The Gilded Madonna

by Garrick Jones

  He set to in the kitchen while I started the process of developing and printing the photographs I’d taken earlier that day. There was a roll of film of the statuette and almost another of various shots of Harry’s blackboard array. By the time I’d hung them out to dry on the internal “washing line” I’d strung across my study for the purpose, Vince announced dinner was ready.

  Salsicce con salsa verde, patatine in padella, broccolini.

  I smiled. What a treat! Sausages with an Italian green sauce made from parsley, basil capers, and garlic, accompanied by sautéed potatoes and baby broccoli shoots. He informed me that as it was my favourite fruit and they were in season, he’d poached half-a-dozen white-fleshed peaches, which he’d peeled and halved. They were now in the fridge, soaking in a little marsala. His mother had sent up a case of mixed stone fruit on the train from Griffith.

  It was nice to sit back and chat in Italian. His was peppered with slang from Lazio, the area in which his parents lived and from where they’d migrated back in the 1920s. Mine, when I didn’t concentrate on Italiano puro, was distinctly Marchigiano, the dialect I’d spoken for three years as a prisoner of war. But, we understood each other, sometimes laughing at unusual words or idioms. I hadn’t been particularly close to him when we’d been working together. He was focused, a no-nonsense detective, and I liked him. But it was only since our mutual involvement on the Daley Morrison case that we’d become mates.

  At about eleven, he started to yawn, so I told him to go home. I’d made photographic copies of the Bishop case documents he’d brought with him. I’d spend some time maybe the next day, or while Harry was here over the weekend, developing them. It was a far quicker method than retyping the whole lot, or even taking them down in shorthand, and would mean I had my own permanent record of the originals, including the case margin notes.

  “Do you think they’re still alive?” he asked me as we stood next to his car. I’d walked him down to the street and we’d had a cigarette. It was balmy, a slight breeze coming from over the ocean—my perfect sort of night, especially as the moon was full in the sky.

  I shook my head. “I really don’t know, Vince, and that’s the honest truth. Most of the ‘Mrs. Keepit’ cases I’ve read about have had the children found within the first six weeks. How long is it now? Three months? Unless the kidnappers have moved interstate there’s a strong possibility we should be looking for bodies. I noticed there’s a lot of places that were never searched, like the storm water drain that goes under the tennis courts and discharges onto the northern end of the beach. No one seems to have checked the caves and ledges along the cliff face between Coogee and Thommo’s Bay, nor have there been searches through the rifle ranges at Kensington or Malabar.”

  “It’s a question of resources, Clyde. There are only so many of us.”

  “Well, I might suggest we get the army involved. Harry’s boss, Jeff Ball, could easily arrange for us to get a few dozen blokes to help out. We’ve become quite good mates since working on the tribunal together. If I can get him to agree, I’ll have to find the best way to let Dioli know, so he doesn’t get offended.”

  “He’s struggling with the Silent Cop killer investigation, Clyde. Did you know a lot of your old case files are missing?”

  “Missing? How can that be, Vince? It’s only three years ago. They should be in storage in the basement.”

  “Remember last year, just before you left, when HQ reorganised the filing system and ordered in all those big cardboard boxes? Well, cold case files were sent into Darlinghurst to be centrally collected, and when Dioli ordered up your old files, he was told they were still in their boxes in a warehouse, packed away with thousands of others from all over Metropolitan Sydney, waiting to be catalogued, ready for that new punched-card system from America. No one knew where to start looking. There’s so many to sift through it could take weeks or even months before they find yours.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Vince. Really?”

  “Clyde …”

  “Yes, Vince?”

  “How long did we work together?”

  “Five, six years maybe.”

  “Long enough for me to know you’ve got copies of your own, haven’t you?”

  “Okay, T. Junior—”

  “That’s the first time you’ve called me by that name for months, Clyde.”

  “It’s because it was Sam’s name for you.”

  “I miss him—”

  “I don’t. Now, about my copies. If, and I say, if I did have my own records, you know that would be against the law.”

  “So, what can we do about it?”

  “We? I’m working the Bishop case, not the murders.”

  “What if they’re connected?”

  “How much have you had to drink, Vince? The abduction of two children and the sexual assault and murder of men in public toilets? I don’t follow your reasoning.”

  He shrugged. “All I know is what you taught me, Clyde. Nothing is a coincidence. You get sent odd messages in green ink at the same time one of your old cases resurfaces?”

  “Well, in this particular instance I can’t see how they could be connected.”

  “Besides, if you did tell the D.S. you had copies of the previous murders, no doubt he’d love to use it against you, even if what you had was really important.”

  I chuckled. “Ah! But then, Vince, what makes you think I haven’t got something over Dioli that might even up the balance?”

  “Have you?”

  I tapped the side of my nose. “See you tomorrow, mate. Drive carefully.”

  After he turned around in the intersection and drove back past me, he flashed the high beam on his car. Had it been the daytime, he might have honked the horn. I remembered he liked those little gestures.

  As I walked into the entranceway of my block of flats, I was thinking of Dioli. I might just have to have a little talk to him privately when I dropped in the copies of Harry’s blackboard notes in the morning and let him know I still had photographic copies of the Silent Cop case.

  No doubt, he’d have a field day, but I never laid myself open to any suggestions of bending the system without some escape plan up my sleeve.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “And what did Dioli say?”

  “He hit the roof!”

  We were having breakfast on Saturday morning after Harry’s first official “sleepover”. I’d been describing how I’d met with Mark Dioli in the room we used for our official investigation in the old lockup next to the police station.

  “He yelled and ranted, saying he was sadly disappointed in me and expected better of someone with my experience …”

  “What did you do?”

  “I waited for him to calm down and then when he finally took a breath, asked him if he wanted copies of my files or not. It was only when he started saying he should report me for misconduct while being a serving officer, that I slammed my own file down on the table in front of him.”

  “Which file was that?”

  “Something I found while I was looking up his police service records on the day I found out about him and his grandfather.”

  “Are you going to tell me?’

  “Of course,” I said. “I need more coffee first.”

  “I’ll make it.” Harry stood and was about to walk past my chair to go to the stove, when I grabbed the edge of his boxer shorts, pulling them down to his knees.

  “Clyde, I don’t know if I can—”

  I laughed. “Me either, but I just wanted to check it’s still there.”

  He raised both arms in the air and did a hip wiggle. I kissed it.

  “So, the file?”

  “Remember the day of Daley Morrison’s funeral? I was sitting in front of Larry the Lamb and Rinaldo Tocacci, taking notes of their conversation about the protection racket in the inner west.”

  “I remember. That’s the day you took off and left me sitting in the graveyard.”

  I went to the stove and folded my arms a
round him, kissing his neck while he fiddled with the mocha pot. “I sent a report to the relevant police stations with the names of the crooks, where they were operating, and included notes about the crime gang operations that Tocacci managed.”

  “And?”

  “And, of course, as I was no longer a serving police officer, they mostly got ignored.”

  “What’s this got to do with Dioli?”

  “One of the biggest areas of interest was in Marrickville.”

  Harry turned to stare at me. “The station that Dioli came from?”

  “Uh huh. You got it, Harry Jones. The file I’d sent had been signed off by him, dated the day he’d received it, with ‘no action required’ and his initials. He probably didn’t even open it. When I saw that, I knew I had him by the short and curlies. That negligence of action is one of the things that could quite easily fall within the purview of our investigation into crime and corruption, especially as it’s connected to Tocacci and Keeps.”

  “Why would he have done such a stupid thing?”

  “Work pressures? The need to clear his desk before he sat his sergeant’s exam? I don’t know to be honest. All I know is he signed off on it, and no action was taken. That’s a way more serious breach of conduct than making copies of investigations for your own private records. I could easily have argued that at the time I simply made them to refer to while I was working the case at home and then, when the investigation went cold, just forgot to destroy my copies.”

  “So what happened when you revealed what you’d found?”

  “He didn’t quite go white, but it’s a long time since I’ve seen a man gape for so long that his cigarette almost fell from the corner of his mouth onto the floor. I hinted that if I didn’t think what he was working on was so important, I might ask him to come in to have a little talk with you, me, Sam, Billy, and your boss.”

  “So then, cards on the table, eh? What was the outcome of your little file-measuring competition?”

  “The outcome might irritate you, but he’s coming for lunch today, and before he arrives you and I are going to spend a few hours sorting through the photographic copies I have of the Silent Cop case to get them into order.”

  “Why here?”

  “Because I won’t be tempted to strangle him and then throw his body out the back window if you’re sitting beside me, Harry Jones.”

  *****

  Mark Dioli and I had spent an hour or so before lunch while I’d talked him through my filing system and had handed him manila folders, on the fronts of which I’d outlined the contents of the photographs of documents inside. I’d explained to him that what I’d given him were the bare bones of each of the four murders, and that there was enough for him to get on with until my files were eventually unearthed at central records. I had plenty of other photographs, but there simply hadn’t been enough time to make copies of everything.

  After lunch, while I’d been cleaning up, I’d listened to him and Harry “shooting the breeze” as the Yanks called it. Dioli had been very interested in Harry’s deciphering work, but as most of it was still classified, my pal had wheedled the conversation around to his adventure tours and bush survival business.

  “Harry’s put an advertisement in the local paper,” I said from the pantry.

  “Really?”

  “Here,” I said. I kept newspapers after I’d read them. I found the paper underneath today’s copies of the Sun, the Mirror, and the Herald, opening it to the page with Harry’s advertisement, and laid it out on the table.

  “Why did you choose a local newspaper instead of one of the major city papers, Harry?” Dioli asked.

  “To start off with, I thought I’d just see if there was any local interest. I’m thinking of holding a few introductory lessons to stir up interest in the basics of rappelling for people who might want to sign up for a Blue Mountains survival course I plan to run in March or April next year. The cliffs around the headlands at both the northern and southern ends of the beach would be—”

  We both spotted it at the same time, Dioli stabbing his finger on another advertisement a few inches below Harry’s.

  “Well, I’ll be …” I said at the same time as Dioli’s, “Well, would you look at this …”

  “What?” Harry asked.

  “This, where the sergeant is pointing.”

  “It’s an advertisement for a fortune teller?”

  “Yes, Harry, but look at her name.”

  He looked amused when he saw what Dioli was pointing to, but we were anything but.

  Fortunes and Divinations

  Tea leaves, Tarot cards, and Psychometry.

  Consultations by appointment only.

  FX-1122

  Madame Marigold Leeks.

  “Mary, gold, leeks. The statuette of the Madonna, gold, and leeks,” I said.

  “Leeks? As in the vegetable or taps?”

  “The long green vegetable. With the daffodil and the red dragon, it’s one of the national symbols of Wales.”

  “That explains the piss, too,” Harry said.

  “Taking a leak” was pretty common these days, mainly because our Australian expression of “having a slash” seemed to have been overtaken by the slang the Yanks had brought with them during the war.

  “Blasted psychics!” Dioli said, folding the newspaper up angrily.

  He was furious, and rightly so. Public offerings by those “gifted” with the sight, or with knowledge from the spirits, or from their dreams, were some of the more irritating bits of information that were constantly sent to the police from mystics or mediums, or in this case, fortune tellers, or even grandmas who’d had a “feeling in their waters”.

  “I’ve got every mind to—”

  “Don’t waste your energy, Detective Sergeant,” I said. If he wasn’t going to use my first name, I’d be buggered if I was going to use his. “You’ll get used to this sort of nonsense after a while.”

  “I’m not unused to psychic ratbags, Smith. We had a drawer in my old nick labelled ‘hocus pocus’ in which all these weird and wonderful tipoffs would end up.”

  “This whole stupid business seems aimed at me. My name is on everything so let me sort it out. I’ll pay her a visit and read her the riot act—in the nicest possible manner of course, no one wants to antagonise the public. You don’t need to get involved, you need to get on with the Silent Cop case, which is far more important.”

  “Why she just didn’t telephone and speak to the desk sergeant with whatever it is she’s had a vision of, I’ve no idea. I don’t know about here, but other than phone calls, my few encounters at Marrickville were long, rambling letters. Never anything on this scale, with clues here and there and all over the shop. Gives me the right shits, to be honest.”

  “I’ll speak with her. The last thing we want is her going to the mainstream newspapers with some hare-brained notion and end up saying you wouldn’t listen to her. There’ll be letters for months from outraged readers of the daily horoscopes cluttering up your in tray. She probably thinks she’s being clever, sending all these obtuse hints. Maybe for her it’s a test to see if I really am as good as the papers say I am. Anyway, I don’t have a lot of patience with time-wasters, so I’ll tell her if she keeps it up, I’ll report her to you boys for being a public nuisance. Either that or get my solicitor to slap a restraining order on her. What she’s done could easily be seen as misleading information and interfering with an ongoing investigation.”

  “Very well, I’ll let you get on with it. Will you let the Bishops know too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, thank you for lunch. I appreciate what you’ve given me on the Silent Cop case. I’ll start with that until your original files turn up.”

  “Feel free to contact me if you need anything cleared up. I have my private notebooks stored away too. It wouldn’t take me long to check them.”

  “Any chance I could have a look before I go?’

  “Of course, as long as you
can read shorthand?”

  “Sorry, Smith. Not my area, but I’ll let you know if I need more information when I’m going through what you’ve given me … and by the way, I’m familiar with tea leaves and Tarot cards, but what the hell is psychometry?”

  “It’s the art of divining the past or the future from touching a physical object,” Harry offered. “The Yanks tried it out during the war.”

  “What?”

  Even I was astounded.

  “We thought they were crazy, but after the Battle of the Coral Sea, all sorts of crackpot schemes came along with the boys of the red, white, and blue. There were rumours that some of the top brass in the U.S. military tried to get mystics to help them find Japanese ships in the Pacific using personal belongings of captured sailors. There was also someone high up in Roosevelt’s circle who ‘contacted the spirits’ to divine where the Nazi wolf packs were during the days of the Atlantic convoys. Even after the war, when they were looking for looted treasure, they had people with divining rods and Ouija boards sending troops out into forests and exploring caves.”

  “Our people never did anything so ridiculous, surely?” I asked and then when Harry gave me one of those looks as a reply. “All right, sorry, just asking.”

  “Clyde, we might be a nation of dingbats but we don’t go chasing after spirits for advice.”

  “Agreed,” Dioli said and then apologised, saying he had to get back to the office and start to go through the material I’d given him.

  “I’d invite you to my house for a return meal sometime, but my grandfather is old and doesn’t like strangers. Maybe I could shout you lunch one day when the dust has settled.”

  “That would be nice, Mark,” Harry said. I remained silent, but shook his hand when he left.

  *****

  “There’s something too managed about him, Clyde,” Harry said while we were clearing up the kitchen. “I get this sense that who we see isn’t who he is inside.”

  “Tighter than a fish’s bum at a thousand fathoms,” I said.