The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ what way?’ asked Kagal.

      ‘I’m a computer software specialist. I taught Errol all he knows.’ She was sitting on an upright chair, her knees together, her hands holding her handbag on her lap. Yet there was no prim stiffness to her, she looked totally relaxed.

      ‘You knew he was in trouble?’ said Kagal.

      There was a slight hesitation. ‘Yes.’

      Kagal looked at Kylie Doolan. ‘You knew, too?’

      She had her hesitation. ‘Ye-es.’

      ‘Well, you have that in common.’ Paula Decker had been silent up till now. She sounded as if she was unimpressed by both women. ‘And Errol, too, of course.’

      Caroline Magee looked at her. ‘My interest in my husband is purely business. Or was.’

      Kylie snorted, but Mrs Magee just ignored her.

      Malone said, ‘Where are you staying? Or were you planning to stay here?’

      ‘No, she is not staying here!’ Kylie had sat up as if she had been bitten by a spider or something else less welcome than Mrs Magee. ‘No, no!’

      ‘Of course not.’ Caroline Magee’s smile could have sliced rock. ‘I’m at the Ritz-Carlton, just up the road. Errol booked me in there,’ she added. ‘He wanted me close by.’

      Malone could taste the sweet-and-sour. ‘Detective Kagal will escort you back there. You can tell Mrs Magee how much Sydney has changed in the time she’s been away, John.’

      ‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ said Kagal, who was the only one to have caught Malone’s wink.

      Caroline Magee stood up. ‘You truly don’t know where Errol is?’

      ‘No, we don’t know,’ said Malone. ‘I’m hoping he may call you at the Ritz-Carlton. You’ll let us know, of course.’

      ‘Of course.’ She had an elegance to her that Kylie Doolan, no matter how many designer labels she wore, would never have. She had come a long, long way from Coonabarabran. ‘Am I going to be under police surveillance?’

      Malone wondered what she knew about police surveillance. ‘Not unless you ask for it.’

      ‘No, thank you.’ She gave Kylie Doolan another false smile. ‘Nice meeting you, Miss Doolan. Pity it’s all over.’

      She left with John Kagal. The PE team had moved out, the Crime Scene tapes were up, there were only two uniformed officers, Paula Decker and Malone left. And Kylie Doolan.

      ‘What a bitch!’ said Kylie.

      ‘Errol really never mentioned her?’ said Paula Decker.

      ‘Never!’ Kylie looked as if she was about to shiver apart with anger. ‘How could he be so – so –’

      ‘I think you’d better move out of here,’ said Malone. ‘For a night or two, anyway. Have you got someone you can stay with?’

      Kylie looked around the room, then back at Malone. ‘Yes, my sister. She lives out at Minto.’

      Ultima Thule of the suburbs: about as far from these Circular Quay apartments as one could get. ‘We’ll get a police car to take you out there. We’ll keep in touch. And if Errol gets in touch –’

      ‘Out at Minto?’ She pushed the suburb off the edge of the world. Malone wondered if Errol Magee knew as little about Kylie as she had known about him. ‘He’ll call here if he’s going to get in touch with me.’ She waved an angry hand, as if she suddenly hated (or was afraid of) the big apartment. ‘There’s a phone in every room with an answering machine – you noticed? Bloody computers with e-mail and faxes … The bastard!’

      ‘Take care, Kylie.’

      Malone nodded for Paula Decker to follow him to the front door. ‘Get on to your boss, ask him to set up a watch on the switchboard at the Ritz-Carlton, in case Errol calls. They’ll probably nominate a strike force, your command will be running it.’

      ‘Are you staying on the case?’

      He grinned wryly. ‘We’ll see. I think there are too many complications in this one for a simple-minded Homicide man.’

      ‘I’d like to transfer to Homicide.’

      He didn’t ask why; he suddenly felt old and tired. ‘Good luck.’

      He left her and went home to Randwick, where there was no computer, no e-mail, no fax, only Lisa. Oh yes, there was Tom, his son, and he had a computer in his room; but Malone never looked at it, avoided it as if any virus it contained was the Ebola strain. There were the two mobile phones, without which no home today was completely furnished, but he looked on them as infectious. He consoled himself with the thought that he belonged to the last century, the further back in it the better. He wallowed in technology atavism.

      He wondered if Errol Magee, linked to his world with every conceivable communication, would be heard from again.

Chapter Two

      1

      Shirlee Briskin was neat: everyone said so. Her blonde hair, her features, her dress: a neat package, said her doctor, a lecher, and her chiropodist, a lesbian lecher, swooned over her neat feet. In her house there was a place for everything and everything was in its place, or you’d better look out. In other people’s houses she straightened the pictures on their walls. Her daughter Darlene, a cynic, told her she should have gone into government: she’d have had the country shipshape in no time.

      Shirlee was also utterly amoral, though neat about it. She had not been innocent from the day she had first walked; she had gone from bad seed to full bloom in one step. She had learned the Seven Deadly Sins at convent school and thought them an ideal design for living. Her entire lack of morals and scruples was, in its own way, a sort of innocence. Or so she liked to think, when she thought of morals and scruples at all.

      ‘What the devil got into you?’ Her vocabulary, too, was neat; she never used four-letter words. ‘How could you mistake a man for a girl?’

      ‘Mum, it was fucking dark in the room –’

      ‘Wash your mouth out.’

      Corey Briskin sighed. He loved his mother in an off-hand sort of way, but you always had to be careful of the landmines of her temper. She, with some help, had planned the kidnapping of Errol Magee’s girlfriend, but, like a good general, she had not come to the scene of the action.

      ‘And that girl,’ said Shirlee. ‘Their maid, she’s dead.’

      ‘You were the one’s been watching everything. You said she only came in during the day.’

      ‘It was an accident, Mum.’ Phoenix Briskin, without his ski-mask, wouldn’t have attracted attention. СКАЧАТЬ