When Tom asked for further instructions, I told him that as soon as the razor arrived, he should bring it up for Jack to have a look at. I thanked him and then after hanging up the phone went outside into the driveway and lit up a cigarette, waving to Dai as I saw him turn the corner, directed by a very flustered young policewoman.
“Hello there, Clyde,” he said, stealing my smoke from the corner of my mouth after having shaken my hand, and then he passed me the notebook. “This is for you, from Howard. He said you were to call him if there was anything further you needed to know.”
“Thank you, Dai. Smoking? I thought Howard said you didn’t.”
“What Howard doesn’t know won’t kill him, Clyde, and that includes more than cigarettes.”
I felt myself blushing.
“If you and Harry ever want company, I’d be very happy to spend time with you both.”
“Oh, sorry, Dai. As flattered as I am, I’m sure Harry is too, but—”
“What are you making up my mind about for me this time, Clyde?” Harry said from behind me. I hadn’t heard the door open.
“Clyde’s being a spoilsport, in the true sense of the word.”
“In what way?” Harry asked. I could hear from his voice that he had no idea what had been suggested just before he’d arrived.
“I get pretty excited after a race, Harry, and I’ve got three later today. I was just telling Clyde that I wouldn’t half mind working off my leftover energy in-between you two, if you were up for it.”
The inflection on the word “up” was unmissable.
“We’re still too new at this business—of being a couple,” Harry said. “And we haven’t had this conversation yet. However, if we do ever decide to share, I can’t think of anyone we’d rather invite into our bed … if it ever came to that, of course.”
I knew Harry Jones when he was being polite. Even though there was the teensiest bit of interest, I knew he was being gallant.
“Shame,” Dai said. “Maybe next year, when I come back to train for the Commonwealth Games?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I promise you we’ll keep it in mind.”
He shook our hands and wished us farewell. Harry and I stood side by side with our hands in our pockets, watching him saunter up the driveway and then turn around the building out of sight.
“You’re enough for me, Harry,” I said.
“Were you tempted?”
I shook my head. “Guess we’re going to be playing the swimming coach and the eager swimmer with a bulge in his Speedos tonight then, are we?”
“Too right, Clyde.”
“I might hold you to it then.”
He took one hand from his pocket and placed it on my shoulder. “You know how much I love it when you hold me to it.”
“You’re a dirty boy, Harry Jones.”
“Amen, Clyde.”
“Sorry, but I need to have a look at what Howard’s sent me—you could look over my shoulder if you want, there are no secrets that I know of, but you won’t understand any of it anyway—it’s in shorthand.”
“More strings to Howard’s bow than we knew of,” Harry said.
“And more men in his bed than just Dai, if you ask me.”
Harry chuckled. “Some men have all the luck.”
“Are you talking about you and me, Harry Jones?”
He gave my elbow a quick squeeze. “Perhaps I am, Clyde. I’ll see you inside in a moment—don’t be long, your tea will get cold.”
*****
I couldn’t say what shocked me more. What I’d read in Howard’s long, word-for-word account of his telephone conversation with the man who’d been at Dr. Bagshaw’s Home while Johnny had been there, and his interviews with some of Johnny’s contemporaries at the home, or when I returned to the forensic room to see Brendan Fox and Mark Dioli, who’d obviously returned from Kensington early, standing in the doorway sipping tea.
I bent down at Luka’s side to check him. He seemed to be sleeping soundly.
“I gave him a muscle relaxant,” Jack said. “He’ll sleep for a few hours yet. He was as tense as a coiled-up spring.”
“Hello, Brendan,” I said and then greeted Dioli, who seemed very subdued. I expected him to be furious with me.
“I’d have preferred it if you’d passed this by me, Clyde,” the detective inspector said.
“Pass what by you, Brendan? I’m a consultant, remember. Just gathering information ready to pass on to D.S. Dioli. It’s his case after all.”
His soft smile and slightly narrowed eyes said it all. Oh yeah, Smith, and I’m Ronald Reagan the movie star, too. I read it in his face. We’d known each other for ages.
“So did you learn anything from your friend?” he asked, nodding at Luka.
“Not yet, but we will, I’m sure.”
“Mystics? Really, Clyde?”
“Say that to your grandfather’s face, Brendan … if you dare.”
Brendan’s grandfather on his mother’s side was a member of the Sufi Khalwati sect, which had been banned in Egypt in the early part of the century. Nothing much was known about them except that they practised Islam mysticism and had close links to the Romany tribes in North Africa.
He stared at me long and hard and then said, “Touché, Smith.”
“Shukrân, Fox,” I said, using one of the few Arabic words I remembered from my time in North Africa. Please, you’re welcome, and thank you were the first words anyone learned in a foreign language.
His snort at my “thank you” in his grandfather’s language made me realise he’d understood that in good policing, we couldn’t afford to ignore anything, no matter how irrelevant or seemingly trivial.
“So, then, Smith,” Dioli said, “if you’ve been ‘consulting’, have you got anything to share with us? Or has it all been pissing into the wind?”
“You will apologise to Clyde this instant, Dioli,” Brendan snapped, red in the face and furious. “In fact, I think it’s about time I pull you off this case. I’ve heard nothing about you that hasn’t included your blasted rudeness to fellow officers and self-obsessed brinkmanship—”
“Wait, Brendan,” I said. “Mark’s been through a lot lately. He’s got too much on his plate, juggling two cases at once, and he’s just out of hospital. Take it easy on him for a while. He’s not usually like this with me, are you, Mark?”
The one thing I had learned about Mark Dioli was that he knew which side of his bread was buttered. “No, I’m sorry. Momentary lapse of manners. I’m still recovering from my injuries and the possibility of my grandfather’s trial and the fact I might never see him again …”
Fox would have nothing of it. I could tell. He glared angrily at his detective sergeant, and just when I thought he was about to rip into him again, I spoke.
“I believe I have the name of the killer,” I said loudly, in an attempt to stop what I knew might be a savage and humiliating experience for Mark.
“You do?”
I held up the notepad Dai had given me. “With this, and a few other bits and pieces my assistant Tom is bringing up at about half past ten, I can bring you up to speed. I’ve arranged for Billy Tancred to meet us next door in the old lockup. Jeff Ball will also be there. What I’ve learned over the past few days involves everyone, and I think it’s only right you all should hear what I have to say.”
“Why Tancred?” Brendan asked.
“Because he’s a Q.C., he has a direct link to the case, and he’s been able to access court records that a cop would give his eye teeth to be able to get his hands on, and he left a message saying he has more information and will bring it when he comes. That’s why.”
“What shall we do about Luka?” Harry asked.
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Jack said. “Unless you need me there too?”
“Just let us know if he wakes up please.”
“Very well, Clyde. Mr. Praz will be out of it until the early afternoon. I put a little sedative in with the muscle relaxant. He’
ll thank me for it when he comes to.”
“Thanks, Jack.” I checked my watch. It was ten o’clock already. “Half an hour from now in the old lockup. I’ll see you all there.”
I slipped him a page from my notepad, on which I’d written: Tom will be bringing something up for you to look at too. I’d be grateful if you could check it over please, Jack? Tom will explain.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The beauty of holding the meeting in the old lockup was that we’d often used it the same way a crime room might be set up.
Tom had arrived just before the meeting was about to start, a little breathless, explaining he’d just delivered the razor to Jack, and at the same time handing me a large envelope.
“What’s this?” I’d asked him.
“It’s from Mr. Tancred,” he’d replied. “He asked me to give you this.”
I’d glanced across the room and seen Billy, deep in conversation with Brendan Fox, who he’d also known from our times together in North Africa. Billy had shot me back a quick wink and a smile before returning to pay attention to whatever Brendan had been saying.
The envelope contained two bundled documents of several pages each, hole punched in the top left-hand corner, and fastened with a brass cotter pin. The first was the long copy of Johnny’s service record; the second was his placement history—first in an orphanage, followed by three months at Petersham Boys’ Home, and then at the Dr. Bagshaw Home in Mudgee. I glanced through it, intrigued that he’d gone from the Dr. Bagshaw’s straight into the army at the age of eighteen. He’d worked at the home for two years before that, after he’d turned sixteen. Orphans were regularly discharged at that age, so if they’d kept him on and given him a job there, they must have liked him.
Just then Jeff Ball and his adjutant arrived, so I thought it was time to get the show on the road. Once introductions had been made and everyone had settled, I walked to a small desk I’d set up between the blackboard and the pin board.
“Those of you who worked with me when I was D.S. next door will be used to my ‘Agatha Christie’ type denouements. Vince will tell you I was renowned for making everyone very busy while I rootled around in the background, doing my own thing, and yes, not keeping the others up to speed and then calling a meeting just like this, at which I’d famously and irritatingly lay out my cards on the table.
“Because of the nature of this case, and the confidential informants involved, this time it’s been a necessity rather than my old workplace modus operandi. I’ll ask for forgiveness before I start, because some of what I might tell you might make you deservedly angry. If any of my men had pulled this sort of stunt while I was running the shop next door, I’d have booted their arses from here to kingdom come.”
Brendan Fox smiled, but his eyes were hard. There wasn’t much he could do about it though, because much of what I had to say fell under our special investigation into police crime and corruption.
I picked up a large, blue, covered book and held it up. “This is a standard text, issued to certain murder investigation units in Great Britain. It’s a worldwide study of ritualised sexual killings. Rather than a manual on how to deal with such crimes, this book is a study of the activities of murderers from around the world who each killed a series of victims during or immediately after sexual activity. I remember consulting it years back when we were working on a case that involved a string of prostitutes found dismembered, their body parts deposited in garbage cans all over Glebe. We had no idea who was behind the murders, or when and where he’d strike again.
“In the early hours of this morning, I woke up suddenly, having remembered a particular case in this book. Perhaps it had been lurking around in the back of my mind and something triggered my memory, but I got out of bed and re-read the story of Louisiana Lola.”
“Louisiana Lola?” Mark Dioli asked.
“Yes. That wasn’t her real name of course, but the case goes with the name the police gave her.” I gave them a precis of her story:
Between 1946 and 1948 the bodies of twenty men were found, each a month apart, in cheap motel rooms they’d hired, presumably to spend time with a prostitute. They were the types of establishment that rented by the hour—hence the presumption. All of the men had been stabbed in the back and kidneys multiple times and then shot through the back of the head. The weapon was later revealed to be a Walther PPK fitted with a silencer and fired with a pillow wrapped around it. The room’s television volume also turned up to help muffle the sound.
The case had driven the police crazy because no one had ever seen any of the men enter the motel room with a woman. Nor could they be sure whether the woman herself was the murderer or whether she had an accomplice. The victim was always unaccompanied when he paid for the room. The only reason they’d initially assumed the murderer was a woman was because of the lipstick marks in various places on the victim’s body—mostly on his neck and shoulders.
The choice of the final victim was Lola’s undoing: an ex-marine, down on his luck, who’d picked her up in a bar and had taken her to a motel with the express purpose of beating her up and stealing whatever money she had in her purse, and perhaps taking her keys and robbing her house afterwards. He’d decided he’d wait until after he’d had sex with her. She’d always arranged to lie at the edge of the bed, her open handbag on the floor, so she could quickly reach down at the moment of his orgasm, retrieve her stiletto from her bag, and start stabbing before the man knew what had hit him and while he was in the throes of ejaculation. No one reacted to a man’s yells in a seedy motel room; it was expected all sorts of things went on there.
The ex-marine later explained he never had one of those gut-wrenching, tooth-grinding orgasms—his were always short and sweet and relatively noiseless. He’d been quick enough to grab the woman’s arm. She’d been hesitating, confused about whether he was just letting out another grunt or shooting his load. He beat her senseless before calling the cops. Her confession had been given freely and made for disturbing reading.
From the age of eleven, her father had abused her, almost on a daily basis. Every night he’d encouraged her to fellate him, had given her a dollar and then had slapped her about, telling her she was a whore, destined to go to hell. But once a month, after his regular poker game with his friends, he’d come home drunk, crawl into her bed, make love to her, tell her how wonderful she was, and he’d return her oral favours before having sexual intercourse with her.
As an adult, she turned to prostitution, working out of cheap bars and having sex with men on the back seats of their cars parked in dark streets, or in dark alleyways standing up against the wall. She said she’d be eager to make them feel good, but then vomit and clean herself with disinfectant afterwards, to try to “wash away the bad”.
However, once every four weeks, she’d get dressed up to the nines and drive across the State, go to somewhere known to be frequented by ex-servicemen and white-collar workers, pick up a man and become amorous with him. She admitted she usually ensnared them by saying she was married and couldn’t be seen going to their homes, suggesting a local motel room. More than one bartender had been obliged to ask the couple to leave because of their unabashed kissing and her inappropriate groping. These were the men she chose as her victims and then killed.
When asked why, she reported that it was because of her father and those occasions, once a month, when he’d come home drunk after playing cards with his buddies. After he’d been tender, attentive, and had made love to her, he’d beaten her senseless. Often she’d been dragged around the house by the hair, and once he’d even thrown her down the stairs. One day, at the age of sixteen, desperately fearful of falling pregnant by her own father, and terrified of the mindless violence after copulation, she decided she’d had enough. She hid a meat skewer under her pillow and a kitchen knife under the edge of the mattress. At the moment of his ejaculation, she stabbed him through the eye with the skewer and then plunged the knife into his back until he fell against
her, dead. She went to the bathroom and scrubbed herself with bleach, took his wallet and gun, shot him in the head, just to make sure, and then set fire to the house.
When I finished telling the story, I held the book up again, opened at the page titled, “Louisiana Lola”.
“The profile of this killer made a lot of sense to me,” I said, “especially after I managed to interview two local men who gave me information about the Silent Cop killer. Each of them had a different friend, who, by luck, got away from our murderer. And before you ask, one of those very lucky blokes is dead and the other wouldn’t speak to me, but his account, although related second-hand, was verified to me by someone else as being accurately reported.”
Vince and Brendan raised their eyebrows or muttered sounds of surprise. Dioli was about to speak, but I didn’t give them the chance to ask about Allan and Max, the friends of Boyd and Neil, the men who’d been fortunate enough to get away, because I hadn’t finished what I was saying and I wanted to keep the identities of my informants at Craig’s baths secret if I could.
“Now you know Lola’s story,” I continued, “let me outline what I’ve learned from my confidential informants about the two lucky men who escaped, combine it with what our witness told us, together with what we know from the crime scenes, so that you understand why I think Louisiana Lola’s modus operandi is relevant to our Silent Cop killer.”
“But you said you know who he is?” Dioli looked puzzled. “You told us next door in the forensic department you know his name.”
“Yes, thanks to someone who provided me the information in this shorthand pad, which I’ve only just received, I do know the murderer’s birth name. But finding him is going to be the major problem because according to these notes, he’s been using a different alias since near the end of the war and we don’t know what it is … yet.”
Billy looked as if he was about to say something, but then changed his mind. If it had been important, I know he would have interrupted me.
The Gilded Madonna Page 38
