The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary
o’clock. They want more time, I’ll say till five p.m. tomorrow. That’ll be the absolute deadline.’
‘And they don’t come through?’ said Corey. ‘What do we do then?’
‘We do him,’ said Phoenix and nodded towards the front of the house.
His brother and sister looked at him and his mother paused at the kitchen sink, a wet plate in her hand. I think we’ll have to talk to Chantelle.’
Chantelle was their contact, the one who had told them where the money was. Or where they had thought it was.
Now Darlene paused under the shop awning and wondered if she should go on into the city. She had phoned in first thing this morning to the bank and told her boss she was not well, but would be in at work tomorrow. Bloody women, had been his only comment and he had hung up in her ear.
She was worried that the police were already on the case; but that was because of the stupid bungle, the killing of the maid. Sometimes she wondered at the intelligence of her brothers. Corey had all his marbles, but at times he could be as coldblooded as their mother. Pheeny was two or three marbles short and she wondered how he would keep his mouth shut after they had collected the ransom money and let Errol Magee go. But that was in the future, down the track, as Pheeny, who never thought beyond tomorrow, would say.
She and her brothers had been petty crims ever since their early teens. They had never been encouraged to take up thieving; but neither had they been discouraged. Their mother, and their father when he wasn’t doing time, had looked upon it as part of growing up, like acne, or in her own case, period pains. Darlene herself had never felt any conscience; if money or clothes or make-up was there to be taken, it was taken. She had never stolen from workmates, but that had been only because it was stupid. Her mother, in the only piece of advice she had given on how to get ahead in the world, had told her that.
She had never gone in for breaking and entering, as Corey and Pheeny had, but that had been more laziness than conscience. Their father had used guns in his hold-ups, but Darlene had never thought much of him anyway, let alone loved him. When her mother had told her, almost off-handedly, that she was getting rid of their father, she hadn’t enquired how or why. He would not be missed, she had told herself, and that had been true.
Shirlee had supplemented the family budget with stolen credit cards, ATM cards and shoplifting. None of them had ever been caught, not even dumb Pheeny. Of course, Clyde had been caught and jailed half a dozen times, but that was to be expected; he had been a loudmouth and thought he had flair. Flair and the loud mouth had landed him in jail and, finally, in a grave.
Shirlee had been firm about one thing: no drugs. She knew the money that was in drugs, but that had been her one moral principle: no drug dealing. And Darlene had always admired her mum for it, as if she were a volunteer aid worker. The family had gone on, making adequate but constant money to supplement what Darlene and Corey earned by working, and then had come this big opportunity.
Now she walked back to the railway station. She passed a newsagent’s and saw the billboard: E-Tycoon On Run. She smiled and a young man, passing her, paused and smiled back. She looked at him, puzzled, then gave him a glare that sent him on his way. She had had half a dozen boyfriends, but they had been only passing fancies, one or two good in bed but none of them a long-term prospect. She would wait and see what she could attract with a million dollars.
In the meantime Chantelle needed to be consulted. She bought a ticket, went out on to the platform and waited for a train. A few minutes and then a loudspeaker announced: The 10.48 for Central is running fourteen minutes late. Good luck.’
She had enough sense of humour to smile at the thought of taking a train, no matter how late, to discuss a ransom of five million dollars.
5
‘What did you do?’ asked Lisa.
‘I should have done a lobotomy on him,’ said Romy. ‘When he told me –’ Her voice trailed off.
The two women were having lunch in the pavilion restaurant in Centennial Park. They were surrounded by other diners: women, children, a few older men who looked like retirees: it was not a restaurant that catered for serious dining or serious deals. But both Lisa and Romy Clements looked serious.
Romy picked at her crab salad. She was a good-looking woman edging towards that mark where her age and her measurements might complement each other. She had an air of quiet confidence and competence to her that made her a success in her job; but today she was a wife and it was a long time since Lisa had seen her so – not unconfident, but unsure.
‘Why are men so desperate for money?’
‘Come on, Romy. Not just men. Women, too. I don’t think we were – not my generation.’
‘Nor mine.’
They sat a moment in satisfied contemplation of their generation’s lack of greed. Out beyond the windows of the restaurant the huge park, a green oasis, was restless with horse riders, cyclists, joggers and a swarm of small children shredding the air with hysterical laughter. At a nearby table a young mother was telling a three-year-old boy not to stuff his mouth so full. The boy looked at her uncomprehendingly, as if to tell her that was what mouths were for.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do?’ Romy chewed on a piece of crab. ‘The money’s gone. It won’t bankrupt us – but I felt like bankrupting him. Cutting his balls off with a scalpel.’
Lisa smiled. ‘That would have –’
I know.’ Romy, too, smiled; but wryly. ‘Cutting off my nose to spite my face … The irony is, this morning they brought in the girl from the Magee apartment, the one he killed. I did the prelim autopsy on her. That was just before Russ came out to the morgue and told me what he’d done. Then I called you. I hope you didn’t mind?’
Lisa reached across and pressed her friend’s hand. The Dutchwoman and the German had bonded almost from the moment they had met, civilized Europeans amongst the Austra-loids. Both of them were better educated than their husbands, had more sophisticated tastes; yet both were happily married and each knew she had made the right choice. If either of them were nostalgic for their heritage, they never told anyone, not even each other.
‘I didn’t say anything to Russ,’ said Romy, ‘but my father was greedy.’
Her father had died six months ago in jail, where he was serving a life sentence for murder. She rarely mentioned him, ashamed of him and his deed but bound to him by childhood love when he had been a doting father. She had gone four or five times a year to visit him in jail, coming back home and saying nothing to her husband. And Clements had never questioned her about the visits. It had been he and Malone who had arrested her father.
‘Russ isn’t greedy,’ said Lisa. ‘Not really.’
‘Yes, he is. Or was. He told me he wanted to make the money to set up a trust fund for Amanda, but I didn’t believe him. And he knew I didn’t.’ She pushed her plate away from her. ‘Why am I eating? I can’t taste anything.’
‘Sixty thousand dollars?’ said Lisa. ‘Are you tasting the money?’
Romy frowned at her. ‘What sort of question is that?’
‘I’m Dutch, darling – we’re supposed to be careful with money. Not as careful as Scobie – but who is? If he lost sixty thousand dollars, you’d be doing a post-mortem on him at the morgue.’
She looked out the big glass walls again. These 500 acres, ‘a countryside in the midst of a city,’ as the originator of the park called it, were only five minutes walk from her house and she came here often on her own. She found isolation here, even amongst the riders, the joggers, the cyclists and the picnickers; her own space, as her daughters would have called it. She would sit beside one of the small lakes and watch the ducks bobbing their heads and