“Morphine?”
“His right knee is a mess. Probably reconstructed during the war by the look of it. I’d say a field hospital. The wires holding his patella in place would have allowed little flexion in his gait, and the calcification around the joint showed severe progressive arthritis as a result.”
“You’re saying he had a limp?” Harry asked.
“Yes, and the poor bastard lived with a lot of pain. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did … and before you ask, the tissue samples and other fluids have gone to the hospital for forensics. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for results because of the holiday season, but I’d say he’d given himself a shot for the pain and then, while flying as high as a kite, decided he needed a bit of extra-marital enjoyment, cleaned himself out, and then went out on the prowl. Jar of Vaseline in his coat pocket, too.”
“Extra-marital?”
“Sorry, bad choice of words. He was single.”
I threw back the sheet. “Nice man too,” I said and then examined the cross-shaped wound above the man’s pubis. I noticed there was no Catseye marble, so turned to Jack and raised an eyebrow. He stretched behind his back and rattled a stainless-steel kidney dish. The glass ball clinked around inside it.
“Terrible world we live in when attractive men like this need to go tomcatting in the dark, risking injury and worse,” Jack added and then took another enormous bite of his sandwich. A slice of tomato slid from it and slithered onto the floor.
“Lots of unattractive men out there have needs too, Jack. No need to be judgemental about it. It’s not all about physical attraction. Why, just look at me and Harry, for example.”
Jack Lyme nearly choked on his sandwich. He went so red in the face I had to thump him on the back. Harry merely smiled at me and gave me a surreptitious wink.
“Levity in the mortuary?” Vince said, after throwing open the door.
He looked exhausted. I’m not sure I looked much better.
“It’s not a mortuary, Detective Constable Paleotti, as well you know,” Jack said, having recovered from his coughing fit. “It’s a forensic department.”
“I see a corpse on a slab. That’s good enough for me.”
*****
We sat outside, at the back of the police station. There was an empty patch of grass with a bench, which had once been used for lunches, long ago abandoned for that purpose as everyone was too busy to take their official lunch break and usually ate at their desks. Besides that, the enormous jacaranda that used to cover the area and give shade in the hottest months had been cut to the ground by some council vandal who couldn’t be bothered cleaning its leaves from the gutters.
“Ex-R.A.A.F., as we originally deduced by the wings on his wallet,” Vince said, handing me the folder in which he’d written some case notes. “Shot down in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, hauled out of the water, and his leg saved from amputation by a quick-thinking military surgeon who happened to be on the American PT boat that rescued him. Distinguished Flying Cross and two other decorations.”
“Poor bastard,” I said, feeling terribly angry that such a person should have come to such an end.
“There’s this too,” Vince said, handing me a framed photograph.
A profound silence fell between the three of us. The photograph was of the victim, his arm around another man of a similar age, both smiling at the camera. In the bottom corner of the frame was a death notice, placed by the man who was lying on the slab, bidding farewell to “the best mate a man could ever have and who was loved and would be missed dearly”.
It was heartbreaking. We three all realised it was one man paying tribute to his deceased lover. The obituary was dated February of this year.
“I need a smoke,” Vince said.
We sat quietly for a while. I didn’t know what the other two were thinking, but my mind couldn’t help going to the mates I’d lost in the war. Good men, who’d deserved to have a chance of living a good life, surrounded by those who loved them.
“Clyde …?”
“Yes, Vince. I think I owe you an apology. When I took the piss out of you for suggesting the Bishop case and the Silent Cop murders could be connected, I had no idea … and I still don’t by the way. I have no blasted idea what could be going on, and why I’ve been linked to both cases. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I have an idea,” Harry said quietly.
“You do?” Vince asked.
“That’s why he’s here,” I said. “Not just a pretty face.”
We both chuckled at Harry’s deep blush.
“Well, I think it’s payback,” Harry said. “Someone is deliberately tying Clyde into both of these cases in an effort to get him to solve something they think is unsolvable. It’s revenge for something, trying to humiliate him, it has to be.”
“That makes no sense, Harry—”
“Think about it, Clyde. You’re sent mysterious messages, boxes with clues, all leading to a psychic who knows nothing about it. And then the murders. The timing of them hasn’t escaped me. When did they start again?”
“The day after Dioli arrived at my office with the business card of mine that had been sent to the Bishops.”
“And the same week the first envelope was delivered under your door. The first of the green ink signatures with your name.”
“Hang on, what you’re saying is the kidnapper and the serial killer are one and the same person? It doesn’t make sense. Child murderers and those who kill adults are two different personality types.”
“Who said it was one person, Clyde?”
*****
Could it have been two people? I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. The puzzle felt like two huge boulders rushing down from the top of a tall mountain, each heading in a different direction. I couldn’t reconcile the idea; it was far too abstract.
There was some sense in it, especially Harry’s suggestion that it was revenge on me for some reason. A pair of children missing for three months, and then as soon as I’m pulled into the investigation the sudden reappearance of a serial killer who’d gone dormant, and whose case I’d not been able to crack. From my experience of working extremely complex cases that we thought might be connected, it was always a matter of finding commonalities—things that were shared between the investigations.
I had few right now. My business card with my name written on the back in green ink was the only real thing linking both the abductions and the murders. Unless, of course, the murderer wanted us to think the Bishop children were part of his scheme. Perhaps he’d read about the case and was using it as a way of distracting me away from his true purpose, that of killing vulnerable men in unsavoury places in a sadistic and ultimately bestial way.
There was one thing that disturbed me. Whenever I closed my eyes to think, there was always an image, right there, occupying my field of inner vision. No matter how hard I tried to dismiss it, it appeared unbidden in my mind, floating in the background, pulling me away from my thoughts.
The gleaming statue of the gilded Madonna.
*****
When Vince said he had to go back to work upstairs, I promised him I’d take Steve Davidovic to a retired graphic artist I knew sometime soon, a man who’d done identity sketches for me in the past. We’d get an accurate drawing of the murderer and decide where to go from there. I’d also said I’d call in to visit Dioli in hospital in the morning, but wanted to go for a walk, to think about what Harry had said, before I stuck my head in at the old lockup.
Half an hour later, I was still confused, so joined the others to see how the interview with Lionel Greyson was progressing. Howard Farrell sat opposite him, making notes, and looking like he’d been put through the wringer. There was no mistaking the anguish hovering at the corners of his eyes.
It was close on four o’clock by the time Jeff Ball had heard enough. I’d been sitting quietly, observing and listening for about an hour when Greyson was marched off by two policemen who’d been stand
ing at the door. Jeff and I went outside to have a smoke while Harry stayed behind for a moment, saying he wanted to have a few words with Howard.
“Of all the things I’ve heard about, or read, or lived through, what Greyson had to say was the most vile account of anything I’ve had the misfortune to sit through,” Jeff said. “They were children, Clyde. Kids who had no say in the matter when it came to what was done to them and by whom.”
“How did Howard hold up before I arrived?”
“That man’s made of steel, I tell you. I don’t know if I could have sat so quietly and calmly and had listened to the names of the men who’d not only raped me repeatedly, but had treated me so poorly during the ordeal and after.”
Harry joined us outside on the footpath.
“Give me one of yours please, Clyde,” he said. “I left mine inside.”
“Is Howard all right?” I asked, passing him my cigarette case.
“Just left through the side door. You didn’t see him drive past?”
I shook my head. “No, we were busy chatting.”
“Well, he said he had to head back to the country before it gets dark,” Harry said. “Honestly, although he didn’t show it, I suspect it was an excuse to get away, to give himself some breathing space. He said he’d call us soon and asked me to apologise for running off without saying goodbye.”
“I don’t know how he did it,” Jeff said, passing his lighter to Harry, who’d been patting his pockets looking for his own. “I’d have jumped over the table and throttled Greyson when he described how he’d lined up male visitors for Howard, one after the other. But although his eyes looked tight at the corners, I’d say he had a degree of self-control that I’m not sure I could have managed under the circumstances.”
I shook my head. “Maybe he’s internalising it, Jeff? What good would it have done to have lost control and beaten Greyson to a pulp? Is there any supporting proof, or is his testimony all that we have?”
“I’ll send you a list of the men’s names, Clyde. I think the only hope is if we do a deal.”
“A deal?”
“As much as I hate the idea of promising either immunity from prosecution or the dropping of one or two charges, two of the names he gave me are people we already have in the clink from our earlier court cases—men involved with Keeps and Tocacci.”
“But surely double indemnity …?”
“Different charges, different cases. We can promise them we won’t prosecute the child abuse in exchange for statements corroborating Greyson’s revelations.”
“I hate to think we’d be letting child molesters off anything, Jeff,” I said.
“Me too, my friend. But we’ve only got Greyson’s confession and Howard Farrell’s accusations.”
“You know what, Jeff? I’d go hard on Terrence Dioli. The military can get away with anything. It’s not as if he can call for a lawyer. He’s being held by Army Intelligence. Surely we still have guys who know how to get anything out of anyone?”
For a few moments he stared into my eyes. Something cold glittered in his gaze.
“In a civil case, whatever we did would be considered a confession under duress, but as it’s military ‘persuasion’, we could get away with tougher measures. Is that what you’re thinking?”
I nodded.
“What if he won’t speak?” he asked.
“I know guys who lived through torture by the Japs, Jeff. It would only take a phone call—they’ll tell you ways of persuasion you probably never knew existed.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong, Clyde. We have records on everything that went on during the war … including yours, if you ever want some light reading.”
“I’d rather throw myself under a tram, Jeff. But thanks for the thought.”
“Leave it to me, Clyde. I’ll see what we can do.”
*****
I knew I was waking from a dream.
Even though I was still caught up in the visions my unconscious had created, I was also slightly aware of the real world around me. I could feel the bed beneath my back, the texture of the clean linen sheets we’d changed on the bed that morning, the rumble of Baxter’s deep purr at my side, his back pressed against my ribs, and the soft puffs of Harry’s breath against my cheek as he exhaled in his sleep.
I’d been dreaming that Luka Praz had woken me in the middle of the night, appearing out of the dark, standing astride my body, holding his envelope out to me with one hand, the index finger of his other held to his lips, shushing me.
“What is it, Luka?” I said in my dream, the sound of my voice echoing dully. I seemed to be lying on my back on the bottom of a corrugated iron storm drain that was filled with dense, swirling, dark blue fog.
He replied silently, mouthing the words, “Don’t ask, just open it!”
The words scrolled across my mind in type, accompanying his unvoiced words. It was normally the way people spoke to me in dreams, in written words rather than in sounds, flowing across my thoughts like the follow-the-bouncing-ball captions of a singalong at the cinema. Sometimes, as they spoke, I saw the words form in the same way they did when I sat at the typewriter, letter after letter, joining word after word until sense could be made of the sentence.
“Open it!” he commanded again and then disappeared behind an eruption of purple steam.
As I opened the envelope, a mass of darkness streaked with the colours of dawn flooded from it, swirling around me like a whirlpool, tendrils of black smudged with pale grey-blue streamers, until an image formed before my eyes. It felt so real that my body began to shake.
It was my father, dressed in his Sunday best, but without his hat or jacket. He stood on the edge of a cliff, holding his hand out into the void, his hair whipping around his face and tears pouring down his face. “Audrey, Audrey!” he called out. My mother’s name. The vision filled me with unspeakable sadness, and I began to cry. “Da! Da! Dwi yma, dwi yma … Daddy! Daddy! I’m here, I’m here …”
And then he seemed to take note I’d been standing behind him and turned, looking at me over his shoulder, sadly shaking his head. “I can’t, son, I can’t—”
“No!” I yelled, trying to stop him before he jumped over the edge of the precipice.
Baxter hissed in alarm, leaped from my side, and hurtled out the door.
“What is it, Clyde?” Harry shouted, grabbing me in his arms.
The nightmare slipped away and I found myself sitting up, my hands stretched out in front of me, trembling, my fingers grasping at invisibility. “Just a bad dream,” I said under my breath, and as I recovered slowly. “Sorry if I woke you, Harry.” My heart was pounding in my chest, and I was panting, sweat running down my neck and over my chest.
“Was it about the war?” He kissed the side of my neck.
I shook my head. “No. It was about Luka … and my father.”
“Come on, lie down with me. Settle down for a minute.” He pulled me back onto the bed and I found myself curled around him, my head on his chest.
“You’re sweating, Clyde.”
I reached over to the bedside table and opened the bottom drawer, pulled out a towel, and wiped myself with it. He took it from my hand and blotted the sweat on my forehead and arms.
“It’s that fucking envelope,” I said. “You left it on my desk next to the telephone.”
“You said a rude word.”
“I did … did you look to see what’s inside?”
“No. It’s for you. Why on earth did you think I’d—”
“Sorry, Harry, of course you wouldn’t.”
“Do you want to tell me about your dream?”
“No. Not now. I need to shake it from my body.”
“And you think it’s the envelope that brought it on?”
I nodded.
“Aren’t you curious to know what he wrote?” Harry asked.
“Did he tell you?”
“No, Clyde. He just said I should hold on to it and give it to you when you aske
d for it.”
“Well, he told me that in it there’s a few sheets of paper describing what he saw in his ‘vision’ on Christmas Eve when I visited him and Gălbenele in their shop.”
“Why didn’t he tell you then?”
“Because he said he knew I didn’t believe, and that I should open the envelope and have a look at what’s in it when I finally understood that his gift was genuine and not things he just made up.”
“And your tiepin is what set his vision off?”
“Yes, he was holding it, talking about your shoes, when—”
“My shoes?”
“Yes, that new pair of yours. I decided to wear them in a bit for you on the day I visited him—”
“Aww, so sweet. Well, Clyde, the envelope’s just outside in the study … do you want me to get it?”
“No, not yet. I think he’s right in what he said about me needing to believe. If I never do, then I’m not meant to know. But I’m curious that yesterday at the pool he told me he didn’t know who Billy was, yet pointed him out, telling me that what he’d seen in his vision was connected to him.”
“So where did you get the tiepin? Was it your father’s?”
“No, Harry. Billy gave it to me—that’s why I’ve been obsessing over it. He has one of his own, exactly the same. It’s one of a pair … please don’t tell me I’m going on about it. You don’t believe this necromancy nonsense do you?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” Harry said, “and it’s psychometry, not necromancy; that’s raising the dead.”
“I know, my little joke.”
“Look, Clyde, Luka seems as honest as they come. He believes in what you call nonsense, that’s for sure. Are you sure he didn’t know Billy?”
I shook my head. “No. He told me he didn’t and it seemed genuine. Besides, Billy reaffirmed it on the phone when he rang just after we got in before dinner. He wanted to know who the tall thin man was with the ‘magnificent’ scar.”
“Well, Smith, there’s only one way of dealing with your uncertainty and that’s—”
“Yes, I know, read what’s in the bloody envelope.”
“I didn’t know Billy rang?”
“You went down to the car to pick up your notebook. Said you wanted to read through the notes you took this afternoon during Greyson’s interview.”
The Gilded Madonna Page 25
