Jon Cleary - The Easy Sin

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 the swans with their question-mark necks and sometimes doze off under the warm blanket of the sun and forget the world that, though it rarely touched her and the children, was where Scobie lived his working life. Where murder and greed and betrayal signposted the city in which they lived, where even this ‘countryside’ had known murder to shred its peace.

She said abruptly, surprising herself, ‘He’s up for promotion.’

‘Who?’ Romy was adrift in her own thoughts.

‘Scobie. He says Russ will probably take over Homicide.’

It was Romy’s turn to stare out through the glass walls. ‘Do you ever wish that they had some other job? Traffic or Fraud, something without murder to it?’

‘Often. But would you give up Forensic, cutting people up to see how and maybe why they died?’

Romy took her time. ‘No-o.’

‘Then we put up with what we’ve got. You could have chosen much worse than Russ.’

Romy pulled her plate back in front of her, picked at the crab salad again. ‘I still could cut his balls off.’

A boy about seven paused by their table. ‘Whose balls?’

‘Yours. Get lost,’ said Romy and started to laugh. Lisa joined in.

Diners at other tables looked at them, two very attractive women sharing a happy day out on their own.

At a far table a mother said to her seven-year-old son, ‘What did the lady say to you?’

‘She said she’d cut my balls off.’

‘Serves you right for speaking to strange women,’ said his father. ‘Remember that, when you grow up.’

He looked across the restaurant and wondered what sort of exciting sex life those two good-looking women led.

‘What are you looking at?’ said his wife.

‘The ducks,’ he said and went back to his long black coffee, which did nothing for the libido.

Malone and Sheryl Dallen delivered Kylie Doolan back to the Magee apartment, where Paula Decker was waiting for them. Malone had phoned her before leaving Minto and she had sounded as if she was jumping at the chance to being involved in the Magee case again.

‘I’ll move in with Miss Doolan,’ she said, looking around the apartment like a prospective buyer. ‘My boss okayed it.’

‘Nobody asked me,’ said Kylie.

‘Miss Doolan,’ said Malone; his patience with women had been long learned, ‘this is for your protection. You may still be on the kidnap list.’

She stared at him as if he were threatening her; then she abruptly turned and went into one of the bedrooms. It was the wrong room. A moment later she came out and went into the main bedroom.

Malone looked at Sheryl and Paula Decker and shrugged. ‘Don’t let her out of your sight, Paula. I’m going to make a call.’

‘The toilet’s that way,’ said Sheryl, nodding.

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