The Easy Sin by Jon Cleary Read Free Book Online Page A

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.
    â€œOh 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.”
    â€œShe say anything about him being kidnapped instead of her?”
    â€œShe 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?”
    â€œWe'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.
    â€œIt'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 !”
    â€œAll 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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œI 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—”
    â€œWe'll take care of her, there'll be surveillance on her. Eventually—” He shrugged. “Is she strong?”
    â€œToo strong. She's always known what she wanted.”
    â€œWhat was that?” said Sheryl.
    â€œMoney, 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?”
    â€œDead, 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?”
    â€œYes,” said Malone. “But you've got your girls.”
    â€œSure,” 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