The Easy Sin

by Jon Cleary

  “Worthless stock options,” said Daniela, as if reading from a list. This morning there was no sign of last night's amateur coquette; she was all business. “Superannuation, sick leave, last month's pay.”

  “The same,” said Louise, when Malone looked at her.

  Then he turned to Caroline, who stood apart from the other two women. That's how she would be, he thought, always standing apart. Daniela and Louise were in casual clothes this morning, slacks and shirts; but Caroline was in a suit, ear-rings and necklace in place, handbag at the ready. It suddenly occurred to him that she was the only one of the four here around the desk who showed no sign of wreckage. It was there in the faces of the other three but not in hers.

  “Errol owes me nothing,” she said, “except my wasted time.”

  “Lucky you,” said Daniela, but Caroline ignored her.

  Malone changed tack, said to Cragg, “The woman didn't ring back yesterday at five as she promised. The woman asking for the ransom.”

  “No-o. How did you know that?”

  “We got a warrant to have I-Saw's phones tapped. I must've forgotten to tell you,” he said with no hint of apology. He was becoming tired of these people. “She called the Kunishima Bank, asked them for the five million.”

  “What did the bank say?” It was Daniela who asked the question. She was the one who was doing most of the talking. Louise stood silent, as if she were no more than an office junior. Caroline still stood apart. Like a partner in Ballantine, Ballantine and Kowinsky? Malone wondered. But she had already declared she was no longer interested in I-Saw or Errol Magee.

  “They told her, whoever she was, to get lost,” said Malone. “But politely—they're Japanese. Errol's name stinks with them, Daniela. He's stolen forty million dollars from them and salted it away somewhere overseas.”

  “Holy shit!” said Cragg; and Daniela and Louise looked as if they were silently echoing him. “Jesus, that could've saved us!”

  “You hadn't told them?” Malone looked at Caroline Magee.

  “No.” Her tone was flat.

  “What a bastard!” Daniela at last found her voice again. “Why can't he pay his own ransom? And pay us?”

  “I could cut his throat,” said Louise and for a moment looked a different, dangerous woman.

  Malone's worst feelings were getting the better of him. Malice is there in everyone; even St. Francis, when people weren't looking, had thrown stones at the birds of Assisi that shat on him. “Maybe we should turn him over to you when we find him.”

  Cragg, Daniela and Louise nodded; but Caroline Magee shook her head. “You can have him. I'm going back to London.”

  “When?” said Malone.

  “I'm booked out on Friday.”

  “What if we find him and he's dead?”

  It was brutal, but Caroline didn't flinch. “Then I'll say a prayer for him. In London.”

  Malone felt he was getting nowhere. He had come over here to talk to Daniela, to get more background on Errol Magee and who else might be involved with him. But the three women, together, even if unwillingly, were behind a barricade. He would have to take them away separately, subject them to hard interrogation. And he couldn't do that without having lawyers brought in and he was in no mood for that sort of obstruction.

  He changed tack again: “Mr. Cragg, may I see you alone? Excuse us, ladies.”

  The three ladies were impassive; it was as if two territories of gender had been staked out. Malone took Cragg back through the desert of work-stations to the front desk. “Jared—” Be matey: first rule of police interrogation. “That woman who rang the other day—did you recognize her voice?”

  “You had a bloody hide tapping our phones without telling me!”

  “I wasn't the one who authorized it. Take it up with our strike force commander . . . Did you recognize the voice? You didn't seem surprised when you got the call.”

  “You don't miss much, do you?”

  “I try not to. How d'you reckon I'd go in IT?”

  Cragg shook his head. “The game's full of fucking blind men you'd eat ‘em.”

  “But not you? Weren't you blind to Errol and what he was up to?”

  Cragg nodded, glum at his own blindness. “Yeah . . . About that girl. Yeah, I thought the voice was familiar, but I couldn't place it. Still can't—I'm not an expert on women's voices.” He would never listen to them, Malone thought; Cragg would make some of the chauvinists in Homicide look like handmaidens to feminism. “It might've been one of Errors girlfriends. Yes?” He was looking over Malone's shoulder.

  Malone turned. Vassily Todorov stood there, dressed for battle in the city streets. He wore black training shoes, black socks, tight black shorts, a green polo shirt with FOLEY'S FLYERS across the front of it in white, and a green-and-white cyclist's helmet shaped like a plume. He wore black gloves and there was a green haversack on his back. He looks bloody ridiculous, thought Malone.

  “Mr. Todorov! You delivering something for Mr. Cragg?”

  “Who's he?” asked Cragg. “A police courier?”

  “Mr. Todorov's girlfriend worked for Mr. Magee. She was the maid who was murdered.”

  “Terrible,” said Todorov and the plumed helmet shook from side to side. “In the prime of her life.”

  “Do you have something for me?” said Cragg.

  “Only a question, sir.” Todorov was not aggressive, but with every muscle exposed in his tight gear, the plumed helmet on the rock of his head, there was a suggestion he was ready for aggression. “Miss Marcos, God rest her soul—she was a Catholic,” he explained; communism still clung to him, like another polo shirt. “She was employed by I-Saw. Her pay cheques were drawn on I-Saw. Signed by Mr. Magee. I think I-Saw owes her superannuation, sick pay and holiday pay. I have added it up. Three thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollars. I am her next-of-kin.”

  “Mr. Todorov, you are just her boyfriend,” said Malone.

  “Inspector, I am her de facto. I have studied the law. I-Saw owes me three thousand, seven hundred and twenty dollars. I will take a cheque.”

  “Mr.—Todorov?” said Cragg. “Go down to the floor below and ask for Mr. Smith. He's in charge of I-Saw now. Tell him what you want and he will put you on his list of creditors. I wouldn't build my hopes, if I were you.”

  Todorov looked at Malone, who said, “They're bankrupt, Vassily. I think you'll be lucky if you get five cents. I wouldn't leave Foley's Flyers if I were you.”

  “I am no fool, Inspector.” Todorov seemed to grow another inch or two; Malone looked to see if he was standing on his toes. He wasn't. “Bulgarians are born looking four ways at once—history is our godfather. I did not come to Australia to be a bicycle courier for the rest of my life. I am pedalling for higher things.”

  This bloke’s having me on. But perhaps he wasn't. Multi-culturism had been in this country for fifty years, but the weave was still as loose as a shark net. Understanding slipped through every day. He knew he would have trouble placing Bulgaria on the map. Somewhere at the arse-end of Europe, bum-wiped by history.

  “He's all yours,” said Cragg bluntly and walked away towards a door that led to stairs, going down to the laying out of the corpse of I-Saw.

  “They don't care, do they?” said Todorov, looking after him.

  “He has things on his mind.” Why am I defending Cragg? Of course he doesn’t care. But then Todorov himself had given the impression that he didn't care, not about Juanita; only about what was owed to her, down to the last dollar.

  “I saw the news—Mr. Magee's girlfriend has been kidnapped. It is like Moscow.”

  Malone had to smile. “Not quite, Vassily.”

  “I hate the Russians. They ruined communism.”

  Malone wasn't going to defend Russians or communism. “How did Miss Doolan and Juanita get on?”

  “Not very well.” Todorov was not hesitant about his opinion. “Miss Doolan was rude. Australian women are not good with servants. They are either rude or too frie
ndly.”

  Ask a Bulgarian communist, a Foley's Flyer, for a considered opinion on Australian women as domestic bosses and don't complain if you get a considered answer. He would have to ask Lisa's opinion tonight. “How did Mr. Magee get on with Juanita?”

  “He hardly spoke to her. Except once.”

  Maybe Australian men were just as bad with domestic help. Had Errol put the hard word on the maid, as happened in Britain and Europe, according to the movies he saw on SBS? “When did he speak to her? About what?”

  “Two weeks ago. Juanita told me about it, she was so surprised.”

  “Why?”

  “Mr. Magee asked her to keep a secret.”

  “What secret?”

  Todorov took off his plumed helmet; he looked more human. “A woman came to see him. They seemed to know each other—Juanita thought it might be someone who worked here.” He gestured about him: a little scornfully, as if they stood in the middle of a rubbish dump. Which I-Saw might soon prove to be. “They talked to each other, Juanita thought for about an hour. She was out in the kitchen most of the time. When the woman left, Mr. Magee kissed her.”

  “That doesn't prove anything. Mr. Magee seems to have kissed a lot of women. What did he say to Juanita?”

  “He came out to the kitchen, she said, and asked her not to tell Miss Doolan the woman had been there. He said he was planning a business surprise for Miss Doolan.”

  Mr. Magee had done that, all right. “Did Juanita say what the woman looked like? Describe her? Blonde, brunette, redhead?”

  “Women never describe other women's hair.” He was an expert on women, too. Foley's Flyers should be paying him a bonus. “Juanita just said she was smart, in the way she was dressed. But so many of them are these days, aren't they? Power women. Even in Bulgaria.”

  “Did Juanita mention the woman to Miss Doolan?”

  Todorov shrugged. “Who knows what women mention to each other? I don't think so. Juanita and Miss Doolan were never friendly.”

  The question came without thought, the tongue finding its own way: “Do you ever deliver anything to the Kunishima Bank?”

  Todorov raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “What do you hear about them?”

  “What does one ever hear about banks, except complaints? But not the Kunishima. One never hears anything about them—even the Aussies who work there never gossip. So I'm told.”

  “So you're told?”

  “Bicycle couriers gossip. You see them sitting around together, what do you think they talk about? Places they have to deliver to, little managers who are rude. Where the good women are on the reception desks.”

  “Good women?” Virginal receptionists?

  Berlitz had let him down. “Good—sorts? Yes, good sorts.”

  Then Caroline Magee came down the long room, moving gracefully, calm as a nun on a sea of charity. “Goodbye, Inspector,” she said as she went by. “Good luck.”

  “You'll still be at the Ritz-Carlton?”

  “Till Friday,” she said over her shoulder and was gone.

  “Who was that?” asked Todorov.

  “Mrs. Magee. His wife. Or used to be.”

  “His wife?” Todorov's mind slipped back into gear on the bicycle of his greed: “Perhaps she would pay Juanita's superannuation?”

  “Mrs. Magee wouldn't pay the Virgin Mary's superannuation.”

  Todorov strapped on the plumed helmet again. “I shall not give up.”

  “Nor I, Vassily,” said Malone, but felt he was on a treadmill.

  II

  Briskin brother and sister had walked away from the police car. “God, Corey, what else can go wrong?”

  “I dunno.” He leaned against a tree for support; he felt sick, but hollow sick, nothing to come up. “How we gunna tell Mum? How's she taking what happened to Pheeny?”

  “Okay. She's making a deal with an ambulance-chaser. We're going to sue the woman who knocked Pheeny over.”

  Corey was unimpressed. “Big deal . . . I wanna call it a day, Sis, turn our mate loose and call off the whole fucking thing. I'll go up to Queensland—”

  “Where is he?”

  Corey nodded across at the police car. “In the boot. I put one of the hoods on him, so he wouldn't know where he is.”

  “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 whil
e 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.