The Easy Sin (10 page)

“Oh, the maid.” Okada sounded as if a budgerigar or some other household pet had been despatched. “Oh, of course. So she is your interest?”

“Part of it, Mr. Okada. If she hadn't been killed, we would not be on the case. But now we are, we have to cover every aspect of it. How much did Kunishima invest in Mr. Magee and I-Saw?”

Okada on the surface was thoroughly Westernized; but he had read the teachings of Yamamoto Jocho in
Hagakure
. He knew the dignity of the closed mouth; but it had nothing to do with wanting to be a samurai. A closed mouth told no secrets; it also gave one time to think. Despite the suddenly impassive face, Malone and Clements could see that Mr. Okada was thinking. Deeply.

“I'm afraid that is confidential,” he said at last.

“No one can be more confidential than we are,” said Clements.

Okada smiled again, as if surprised that a police officer could have a sense of humour. “I'm sure you can, Sergeant. But we are in different territory—”

“No, we're not, Mr. Okada—”

Malone wondered if he should step in, but decided to wait and give Clements his head. The big man had knocked down stone walls before, not always with a sledgehammer. Nakasone and Tajiri had shifted a little uneasily in their chairs.
Go for it, Russ
. . .

“You see,” said Clements, “we've done due diligence on your bank and its investments here. I- Saw is your only bad investment. Three hundred million dollars, your original investment, has gone down the drain.”

“Then why are you asking?”

“Because in Homicide we're like you bankers—we like everything confirmed. It helps in prosecution.”

Okada was impressed. “How do you know so much, Sergeant?”

Malone got Clements out of that one before the latter might be tempted to explain how he had lost sixty thousand dollars: “You'd be surprised how much investigation we have done before we got to
Kunishima.”
And how little the investigation had produced. “We don't want the Securities Commission getting in our way—and I'm sure you don't, either. So let's talk friendly, just between ourselves, and see what we come up with.”

Okada stared at him, not hostilely, then he looked at Nakasone, who said something in Japanese. Okada listened, nodded, then looked back at Malone. “Mr. Nakasone is from our head office in Osaka. He doesn't speak English.”

Not bloody much he doesn't, thought Malone. He had read too many faces, Japanese or otherwise, to know when a conversation was not understood. Nakasone and Tajiri had understood every word that had been said since he and Clements had come into the office.

“So what has he suggested? From head office?”

“He has suggested we cooperate—”

Up to a point: it wasn't said, but Malone read it.

“Mr. Magee has been less than honest with Kunishima. As you may know—” Okada looked at Clements, as if recognizing he was the businessman “—the share price for I-Saw has gone down and down over the past six months. We bought from anyone who wanted to sell, but we couldn't prevent the slide. Then we found that one of the biggest sellers was Mr. Magee—he had shares under other names. But the money wasn't coming back into I-Saw. It had just disappeared. Forty million dollars.”

“Gone overseas?” said Clements, sounding unsurprised.

Okada nodded. “We presume so. But where?” He spread his hands, a Mediterranean gesture; Nakasone looked sideways at him, as if he had emigrated. These fellers don't trust each other, thought Malone. “Switzerland, Hong Kong, the Bahamas, the Caymans? Who knows? We are searching, but so far, no success.”

“If we find Mr. Magee,” said Malone, “what do you plan to do?”

Okada looked at Nakasone and Tajiri, said something in Japanese; all three men smiled. Then he looked back at the two detectives. “Persuade him to tell us where the money is.”

“So you won't pay the five million ransom, even to get him back to persuade him to tell you
where
the forty million is?”

Okada continued smiling. “As you Aussies say, no way, mate.”

Only then did Malone say, “And what about your backers, the
yakuza
? What will they say?”

Suddenly all the smiles were gone; the faces turned to stone. A gull appeared outside the big window, fluttering close to the glass as if trying to mate with its own reflection. Then, as if frightened by the atmosphere inside the room, it abruptly swept away.

“You see, Mr. Okada,” said Malone, “as Sergeant Clements has said, we've done due diligence.”

“Un-due diligence, I think, Inspector. You are wrong, very wrong.” The
r
s were indistinct, he had slipped back into his nationality.

Malone, like most of his countrymen, was impressed with foreigners who spoke English so well, even if they had some difficulty with certain letters. He was also impressed that Nakasone and Tajiri appeared to have understood what Okada had said.

“I don't think so, Mr. Okada. We have our sources.”

The three bankers looked at each other. The question could be read on the unreadable faces: what sources? where? Then Okada looked back at Malone: “This meeting is over, Inspector.”

He stood up and bowed, suddenly no longer Westernized, and Nakasone and Tajiri followed suit. Malone hesitated, then he and Clements rose.

“We'll be back, sir. Take that for granted.”

He turned abruptly, rudely, and walked out, followed by Clements. Neither of them spoke as they crossed the reception area nor in the crowded lift as they went down to the lobby. There Malone paused and let out his breath, as if he had been holding it for the past several minutes.

“What do you think?”

“Like you said, we'll have to come back—” Clements led the way out into sunshine; it was like a blessing. “I think Okada is genuine, a banker. The other two—”

“Nakasone probably is, too. But Tajiri—”

“Don't
yakuza
cover themselves in tattoos? He had skin like a baby.”

“
He had eyes like a snake . . . Remember the Casement case? The last time we heard of Kunishima? The feller in that we were chasing, his name was Tajiri. Is that a
yakuza
name?”

“I dunno. Are all Malones cops?”

“Righto, you've made your point. He was the one I was watching when I mentioned the
yakuza
. He was the one who showed no reaction, nothing. He doesn't need tattoos to tell me where he comes from.”

Clements grinned. “Maybe they've given up on tattoos, now all the idiots are into it. We'll keep an eye on him.”

They walked down to their car and Clements said, “You think they'll do Magee if they get to him before we do?”

“We'll have to see that they don't.”

There was the usual parking ticket on the unmarked car. Clements tore it up and dropped it down a grating. They smiled at each other, glad of small consolations not due other voters.

III

Errol Magee, still in his blue dress, still bound to his chair, sat in the darkened room and began to wonder if he would get out of this place, wherever it was, alive. There was a callous coldness hidden in the blue hoods that came in every so often: the two men and Mum. The younger woman, the daughter, had left the house—“She's gone to talk to your friends at the bank,” Mum had said.

Fat chance, he had thought but didn't voice it. Unless Kunishima offered to pay the ransom, then reneged on it once he was turned over to them. Then, he knew, his life wouldn't be worth ten cents. He trembled at the thought and almost wet himself.

He began to wonder where he was being held. Obviously somewhere in the bush; the outside silence told him that. Occasionally the silence would be broken by the squawk of parrots, something one didn't hear in the apartment at Circular Quay; once he thought he heard a cow or a bull bellow, but he wasn't sure. He was not and never had been a bush person; Centennial Park was his idea of the Outback.
He
was not interested in conservation nor in the welfare of endangered species. Once, when approached for a donation, he had asked an animal rights lover if she felt deprived, materially and emotionally, because there were no more brontosauruses. He had been shocked when she broke his nose with her flailed backpack. It had cost two thousand dollars to repair the damaged nose and from then on he had steered clear of anyone remotely connected with the bush.

The door opened, letting in some daylight from the hallway. Corey Briskin, anonymous inside the blue hood, came in. “You wanna go to the dunny?”

“I could do with another leak.”

“You got a weak bladder or something? This is the second time in an hour.”

“I'm scared of you lot. You'd be pissing, too, if you were in my place.”

“Relax, sport.” Corey undid the straps. “We're not gunna do you. What would you be worth dead?”

Magee didn't know whether it was the relaxed attitude of this kidnapper or whether it was just that they were having a conversation, of sorts; all at once he felt less scared. “Nothing. I think you're going to find out I'm not worth much more alive.”

Corey chuckled inside the hood. “Wrong thing to say, sport. Okay, on your feet. No funny stuff or I'll have to clock you.” He held up a bunched fist. For the first time Magee noticed the tattoo on the back of the hand: a woman's lips opened in a smile, the teeth yellowed by the hand's tan. “I'm not squeamish about it.”

“I can believe it,” said Magee and managed to make it sound complimentary.

Corey led him down a short hallway to the bathroom. On the way Magee remarked that the house seemed sparsely furnished; so this wasn't where they lived permanently. Corey said, “When you're wearing a dress, do you sit down to pee?”

“Till I was brought here, I'd never had to pee when I was in a dress.” He lifted the front of the dress and relieved himself.

“You're not a poof. What makes you go in for that sorta thing?”

“
I dunno. Like you say, I'm not a poof. I don't even think I'm weird. It's just—I dunno.” He shook the dress back into place, then looked down at it. “You got something you can lend me, I can change into? If Kunishima comes up with the ransom money, I don't want to be turned over to them in
this
.”

Corey smiled inside the hood. “That'd be something in the
Financial Review
, wouldn't it?”

Magee remembered reading once about the relationship that had grown between kidnappers and kidnappees in the terrorist days in Beirut. He had been in London then and there had been a Lebanese working in the same office whose father had been kidnapped and killed. So there could be a relationship verging on friendship, yet it could still end in murder.

He couldn't imagine himself ever becoming friends with this lot, but the atmosphere had certainly improved since this morning. Maybe it was just this one guy; the other one, who had sounded younger, was another case altogether. Mum had sounded as cold and hard as any woman could get to be; and he had known a few in his time. The younger woman (these guys' sister?) had sounded as if she might have a sense of humour. The atmosphere might improve, but he was kidding himself if he thought they would be
friendly
. With him, who had never encouraged friendships.

They went back to the room. “Do you have to tie me up?”

“Sport, we're in business. Do you trust people in business?” He hadn't, but he wasn't going to say so. “Most of the time, yes.”

“Not here, sport. Sorry. Here—” Corey had gone to an old-fashioned wardrobe, taken out a pair of jeans and an old wrinkled football jersey—“get outa that dress.”

Magee pulled on the jersey and jeans. “South Sydney?”

“My old man played for them years ago. Don't get any ideas about trying to trace us. A thousand guys played for Souths. You follow league?”

“No, I'm not a football fan. I'm not sports-minded.”

“How come you know that's a South's jersey?”

“I-Saw did some research for the lawyers when they were trying to wind up Souths.” The club
had
been dropped by the league's administrators and there had been huge demonstrations by the club's supporters. He had not understood the supporters' anger, but he was sure his parents would have. His father, though not a rugby league fan, would have been writing letters to the newspapers decrying the death of real sport. “I wish you'd believe me. I-Saw is broke. Skint. If you hadn't grabbed me, I'd be on the dole next week.”

“Errol—” Corey was tolerant, like a master to a pupil. He began to tie Magee up again. “I think you're having us on. Don't stretch your luck. If that bank of yours don't come good, you're in the shit, sport. There. Comfy?”

“Up yours,” said Magee, suddenly brave out of desperation and despair.

Corey chuckled behind the hood. “That used to be South's old motto.”

He went out, closing the door again. Gloom settled on Magee and the room.

Out in the kitchen Corey took off his hood. “Mum, what we gunna do with him if, like he says, there's no money?”

Shirlee Briskin was making corned-beef-and-salad sandwiches. She had once worked in a delicatessen, when Clyde had been doing time again, and she made sandwiches with professional skill. “If he gives us trouble, we'll have to get rid of him.”

Corey, occasionally, had trouble accepting his mother's approach. He had dug the pit in the timber up behind the house and buried his father after his mother had poisoned him. He had never had any time for his father, but he would never have
killed
him. He might have beaten him up and told him to get lost, but he would never have
murdered
him, certainly not with arsenic fed to him over two days. The police had never come near them, because the family had never reported Clyde's disappearance. Some of the family's friends had asked what had happened to Clyde and they had been told that he, you know what a bastard he was, had gone off with another woman and Shirlee, dry-eyed, was glad to see him go. One or two of the women friends had nodded and said,
good riddance
.