The Easy Sin. Jon Cleary
all of ‘em. On all the keys the prints were the same – we surmise they were Magee’s own. Evidently no one but him used the computers. On the keys that tapped out the ransom note, on all the computers, there were no prints or they were smudged. As if he’d worn gloves. Did he have something wrong with his hands, dermatitis or something?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Sam. I’ll ask Miss Doolan. I should imagine it’s not easy to type with gloves.’
‘Unless they were thin gloves. Surgical gloves. Ask Miss Doolan if he ever wore those.’
‘Righto, Sam, thanks. You fellers take care of Norma. She’s useful.’
‘Some women are. Don’t quote me.’
Malone took Sheryl Dallen with him out to Minto. She drove and he sat beside her, his feet as usual buried in the floorboards. He was not a car man; he had never envied Inspector Morse his Jaguar or that American detective of long ago who rode around in a Rolls-Royce. All travellers have attitudes; in a car his was nervousness. Sheryl drove as he imagined she exercised, purposefully and keeping her pulse rate up; and his. They talked of everything but the case, as if to mention it would sully the shining day through which they drove. Summer was going out like a fading benediction.
It was a long drive, almost fifty kilometres, on roads clogged with traffic. Heavy vehicles bore down on them like ocean liners; speed-hogs, driving not their own but company cars, sidestepped in front of them without warning. Sheryl swore at them and Malone buried his feet deeper in the floorboards.
They passed a military camp, strangely deserted but for a squad of soldiers marching stiff-legged to nowhere, training for wars not yet declared. A tank rolled without warning out into the road before them, right in the path of an oncoming 10-ton freight truck. Malone sat up, waiting for the coming crash, but somehow the two leviathans managed to avoid each other.
‘Pity,’ said Sheryl and drove on.
Minto lies in what was once rolling farm and orchard country. It was first settled almost two hundred years ago and only in the last fifty years has it grown to being a populated suburb of the nearby small city of Campbelltown. Its name was another example of the crawling, sucking-up, brown-nosing, call it what you will, that distinguished the early colonists. In 1808 officers of the New South Wales Corps, rum-runners that the Mafia would have welcomed as Family, deposed Governor William Blight and assumed control of the colony themselves. Then they decided they had better curry some favour with someone in authority. They chose to nominate the Earl of Minto, the nearest high-ranking British official, as patron of the new settlement south of Sydney. That Minto was Viceroy of India, was 7500 miles from Sydney and hadn’t a clue what went on below the Equator, didn’t faze the crawlers. They knew an easy target when they heard of one; they were years ahead of the traps of mobile phones and e-mail and faxes. That a settlement of less than forty people was named, supposedly as an honour, after a man viceroy to 200 million was a joke that nobody spread.
The suburb lay on the slopes of gentle hills, a mix of would-be mansions on the heights, new villas, modest older and smaller houses and cramped terraces built by the State government and blind bureaucrats in the late 1970s. There was a shopping centre, with the new patrons, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Burger King flying their pennants above it. There were several parks and playing fields and two schools that had large open playgrounds. It was better than Malone, trapped in the mindset of inner Sydney, had expected.
Malone had got the address from Detective Decker and Sheryl found it as if she came to Minto every day of the week.
There were half a dozen cars parked in the street, only one of them occupied. Malone got out and walked down to the grey, unmarked Holden. The young plainclothes officer got out when Malone introduced himself.
‘Detective-Constable Paul Fernandez, sir. We’re doing two hours on, four hours off, just one man at a time. Are you expecting anyone to try and snatch Miss Doolan?’
‘We don’t know. You know what happened?’
‘We got it through on the computer.’ He was tall and heavily built and at ease. And bored: ‘There’s not much market for kidnappings around here, sir.’
Malone grinned, though he was not amused. But you didn’t throw your weight around with the men from another’s command. He knew how boring a watch could be. ‘Have you spoken to Miss Doolan?’
‘No, sir. Our patrol commander had a word with her, he said she didn’t seem particularly put out. I mean about the kidnapping.’
‘That’s Miss Doolan.’
Sheryl waited for him outside the gate of Number 41. It was a weatherboard house that had a settled look, as if it had stood on the small lot for years; but its paint was not peeling and the small garden and lawn were well kept. There were cheap security grilles on the windows and a security door guarding the front door. On its grille was a metal sign, Welcome, like a dry joke.
The door was opened by a larger, older, faded version of Kylie Doolan. I’m Monica, Kylie’s sister. You more coppers?’
Malone introduced himself and Sheryl. ‘May we come in?’
‘You better, otherwise we’re gunna have a crowd at our front gate. They’re already complaining about your mate over there in his car.’ She led the way into a living room that opened off the front door. ‘But I suppose you’re used to that? Complaints?’
‘Occasionally.’ Malone hadn’t come here to wage war.
The living room was small, crowded with a lounge suite, coffee table, sideboard and a large TV set in one corner. The sideboard was decked with silver-framed photographs, like a rosary of memories; Kylie was there, younger, fresher, chubbier. Hans Heysen and Elioth Gruner prints hung on the walls; someone liked the Australian bush as it had once been. The whole house, Malone guessed, would have fitted three times into the apartment at Circular Quay.
‘Kylie’s in the shower,’ said Monica and waved at the two suitcases by the front door. ‘She’s going back to the flat, where her and What’shisname –’
‘Errol Magee,’ said Sheryl, and Malone wondered just how much interest Monica, out here in the backblocks, had taken of Kylie in the high life.
‘Yeah. Siddown. You like some coffee? It’ll only be instant –’
Malone declined the offer. ‘We’re here to talk to Kylie. How’s she been?’
‘Itchy. It’s a bit crowded here, we only got two bedrooms. There’s me and my husband and our two girls, they’re teenagers. Wanna be like their aunty,’ she said and grinned, but there was no humour in her. ‘Ah, here she is.’
Kylie Doolan stood in the doorway, wrapped in a thick terry-towelling gown, barefooted and frowning. ‘What are you doing here?’
Malone ignored that, nodded at the suitcases. ‘You’re going back to the apartment?’
‘Yeah. It’s too crowded here.’
‘Thanks,’ said Monica, drily. ‘Any port in a storm, so long’s it’s not too small.’
‘Well, it is. I’m not ungrateful –’
‘Put a lid on it, Kylie. You thought you’d got outa here, outa Minto, for good. But they hadda bring you back here to be safe –’
Malone and Sheryl sat silent. Listeners learn more than talkers.
Monica turned to them: ‘She always wanted to get away from here, from the time she was in high school. Now she’s got my girls talking like her –’
‘Don’t blame me, they’ve got minds of their own. You’d of got outa here if it hadn’t been for Clarrie –’ Her voice had slipped, she sounded exactly like her sister.
‘Clarrie,’ Monica told the two detectives, ‘he’s my husband. She never liked him –’
‘That’s