The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary
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?’
‘God, no, nothing like that. He had beautiful hands, too good for a man, almost like a woman’s. Why?’
‘Oh, something’s come up. Righto, Sheryl, can you find your way back to town?’
‘We just head north, sir. We’ll hit either Sydney or Brisbane.’
Serves me right for being a smartarse with a junior rank.
They drove Kylie Doolan back to Sydney. She sat in the back of the car looking out at the passing scene with eyes blank of recognition or nostalgia. She had drained Minto out of her blood.
3
‘Before we take you back to your unit –’
‘Apartment. Not unit.’
‘Apartment, unit, flat,’ said Malone. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘Size. Location,’ said Kylie. She could sell real estate, he thought. She could sell anything, including herself. ‘If I’d stayed in Minto, I’d be living in a flat. Or a unit.’
‘Righto. Before we take you back to your apartment, I think we might drop in at I-Saw’s offices. Where are they?’
‘In Milson’s Point,’ said Sheryl, chopping off a road-rager trying to cut in on her. ‘They have a whole building there.’
He might have guessed it; Sheryl always did her homework. ‘Milson’s Point? When my wife and I were first married we lived in Kirribilli, the other side of the Bridge. In a unit.’
‘He’s a real card, isn’t he?’ Kylie said to Sheryl. ‘Okay, let’s go to I-Saw.’
‘Who dreamed up that awful bloody name?’ asked Malone.
‘Is it any worse than Yahoo, Sausage, names like that?’ She was defensive of I-Saw; after all it had kept her in luxury. ‘It was a game in the early days, dreaming up smartarse names. There were four-letter ones that almost got on to the companies’ register.’