The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary
to early settlers; modern-day developers wince at the luck of James Milson. He was a farmer from Lincolnshire, who, to his credit, couldn’t believe his own luck. Today the Point and its neighbour, Kirribilli, are the most densely settled area north of the harbour. The ghost of James Milson occasionally stands on the Point, beneath the grey rainbow of the bridge, and looks across at the city skyline. Standing behind him, more solidly fleshed, are developers and estate agents wondering how much higher they can push property prices.
Errol Magee had had the sense not to call his building I-Saw House. It had a number, was twelve storeys high and stood between two high-rise blocks of units – excuse me, apartments. Other high-rise buildings ran down to the water’s edge, a wall of cliff. Gulls cruised the upper storeys as if looking for ledges on which to nest.
Sheryl, true to her training, parked in a No Standing zone. The three of them got out of the car and went into the building and up to the executive floor. There was no one in the lobby and no one in the lifts. Malone had the abrupt feeling that he was entering a shell.
The executive floor was like none that Malone had ever been on. A receptionist lolled in a chair behind a desk on which were two computers. Behind her were empty work-stations, yards from which the horses had bolted. In the far distance two men sat behind a long table.
‘Can I help you?’ She was in her early twenties, jeans and a plaid shirt open almost to her belt. She was pretty but appeared to have done everything she could to avoid the label. ‘Oh, it’s you, Kylie! Hi.’
‘These are the police, Louise. Who’s in today?’
The girl looked over her shoulder towards the far distance, then turned back. She hadn’t risen. ‘Just Jared. You want to see him?’
‘No,’ said Malone, ‘she doesn’t want to see him. I do, Inspector Malone. Now do you think you could stir yourself and tell Jared we’re here and that I’m not a patient man? Right, Detective Dallen?’
‘Oh, boss,’ said Sheryl, ‘you have a terrible temper. Better do what he says, love.’
The girl looked at Kylie as if to say, Where ‘d you dig up these two? Then she got up and sauntered down towards the end of the room.
Malone looked at Kylie. ‘Are they all like that who work in IT? Rude and laid back?’
For the first time since leaving Minto she smiled. ‘No. But she’s a mathematical whiz, she’s not really the receptionist. The girl they had had manners.’
‘Where’s she now?’ Malone looked around. ‘Where’s everybody?’
Kylie shrugged, the smile suddenly gone. She’s more worried than she’s letting on, thought Malone.
Then Louise, the mathematical whiz, came back. ‘He’ll see you.’
Malone, Sheryl and Kylie travelled the huge floor, walking between the work-stations that, empty, looked like stylized roofless caves. As they came to the end of the room the two men at the long table stood up.
The taller of the two men came round the table and put out his hand. ‘I’m Jared Cragg.’ It sounded more like a rock-heap than a name, but Malone, who remembered the good old days of Clarrie and Joe and Smithy, kept his face expressionless. He couldn’t imagine this soft-faced, slimly built man being called Craggy. But the soft paw was much firmer in its grip than he had expected. ‘It’s about Errol? Oh, this is Joe Smith.’
Malone couldn’t believe his luck; he shook hands warmly with Smithy. ‘Yes, it’s about Mr Magee.’
‘Well, basically, he’s a bastard.’ Cragg couldn’t have been more than thirty, but he looked as if his last ten years had been flattened and stretched like strudel dough. His eyes were tired and disillusioned, they had none of the spark of the New Economy. ‘Have you caught him yet?’
‘Caught him?’
‘Well, he’s basically done a bunk, hasn’t he? He knew who was coming in today. Mr Smith is from Ballantine, Ballantine and Kowinsky. The receivers.’
Smith was middle-aged in every way: dress, looks, demeanour. He made Cragg in his dark blue shirt with button-down collar and no tie, his off-white cargo pants and his trainers look like an over-the-hill teenager. But he was good-humoured, as if he had decided that was the only way to combat the depression of throwing businesses out on the street.
‘My men are down in the finance department,’ he said. ‘When we came in this morning all Mr Cragg’s staff just up and left, as if we’d come to fumigate the place. No offence, Mr Cragg. It’s the way we’re always greeted.’ He smiled as if to show it was water off a platypus’ back. ‘One gets used to it.’
‘It’s a regular business, receivership?’ said Malone.
‘Like cremation,’ said Smith and smiled again.
‘Who ordered the cremation?’
Smith hesitated, but Malone’s look told him: don’t hedge, mate. ‘The Kunishima Bank. They’re Japanese, from Osaka.’
‘And what have you found?’
‘It’s too early to say,’ said Smith, hedging. ‘But the losses are considerable, otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’
Malone looked back at Cragg. ‘What do you think happened to Magee?’
Cragg ran a pondering hand over his head. His hair was cut to such a short stubble that it looked like dust; Malone waited for him to look at his hand to see if any had come off. He, too, was hedging. ‘Well, basically, from what I read in the papers, the joke on the computers about a ransom for Kylie –’ He nodded at her as if she were no more than a prize doll on a sideshow stall.
Malone wondered who had told the media about the messages on the computers. ‘You don’t want to believe everything you read in the newspapers. So you think he killed the maid on his way out, just as an afterthought?’
‘No!’ Kylie up till now had remained silent in the background. ‘Errol wouldn’t hurt a fly –’
‘He’s hurt three hundred workers,’ said Cragg. ‘All of them downsized without, basically, any redundancy pay. He’s a bastard,’ he repeated.
‘You haven’t answered my question,’ said Malone. ‘You think he killed the maid?’
‘Well, no-o …’ Cragg all at once looked lost: not just for words, but as if the scene he looked out on, the rows of work-stations, had abruptly turned into a landscape he didn’t recognize. ‘No, I know it doesn’t sound like him – basically –’
‘Of course it doesn’t!’
Malone motioned for Kylie to keep quiet. ‘Could he have been kidnapped?’
‘Why? Why would anyone want to kidnap him and ask for a ransom?’ Cragg frowned. ‘Jesus, everyone’s known for the past week we’re broke –’
‘Maybe one of your staff, or several of them, thought there was some money hidden that would pay for him?’ Sheryl had picked up a nod from Malone. Two interrogators were always better than one. It was Malone’s old cricket strategy, different-type bowlers from opposite ends. ‘Is there any money missing?’
The last question was directed at Smith; he shook his head. ‘Too early to tell.’ Then he added undiplomatically, ‘There often is.’
‘Where would it be?’ Kylie had lapsed back into sullen silence, but now her nose pointed to the scent of money.
Smith shrugged. ‘Anywhere in the world. I’m not saying there is any, but if there is our clients have first call on it. They are the major debtors.’
Malone gave Cragg a hard stare, taking over the bowling again. ‘Did you know the state of affairs?’
Cragg spread his hands, like