The Gilded Madonna

by Garrick Jones

  “The cross-shaped incision above the pubis of the victims is the sign for a target. A Catseye reflector marble is in lieu of the gemstones used for shrapnel,” I explained.

  “But the cut throats? How is that part of Kemeny’s modus operandi?” Brendan asked.

  I waved the shorthand pad in the air. “The superintendent at the home had a very good memory and some serious concerns about Dennis Kemeny. Although he reported his suspicions to the local police, our friend with the green eyes had disappeared into thin air.”

  “Serious concerns?”

  “In 1947, just after Dennis visited our ex-C.O. and learned the details of Johnny’s death, the superintendent remembered Kemeny turning up on the doorstep of the Dr. Bagshaw’s Home in Mudgee, asking if Bishop or the groundsman were still around. Kemeny had left the home four years before, when he turned sixteen. The superintendent told him he was new, but had heard that the groundsman had died eighteen months beforehand, stabbed in his sleep while dead drunk by persons unknown, and Bishop had retired shortly after to a property not far from the old shale oil works at Glen Davis.”

  “And?” Brendan asked.

  “Four weeks later, Bishop’s body was found, his throat slashed and his penis severed, stuffed in his mouth. We can most likely assume that Kemeny killed him in revenge for what Bishop had done to him.”

  “And to the other boys at the home,” Mark said, shaking his head slowly. I could see the tightness in his jaw—no doubt there were a few people he’d known that he wished could end up like Bishop.

  “As I said, the superintendent spoke to the local police about his concerns and the coincidence, but Kemeny seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.”

  While I’d been speaking, I’d noticed Billy’s articled clerk had arrived and had handed a document to Billy. Billy’s eyebrows shot up while he was reading it—obviously he had news.

  “May I?” he asked.

  “Please, Billy,” I said.

  He held up the document. “My very assiduous articled clerk has spent the morning trawling through the register of births, deaths, and marriages, and has just given me this document. Dennis Kemeny changed his name legally to Dennis Edgar in 1943, apparently just after he left the Dr. Bagshaw Home in Mudgee. He’s assumed the fantasy of being Johnny’s brother and remade his life with a new identity. That’s obviously why the police hadn’t been able to find him. He’d been living with a new name for four years before he returned looking for the groundsman and Bishop.”

  “Where was he in the time between when he returned to the home, killed Bishop, and the first time he resurfaced? Any clues, Clyde?” Brendan asked me.

  “According to the local men I recently interviewed, he was first seen in Hyde Park in town in January, 1951, two years before the first killings. One of our wealthy friend’s informants told him that Dennis Edgar had been arrested in January 1948 for soliciting on Katoomba railway station, for indecent behaviour in the station toilet, and for assaulting an officer. He got five years, reduced to three for good behaviour, in Lithgow jail.”

  “Away for three years?”

  “And, Brendan,” I added. “As that’s the standard sentence for that sort of arrest, I bet now we know what name he’s been using since 1943, we’ll find a similar term of confinement in 1953, after the last of the Silent Cop killings when I was running the case. We know he gives gobbies for money, I bet he’s got a charge sheet.”

  “I’ll get onto it,” Brendan said. “It would explain the hiatus of three years between the last spate of murders and these more recent ones. At least if he’s got a record, there’ll be a last known address, and it will give us something to start off an investigative trail.”

  Vince had been curiously quiet during the time we’d been discussing the killer and his associations with Billy and me and our group of four.

  “Vince?” I asked. I’d been watching him tap his pencil on the desk for the past five minutes with his head down, puzzling over something.

  “Why did you bring Luka Praz in to see the statue? I know you well. There has to be a reason other than him having a tenuous link to the Bishop kidnapping.”

  I wasn’t sure how I should proceed, or what I should say.

  “Tell them, Clyde,” Harry said.

  I took a deep breath and then spoke. “I met Luka Praz for the first time on Christmas Eve when I visited his shop to read the riot act to him and his sister. Mark and I believed they were somehow trying to draw attention to their business by sending me the notes and the statue. Instead of a pair of charlatans, I ran into a situation that has made me reassess much of what I believe in.”

  “Why, Clyde?” Brendan asked.

  “Because he asked for my tiepin and then told me nearly everything about Johnny Edgar’s death, where and how it happened, in more detail than a random guess.”

  “Why your tiepin?”

  Billy spoke. “Because I had it made from the gold outer casing of Johnny Edgar’s cigarette lighter, and Luka Praz linked me to him as well, two days before he even laid eyes on me.”

  I rifled through my briefcase and then threw a file on the desk in front of Brendan and Mark Dioli.

  “In there you’ll read a police report that Tom obtained from the Nowra cops on how he discovered the body of a missing child by merely holding the ten-shilling note the girl’s mother gave him in payment for advice from his sister.”

  Fox and Dioli were both speechless.

  *****

  I was surprised when Jack telephoned me later in the day to say that Luka had awoken and wanted to speak not only to me but also to Mark Dioli. Just the two of us. He hadn’t explained why, but said what he had to say involved us both. Jack also told me the razor was useless. It had rusted badly in the years it had been put away and the ivory of the handle had split and splintered. No blood or usable fingerprints remained.

  I’d been back in my office, Harry in his, playing with Baxter, who somehow seemed to sense that my man was going away for three days, when Jack’s call had come through. Of course, now he knew more, Harry had become worried for my safety and didn’t want to go.

  I’d told Harry to stay where he was, and I’d phoned Dioli and told him I’d come by the station to pick him up … Luka had asked to see us alone. I parked outside the police station and we walked to Luka’s shop, which was no more than a few hundred yards away. Gălbenele was serving a customer when we arrived and raised her eyes towards the ceiling, indicating Luka was up in his room.

  When we entered, he was lying on his back on his bed, a wash cloth covering his eyes.

  “How are you feeling, Luka?” I asked, perching on the edge of the bed.

  “Shaken, Clyde. Please, Detective Sergeant, either pull up a chair or sit on the end of the bed. Hovering so anxiously only makes me nervous.”

  “I don’t understand why you want me to be here,” Mark said, sitting at the end of the bed, one leg crossed over his knee.

  “Because what I saw has to do with both of you. You must listen, because whether you believe what I have to say or not, you are both in danger, but for different reasons.”

  Dioli took out his notepad. At least he was being serious about the situation.

  “First of all, you are looking in the wrong place. He’s not in a steep-sided ravine with water running through the middle. However, he is underground and very near water.

  Mark and I exchanged quick glances at the mention of the steep ravine. Jeff Ball’s men were still thrashing through the undergrowth in Glebe Gully. There was no way Luka could have known we were interested in it.

  “He’s near the sea, the water is not underground, but he is. He hates you, Clyde. I don’t know why. His mind is either like a vortex at one moment or a room full of frogs, jumping from one place to another randomly. He has the mind of a madman. I saw colours of blue and pink and glimpses of horses and cats, but they were far away from where he is now—they’re made of fabric and are near somewhere that smells of petro
l and oil. He’s like a child, Clyde. He wants to be protected. Someone he loved abandoned him and he blames you. There were four images I saw: a target, like a dartboard or a bullseye; an animal he cares for; something in his head that’s not part of his body; and a room in his head that’s filled with penises and the smell of sex.”

  “Penises?” Dioli asked.

  Luka unbuttoned his shirt slowly. “Put your hand on my chest, please, Detective Sergeant. It’s nothing untoward. I have an answer for you, but it’s locked until you touch me.”

  Mark Dioli hesitated, looking at me for guidance. I shrugged, so he leaned up the bed and placed his palm over Luka’s heart. The touch looked careful, hesitant, yet gentle. Luka placed one hand on top of Mark’s.

  “You must prevent him from killing Clyde,” Luka said. “He cares nothing for you, but he’s chosen you as a witness to Clyde’s death. You must ask him the questions, for he won’t answer any from Clyde.”

  “I’m sorry …” Dioli said, and began to withdraw his hand. It was obvious he didn’t believe a word of what Luka was saying.

  “Wait! Please. I know you don’t believe, but you must bury what’s happened to you in the same way that your first life was buried underwater. I feel it in the ring on your hand. You’ve had two lives now, both of which are behind you. Mourn neither, for constant grieving for what has happened in the past will never free you for a different future.”

  Dioli sat back, as if a snake had bitten him. He was about to jump off the bed, but I grabbed his arm, shaking my head. Luka’s eyes were still covered. I stared at the ring. “My mother’s,” Dioli mouthed silently.

  “Don’t hate me, Detective Sergeant,” Luka said. “Like you, I’ve had far too much hate in my life, and it’s time for all of us to find a place in our lives where what comes now is unconnected with what made us who we are. All I ask is you save Clyde and take charge when it’s important.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  After three days had passed since Luka had spoken to Mark and me, I finally had a handle on Luka’s unconscious mind-processing and his professed ability to be one of the people that remembered every tiny detail. I’d mulled on it over and over, and more of what he’d told Mark and me could be more or less rationally explained away.

  Blue and pink, horses and cats—typical colours and toys associated with children of the ages of David and Susan.

  Care of an animal—perhaps he’d unconsciously seen Dennis tie the dog up on the other side of the road before coming to the shop, or retrieving it after he’d left with his magazines and then had just stored it away in the back of his mind.

  Something in his head and which was not part of his body—false teeth were always too perfect. For someone who’d described he and his sister as being able to pick up on the small finger movements or eye movements of clients, it wasn’t impossible for him to have noticed Dennis’s teeth and not have given it a second thought.

  Penises and the smell of sex—well, we had told him a bit about the killer’s sexual activities. I’d warned him away from the parks myself—twice.

  The mention of Dioli’s two lives. The first when his family were drowned in the sinking of the Greycliffe could be explained away because Luka dealt in second-hand books and magazines, which he inspected to see they were intact and indeed saleable. It would have been easy to leaf through a magazine that held or featured an account of the sinking of the ferry—although how he’d linked that to Mark was for the moment evasive to me. His second life, that of abuse at the hands of his grandfather—I’d told Luka about it, not in so many words but enough that he could have worked it out, especially as Harry had told Luka that Dioli had been staying with Harry’s parents after his grandfather had been arrested and that Mark had cried into Mary’s arms more than once.

  However, the connection with Mark’s mother’s wedding ring and the ferry sinking was one of the three things for which I had no logical explanation. The other two were the children being far away, near the smell of petrol and oil, and the target or bullseye, which I equated with the incised cross in each of the victims—I’d never mentioned that to him. It was one fact only known to those directly involved with the case.

  “How did he know about my mother’s wedding ring?” Mark asked me for the third time since last Friday, when Luka Praz had told him and me what he’d seen in his vision.

  It was Tuesday night, two days after Harry had returned from his weekend adventure trip, and we were staking out one of the only two public toilets in the district known to be frequented by men at night that we’d organised to be left open. We’d left them unlocked last night too, not only so word could get around among those who “did the beats” but also to see whether Kemeny might turn up if he was on the prowl. We hoped it just looked like the same lazy council man had just decided to not bother to lock them up, because both were fairly close to each other.

  Brendan and Vince supervised one team and Mark and I the other. Six policemen placed in strategic positions at each of the two conveniences, and with them two of my mates wandering around in the bushes and loitering near the toilets, acting as lures for a man with bright green eyes. Courtesy of Jeff Ball, we’d scored two pairs of the new “night vision” binoculars, developed during the Korean War. We had one pair and Brendan and Vince the other. Last night, despite high expectations, had turned out to be a fizzer. Mark and I had sat tensed-up and waiting for hours, eventually going home at first light. Only a few cars had stopped and Kemeny hadn’t been among the men who’d got out of them to prowl about.

  “Your mother’s wedding ring?” I replied. “To be honest I’ve no idea. Until this whole thing is over, I’ve decided to take whatever Luka says on face value, and I’ll be happy to be disillusioned if it all comes to nothing. But for the time being, I don’t have an answer, sorry.”

  “It’s getting close to midnight,” Mark said. We were seated on a park bench in a cleared area at the top of a small rise, about two hundred yards away from the public toilet. There was a thicket of native bush between us and it, but as we were up high, we could see comings and goings easily from where we sat with our night-time binoculars, but in the dark it would have been hard for anyone down there to see us.

  We’d chosen to take the park at the south side of Maroubra Beach, at the bottom of Fitzgerald Avenue, near the ocean. We’d been there since it had got dark, and I’d been surprised to see the number of cars that had arrived, their drivers disappearing into the bushes or into the lavatory and then driving off tens of minutes later. I’d had no idea places like this would be so popular—but then again, we’d closed perhaps fifteen or twenty other public toilets in the Waverley district, and word seemed to have spread, it was very much busier than it had been the night before. At eleven it had become quieter and only occasional glimpses of my two mates could be seen as they wandered around outside the toilet or moved between clearings in the bushes.

  I could hear the waves breaking on the beach, there was a soft warm breeze from the north-west, and Mark had finally begun to relax in my presence. I realised it was because there was no one else around. We’d been chatting very softly, almost in a whisper, since we’d arrived, talking about other things than the case—what the police station had been like when I’d first arrived, why he’d decided to become a policeman, and then, just as I was about to open my Thermos, a dark shape ran across the grass in front of us. For a moment, I thought it might have been a native animal, but it was far too big for a wombat and the motion was all wrong.

  “He’s here,” I whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  At that moment, a large shaggy dog ran up to us and sat at our feet, its mouth open and tongue lolling.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” a voice said from behind us. As I reached for my gun, Mark stood to pull his from his holster. A muffled shot rang out and he fell to the ground, groaning and clutching his shoulder.

  I turned quickly, surprised to see that despite his rigidly aimed weapon p
ointing at a spot between my eyes, Kemeny seemed amused at my reaction. His hat was pushed so far back on his head he looked for all the world like some two-bob gangster from a B-grade movie. I still had my hand on my gun, my finger on the trigger, wondering if I could throw a slug into his gun-arm shoulder before he shot me in the head.

  “Stop!” he said as I started to crouch down to see to Mark. “If I’d wanted to kill him, he’d be dead.”

  Mark grimaced, but nodded that he was okay, drawing in breath noisily between his teeth, one hand pressing his handkerchief over the bullet wound.

  “Did you really have to do that?” I said, trying to unsettle Kemeny with an off-the-cuff, seemingly inappropriate remark, to give myself a few extra seconds to weigh up my options. Him or Mark, I wasn’t sure which was the priority right at that moment.

  “Don’t even think about it, Smith,” Kemeny said, noticing the slight movement of my arm as I adjusted the grip on my gun. Before I could react, he aimed his weapon at Mark. “I’ll shoot your mate in the head before you can pull the trigger. Now, put one arm in the air where I can see it, spread your fingers and wriggle them around so I can see you’re not holding anything, then withdraw your weapon and throw it over there in the bushes.”

  I couldn’t stop staring at his bright green eyes—even in the moonlight I could see the oddness of their colour.

  As I did what he asked, he turned his gun on me, watching as I slowly withdrew my Beretta from my underarm holster. I threw my gun where he’d indicated. It made little noise, crashing softly into the undergrowth. He whistled to the dog, who’d started to run after the gun as if it was a stick I’d thrown for him to fetch.

  He smiled as he caught my swift glance at his weapon. It was an Enfield No. 2, as we’d guessed, with an awkward-looking jerry-rigged silencer attached.