The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary
at the time. Every computer had the same bad news of the day, like silent echoes of each other.
The apartment was on an upper floor in the block that was part of the man-made cliff that was East Circular Quay. Down on the harbour the ferries came and went at the wharves without fuss, like wooden governesses. Lights swirled on the dark waters, ghostly fish, and a lone night-bird went like a dark tic across the brilliance of the tall office blocks fronting the Quay. Two hundred yards across the water from Magee’s apartment was a cruise ship. On an upper deck, night-glasses to her eyes, was Darlene Briskin. She was not a passenger, not at $160,000 the round trip; she had bluffed her way on board through the delivery hold as a casual waitress for tonight’s big reception. Darlene was a planner, like her mother, and had checked on this evening’s programme aboard the SS Caribbean. She had also helped her mother to plan what was about to happen across the water.
She lowered the glasses, punched numbers on her mobile. Then: ‘Go! She’s alone!’
Errol Magee, in the apartment, did not hear Corey and Phoenix Briskin come in through the back door of the kitchen. Corey had been picking locks since he was twelve years old; the kitchen door was no problem. He and his brother wore ski-masks and surgical gloves; the ski-masks were battle-worn, but the gloves were new equipment. They went through into the living room and Errol Magee, as fey for the moment as Loretta Young in nostalgia, did not hear them as they crossed the thick white carpet. Phoenix came up behind him, wrapped the chloroform pad over his face and after a moment’s struggle Errol was a dead weight. Phoenix grabbed him under the arms as he sagged.
‘She’s got no tits –’
‘She’s an ex-model,’ said Corey. ‘They don’t have tits.’
‘Not even when they’re retired?’
‘Pheeny, for Crissakes, shut up and bag her!’
While Phoenix pulled the big black garbage bag over the victim’s head, Corey went round the apartment to the eight computers, including the ones in the bathrooms and the kitchen. On each he deleted everything he saw, then he typed an identical message on each screen. The surgical gloves left no prints on the keys. Their mother had planned that.
He went back into the living room where Errol Magee was now almost totally enveloped in the garbage bag. Phoenix, about to hoist the body over his shoulder, said, ‘What’s she wearing fucking Reeboks for? A model?’
‘For Crissake, shut up – What’s that?’
Juanita Marcos had just come in through the kitchen’s back door. She was a Filipina with a flat pretty face and a history of choosing the wrong men. She had come in three times a week to clean the Magee apartment, re-locating the dust and managing not to flood the shower-stalls and the baths. She was paid twenty dollars an hour and didn’t think she was overpaid, because this was the only job she had had since arriving from Zamboanga a year ago. And anyway Mr Magee was loaded; her live-in boyfriend, Vassily Todorov, had told her that and he knew everything about who had the money. Then this morning Miss Doolan, Mr Magee’s girlfriend, the bitch, had given her notice.
‘Go back,’ Vassily had told her; he was a Bulgarian ex-communist and he knew all about capitalist bastards, ‘and tell Mr Magee you want redundancy pay and sick-leave pay. Tell him you want two thousand dollars.’
‘What’s redundancy pay?’ In Zamboanga she had never heard these esoteric terms.
‘It’s something capitalist bosses have to pay. Go now and tell him what you want or you will go to the Industrial Court.’
So Juanita Marcos came into the kitchen just as Corey Briskin came through from the living room. She saw him in his ski-mask and she opened her mouth to scream. He hit her with the first thing that came to hand, a copper-bottomed saucepan up-ended on the draining board. He was not to know, and she didn’t know, that she had an eggshell skull. She was dead before Corey and Phoenix, the latter with the bagged form of Errol Magee over his shoulder, had left the apartment.
2
Fifteen minutes after the Briskins had departed, a man arrived in the Magee apartment with intent to murder, not to kidnap. He came in through the same door as the one through which the Briskins had departed with their baggage. He saw the corpse of Juanita Marcos on the floor, knelt down and felt for a pulse. He remained kneeling on one knee for a long moment, then he shook his head and stood up. He knew who Juanita was, but from observation, not from meeting her. He was a professional killer and he had a professional contempt for collateral damage.
He went quickly through the rest of the apartment, pausing only to look at the messages on the eight computers and shake his head again, this time in amusement.
When he left he had been in the apartment only three minutes. He had touched nothing but the still pulse on Juanita Marcos’ throat.
Across the waters of Circular Quay he had been watched by a puzzled Darlene Briskin. She had been waiting for Errol Magee to come home and read the messages on the computers. Who was this stranger?
‘You are looking at where you live?’ The elderly man had appeared while she was concentrating, through the night-glasses, on the Magee apartment.
‘No, my mother does.’ She knew how to lie, she worked in a bank’s customer service: please hold, your custom is valued by us …
‘Very fortunate. I live in Essen, in Germany. Nothing to see. You are travelling alone?’
‘Just me and my boyfriend.’
‘Ach, a pity.’
Then her mobile rang. ‘Excuse me,’ she said and moved away along the deck. ‘Corey?’
Corey gave her the bad news.
3
Malone read the messages, all the same, on the computers in all the rooms. Then he went back into the living room where John Kagal and Paula Decker sat with Kylie Doolan. The Physical Evidence team were going about their affairs with their usual unhurried competence; Juanita Marcos was zipped up in a body bag, ready to be taken away. Murder, and the solving of it, is a business.
Malone sat down opposite Kylie Doolan. ‘You’re the girl mentioned in the messages? The one they want five million dollars for?’
‘Who else would it be?’
As if she wore the price tag round her neck. Kylie Doolan was a good-looking girl, an eyelash short of beautiful; it was her eyes, shrewd and grey, that distracted one from appreciating the rest of her finely chiselled face. She had thick blonde hair cut in a short page-boy style, a graceful figure and a voice cultivated a tone or two lower than its natural level. Malone found it difficult, even on short acquaintance, to like her.
‘Miss Doolan, I don’t mean to be rude – but why would you be worth five million dollars?’
‘Because I’m Errol’s girlfriend.’
He had known that; he had wanted to know what price she put on herself. ‘And where would Mr Magee be now?’
‘I have no idea –’
‘There’s a box with a half-eaten chicken-burger in the kitchen.’ Kagal was sitting on the long couch beside Miss Doolan. Handsome and well-dressed, as usual, he looked more like an adviser than an interrogator. Malone always found him invaluable when questioning women, especially young women. ‘Is that yours?’
‘I never eat junk food. That would be Errol’s. Or it might’ve been Juanita’s. Though I don’t know why she was here.’ She glanced towards the kitchen as the maid, in a body bag, was carried out towards the front door. ‘Are they going to take the – her – down in the front lifts?’
‘You’d prefer she was taken down in the service lift?’ said Malone.
For a moment she missed a step, without moving.