The Easy Sin

Chapter One

1

The apartment was big; and soul-less as an operating theatre. The walls, furniture and carpets were all white, as if the designer had been a graduate of Antarctica Tech. The paintings on the walls offered splashes of colour, but they were so abstract as to suggest burst blood vessels in the eyes of anyone looking at them. There were computers and phones in every room, including the bathrooms, as if the owner must always be available, even during ablutions or bowel movements. It was post-modern.

Errol Magee had no soul; or if he had, it had never bothered him. He had been educated at a private school where brutality by prefects had been considered part of social education and sodomy looked upon as a minor aberration of sexual education. He had been a brilliant student at school and university, his only blemish as an Australian his total lack of interest in sport. An only child, he had lost his parents during his first year at university. Paid-up Australians both, dismayed by his lack of interest in sport, they had taken up bungee-jumping in the hope of inspiring him into some excitement. Unfortunately, during a double-act in New Zealand, their rope had broken and they had plunged to their death in a splash that was like an explosion of their hopes. Errol had been dismayed by their death and its manner, but after six months he was over his grief and not looking back. That was ten years ago.

Now he was trying on his girlfriend’s new Versace dress and jacket. The dark blue silk went with his eyes, which were his most distinctive feature. He was good-looking in an unremarkable way; his looks sort of crept up on an observer. He was short and slim and the outfit, though a little tight, fitted well. Kylie was much the same build as himself, though with more on the upper deck, and he always liked the outfits she bought with his money. He undid his ponytail and let his blond hair fall loose; he looked at himself in the full-length mirror. Not bad, though the dress and jacket would have looked better worn with something else but his black Reeboks. Kylie’s shoes were too small for him and, anyway, he always felt awkward in high heels, tottering around like a drunken drag queen.

He was not a drag queen; nor even a drag commoner. He was not gay nor bisexual nor perverted; he just liked dressing up. Which was one reason why he had never liked rugby at school, though today’s one-day cricketers, in their fancy pyjamas, would have welcomed him. He had never told Kylie that he liked dressing up in her clothes. Everyone, he had read on the internet, had his or her idiosyncrasies, and this was his.

It had been another bastard of a day, everyone disowning the stuff-ups that had occurred. A year ago the stuff-ups had occurred singly and only occasionally; lately they had come in bunches, haemorrhoids of disaster. For almost three years he had ridden at the top of the rainbow, up there with all the other cyberspace millionaires; then the rainbow had begun to fade and he, like so many of the others, had begun to slide. But, because he had always been less vocal than so many of the others, his slide had been less remarked. He was not a modest man, but his mouth and mind were always connected, with his mind in control.

He had come home, glad to find that Kylie was out at another fashion show. She went to more openings than a battlefield surgeon; he occasionally tagged along, but always avoided the flash of the paparazzi’s cameras; he was never there in the miles of smiles in the Sunday papers. He wanted to be alone tonight, to say goodbye to the apartment. His lease ran out in another week and he wasn’t going to renew it. Twelve thousand dollars a month had once been chicken-feed; for a week or two, till he got out of the country, he would be living on chicken-burgers.

Which was what he had brought home for supper. He had eaten while looking at the ABC news, which was all bad news. He had sat in the ultra-modern kitchen, so sterile-looking that one wondered if food would taint it, and the tears had come as they hadn’t since he was six years old when his father had yelled at him for not being able, for Crissake, to catch a bloody cricket ball. The tears were a mixture of self-pity and anger; the world had no right to treat him as it had. He wept for five minutes, then he got up and went into the en suite bathroom and washed his face. When he had come out into the main bedroom he had seen the open cardboard box on the bed, the Versace dress and jacket draped carelessly out of the box like an invitation. It had been enough.

He looked at himself now in the mirror, pirouetting slowly to let the full skirt flower out. Then he had glided, if one can glide in Reeboks, out of the bedroom into the big unlit living room. He drifted slowly around the room, touching furniture and objects as he had seen Loretta Young and Susan Hayward do in Late Late Movies as they said farewell to their Ole Kentucky Home and a Southern life gone forever. There was nothing ante-bellum in the apartment, though the computers in every room were now reminders of a war that no one had recognized at the time. Every computer had the same bad news of the day, like silent echoes of each other.

The apartment was on an upper floor in the block that was part of the man-made cliff that was East Circular Quay. Down on the harbour the ferries came and went at the wharves without fuss, like wooden governesses. Lights swirled on the dark waters, ghostly fish, and a lone night-bird went like a dark tic across the brilliance of the tall office blocks fronting the Quay. Two hundred yards across the water from Magee’s apartment was a cruise ship. On an upper deck, night-glasses to her eyes, was Darlene Briskin. She was not a passenger, not at $160,000 the round trip; she had bluffed her way on board through the delivery hold as a casual waitress for tonight’s big reception. Darlene was a planner, like her mother, and had checked on this evening’s programme aboard the SS Caribbean. She had also helped her mother to plan what was about to happen across the water.

She lowered the glasses, punched numbers on her mobile. Then: ‘Go! She’s alone!’

Errol Magee, in the apartment, did not hear Corey and Phoenix Briskin come in through the back door of the kitchen. Corey had been picking locks since he was twelve years old; the kitchen door was no problem. He and his brother wore ski-masks and surgical gloves; the ski-masks were battle-worn, but the gloves were new equipment. They went through into the living room and Errol Magee, as fey for the moment as Loretta Young in nostalgia, did not hear them as they crossed the thick white carpet. Phoenix came up behind him, wrapped the chloroform pad over his face and after a moment’s struggle Errol was a dead weight. Phoenix grabbed him under the arms as he sagged.

‘She’s got no tits –’

‘She’s an ex-model,’ said Corey. ‘They don’t have tits.’

‘Not even when they’re retired?’

‘Pheeny, for Crissakes, shut up and bag her!’

While Phoenix pulled the big black garbage bag over the victim’s head, Corey went round the apartment to the eight computers, including the ones in the bathrooms and the kitchen. On each he deleted everything he saw, then he typed an identical message on each screen. The surgical gloves left no prints on the keys. Their mother had planned that.

He went back into the living room where Errol Magee was now almost totally enveloped in the garbage bag. Phoenix, about to hoist the body over his shoulder, said, ‘What’s she wearing fucking Reeboks for? A model?’

‘For Crissake, shut up – What’s that?’

Juanita Marcos had just come in through the kitchen’s back door. She was a Filipina with a flat pretty face and a history of choosing the wrong men. She had come in three times a week to clean the Magee apartment, re-locating the dust and managing not to flood the shower-stalls and the baths. She was paid twenty dollars an hour and didn’t think she was overpaid, because this was the only job she had had since arriving from Zamboanga a year ago. And anyway Mr Magee was loaded; her live-in boyfriend, Vassily Todorov, had told her that and he knew everything about who had the money. Then this morning Miss Doolan, Mr Magee’s girlfriend, the bitch, had given her notice.

‘Go back,’ Vassily had told her; he was a Bulgarian ex-communist and he knew all about capitalist bastards, ‘and tell Mr Magee you want redundancy pay and sick-leave pay. Tell him you want two thousand dollars.’

‘What’s redundancy pay?’ In Zamboanga she had never heard these esoteric terms.

‘It’s something capitalist bosses have to pay. Go now and tell him what you want or you will go to the Industrial Court.’

So Juanita Marcos came into the kitchen just as Corey Briskin came through from the living room. She saw him in his ski-mask and she opened her mouth to scream. He hit her with the first thing that came to hand, a copper-bottomed saucepan up-ended on the draining board. He was not to know, and she didn’t know, that she had an eggshell skull. She was dead before Corey and Phoenix, the latter with the bagged form of Errol Magee over his shoulder, had left the apartment.

2

Fifteen minutes after the Briskins had departed, a man arrived in the Magee apartment with intent to murder, not to kidnap. He came in through the same door as the one through which the Briskins had departed with their baggage. He saw the corpse of Juanita Marcos on the floor, knelt down and felt for a pulse. He remained kneeling on one knee for a long moment, then he shook his head and stood up. He knew who Juanita was, but from observation, not from meeting her. He was a professional killer and he had a professional contempt for collateral damage.

He went quickly through the rest of the apartment, pausing only to look at the messages on the eight computers and shake his head again, this time in amusement.

When he left he had been in the apartment only three minutes. He had touched nothing but the still pulse on Juanita Marcos’ throat.

Across the waters of Circular Quay he had been watched by a puzzled Darlene Briskin. She had been waiting for Errol Magee to come home and read the messages on the computers. Who was this stranger?

‘You are looking at where you live?’ The elderly man had appeared while she was concentrating, through the night-glasses, on the Magee apartment.

‘No, my mother does.’ She knew how to lie, she worked in a bank’s customer service: please hold, your custom is valued by us …

‘Very fortunate. I live in Essen, in Germany. Nothing to see. You are travelling alone?’

‘Just me and my boyfriend.’

‘Ach, a pity.’

Then her mobile rang. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and moved away along the deck. ‘Corey?’

Corey gave her the bad news.

3

Malone read the messages, all the same, on the computers in all the rooms. Then he went back into the living room where John Kagal and Paula Decker sat with Kylie Doolan. The Physical Evidence team were going about their affairs with their usual unhurried competence; Juanita Marcos was zipped up in a body bag, ready to be taken away. Murder, and the solving of it, is a business.

Malone sat down opposite Kylie Doolan. ‘You’re the girl mentioned in the messages? The one they want five million dollars for?’

‘Who else would it be?’

As if she wore the price tag round her neck. Kylie Doolan was a good-looking girl, an eyelash short of beautiful; it was her eyes, shrewd and grey, that distracted one from appreciating the rest of her finely chiselled face. She had thick blonde hair cut in a short page-boy style, a graceful figure and a voice cultivated a tone or two lower than its natural level. Malone found it difficult, even on short acquaintance, to like her.

‘Miss Doolan, I don’t mean to be rude – but why would you be worth five million dollars?’

‘Because I’m Errol’s girlfriend.’

He had known that; he had wanted to know what price she put on herself. ‘And where would Mr Magee be now?’

‘I have no idea –’

‘There’s a box with a half-eaten chicken-burger in the kitchen.’ Kagal was sitting on the long couch beside Miss Doolan. Handsome and well-dressed, as usual, he looked more like an adviser than an interrogator. Malone always found him invaluable when questioning women, especially young women. ‘Is that yours?’

‘I never eat junk food. That would be Errol’s. Or it might’ve been Juanita’s. Though I don’t know why she was here.’ She glanced towards the kitchen as the maid, in a body bag, was carried out towards the front door. ‘Are they going to take the – her – down in the front lifts?’

‘You’d prefer she was taken down in the service lift?’ said Malone.

For a moment she missed a step, without moving. ‘No. No, of course not. I was just thinking of the other tenants, the other owners –’

‘Should Juanita – that her name? – should she have been here this evening?’

Detective-Constable Paula Decker was from The Rocks station, the command that covered this downtown section of the city. The Rocks, short of staff, had called in Homicide and Malone, short of staff in his own section, had come down here with John Kagal, a junior sergeant. Tomorrow he would retire from the scene, go back to his office and leave the case to Kagal and another officer. And Paula Decker.

She was a tall girl: a high jumper, maybe, or a basketballer. She had pleasant eyes that, with her tallness, always seemed to be looking down. She had angular features that, had she been a man, would have made him handsome. She was dressed in a black trouser-suit and carried a handbag big enough to hold a year’s crime reports. She was efficient and, like John Kagal, ambitious.

‘Were you or Mr Magee expecting her?’

‘No. I gave her notice this morning and paid her off.’

‘You sacked her? She was unsatisfactory?’

‘She wasn’t exactly brilliant. She was lazy, but Errol trusted her and kept her on. No, I paid her off because we’re not renewing the lease. Yes?’ Kylie Doolan turned her head as Sam Penfold, leader of the PE team, appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Penfold ignored her. ‘Inspector, I see you out here?’

Malone followed him into the kitchen. ‘You come up with something?’

Sam Penfold had been coming up with something for twenty years and more. He was bony-faced with a hunter’s eyes; he hunted evidence as other men hunted game. ‘There are prints all around the place, but I’d say they’re the owner’s and his girlfriend’s. What’s she like?’

‘The original Ice Maiden.’

‘Never met her. We came up with this –’ He held up a pad. ‘It was in the sink, I thought it was a dish-rag. But smell it –’ Malone took a sniff, reared back. ‘Chloroform, right? It wasn’t used on the dead maid. So who was it used on?’

‘Mr Magee? What’s that they say about the plot?’

‘It thickens. I love it when that happens. It means PE guys like me don’t become redundant. Another thing – on a chair out in the entrance hall, there’s Magee’s blazer, like he’d thrown it there when he came in. And his trousers and shirt are on the floor beside the bed in the main bedroom. No shoes, though. Mr Magee has been home some time this evening.’

When Malone went back into the living room Paula Decker was saying, ‘Miss Doolan, there’s a Versace box on the bed in the main bedroom, tissue paper on the bed – where is what was in the box?’

She should be in PE, thought Malone.

‘I don’t know. It was a new dress and jacket, I brought it home this afternoon.’

‘How long have you known Mr Magee?’

‘I don’t know. A year, eighteen months.’

‘Miss Doolan, what do you do?’ asked Malone.

She gave him the full glare of the shrewd, challenging eyes. ‘I decorate.’

‘Decorate what?’

‘Errol’s life.’

Malone wasn’t sure if he was supposed to laugh. He looked at Paula Decker and Kagal; they both appeared to be smiling at his naivete. He looked back at the decorative Miss Doolan. ‘In what way?’

‘He shows me off.’

Malone pondered that one. She had a pre-loved look, like an expensive car. ‘So you’re more a decoration than a decorator?’

Her eyes scratched him. Then all of a sudden it seemed she decided to be patient with him, as if he were an Inuit from the remoter parts of Greenland. ‘No, I work at it. The social pages on Sunday –’

Then John Kagal came to his rescue. ‘Our boss isn’t into the social whirl. He’s still getting over the Bicentenary gig.’

Back in 1988: thank you, John. But he grinned benevolently.

Kagal took a pull on the rescue rope: ‘Inspector, there’s something I’d like to show you on the computers –’

Malone got up and followed him into the main bedroom. ‘Look, I’m not interested in some feather-brained social butterfly –’

‘She’s no feather-brain, Scobie. I’d say she’s as calculating as any girl I’ve ever come across.’

Malone said admiringly, ‘And that would be a pretty wide circle.’

‘Used to be,’ admitted Kagal, safe in his conceit. ‘Before I settled down with Kate.’

A relationship that had lasted longer than Malone had expected. Kagal had once confessed to Malone that he was double-gaited in his sexual preference, fluid as the gays called it, but he had been living with Kate Arletti, once one of Malone’s Homicide detectives and now with Fraud, for five years and it seemed to be a happy arrangement. Malone, up to his belly in middle age, had given up guessing about the young. Including his own three young.

Then Norma Nickles came into the bedroom: floating in, as Malone always thought of her. She had been a ballet dancer before she had become Sam Penfold’s most reliable assistant in Physical Evidence. She was blonde and attractive and looked feminine even in the police dark blue blouson and slacks.

‘How are you two making out with Miss Doolan?’

‘Have you spoken to her?’ asked Malone.

‘Only when I first came in. I told her we’d have to go through the entire apartment and she got a bit haughty about it.’

‘If your boyfriend was missing, you’ve found your maid dead in your kitchen, kidnap notes on your computers, how upset would you be?’

‘With the guy I just dumped, and no maid, not particularly upset. But I see your point. Our Kylie’s not going to need smelling salts.’

‘You come up with anything?’ said Kagal.

‘Nothing that’s going to help us much. But I could write you a character profile on Mr Magee and Miss Doolan. They’re the original designer junkies, I think. The closets are full of designer labels. Alex Perry dresses, Blahnik shoes, Gucci handbags –’

‘What about him?’

‘Versace, Armani –’

Malone, who wouldn’t have gone beyond K-Mart if allowed by his wife and daughters, who was a life member of Fletcher Jones and Gowings, thought labels, especially if worn on the outside, were like birdshit, something that should be scrubbed off.

‘Spare me the details. Where does the money come from?’ He looked around the apartment.

Kagal looked at him as if he had just arrived from the upper reaches of New Guinea. ‘Scobie, Magee is I-Saw. I-Saw, for Crissakes.’

‘Eyesore?’

Kagal spelled it out for him: I-S-A-W. Don’t you ever read the BizCom pages in the papers? They have all the cute names, they’re like twelve-year-old kids –’

‘I’m not interested in BizCom or Information Technology, whatever you want to call it. I’m still getting used to faxes instead of telegrams –’ He stopped at the look on Kagal’s and Norma Nickles’ faces. ‘Righto, I’m joking. But no, I don’t know who or what I-Saw is.’

Kagal didn’t quite take him by the hand; but almost: I-Saw was started by Magee three or four years ago. It’s a software programme for lawyers, worldwide. It’s supposed to be, or anyway claimed to be, streets ahead of anything else in that field. It made Magee a millionaire, a multi-millionaire, almost overnight. On paper, that is – which is where most of these smart guys were, to begin with. I-Saw has started to go wrong over the last two or three months. It’s got cases against it, geeks charging Magee pinched some of their programmes and adapted them –’

‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Norma, who had seen more larceny in ballet than any choreographer cared to admit.

Kagal looked at his boss. ‘Is that the sort of principles they teach in Physical Evidence?’

‘All the time,’ said Malone and gave Norma a smile to show he didn’t mean it. ‘Go on.’

‘I-Saw is on the point of going into receivership. I’d say that is one of the reasons Magee is giving up his lease on this –’ He nodded around them. ‘And why Miss Doolan sacked the maid this morning.’

Malone gave the matter some thought. ‘So Mr Magee could’ve done a bunk, put those kidnap notes on the computer as some sort of joke against our girlfriend?’

‘And killed the maid on the way out?’ asked Norma, still practical-minded. ‘Why?’

Malone knew it was a weak argument: ‘Maybe he had a barney with her and thumped her with the saucepan. Any prints on it?’

‘No. And I don’t buy that argument.’

I’m losing the reins here, thought Malone; and said, ‘Neither do I. You think of a better one?’

Said Kagal, also practical-minded: ‘Why would he be wearing gloves in his own apartment? I mean if he put the messages on the computers as some sort of dirty joke against his girlfriend? Or did he put on gloves to pick up the saucepan to scone the maid?’

Malone sighed. ‘You practical-minded buggers make me tired. Why don’t you have a little Celtic imagination?’

‘I once lived with an Irish ballet dancer.’ Norma shook her head at the horrible memory. ‘He’d get out of bed after sex to riverdance. All stiff arms and ratatatat with his feet.’

‘Riverdancing in bare feet?’ said Malone. ‘You’re kidding us. Righto, we put out an ASM on Magee, let The Rocks do it. We’ll see what comes after that.’

He went back into the living room as a woman came in the open front door and was halted by one of the uniformed men.

‘Yes?’ said Malone.

The woman looked around at all those who were staring at her. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Who are you?’ asked Malone.

‘Caroline Magee.’

‘A relative? His sister?’

‘No,’ said Caroline Magee. ‘His wife.’

There was a gurgling sound from Kylie Doolan, like the last of the bathwater going down the plughole.