The Easy Sin

by Jon Cleary

  Shirlee looked at her, totally shocked. “I expected better from you. Is that how they talk in London stockbrokers? Wash your mouth out—”

  “Mum, for Crissakes stop being so prissy and—and neat! Look worried, for God's sake!” The vowels had flattened, she was back at Coonabarabran when she was ten years old and the dreams had begun as London, Paris, New York had appeared on the jittery TV screen like mirages. “I spent three months planning a neat job of kidnapping my own husband—What's the matter with you?”

  Darlene was laughing softly. “I thought that was funny when you first told us. Kidnapping your own husband!”

  “It wasn't meant to be funny. And keep your voice down—those kids have got their ears wide open.” She looked at the three Muslim children, gave them a smile that cut their little throats. Then she turned back to her mother and sister: “You didn't think the money was funny when I mentioned how much we'd ask for. A simple job, that was what it was supposed to be. Then, first, Corey buggered it up by killing the maid—”

  “It was an accident,” said Darlene. “He's not a killer.”

  The police don't think it was an accident. You haven't met this Inspector Malone—”

  “I have,” said Shirlee, sipping the less-than-praised coffee. She explained the visit this afternoon. “He seemed a nice bloke. Some of them are. He put Mrs. Charlton next door in her place. Nicely.”

  “Mum, he's on my back. I don't know whether he suspects me or not, but the whole thing's got out of hand. We're gunna have to let Errol go.”

  “After all our trouble?” Shirlee put her cup down hard.

  “That's it. Trouble. We're in it up to our necks. We let him go and we all go home. I'm going back to London.”

  “I agree,” said Darlene. “You want your coffee?”

  “No,” said Caroline and pushed her cup towards her. “I thought you didn't like it?”

  “I'm trying to steady my nerves. I've tried not to think about the murders, but—” She put more sugar in the coffee.

  “Your hubby,” said Shirlee, trying to keep to the subject, “the one you wanna be kind to now, he's still got forty million dollars stashed away somewhere.”

  “I'll ask him about it when we let him go.” Then as an afterthought: “How's Pheeny?”

  “He's conscious and out of intensive care,” said Darlene. “Eating like a horse, the nurse said. He's gunna be okay.”

  “We're still talking with the lawyer, Mr. Bomaker,” said Shirlee. “About the class action. We'll make some money outa that. Not five million,” she added sarcastically, “but some. What do you want, dear?”

  One of the Muslim children, a small girl with big dark eyes, said shyly, “My mother asks could we borrow the sugar?”

  “Of course,” said Darlene and gave the holder to the child. Then she said to Shirlee, “Spoke English, didya notice?”

  Shirlee ignored her. “I don't like giving up—”

  “Mum,” said Caroline, “don't blame me because I'm calling the whole thing off. I didn't muck it up—Corey did.”

  “I told you—he didn't plan to kill anyone. They just—they just happened. The stars weren't right or something.”

  “She studies star charts now?” Caroline asked her sister. “She's into astrology?”

  “No, she listens to talk-back stars. Maybe we should ask Alan Jones or John Laws for advice.”

  “All right, you two, finished with your sarcasm?” Shirlee was pulling herself, and them, together. Neatly. “When do we let him go?”

  “It'll have to be tonight, after dark,” said Darlene. “Otherwise Mrs. Charlton will be sticking her nose in. Where will we let him loose?”

  “Somewhere where you won't be seen,” said Caroline. “A station car park, after the last train. Give him some money so he can catch a cab back to his apartment. I'll be there.” Then she added: “Whether Miss Doolan likes it or not.”

  “A taxi?” said Shirlee. “All the way from here to the Quay? That'll be—what?—thirty or forty dollars?”

  “We owe it to him,” said Caroline.

  “We don't owe him nothing. You pay, he's your husband.”

  Caroline took out a fifty-dollar note. “Here.”

  “Who's paying for the coffee?” said Darlene.

  “I am,” said Shirlee and laid out the exact cash.

  “No tip?” said Caroline.

  “Only if they speak English,” said Shirlee, defender of cultures.

  They stood up and moved off. The three Muslim mothers looked after them.

  “I'll never understand them,” said one of them in Turkish.

  “They were talking about three fucking murders,” said the little girl who had asked for the sugar.

  “Wash your mouth out,” said her mother in Turkish; then she turned to the other two women: “Her kindergarten teacher says she has just the ear for English.”

  II

  Malone, having shaved, turned from looking in the mirror as Lisa stepped out of the shower. “If there were no mirrors, everyone could think he was good-looking.”

  “You think it's the mirror that tells you the truth?” She began to dry herself. Her figure was still good and she was proud of it in an unobvious way; she took care of it, rather than others taking stock of it. “It's your enemies who tell you what you don't want to know. Dry my back.”

  “Why is it I still get randy after all these years when I look at you?”

  “I'll have to stop putting Viagra in your Milo. Keep your hands off.”

  “I'm just trying to dry every nook in Granny.”

  “I think your jokes could do with some Viagra. Kiss me.”

  He did. “Why did we have to invite the old folks here for dinner tonight? We could go to bed—”

  “Forget it. Have your shower and don't try any American Beauty stuff.”

  “You watch too many videos.”

  He got under the shower, let the water wash the day out of him. He felt the old sense of retreat. My castle, with hot and cold running water, with a good cook and an even better mistress.

  Con and Brigid Malone, Hans and Elisabeth Pretorius were coming to dinner, as they did every month. It was a duty call, Malone sometimes felt, but he always enjoyed the evening. Hans brought expensive wines from his cellar; Con brought vintage opinion from the cellars of another life. Brigid and Elisabeth, strangers to each other for the rest of the month, met as friends on these evenings. In-laws are the original immigration inspectors, ever watchful of what has crossed their borders. It gave Malone and Lisa a lot of pleasure that they were the anchors for these meetings.

  Later, over dessert, blackbottom pie, Con's and Hans' favourite, Lisa was saying, “With so little history, Australians have to invent myths—”

  “Please explain,” said Brigid, almost merry on one glass of Hill of Grace shiraz. She was wearing a pink cashmere cardigan which, over her protests, Lisa and the girls had bought her for Christmas. She looked almost well-dressed till one got down to her lisle stockings and her comfortable Footrest shoes. Elisabeth, on the other hand and other foot, was all Missoni and Ferragamo, at home amongst the double pay of Double Bay.

  The discussions never got heated, they were part of the reasons for these monthly dinners.

  “—look at rugby internationals,” said Lisa, “all those players hugging each other like gays in a gale, all of them earning around half a million dollars a year, all of them singing about a suicidal, sheep-stealing drifter trying to evade the police. It's like Kerry Packer singing ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?'”

  “‘Waltzing Matilda,'” said Con. “Beautiful song. We used to sing it at party meetings. After the ‘Internationale' and the ‘Red Rag.'” He grinned, a crack in a cracked face, and winked at Elisabeth, who winked back.

  “But what's the connection on the rugby field? Another myth sought.” Lisa took a mouthful of the pie. “A country needs to be old to have myths.”

  “Ireland,” said Brigid, sipping her wine with reverence, as i
f the Pope himself had blessed it. She prayed regularly for her husband and her son and wondered sometimes why God gave her only half an ear. “We have the melancholy for the myths.”

  “Holland,” said Hans. “We have our true myths. The little boy with his finger in the dike.”

  Didn’t she find it uncomfortable? But Malone saw Lisa's warning glare and he didn't unwind the old joke. Brigid didn't like dirty stories and would instantly lose her merry mood. He changed the subject: “Hans, when you started out to make your money, were you greedy?”

  “What sort of question is that?” But Elisabeth was not offended. “Or are we still talking myths?”

  “Greed isn't a myth,” said Malone, and Con nodded and raised the red shiraz in lieu of the Red Flag. “Right now, at work, I'm dealing with some very greedy buggers.”

  Hans had made a small fortune, since enlarged by wise investment, out of rubber heels. For a few years half the population of the country bounced through life on Pretorius heels; then he had sold out to a conglomerate and the pedestrians had stopped treading on his name. It was his own private joke.

  “No, I don't think I was greedy.” He had caught the point of Malone's question. “In those days the aim was to make a living, not a fortune.”

  “That was what us socialists believed,” said Con.

  “You were a commo,” said his son.

  “Only at work,” said Con and took another sip of the red.

  He had been a boy during the 1930s Depression. A socialist at five, he had claimed, a communist at ten. He had told Malone lurid stories of deprivation and exploitation that had had Malone, living then in the affluence of the 1970s, laughing like a drunken oil baron.

  “I'd have drowned him in holy water if he'd brought the Daily Worker home,” said Brigid and for a moment looked like a jovial Virgin Mary.

  “Times have changed, Scobie. Everything these days is competition.” Hans, too, took a sip of his wine. He enjoyed his affluence, but never flaunted it. He was dressed all in grey, shirt, cashmere pullover, trousers: sleek as a seal, a good-humoured one who rarely barked. “Look at the Russians. The ambitious and ruthless are as greedy now as the rest of us.”

  “I never trusted the Russians,” said Con piously, conveniently shutting a door of memory.

  “Neither did I,” said Elisabeth from the other end of the spectrum. She believed in monarchs, preferably female.

  “You're involved in that kidnapping of Errol Magee, aren't you?” said Hans.

  “Only indirectly,” said Malone. “We're trying to find who murdered his maid.”

  “I made a small investment in Mr. Magee's company,” said Hans.

  Oh crumbs, why did I mention greed? From the other end of the table Lisa sent another warning glare.

  Hans went on, “I'm not really interested in the New Economy, as they call it. But I-Saw, Mr. Magee's company, seemed to me to be on to a good thing. I thought anything to do with lawyers couldn't miss, there are so many of them. Worldwide, hundreds of thousand of them, perhaps millions, studying their websites to see what Mr. Magee had to tell them.”

  Malone didn't ask how much Hans had lost. “It's all down the drain now.”

  “I wonder who has kidnapped Mr. Magee? Lawyers?”

  “It would be the first time they've asked for ransom. They usually ask for damages.”

  At ten o'clock the Pretoriuses and the Malones rose to go; they left at this hour every visit, like draught horses out of a gate. Con shook hands with Lisa and Malone, told them to vote Labor. Hans, smiling, shook hands and told them to vote Coalition. Elisabeth hugged then both, told them to hug the children for her. Brigid, one and a half glasses into abandon, kissed Lisa and then, for the first time in almost forty years, kissed Malone on the cheek. He almost wept.

  The in-laws drove off into the night in Hans' Jaguar. He would drop Con and Brigid in Erskineville, then drive himself and Elisabeth home to Vaucluse, another country. Duty had been done as parents, bonds linked as in-laws. They would not see each other nor communicate till next month's dinner.

  Malone and Lisa had rinsed the dishes and stacked them in the dishwasher when he touched his cheek. “Did you notice? Mum kissed me tonight.”

  “Be grateful.”

  “I am. I almost cried.”

  She kissed him, on the cheek. “She's always loved you, you know that. She was just always afraid to show it. Some of them, her generation, were like that. Let's go to bed.”

  “I have a headache—”

  She thumped him. “I wasn't thinking of that—”

  Then Tom came in the front door and down the hallway to the kitchen. “How were the oldies tonight?”

  “You're home early,” said Malone. “You get a knock-back?”

  “I've been down to the rugby club. I didn't fancy any of the guys, especially the front-row forwards.”

  “You seen any more of Daniela?”

  Tom shook his head. “You scared her off. Anything left to eat?”

  They left him with a slice of blackbottom pie and went along to their bedroom. Malone undressed and pulled on his K-Mart pyjamas. He never spent money on sleepwear, underwear or swimwear; Sulka, Derek Rose and Charvet would go bankrupt waiting for him. “When we are old, you think our kids will hold duty dinners for us?”

  “I hope so. Goodnight. Kiss me.”

  “You're covered in Ella Baché.”

  “Not on the lips.”

  Malone was asleep when the phone rang. He reached for it without turning on the light, feeling the same old chill in the breast: something's wrong with Claire or Maureen! But it was Clements:

  “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? Th
e 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.