2

I

SHIRLEE BRISKIN was neat: everyone said so. Her blonde hair, her features, her dress: a neat package, said her doctor, a lecher, and her chiropodist, a lesbian lecher, swooned over her neat feet. In her house there was a place for everything and everything was in its place, or you'd better look out. In other people's houses she straightened the pictures on their walls. Her daughter Darlene, a cynic, told her she should have gone into government: she'd have had the country shipshape in no time.

Shirlee was also utterly amoral, though neat about it. She had not been innocent from the day she had first walked; she had gone from bad seed to full bloom in one step. She had learned the Seven Deadly Sins at convent school and thought them an ideal design for living. Her entire lack of morals and scruples was, in its own way, a sort of innocence. Or so she liked to think, when she thought of morals and scruples at all.

“What the devil got into you?” Her vocabulary, too, was neat; she never used four-letter words. “How could you mistake a man for a girl?”

“Mum, it was fucking dark in the room—”

“Wash your mouth out.”

Corey Briskin sighed. He loved his mother in an off-hand sort of way, but you always had to be careful of the landmines of her temper. She, with some help, had planned the kidnapping of Errol Magee's girlfriend, but, like a good general, she had not come to the scene of the action.

“And that girl,” said Shirlee. “Their maid, she's dead.”

“You were the one's been watching everything. You said she only came in during the day.”

“It was an accident, Mum.” Phoenix Briskin, without his ski-mask, wouldn't have attracted attention. He had such a plain face Shirlee sometimes wondered what she had been thinking about when she had conceived him. He had a thick neck and shoulders that could have carried an ox-yoke. “She was gunna scream the house down if Corey hadn't clocked her.”

Shirlee looked at Darlene. “Who was the bloke you said you saw come into the flat?”

“Got no idea,” said Darlene. “All I could see was that he was wearing gloves. On a summer night, if you're wearing gloves, you're up to no good.”

“Corey was wearing gloves,” said Phoenix. “So was I. Medical ones.”

“Pull your head in,” said his brother wearily. The resemblance between them was so faint one could be mistaken. Corey had a pleasant face, except for a certain caution about the eyes, as if he trusted no one. He was slim without being skinny and, where his brother was flat-footed, he moved with a certain grace. “What we gunna do with Mr. Magee? Can you ask a guy to pay for his own kidnapping?”

“Why not?” said Darlene, who had gone further at school than her brothers. “There are self- funded retirees. Here's a self-funded kidnappee.”

“Let's talk sense,” said Shirlee, never without a supply of brass tacks.

They had brought Errol Magee, still drugged, to this house eighty kilometres south of Sydney. It was a timber house with a corrugated-iron roof, a turn-of-the-previous century relic; it stood in two hectares of partly-cleared, partly-timbered land that had somehow escaped developers and city folk looking for a weekend hideaway. Clyde Briskin, now dead by his wife's steady hand, had inherited it from his parents, who had inherited it from their parents. Clyde, though a drunk and a philanderer when he was not holding up service stations or in jail, had been a sentimentalist. In his will he had inserted a clause, as had been in his parents' and grandparents' wills, that the property was never to be sold. Shirlee, no sentimentalist, had nominated it as one of her reasons for poisoning him with fox bait.

Now she was glad they had not been able to sell the house. It was an ideal hideaway; there were no neighbours for at least a kilometre on either side. The road that ran past the property was a dirt track that led to a dead end against the Illawarra escarpment. Errol Magee could have disappeared off the face of the earth.

“I think you and me should talk to Mr. Magee,” said Darlene. She was better-looking than her mother, but not a neat package; there was always the suggestion that something, physically or emotionally, was going to break out of her. But she had control, something else she had inherited from her mother. She worked for a bank, where control is endemic. “We'll see how much he values himself.”

“Let me and Corey do it,” said Phoenix. “We can scare the shit outa him—”

“Darlene and me can do that,” said his mother. “Wash your mouth out. Here, Darlene, put this on.”

She had planned everything, even to the calico hoods to be worn when they were with Magee. They were pale blue, with round holes for eyes and mouth. “Very chic,” said Darlene, slipping a hood over her head. “Does it go with my yellow shirt?”

“Cut the crap,” said Corey, “and get in there and tell him what our price is.”

Errol Magee was feeling sick: with the smell of the chloroform in his nostrils and with fear. Early this morning two hooded men had come into this room and taken him to the toilet, where everything had gushed out of him. They had brought him back here to the kitchen chair in this bedroom and rebound him with the brand-new leather straps. They had not spoken to him, just ignoring him when he had asked why the hell he was here. Then he had been left alone till now.

He looked up in surprise when the two women, hooded as the men had been, came into the room. He had heard voices somewhere at the back of the house, but he had not been able to tell how many there were.

“Mr. Magee,” said Shirlee, nailing brass tacks to the floor, “let's talk business.”

“Business? What sort of business?” His voice was a croak. His hands, bound together by a strap, were in his lap. In his blue dress, his knees bound together, he looked demure.

“Well,” said Darlene, “we made a mistake, Mr. Magee. We meant to take your girlfriend, not you. Do you usually mope around the house in drag at night?”

Magee felt even sicker, with embarrassment. “No. No, of course not! It was—it was a joke, I was fooling around . . . What's going on, for God's sake?”

“We've kidnapped you,” said Shirlee. “For money. Five million dollars.”

“American,” said Darlene, who knew the exchange rate. “Not Australian.”

Magee looked at them; but the hoods were blank. “You've gotta be kidding! I'm broke—skint—”

He was still sick with fear; but he was a good actor. He wouldn't tell them about the money hidden away overseas, not till they held a gun at his head and threatened to kill him. At the moment they were just talking a deal.

“Mr. Magee,” said Shirlee patiently, “you are worth seventy million dollars—”

“On paper,” said Darlene. “Australian.”

“Christ, that was twelve months ago! Don't you read the papers?” But he had forgotten. There had been only rumours, buried away in financial columns, nothing in the headlines. He began to regret his closed mouth. “My company is going into receivership—”

The two hoods turned towards each other. Then Darlene looked back at him. “We're not financial wizards, Mr. Magee, but do you expect us to believe you could lose that much money in twelve months?”

He was dealing with financial idiots; or anyway, infants. He could feel his fear subsiding; a little expertise can stiffen a spine. “Ladies—”

“Cut out the bullshit,” said Darlene.

Her mother's hood looked at her, but said nothing.

“Ladies, in IT—”

“What's that?” said Shirlee.

“Information Technology.” They were idiots, no doubt about it. “In IT fortunes were made overnight. On paper, that is. And the millionaires went broke overnight. Throats are cut every day of the week. They started cutting my throat three months ago.”

“Who's they?” asked Shirlee.

“I'd rather not say—”

“Mr. Magee,” said Darlene, “I know what you say is true, about all those paper millionaires. But I don't think you are one of them. But for the record, who's been trying to cut your throat?”

“Are you in the game? IT?”

“No. But I'm not dumb, Mr. Magee.”

He hesitated. It had disconcerted him to have these two women apparently running this kidnapping. He had felt threatened by the two silent men, but these two women, especially the older one, if she was the older one, had their own menace. He had never felt really safe with women, not with Caroline and the women between her and Kylie, but he had never felt threatened by them.

“The people who put up the venture capital. The Kunishima Bank, they're Japanese.”

“A bank is cutting your throat?” said Shirlee.

“Banks are expert at it,” said Darlene. “You mean, Mr. Magee, you've been playing funny buggers and the bank is foreclosing?”

“Something like that.”

“Not good enough,” said Shirlee and even beneath the hood one could see the jaw setting. “Someone's gunna pay for you, Mr. Magee. All the money you've been worth don't just disappear into thin air.”

“Mum, let me handle this—”

Mum? He'd been kidnapped by a gang run by Mum? If he got out of this alive, nobody would believe him; or they would laugh him out of town. He had lunched with Bill Gates, had sat with leading lawyers in London, Paris, New York; the PM here in Australia had once called him Errol, like an old mate. And now Mum and daughter (he wondered what her name might be) were holding him to ransom. He was a snob, but that had been his mother's fault. She had never let him call her Mum.

“Errol,” said Darlene, like an old mate, “someone is going to pay for you, so let's cut out the bullshit—”

“Wash your mouth out,” said the other blue hood.

“—and give us a name. What about your girlfriend Kylie?”

Somehow he managed a laugh. “She'd put me on her credit card—that's all she ever uses. I told you, I'm broke—”

“All right, you told us that.” Shirlee was losing patience. She had neatly planned everything, like a Christmas package, and now all the string was coming undone. “But it don't matter. You've got contacts, they've got money . . . I been reading about it, Big Business sticks together, it don't matter about the battlers—”

“You're battlers?”

“We won't be when we get the money for you,” said Darlene.

“Look, Big Business, as you call it, doesn't run a fund for kidnapped businessmen—” Then he shook his head, as if he had only just understood what he had said. “Call my office, see what they can do.”

“We'll do that,” said Darlene and she and her mother stood up. “You want some breakfast? Mum does nice sausages and bacon.”

His stomach heaved at the thought. “No, thanks. Just some yoghurt and coffee.”

“Where does he think he is?” snapped Shirlee and whirled out of the room.

Darlene checked the straps that bound him, then fingered his dress and jacket. “Versace?”

“Yeah. How'd you know?”

“I've been adding up what I'm gunna buy when we get the money for you. Try and get some sleep after breakfast.”

“Sitting up?”

“Imagine you're in economy class.” Behind the hood one could almost see the smile. “You'll be back in first class, Errol, soon's we get the money.”

II

“What do you know about a software firm, I-Saw?” said Malone at breakfast.

Tom paused as he was about to bite into his second piece of toast and home-made marmalade. He was a big young man, bigger than his father, with a good blend of his father's and his mother's looks. He had recently graduated with an Honours degree in Economics and a month ago had started with an investment bank at 35,000 dollars a year, almost half of what his father was earning after twenty-seven years service in the police. He was already an expert on world economics, on how to run the country and an authority on other experts. He was still young, God bless him.

“Are we talking about last night's murder?” said Lisa. “There is a golden rule in this house, in case you've forgotten. We don't talk shop at breakfast.”

Malone gave his wife what he thought of as his loving look. She was still beautiful, at least in his eyes, and had that calm command that was like oil on the family's occasional troubled waters. She wore no make-up at breakfast, was in shirt and slacks, always gave the appearance of being ready for the day.

“I am just trying to get some payback for all the years we've supported him—” He looked again at his son. “What do you know about I-Saw?”

“I wouldn't put money into it,” said Tom. “In fact, people are taking money out of it, if they can find suckers to buy their shares. Have been for some time. It's dead.”

“What killed it?”

“Hard to pin down. Too much ambition, not enough capital—it could be a dozen reasons. Errol Magee's not everyone's favourite character. Sometimes he's seen at the right places, but he never gives interviews or makes statements. There's virtually nothing about him on the internet, him personally, I mean. Everyone's heard of him, but no one knows him.”

“Except his girlfriend. And his wife.”

“He has a wife?” Lisa looked up from her Hi-Bran.

“What's happened to the golden rule?”

“Don't beat about the bush. You made a mistake, mentioning a girlfriend and the wife in one breath.”

“Never misses out on gossip,” Malone told his son. “Righto, he has a wife no one suspected, least of all the girlfriend. She flew in yesterday from London. Mr. Magee was expecting her, but forgot to tell the girlfriend.”

“What's she like?” asked Lisa.

“Who?”

“Both of them.”

“We're breaking the golden rule,” said Tom, grinning.

“Shut up,” said his mother. “What are they like?”

“Good lookers, both of them.” Then Malone took his time. A man should never rush into explaining other women to his wife. He would have to explain that to Tom at some later date. “They're out of the same mould, I think. Both calculating, but the wife would have the edge. More experience.”

“You must have spent some time sizing them up,” said Lisa, like a wife.

“Actually, I hardly looked at them. I made all that up.” Then he looked at Tom: “What are the women like at the bank?”

“Calculating,” grinned Tom. “I'm still looking for a woman with some mystery to her, like you told me—”

“He told you that?” said Lisa.

“You're still a mystery to me,” said Malone.

“Glad to hear it. Hurry up with your breakfast. It's wash day.”

Late last year she had given up her job as a public relations officer at Sydney's Town Hall and since then worked three days a week as a volunteer with the Red Cross. Claire, their eldest, was now married with a baby son and Maureen was living with a girlfriend while she picked and chose her way through a battalion of boyfriends. Tom, devoted to his mother's cooking, still lived at home, though there were nights when he didn't come home and his parents asked no questions.

“Find out what gossip you can about I-Saw,” said Malone.

“Am I on a retainer?” Tom was fast becoming an economic rationalist, a bane of his father's.

“I'll shout you a night out at Pizza Hut.”

“Investment bankers don't go to Pizza Hut.”

When Malone was leaving for the office Lisa followed him to the front door. “Any more on the promotion? You said nothing last night.”

“It's going through.” He wasn't enthusiastic about it. “I got a hint I'll be skipping a rank. How does Superintendent Malone strike you?”

“I'll get a new wardrobe.”

“There's a summer sale on at Best & Less.”

She kissed him tenderly. There are worse fates than a tight-fisted husband.

Malone drove into Strawberry Hills through an end-of-summer morning. The traffic was heavy, but road rage seemed to have been given a sedative. He was a careful driver and had never been a hurrier; he acknowledged the occasional but fading courtesy of other drivers and gave them his own. The day looked promising. He would turn the Juanita Marcos murder over to Russ Clements and relax behind his desk, mulling over the future.

He parked in the yard behind the building that housed the Homicide and Serial Offenders Unit and sat for a while in the car. In another month he would no longer be Inspector Malone, but Superintendent Malone. He would no longer be the co-ordinator of Homicide, but moved to a desk in Crime Agency at Police Central.

Strawberry Hills, named after the English estate of compulsive letter-writer Horace Walpole, though it had never looked English and had never grown strawberries, indeed had nothing to it but this large nondescript building in front of him, suddenly seemed like Home Sweet Home. In Homicide, whether here or in other locations—and the unit had been moved around like an unwanted bastard—he had spent most of his police life. It had not always been enjoyable; homicide officers were not sadists nor masochists. There had been times when he had wanted to turn away, sickened by what he had to investigate. But to balance that there had been the solving of the crimes, the bringing to justice those who had little or no regard for the lives of others. He hated murder and had never become casual about it. It was part of life and had to be accounted for.

As a superintendent in Crime Agency he would be at least one remove from it, maybe more.

He went up to the fourth floor, let himself in through the security door and was met by Russ Clements, who, he hoped, would succeed him. The big man, usually imperturbable, had something on his mind.

“I see you, mate? Before the meeting?”

There was always a meeting each morning, to check on yesterday's results, to assign new cases for today. “What've we got? Something serious?”

He led the way into his office and Clements followed him. The big man, instead of taking his usual relaxed place on the couch beneath the window, eased his bulk into the chair opposite Malone's desk. He looked uncomfortable, like a probationary constable who had made a wrong arrest.

“There were two more homicides last night, one at Maroubra, the other at Chatswood. The locals don't need us, they've got the suspects in custody. No, it's something else.”

Malone waited. He had a sudden irritating feeling that Clements was going to tell him something personal he didn't want to hear. That his marriage was breaking up?

“The job down at the Quay,” said Clements. “The maid that was done in. Well, not her, exactly.” He shifted in the chair.

Malone, studying him, this man with whom he had worked for twenty-two years, said, “What's eating you? You got ants up your crack?”

“No. Well, yes—in a way. The maid's boss, the guy who's disappeared, Errol Magee. We've got a problem.”

“We?” Still puzzled, he yet felt a certain relief that Clements' problem was not a domestic one.

“Well, me.” He looked out at the bright day, then back at Malone. “I invested in Magee's company, I got in when it was floated.”

“So?”

“You're not helping me, are you?”

“I'm listening, but you're taking a long time to get around to what's worrying you.”

Clements looked out the window again. He was not a handsome man, but there was a certain strength to the set of his big face that, for the truly aware, was more reassuring than mere good looks. Right now, though, all the strength seemed to have drained out of him. He looked back at Malone. “I invested sixty thousand dollars.” Almost a year's salary for a senior sergeant. “I've done the lot. The receivers are moving in on I-Saw, it's gunna be announced today.”

Clements had always been a gambler, first on the horses, then, when he married, on the stock exchange. But he had never been a plunger. Or so Malone had always believed.

Malone shook his head. “Sixty thousand? You and Romy've got that much to spare?”

“It's not gunna bankrupt us. But no, we don't have it to spare. Not for gambling—which, I guess, is what she calls it. I just got greedy. I thought things had settled down in the IT game, the mugs had been sorted out—you know what it was like a coupla years ago.”

“Only what Tom told me. I was never into companies that weren't going to show any profit for five, ten years. That were paying their bosses half a million or more before they'd proved anything. I'm short-sighted, I like my dividends every six months. One thing about the Old Economy, as I gather you smartarses call it, it had little time for bullshit. Does Romy know you've done that much?”

Again Clements looked out the window, then back at Malone. “No. Not yet.”

“Ah.” As wives say when told something they don't want to hear. “I can hear her say that. Ah.”

“No, it'll be Ach! She'll all of a sudden be Teutonic.” Romy, his wife, had been in Australia just over twenty years, but she was still proudly German. She liked Bach, Weill and Günter Grass, three strangers Clements avoided, and occasionally tartly reminded him that not all Germans had been Nazis. They were an odd match but genuinely in love. “Even when I tell her that I was aiming for a trust fund for Amanda.”

Amanda was the Clements' five-year-old daughter. “When did you dream that up, the trust fund?”

Clements grinned weakly. “Is it that obvious? Okay, when I first put the money into I-Saw, all I saw . . .” He paused.

“Go on. Forget the puns.”

Clements grinned again, but there was no humour in him. “All I saw was I was gunna make a million or more. It was gunna zoom to the top, like Yahoo. It was designed to help out lawyers, and lawyers are like rabbits. You get two lawyers in an office and pretty soon you've got four or six or a whole bloody floor of them. My stockbroker told me we couldn't lose.”

“How much has he lost?”

Again the grin, shamefaced this time. “He cashed in at the end of the first day's trading, made 40 per cent. He didn't tell me. I hung on, I was gunna make 1000 per cent.”

Malone pondered a while. This could not have come at a worse time; he had already recommended Clements for promotion. The Service had had a rough period, with Internal Affairs sniffing around like bloodhounds, and matters had only settled down in the last few months. But the media and the Opposition in Parliament were always out there, prowling the edges like hyenas, waiting to score points, scandal-chewers. He and Clements had always been honest cops, but they were always wary of outsiders. It came with the wearing of the blue.

“Righto, you're not going to have anything to do with the murder. You're out of it. Entirely. But I want you to find out all you can about Mr. Magee. He could've arranged his own kidnapping, if he's in the shit financially. He might also have killed the maid. Has Forensic come up with anything more?”

“Not so far. John and Sheryl are with the maid's boyfriend now. They're in the interview room. He's a Bulgarian.”

“I'll leave him to you for the time being. When you're finding out what you can about Magee, stay out of the picture yourself. We don't want feature stories on you in the Herald or the Mirror. You know, Greg Random has backed up my recommendation that you take over from me.” Random was their senior in Crime Agency. “Don't bugger it up.”

Clements stood up slowly, as if his joints had set. “You're not very sympathetic, are you?”

“You said yourself you were greedy. What do you want me to do—bless you?”

“I'll be glad when you move out.”

Malone hummed, “You gonna miss me, honey, when I'm gone—”

They grinned at each other. The glue of friendship still held fast.

“I'm gunna take half an hour off and duck over to see Romy.”

“You're going to give her the bad news in the morgue?”

Romy was the Deputy-Director of Forensic Medicine in the State Department of Health and second-in-charge at the City Morgue. She earned more than Clements and, like Lisa, kept an eye on household accounts.

“I wanna get it off my chest.”

“Good luck. I've got two females to interview, Magee's girlfriend and his wife. Do I toss up?”

“Take the girlfriend. She'll always tell you more than a wife.”

They grinned at each other again, further glued by domestic chauvinism.

As Clements left, Malone saw Kagal and Sheryl Dallen come into the main office. He signalled them and they came in and sat down opposite him. They had no look of excitement on their faces.

“Mr. Todorov doesn't think much of the New South Wales Police Service,” said Kagal.

“Or any police service,” said Sheryl Dallen. “I just wonder whose side he was on back in Bulgaria.”

Though not a lesbian or a man-hater, she always had reserved opinions about men. She was attractive without any distinguishing good looks, except that she always looked so healthy; she worked out three times a week at a gym and was on first-name terms with every muscle in her body. Just looking at her sometimes made Malone tired.

“He doesn't seem too upset by what happened to his girlfriend,” said Kagal. “He's already asking if he can claim worker's compensation for her murder.”

Kagal always added distinction to the office. But his looks, his sartorial elegance compared to Malone and Clements, never hid the fact that, like Sheryl Dallen, he was a bloody good detective.

“Keep an eye on him,” said Malone. “Could he have had a hand in the kidnapping? Things went wrong when his girlfriend somehow got her skull bashed in?”

“Maybe,” said Sheryl, “but it's a long shot. But we'll put him on the list. Do we put surveillance on him?”

“Let The Rocks do that.” Never deprive another command of work. “Has the maid got any relatives?”

“In the Philippines. We're trying to get in touch with them.”

The paperwork of murder: “Try and unload that on The Rocks, too. In the meantime keep looking for Mr. Magee. Though he's ostensibly been kidnapped, he's our Number One suspect for the moment. Unless you've got another candidate?”

They shook their heads, got up and left his office. He sat a while, trying to stir up energy and enthusiasm; suddenly he was in limbo. Was this what promotion did to you? He remembered that Greg Random, though a melancholy man at the best of times, had once told him that his devotion to police work had evaporated the day he had been promoted out of Homicide. Maybe there was a rung in the ladder of upward mobility (where had that phrase gone to?) where your foot found a natural resting place, where you really didn't want to go any higher. But then (and he had seen it happen too often) there was the danger of growing fat and lazy on that rung.

He stirred himself, reached for his phone and called Detective-Constable Decker at The Rocks station. “Inspector Malone, Constable.” He was always formal with officers from someone else's command; he expected the same treatment for his own officers by other commanders. “What's with Miss Doolan?”

“I left her with her sister, sir, out at Minto. Macquarie Fields are keeping an eye on her, Minto is in their area. Any progress at your end, sir?”

“No.” Was she keeping score? Or was he becoming sensitive in his late middle age? “I'm going out to see Miss Doolan now. I'll keep you up to date.”

“You want me to come with you, sir? I think I built up some rapport with her.”

He hesitated, then said, “No. I'll be in touch, Constable.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was always the same, the territorial imperative, the defence of one's own turf. David Attenborough should bring the BBC Science Film Unit down here to study the wildlife in the NSW Police Service. Beginning with ageing bulls . . .

He had no sooner put down the phone than it rang: “Scobie? Sam Penfold. Norma has been back to the Magee apartment, something about the computers worried her.” He paused: Physical Evidence were becoming actors.

“Get on with it, Sam. Forget the dramatic pauses, I get enough of that on TV.”

One could almost imagine Penfold's grin at the other end of the line. “Just effect, mate, that's all. Norma looked again at the keys on the computers, 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 not true—he was just—just—” She flapped a hand.

“Yeah, he was just. He never had any ambition, he never looked beyond the end of the street. But he was—he is solid. He's a pastrycook,” she was talking to Malone and Sheryl again, “he works in a baker's shop in Campbelltown. He's good and solid and he loves me and the girls—” Suddenly she buried her face in her hands and started to weep.

“Oh shit!” said Kylie and dropped to her knees and put her arms round her sister. “I'm sorry, sis. Really.”

The room seemed to get smaller; Malone felt cramped, hedged in. He was no stranger to the intrusion into another family, but the awkwardness never left him. He waited a while, glanced at Sheryl, who had turned her head and was looking out the window. Then he said, “Get dressed, Kylie. We'll take you back to town.”

She hesitated, then she pressed her sister's shoulders, stood up and went out of the room without looking at Malone and Sheryl.

Sheryl said, “Monica, did she ever talk to you about Mr. Magee?”

Monica dried her eyes on her sleeve, sniffed and, after fumbling, found a tissue in the pocket of her apron. “Not much.”

“She say anything about him being kidnapped instead of her?”

“She laughed. We both did. But it's not something to laugh about, is it? The maid dead, and that. God knows what's happened to him. You find out anything yet?”

“We're working on it,” said Malone; you never admit ignorance to the voters. “She ever talk to you about how much he was worth? And now it's all gone?”

Monica raised her eyebrows. She would have been good-looking once, Malone thought, but the years had bruised her. He wondered how tough life had been for her and Clarrie and the girls. Wondered, too, how much she had envied Kylie.

“It's all gone? He's broke? I read about him once or twice, he wasn't in the papers much, but I'd see his name and because of Kylie . . . He was worth millions!”

“All on paper,” said Sheryl.

Monica laughed, with seemingly genuine humour, no bitterness at all. “Wait till I tell Clarrie. He'll bake a cake—” She laughed again; she was good-looking for a moment. “He won't be nasty, he's not like that, but he'll enjoy it. He's not worth much, but it's not paper, he brings it home every week—” She shook her head, then said, “What's gunna happen to Kylie?”

“I don't know.” Crime victims had to be dropped out of one's knowing. It wasn't lack of compassion. It was a question of self-survival.

“I don't mean in the future, I mean right now.” She was shrewder than he had thought. “Will she be in—” She hesitated, as if afraid of the word: “—in danger? I'd hate to think I'd let her go back to that—”

“We'll take care of her, there'll be surveillance on her. Eventually—” He shrugged. “Is she strong?”

“Too strong. She's always known what she wanted.”

“What was that?” said Sheryl.

“Money, the good life, all that sorta stuff. That's the way it is these days, isn't it?” She said it without rancour, resigned to a tide she couldn't stop. “I see it in my own girls and their friends—”

Malone changed the subject: “Where are your parents?”

“Dead, both of them. Ten years ago, when Kylie was seventeen. Dad went first, a stroke—he was a battler, always in debt, it just got him down in the end. Mum went two months after, like she'd been waiting for him to go and didn't want to stay on. Both of ‘em not fifty. They were like Clarrie and me. Kylie never understood that, you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Malone. “But you've got your girls.”

“Sure,” she said. “But for how long?”

Then Kylie came back. Malone, who wouldn't have known a Donna Karan from a K-Mart, recognized that she would always dress for the occasion: any occasion. Her dress was discreet, but it made the other two women look as if they had just shopped at St. Vincent de Paul. In Monica's case, he felt, the contrast was cruel.

But it seemed that the cruelty was unintentional. Kylie kissed her sister with real affection. “Say goodbye to Clarrie and the girls for me. I'll call you.”

“Look after yourself,” said Monica.

“Sure,” said Kylie and one knew that she would. Always.

Sheryl picked up the suitcases and Kylie looked at Malone. “Is that how it is in the police force? The women carry the bags?”

“Only Detective Dallen. It's part of her weights programme.”

He grinned at Sheryl and went ahead of her and Kylie down the garden path. Behind him he heard Kylie say, “How can you stand him?”

He was out of earshot before Sheryl replied. He went across to Detective-Constable Fernandez, who got out of his car as he approached. “There'll be no need for further surveillance. I'll call your commander and put it on the computer. We're taking Miss Doolan back to town.”

Fernandez looked past him. “She doesn't look too upset, sir.”

“Like I told you, that's Miss Doolan.”

Fernandez nodded. “They'll always be a mystery to me, women.”

“Never try to solve them, Paul. You might be disappointed.”

He went along to his own car. Sheryl had put the suitcases in the boot and she and Kylie stood waiting for him.

“Kylie, did Errol ever wear gloves?”

“You mean in winter, against the cold?”

“No, medical gloves, surgical ones. Did he have a hand condition, dermatitis, something like that?”

“God, no, nothing like that. He had beautiful hands, too good for a man, almost like a woman's. Why?”

“Oh, something's come up. Righto, Sheryl, can you find your way back to town?”

“We just head north, sir. We'll hit either Sydney or Brisbane.”

Serves me right for being a smartarse with a junior rank.

They drove Kylie Doolan back to Sydney. She sat in the back of the car looking out at the passing scene with eyes blank of recognition or nostalgia. She had drained Minto out of her blood.

III

“Before we take you back to your unit—”

“Apartment. Not unit.”

“Apartment, unit, flat,” said Malone. “What's the difference?”

“Size. Location,” said Kylie. She could sell real estate, he thought. She could sell anything, including herself. “If I'd stayed in Minto, I'd be living in a flat. Or a unit.”

“Righto. Before we take you back to your apartment, I think we might drop in at I-Saw's offices. Where are they?”

“In Milson's Point,” said Sheryl, chopping off a road-rager trying to cut in on her. They have a whole building there.”

He might have guessed it; Sheryl always did her homework. “Milson's Point? When my wife and I were first married we lived in Kirribilli, the other side of the Bridge. In a unit.”

“He's a real card, isn't he?” Kylie said to Sheryl. “Okay, let's go to I-Saw.”

“Who dreamed up that awful bloody name?” asked Malone.

“Is it any worse than Yahoo, Sausage, names like that?” She was defensive of I-Saw; after all it had kept her in luxury. “It was a game in the early days, dreaming up smartarse names. There were four- letter ones that almost got on to the companies' register.”

“It's no longer a game,” said Sheryl, taking the car over the Harbour Bridge.

“No,” said Kylie and was abruptly silent.

Milson's Point was another of the original grants to early settlers; modern-day developers wince at the luck of James Milson. He was a farmer from Lincolnshire, who, to his credit, couldn't believe his own luck. Today the Point and its neighbour, Kirribilli, are the most densely settled area north of the harbour. The ghost of James Milson occasionally stands on the Point, beneath the grey rainbow of the bridge, and looks across at the city skyline. Standing behind him, more solidly fleshed, are developers and estate agents wondering how much higher they can push property prices.

Errol Magee had had the sense not to call his building I-Saw House. It had a number, was twelve storeys high and stood between two high-rise blocks of units—excuse me, apartments. Other high-rise buildings ran down to the water's edge, a wall of cliff. Gulls cruised the upper storeys as if looking for ledges on which to nest.

Sheryl, true to her training, parked in a No Standing zone. The three of them got out of the car and went into the building and up to the executive floor. There was no one in the lobby and no one in the lifts. Malone had the abrupt feeling that he was entering a shell.

The executive floor was like none that Malone had ever been on. A receptionist lolled in a chair behind a desk on which were two computers. Behind her were empty work-stations, yards from which the horses had bolted. In the far distance two men sat behind a long table.

“Can I help you?” She was in her early twenties, jeans and a plaid shirt open almost to her belt. She was pretty but appeared to have done everything she could to avoid the label. “Oh, it's you, Kylie! Hi.”

“These are the police, Louise. Who's in today?”

The girl looked over her shoulder towards the far distance, then turned back. She hadn't risen. “Just Jared. You want to see him?”

“No,” said Malone, “she doesn't want to see him. I do, Inspector Malone. Now do you think you could stir yourself and tell Jared we're here and that I'm not a patient man? Right, Detective Dallen?”

“Oh, boss,” said Sheryl, “you have a terrible temper. Better do what he says, love.”

The girl looked at Kylie as if to say, Where’d you dig up these two? Then she got up and sauntered down towards the end of the room.

Malone looked at Kylie. “Are they all like that who work in IT? Rude and laid back?”

For the first time since leaving Minto she smiled. “No. But she's a mathematical whiz, she's not really the receptionist. The girl they had had manners.”

“Where's she now?” Malone looked around. “Where's everybody?”

Kylie shrugged, the smile suddenly gone. She's more worried than she's letting on, thought Malone.

Then Louise, the mathematical whiz, came back. “He'll see you.”

Malone, Sheryl and Kylie travelled the huge floor, walking between the work-stations that, empty, looked like stylized roofless caves. As they came to the end of the room the two men at the long table stood up.

The taller of the two men came round the table and put out his hand. “I'm Jared Cragg.” It sounded more like a rock-heap than a name, but Malone, who remembered the good old days of Clarrie and Joe and Smithy, kept his face expressionless. He couldn't imagine this soft-faced, slimly built man being called Craggy. But the soft paw was much firmer in its grip than he had expected. “It's about Errol? Oh, this is Joe Smith.”

Malone couldn't believe his luck; he shook hands warmly with Smithy. “Yes, it's about Mr. Magee.”

“Well, basically, he's a bastard.” Cragg couldn't have been more than thirty, but he looked as if his last ten years had been flattened and stretched like strudel dough. His eyes were tired and disillusioned, they had none of the spark of the New Economy. “Have you caught him yet?”

“Caught him?”

“Well, he's basically done a bunk, hasn't he? He knew who was coming in today. Mr. Smith is from Ballantine, Ballantine and Kowinsky. The receivers.”

Smith was middle-aged in every way: dress, looks, demeanour. He made Cragg in his dark blue shirt with button-down collar and no tie, his off-white cargo pants and his trainers look like an over-the-hill teenager. But he was good-humoured, as if he had decided that was the only way to combat the depression of throwing businesses out on the street.

“My men are down in the finance department,” he said. “When we came in this morning all Mr. Cragg's staff just up and left, as if we'd come to fumigate the place. No offence, Mr. Cragg. It's the way we're always greeted.” He smiled as if to show it was water off a platypus' back. “One gets used to it.”

“It's a regular business, receivership?” said Malone.

“Like cremation,” said Smith and smiled again.

“Who ordered the cremation?”

Smith hesitated, but Malone's look told him: don't hedge, mate. “The Kunishima Bank. They're Japanese, from Osaka.”

“And what have you found?”

“It's too early to say,” said Smith, hedging. “But the losses are considerable, otherwise we wouldn't be here.”

Malone looked back at Cragg. “What do you think happened to Magee?”

Cragg ran a pondering hand over his head. His hair was cut to such a short stubble that it looked like dust; Malone waited for him to look at his hand to see if any had come off. He, too, was hedging. “Well, basically, from what I read in the papers, the joke on the computers about a ransom for Kylie—” He nodded at her as if she were no more than a prize doll on a sideshow stall.

Malone wondered who had told the media about the messages on the computers. “You don't want to believe everything you read in the newspapers. So you think he killed the maid on his way out, just as an afterthought?”

“No!” Kylie up till now had remained silent in the background. “Errol wouldn't hurt a fly—”

“He's hurt three hundred workers,” said Cragg. “All of them downsized without, basically, any redundancy pay. He's a bastard,” he repeated.

“You haven't answered my question,” said Malone. “You think he killed the maid?”

“Well, no-o . . .” Cragg all at once looked lost: not just for words, but as if the scene he looked out on, the rows of work-stations, had abruptly turned into a landscape he didn't recognize. “No, I know it doesn't sound like him—basically—”

“Of course it doesn't!”

Malone motioned for Kylie to keep quiet. “Could he have been kidnapped?”

“Why? Why would anyone want to kidnap him and ask for a ransom?” Cragg frowned. “Jesus, everyone's known for the past week we're broke—”

“Maybe one of your staff, or several of them, thought there was some money hidden that would pay for him?” Sheryl had picked up a nod from Malone. Two interrogators were always better than one. It was Malone's old cricket strategy, different-type bowlers from opposite ends. “Is there any money missing?”

The last question was directed at Smith; he shook his head. “Too early to tell.” Then he added undiplomatically, “There often is.”

“Where would it be?” Kylie had lapsed back into sullen silence, but now her nose pointed to the scent of money.

Smith shrugged. “Anywhere in the world. I'm not saying there is any, but if there is our clients have first call on it. They are the major debtors.”

Malone gave Cragg a hard stare, taking over the bowling again. “Did you know the state of affairs?”

Cragg spread his hands, like a man pushing away cards he had been dealt that had no value. “I'm not a money man. I came in here two years after Errol had got it off the ground—he wanted my technical experience. I worked in Silicon Valley for two years—I came back here and I could take my pick of jobs. Errol made the best offer.”

“You've got options?” said Sheryl and again after a slight hesitation Cragg nodded. He seemed off-balance with the two-pronged attack. “On paper you'd have been wealthy. Did you sell when you saw the share price going down?”

“What business is it of yours?” He was growing angry.

“We cover every angle,” said Malone and waited.

Cragg hesitated again, looked at Smith, then back again at Malone and Sheryl. “Well, basically, yes—”

Then Malone saw the woman come in the door at the far end of the long room and pause by the reception desk. He was long-sighted, but it was a moment before he recognized Caroline Magee. She stared down towards the group, then turned and was about to disappear when Malone called out, almost a shout, “Mrs. Magee!”

“Mrs. Magee?” said Cragg. “Who's that, his mum?”

“He doesn't have a mum,” said Kylie. “It's his bloody wife!”

“His wife?” Cragg looked at Kylie as if she had suddenly become an unwanted refugee. “He has a wife?”

“I wonder if she controls any of his assets?” said Smith and looked like a prospector who had just come on an unexpected reef. Then he saw Malone look at him and he smiled yet again. “Sorry. Just a thought.”

Caroline Magee came leisurely down through the desert of work-stations. She has style, thought Malone; the sort of style Kylie Doolan would never achieve. She was dressed in a dark-green suit with a cream silk shirt under it; a heavy gold bracelet on her wrist and a thin gold chain round her neck were the only decoration. The dark auburn hair was sleek on her head and the large hazel eyes were cautious but confident. She smiled at Malone, ignoring the others.

“Hello, Inspector. What do we have—good news or bad news?”

“No news so far.” Malone introduced her to Sheryl, Cragg and Smith. Kylie had stepped back a pace or two, as if into a frigid zone. “Has he contacted you?”

“Not a word.” Then she turned to Cragg. “Errol mentioned you, Mr. Cragg. Said you held the company together.”

Smith laughed; he was the most jovial accountant Malone had ever met. Cragg gave him a sour look, then said, “I think Errol was kidding, Mrs. Magee. While I was holding it together, he was basically pulling it apart.”

Caroline nodded agreeably. “That would be Errol. Wouldn't it, Miss Doolan?”

Kylie thawed, but only a degree. “He always treated me okay.”

“One can see that,” said Caroline, spraying freezer. Then she turned to Smith. “Will there be any debt?”

“Oh, I should think so.” Christ, thought Malone, I bet he goes to cemeteries and dances on graves. “Perhaps you could spare me half an hour for a talk?”

She returned his smile. “Forget it, Mr. Smith. There's nothing in my name nor with my signature on it. Did he have you sign anything?” She drew Kylie in again from Antarctica.

Kylie suddenly looked pinched, even sick. “Only for credit cards.”

“Jesus!” Cragg ran his hand over his head. “He's left us all holding the can!”

“Not me,” said Caroline.

Then Sheryl, who had been silent up till now, said, “Did he ever talk with you about places he'd like to go to, to live in retirement?”

“Like Majorca? It's a little crowded there, isn't it? But then, it's easier to get lost in a crowd, isn't it?”

Malone wondered what sort of man Errol Magee had been that neither his wife nor his girlfriend appeared too upset at his disappearance. But then as he and Detective Constable Fernandez had agreed, women were a mystery.

“We'll find him eventually, Mrs. Magee,” he said. “We sometimes have unsolved murders on our books, but when we know who the murderer is, we usually find him. No matter how long it takes.”

“So you basically think he killed the maid,” said Cragg.

“We never use the word basically in Homicide, Mr. Cragg. With us, it either is or it ain't. Not basically.”

“I don't believe Errol killed Juanita,” said Kylie.

“Neither do I,” said Caroline.

They looked at each other as if they had heard disembodied voices. They will never be friends, thought Malone, but they'll defend Magee if only because they want to get to him before we do. And he began to wonder if the women, separately, knew more than they were telling.

Then the computer on the table behind Cragg began to print out a message. Malone stepped round Cragg and read it: There’s a call for you, Jared. They won’t speak to anyone but you.

He looked towards the far end of the room. Louise had sat back from the computer on her desk and was looking towards them. Crumbs, he thought, they even talk to each other on the screens. “It's for you, Mr. Cragg. The phone.”

“Thanks,” said Cragg sarcastically and picked up one of the three phones on the table. “Put them through, Louise.”

Then: “Yes, this is Jared Cragg. Who's that? Who?”

Then he looked at Malone, nodded at a second phone and reached across and pressed a button. Malone picked up the second phone.

“Look—” Cragg was showing no agitation; Malone, watching him, had to admire him. “How do we know you've got Mr. Magee?”

“He was the one who gave us your name,” said the woman at the other end of the line. It was an Australian voice, Malone remarked, no accent. Over the past few years the police had started to divide crims up into ethnic groups, much to the loud disapproval of ethnic groups. “He's all right, Mr. Cragg. He hasn't been harmed—not so far. He said you'd be able to raise the money we're asking. Five million dollars, US.”

Cragg raised his eyebrows at Malone, who gestured at him to keep talking. “US? Why US?”

“You know what the Aussie dollar is like, Mr. Cragg. Up and down like a yo-yo. Five million, American.”

“Mr. Magee knows we don't have that sort of money right now, US or Aussie. He would've told you that, right?” There was silence at the other end. “Right? Well, I'm confirming it. Name a reasonable sum and I'll see what we can raise.”

“You can raise the five million. Try your partners, the Kunishima Bank. I'll call back at five this evening. Have the money by then.”

“Just a moment,” said Malone, cutting in. “This is Detective-Inspector Malone, of Homicide. Put Mr. Magee himself on.”

The woman laughed, a pleasant laugh. “You're kidding, aren't you? Get lost, copper. This is between us and Magee's company.”

“Did you kill the Magee maid? That puts it between you and me.”

There was a moment's silence, then the phone went dead.

Cragg said, “Can you trace that call?”

“Maybe the area, but not the actual phone. Sheryl, get them started on that.”

“Right away, sir.” She checked the number of I-Saw, then went quickly down to the reception desk.

“Did you recognize the woman's voice?” Malone asked Cragg.

“A woman?” Kylie's voice rose. “Holy shit, he's got another woman?”

“It's getting crowded,” said Caroline Magee and there was just a hint of a smile around her lips.

Malone ignored them both. “If they're demanding ransom for Magee, if they do have him, why the pantomime of the ransom notes on the computers for Miss Doolan?” But he was talking to himself; he wasn't looking for an answer from the others. “Could the woman on the phone be someone who works here?”

“I didn't recognize the voice,” said Cragg. “You still think someone from here organized all this?”

“I don't know. We consider every possibility and then start eliminating them. I still think the strongest possibility is that Errol organized his own kidnapping and it all went wrong when the maid was killed. Maybe the woman is in on the scam with him—”

“Bastard!” said Kylie.

Malone had been thinking aloud, something no cop should ever do. He realized it and tried to get his thoughts and his tongue under control. He looked at Caroline: “Did he ever mention another woman to you?”

“Only Miss Doolan,” said Caroline and made it sound as if Miss Doolan were no more than graffiti on a wall.

Malone swallowed his smile, turned back to Cragg. “I want a list of everyone who's worked here in the past twelve months.”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone. It shouldn't be any problem, Mr. Cragg.” He nodded at the deserted work-stations, every one with its own computer. “Not with Information Technology.”

He spoke with the sarcasm of a troglodyte who still scratched sketches on the wall of his cave. Cragg and Smith looked at him as if they saw him exactly like that.

“Can we help?” asked Smith.

“Just see no money goes out, five million or even a dollar. No ransom, unless you talk to us first. We'll be in touch.”

He walked down the long room to where Sheryl waited for him at the reception desk.

“They've started the trace,” she said. “But they're not hopeful.”

“Good,” said Malone, but entertained no hope. “Have you got Louise's full name?”

“Louise Cobcroft.”

“Why do you want my name?” Louise was standing at her desk, antagonism in every line of her slim body. She had drawn her hair back, holding it in place with a headband, and it improved her looks, showing the fine bonework in her face. Her eyes were almost glassy in their severity. “What's going on?”

“Louise, you stayed on the phone when that call came through for Mr. Cragg. I saw you, you listened to every word. Do you usually do that on your boss' calls?”

“No-o.” She backed down, but only an inch.

“Did you recognize that woman's voice? One of your workmates, for instance?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Why were you so interested in the call? Did the woman mention Mr. Magee when she first came on the line?”

“No-o.” She was looking less and less confident.

“How well did you know Mr. Magee? Did you work closely with him?”

“Yes.”

“How close?” said Sheryl, coming in at the other end of the pitch. She's learning, thought Malone, she's going to be a good change bowler.

“We'd work at night together—”

“That all?”

Suddenly all the stiffness went out of Louise. She glanced down towards the far end of the room. The group there were looking in the direction of Malone and the two women. Louise sighed and turned back to Malone and Sheryl. “Okay, sometimes we'd hold hands—”

Malone grinned. “How tightly?”

Unexpectedly she smiled; it changed her whole face, made her very attractive. “It was nothing serious . . . He had Kylie. But now and again one thing would lead to another . . . You know how it is—” She looked at Sheryl, not at the old man beside her. “Basically, just one-night stands.”

“Here amongst the work-stations?” said Malone.

“No. Up till yesterday the work-stations were in operation twenty-four hours a day. He'd take me home . . .”

“Did he hold hands with any of the other women on the staff?”

“I don't know. He might have . . . And that's all I'm going to tell you. Here comes Kylie. Don't tell her.”

“You talking about me?” said Kylie as she reached them.

“Only sympathetically,” said Sheryl, reacting quicker than Malone. “You must be terribly hurt by what's happened to Errol.”

“Oh, I am,” said Kylie, and sounded as if she might also be pleased. “What's going to happen to you, Louise?”

“Oh, I'll be okay,” said Louise, settling back into her chair. “In this game you're always ready to jump. It's the nature of it.”

“Basically,” said Malone and then from another age asked, “Don't you ever think of long-service leave and superannuation?”

“What are they?” she said, but gave him the pleasant smile again.

IV

Darlene hung up the phone and stepped out of the phone-box into the glare of the Sutherland street. She put on her dark glasses and stepped under the shade of a shop awning. She only knew this southern suburb from passing through it on the way down to the bush cottage. She was a stranger here.

“We've got to get right away from where we usually are,” her mum had said. “We don't make any calls from anywhere near home. I dunno whether they can trace phone calls, but we're not gunna take any chances. Don't use your mobile.”

Shirlee had organized them all, right after breakfast. First, she had spoken to Phoenix, who always wanted to argue: “You go back up to Hurstville and check in at Centrelink, tell ‘em you're still looking for a job. Then go and bank your dole cheque—”

“Ah shit, Mum—”

“Wash your mouth out,” she said, washing dishes.

“Well, for Crissakes, Mum, we're gunna be rich—why the fuck—why the hell've I gotta worry about my dole cheque? Or fuck—or Centrelink? I'm not innarested in a job now.”

“We don't arouse suspicion, that's why. So none of the nosy neighbours back in Hurstville can talk—”

“Mum,” said Corey, lolling back in a chair at the breakfast table, “why d'you think anyone's gunna suspect us? You think they got guys out there, watching Pheeny don't turn up at Centrelink?”

“As for you,” said his mum, the general, “you be certain, you go back to town, you walk around like you got a sore back. Men on workers' compo, the insurance companies, they got private investigators watching you like hawks. I seen it on TV a coupla months ago.”

Corey worked for a haulage company as its chief mechanic. A week ago he had conveniently strained his back and had gone to a doctor, recommended by one of his workmates, who, for the right consideration, would give a death certificate to a glowing-with-health gymnast.

“How long we gunna give ‘em to make up their minds to pay the ransom?”

“Four, five days, a week at the most. They're gunna bargain. I been reading about Big Business, them takeover deals. They bargain for weeks. They do something, I dunno what it means, it's called due diligence.”

“Mum,” said Darlene, putting on her face, looking at it in her vanity mirror, wondering what she would look like when she was a million dollars richer, “this isn't big business. It's a ransom, five million dollars. Petty cash to them.”

“You been working too long at that bank,” said Corey. “You dunno what real money means.”

She put away her mirror and lipstick. “We can't sit around here looking after His Nibs, feeding him, taking him to the toilet . . . I'll give ‘em a deadline. I'll call ‘em today, give ‘em till five 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.

V

“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 Australoids. 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.