements, who, he hoped, would succeed him. The big man, usually imperturbable, had something on his mind.
“I see you, mate? Before the meeting?”
There was always a meeting each morning, to check on yesterday's results, to assign new cases for today. “What've we got? Something serious?”
He led the way into his office and Clements followed him. The big man, instead of taking his usual relaxed place on the couch beneath the window, eased his bulk into the chair opposite Malone's desk. He looked uncomfortable, like a probationary constable who had made a wrong arrest.
“There were two more homicides last night, one at Maroubra, the other at Chatswood. The locals don't need us, they've got the suspects in custody. No, it's something else.”
Malone waited. He had a sudden irritating feeling that Clements was going to tell him something personal he didn't want to hear. That his marriage was breaking up?
“The job down at the Quay,” said Clements. “The maid that was done in. Well, not her, exactly.” He shifted in the chair.
Malone, studying him, this man with whom he had worked for twenty-two years, said, “What's eating you? You got ants up your crack?”
“No. Well, yes—in a way. The maid's boss, the guy who's disappeared, Errol Magee. We've got a problem.”
“We?” Still puzzled, he yet felt a certain relief that Clements' problem was not a domestic one.
“Well, me.” He looked out at the bright day, then back at Malone. “I invested in Magee's company, I got in when it was floated.”
“So?”
“You're not helping me, are you?”
“I'm listening, but you're taking a long time to get around to what's worrying you.”
Clements looked out the window again. He was not a handsome man, but there was a certain strength to the set of his big face that, for the truly aware, was more reassuring than mere good looks. Right now, though, all the strength seemed to have drained out of him. He looked back at Malone. “I invested sixty thousand dollars.” Almost a year's salary for a senior sergeant. “I've done the lot. The receivers are moving in on I-Saw, it's gunna be announced today.”
Clements had always been a gambler, first on the horses, then, when he married, on the stock exchange. But he had never been a plunger. Or so Malone had always believed.
Malone shook his head. “Sixty thousand? You and Romy've got that much to spare?”
“It's not gunna bankrupt us. But no, we don't have it to spare. Not for gambling—which, I guess, is what she calls it. I just got greedy. I thought things had settled down in the IT game, the mugs had been sorted out—you know what it was like a coupla years ago.”
“Only what Tom told me. I was never into companies that weren't going to show any profit for five, ten years. That were paying their bosses half a million or more before they'd proved anything. I'm short-sighted, I like my dividends every six months. One thing about the Old Economy, as I gather you smartarses call it, it had little time for bullshit. Does Romy know you've done that much?”
Again Clements looked out the window, then back at Malone. “No. Not yet.”
“Ah.” As wives say when told something they don't want to hear. “I can hear her say that. Ah.”
“No, it'll be Ach! She'll all of a sudden be Teutonic.” Romy, his wife, had been in Australia just over twenty years, but she was still proudly German. She liked Bach, Weill and Günter Grass, three strangers Clements avoided, and occasionally tartly reminded him that not all Germans had been Nazis. They were an odd match but genuinely in love. “Even when I tell her that I was aiming for a trust fund for Amanda.”
Amanda was the Clements' five-year-old daughter. “When did you dream that up, the trust fund?”
Clements grinned weakly. “Is it that obvious? Okay, when I first put the money into I-Saw, all I saw . . .” He paused.
“Go on. Forget the puns.”
Clements grinned again, but there was no humour in him. “All I saw was I was gunna make a million or more. It was gunna zoom to the top, like Yahoo. It was designed to help out lawyers, and lawyers are like rabbits. You get two lawyers in an office and pretty soon you've got four or six or a whole bloody floor of them. My stockbroker told me we couldn't lose.”
“How much has he lost?”
Again the grin, shamefaced this time. “He cashed in at the end of the first day's trading, made 40 per cent. He didn't tell me. I hung on, I was gunna make 1000 per cent.”
Malone pondered a while. This could not have come at a worse time; he had already recommended Clements for promotion. The Service had had a rough period, with Internal Affairs sniffing around like bloodhounds, and matters ha
d only settled down in the last few months. But the media and the Opposition in Parliament were always out there, prowling the edges like hyenas, waiting to score points, scandal-chewers. He and Clements had always been honest cops, but they were always wary of outsiders. It came with the wearing of the blue.
“Righto, you're not going to have anything to do with the murder. You're out of it. Entirely. But I want you to find out all you can about Mr. Magee. He could've arranged his own kidnapping, if he's in the shit financially. He might also have killed the maid. Has Forensic come up with anything more?”
“Not so far. John and Sheryl are with the maid's boyfriend now. They're in the interview room. He's a Bulgarian.”
“I'll leave him to you for the time being. When you're finding out what you can about Magee, stay out of the picture yourself. We don't want feature stories on you in the Herald or the Mirror. You know, Greg Random has backed up my recommendation that you take over from me.” Random was their senior in Crime Agency. “Don't bugger it up.”
Clements stood up slowly, as if his joints had set. “You're not very sympathetic, are you?”
“You said yourself you were greedy. What do you want me to do—bless you?”
“I'll be glad when you move out.”
Malone hummed, “You gonna miss me, honey, when I'm gone—”
They grinned at each other. The glue of friendship still held fast.
“I'm gunna take half an hour off and duck over to see Romy.”
“You're going to give her the bad news in the morgue?”
Romy was the Deputy-Director of Forensic Medicine in the State Department of Health and second-in-charge at the City Morgue. She earned more than Clements and, like Lisa, kept an eye on household accounts.
“I wanna get it off my chest.”
“Good luck. I've got two females to interview, Magee's girlfriend and his wife. Do I toss up?”
“Take the girlfriend. She'll always tell you more than a wife.”
They grinned at each other again, further glued by domestic chauvinism.
As Clements left, Malone saw Kagal and Sheryl Dallen come into the main office. He signalled them and they came in and sat down opposite him. They had no look of excitement on their faces.