The Easy Sin

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 Gunter 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 had 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.

‘Mr Todorov doesn’t think much of the New South Wales Police Service,’ said Kagal.

‘Or any police service,’ said Sheryl Dallen. I just wonder whose side he was on back in Bulgaria.’

Though not a lesbian or a man-hater, she always had reserved opinions about men. She was attractive without any distinguishing good looks, except that she always looked so healthy; she worked out three times a week at a gym and was on first-name terms with every muscle in her body. Just looking at her sometimes made Malone tired.

‘He doesn’t seem too upset by what happened to his girlfriend,’ said Kagal. ‘He’s already asking if he can claim worker’s compensation for her murder.’

Kagal always added distinction to the office. But his looks, his sartorial elegance compared to Malone and Clements, never hid the fact that, like Sheryl Dallen, he was a bloody good detective.

‘Keep an eye on him,’ said Malone. ‘Could he have had a hand in the kidnapping? Things went wrong when his girlfriend somehow got her skull bashed in?’

‘Maybe,’ said Sheryl, ‘but it’s a long shot. But we’ll put him on the list. Do we put surveillance on him?’

‘Let The Rocks do that.’ Never deprive another command of work. ‘Has the maid got any relatives?’

‘In the Philippines. We’re trying to get in touch with them.’

The paperwork of murder: ‘Try and unload that on The Rocks, too. In the meantime keep looking for Mr Magee. Though he’s ostensibly been kidnapped, he’s our Number One suspect for the moment. Unless you’ve got another candidate?’

They shook their heads, got up and left his office. He sat a while, trying to stir up energy and enthusiasm; suddenly he was in limbo. Was this what promotion did to you? He remembered that Greg Random, though a melancholy man at the best of times, had once told him that his devotion to police work had evaporated the day he had been promoted out of Homicide. Maybe there was a rung in the ladder of upward mobility (where had that phrase gone to?) where your foot found a natural resting place, where you really didn’t want to go any higher. But then (and he had seen it happen too often) there was the danger of growing fat and lazy on that rung.

He stirred himself, reached for his phone and called Detective-Constable Decker at The Rocks station. ‘Inspector Malone, Constable.’ He was always formal with officers from someone else’s command; he expected the same treatment for his own officers by other commanders. ‘What’s with Miss Doolan?’

I left her with her sister, sir, out at Minto. Macquarie Fields are keeping an eye on her, Minto is in their area. Any progress at your end, sir?’

‘No.’ Was she keeping score? Or was he becoming sensitive in his late middle age? I’m going out to see Miss Doolan now. I’ll keep you up to date.’

‘You want me to come with you, sir? I think I built up some rapport with her.’

He hesitated, then said, ‘No. I’ll be in touch, Constable.’

‘Yes, sir.’

It was always the same, the territorial imperative, the defence of one’s own turf. David Attenborough should bring the BBC Science Film Unit down here to study the wildlife in the NSW Police Service. Beginning with ageing bulls …

He had no sooner put down the phone than it rang: ‘Scobie? Sam Penfold. Norma has been back to the Magee apartment, something about the computers worried her.’ He paused: Physical Evidence were becoming actors.

‘Get on with it, Sam. Forget the dramatic pauses, I get enough of that on TV.’

One could almost imagine Penfold’s grin at the other end of the line. ‘Just effect, mate, that’s all. Norma looked again at the keys on the computers, all of ‘em. On all the keys the prints were the same – we surmise they were Magee’s own. Evidently no one but him used the computers. On the keys that tapped out the ransom note, on all the computers, there were no prints or they were smudged. As if he’d worn gloves. Did he have something wrong with his hands, dermatitis or something?’

‘I wouldn’t know, Sam. I’ll ask Miss Doolan. I should imagine it’s not easy to type with gloves.’

‘Unless they were thin gloves. Surgical gloves. Ask Miss Doolan if he ever wore those.’

‘Righto, Sam, thanks. You fellers take care of Norma. She’s useful.’

‘Some women are. Don’t quote me.’

Malone took Sheryl Dallen with him out to Minto. She drove and he sat beside her, his feet as usual buried in the floorboards. He was not a car man; he had never envied Inspector Morse his Jaguar or that American detective of long ago who rode around in a Rolls-Royce. All travellers have attitudes; in a car his was nervousness. Sheryl drove as he imagined she exercised, purposefully and keeping her pulse rate up; and his. They talked of everything but the case, as if to mention it would sully the shining day through which they drove. Summer was going out like a fading benediction.

It was a long drive, almost fifty kilometres, on roads clogged with traffic. Heavy vehicles bore down on them like ocean liners; speed-hogs, driving not their own but company cars, sidestepped in front of them without warning. Sheryl swore at them and Malone buried his feet deeper in the floorboards.

They passed a military camp, strangely deserted but for a squad of soldiers marching stiff-legged to nowhere, training for wars not yet declared. A tank rolled without warning out into the road before them, right in the path of an oncoming 10-ton freight truck. Malone sat up, waiting for the coming crash, but somehow the two leviathans managed to avoid each other.

‘Pity,’ said Sheryl and drove on.

Minto lies in what was once rolling farm and orchard country. It was first settled almost two hundred years ago and only in the last fifty years has it grown to being a populated suburb of the nearby small city of Campbelltown. Its name was another example of the crawling, sucking-up, brown-nosing, call it what you will, that distinguished the early colonists. In 1808 officers of the New South Wales Corps, rum-runners that the Mafia would have welcomed as Family, deposed Governor William Blight and assumed control of the colony themselves. Then they decided they had better curry some favour with someone in authority. They chose to nominate the Earl of Minto, the nearest high-ranking British official, as patron of the new settlement south of Sydney. That Minto was Viceroy of India, was 7500 miles from Sydney and hadn’t a clue what went on below the Equator, didn’t faze the crawlers. They knew an easy target when they heard of one; they were years ahead of the traps of mobile phones and e-mail and faxes. That a settlement of less than forty people was named, supposedly as an honour, after a man viceroy to 200 million was a joke that nobody spread.

The suburb lay on the slopes of gentle hills, a mix of would-be mansions on the heights, new villas, modest older and smaller houses and cramped terraces built by the State government and blind bureaucrats in the late 1970s. There was a shopping centre, with the new patrons, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King flying their pennants above it. There were several parks and playing fields and two schools that had large open playgrounds. It was better than Malone, trapped in the mindset of inner Sydney, had expected.

Malone had got the address from Detective Decker and Sheryl found it as if she came to Minto every day of the week.

There were half a dozen cars parked in the street, only one of them occupied. Malone got out and walked down to the grey, unmarked Holden. The young plainclothes officer got out when Malone introduced himself.

‘Detective-Constable Paul Fernandez, sir. We’re doing two hours on, four hours off, just one man at a time. Are you expecting anyone to try and snatch Miss Doolan?’

‘We don’t know. You know what happened?’

‘We got it through on the computer.’ He was tall and heavily built and at ease. And bored: ‘There’s not much market for kidnappings around here, sir.’

Malone grinned, though he was not amused. But you didn’t throw your weight around with the men from another’s command. He knew how boring a watch could be. ‘Have you spoken to Miss Doolan?’

‘No, sir. Our patrol commander had a word with her, he said she didn’t seem particularly put out. I mean about the kidnapping.’

‘That’s Miss Doolan.’

Sheryl waited for him outside the gate of Number 41. It was a weatherboard house that had a settled look, as if it had stood on the small lot for years; but its paint was not peeling and the small garden and lawn were well kept. There were cheap security grilles on the windows and a security door guarding the front door. On its grille was a metal sign, Welcome, like a dry joke.

The door was opened by a larger, older, faded version of Kylie Doolan. I’m Monica, Kylie’s sister. You more coppers?’

Malone introduced himself and Sheryl. ‘May we come in?’

‘You better, otherwise we’re gunna have a crowd at our front gate. They’re already complaining about your mate over there in his car.’ She led the way into a living room that opened off the front door. ‘But I suppose you’re used to that? Complaints?’

‘Occasionally.’ Malone hadn’t come here to wage war.

The living room was small, crowded with a lounge suite, coffee table, sideboard and a large TV set in one corner. The sideboard was decked with silver-framed photographs, like a rosary of memories; Kylie was there, younger, fresher, chubbier. Hans Heysen and Elioth Gruner prints hung on the walls; someone liked the Australian bush as it had once been. The whole house, Malone guessed, would have fitted three times into the apartment at Circular Quay.

‘Kylie’s in the shower,’ said Monica and waved at the two suitcases by the front door. ‘She’s going back to the flat, where her and What’shisname –’

‘Errol Magee,’ said Sheryl, and Malone wondered just how much interest Monica, out here in the backblocks, had taken of Kylie in the high life.

‘Yeah. Siddown. You like some coffee? It’ll only be instant –’

Malone declined the offer. ‘We’re here to talk to Kylie. How’s she been?’

‘Itchy. It’s a bit crowded here, we only got two bedrooms. There’s me and my husband and our two girls, they’re teenagers. Wanna be like their aunty,’ she said and grinned, but there was no humour in her. ‘Ah, here she is.’

Kylie Doolan stood in the doorway, wrapped in a thick terry-towelling gown, barefooted and frowning. ‘What are you doing here?’

Malone ignored that, nodded at the suitcases. ‘You’re going back to the apartment?’

‘Yeah. It’s too crowded here.’

‘Thanks,’ said Monica, drily. ‘Any port in a storm, so long’s it’s not too small.’

‘Well, it is. I’m not ungrateful –’

‘Put a lid on it, Kylie. You thought you’d got outa here, outa Minto, for good. But they hadda bring you back here to be safe –’

Malone and Sheryl sat silent. Listeners learn more than talkers.

Monica turned to them: ‘She always wanted to get away from here, from the time she was in high school. Now she’s got my girls talking like her –’

‘Don’t blame me, they’ve got minds of their own. You’d of got outa here if it hadn’t been for Clarrie –’ Her voice had slipped, she sounded exactly like her sister.

‘Clarrie,’ Monica told the two detectives, ‘he’s my husband. She never liked him –’

‘That’s not true – he was just – just –’ She flapped a hand.

‘Yeah, he was just. He never had any ambition, he never looked beyond the end of the street. But he was – he is solid. He’s a pastrycook,’ she was talking to Malone and Sheryl again, ‘he works in a baker’s shop in Campbelltown. He’s good and solid and he loves me and the girls –’ Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and started to weep.

‘Oh shit!’ said Kylie and dropped to her knees and put her arms round her sister. ‘I’m sorry, sis. Really.’

The room seemed to get smaller; Malone felt cramped, hedged in. He was no stranger to the intrusion into another family, but the awkwardness never left him. He waited a while, glanced at Sheryl, who had turned her head and was looking out the window. Then he said, ‘Get dressed, Kylie. We’ll take you back to town.’

She hesitated, then she pressed her sister’s shoulders, stood up and went out of the room without looking at Malone and Sheryl.

Sheryl said, ‘Monica, did she ever talk to you about Mr Magee?’

Monica dried her eyes on her sleeve, sniffed and, after fumbling, found a tissue in the pocket of her apron. ‘Not much.’

‘She say anything about him being kidnapped instead of her?’

‘She laughed. We both did. But it’s not something to laugh about, is it? The maid dead, and that. God knows what’s happened to him. You find out anything yet?’

‘We’re working on it,’ said Malone; you never admit ignorance to the voters. ‘She ever talk to you about how much he was worth? And now it’s all gone?’

Monica raised her eyebrows. She would have been good-looking once, Malone thought, but the years had bruised her. He wondered how tough life had been for her and Clarrie and the girls. Wondered, too, how much she had envied Kylie.

‘It’s all gone? He’s broke? I read about him once or twice, he wasn’t in the papers much, but I’d see his name and because of Kylie … He was worth millions!’

‘All on paper,’ said Sheryl.

Monica laughed, with seemingly genuine humour, no bitterness at all. ‘Wait till I tell Clarrie. He’ll bake a cake –’ She laughed again; she was good-looking for a moment. ‘He won’t be nasty, he’s not like that, but he’ll enjoy it. He’s not worth much, but it’s not paper, he brings it home every week –’ She shook her head, then said, ‘What’s gunna happen to Kylie?’

‘I don’t know.’ Crime victims had to be dropped out of one’s knowing. It wasn’t lack of compassion. It was a question of self-survival.

‘I don’t mean in the future, I mean right now.’ She was shrewder than he had thought. ‘Will she be in –’ She hesitated, as if afraid of the word: ‘- in danger? I’d hate to think I’d let her go back to that –’

‘We’ll take care of her, there’ll be surveillance on her. Eventually –’ He shrugged. ‘Is she strong?’

Too strong. She’s always known what she wanted.’

‘What was that?’ said Sheryl.

‘Money, the good life, all that sorta stuff. That’s the way it is these days, isn’t it?’ She said it without rancour, resigned to a tide she couldn’t stop. ‘I see it in my own girls and their friends –’

Malone changed the subject: ‘Where are your parents?’

‘Dead, both of them. Ten years ago, when Kylie was seventeen. Dad went first, a stroke – he was a battler, always in debt, it just got him down in the end. Mum went two months after, like she’d been waiting for him to go and didn’t want to stay on. Both of ‘em not fifty. They were like Clarrie and me. Kylie never understood that, you know what I mean?’

‘Yes,’ said Malone. ‘But you’ve got your girls.’

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But for how long?’

Then Kylie came back. Malone, who wouldn’t have known a Donna Karan from a K-Mart, recognized that she would always dress for the occasion: any occasion. Her dress was discreet, but it made the other two women look as if they had just shopped at St Vincent de Paul. In Monica’s case, he felt, the contrast was cruel.

But it seemed that the cruelty was unintentional. Kylie kissed her sister with real affection. ‘Say goodbye to Clarrie and the girls for me. I’ll call you.’

‘Look after yourself,’ said Monica.

‘Sure,’ said Kylie and one knew that she would. Always.

Sheryl picked up the suitcases and Kylie looked at Malone. ‘Is that how it is in the police force? The women carry the bags?’

‘Only Detective Dallen. It’s part of her weights programme.’

He grinned at Sheryl and went ahead of her and Kylie down the garden path. Behind him he heard Kylie say, ‘How can you stand him?’

He was out of earshot before Sheryl replied. He went across to Detective-Constable Fernandez, who got out of his car as he approached. There’ll be no need for further surveillance. I’ll call your commander and put it on the computer. We’re taking Miss Doolan back to town.’

Fernandez looked past him. ‘She doesn’t look too upset, sir.’

‘Like I told you, that’s Miss Doolan.’

Fernandez nodded. They’ll always be a mystery to me, women.’

‘Never try to solve them, Paul. You might be disappointed.’

He went along to his own car. Sheryl had put the suitcases in the boot and she and Kylie stood waiting for him.

‘Kylie, did Errol ever wear gloves?’

‘You mean in winter, against the cold?’

‘No, medical gloves, surgical ones. Did he have a hand condition, dermatitis, something like that?’