The Gilded Madonna Garrick Jones (ebook reader online .txt) 📖

could have probably tracked him down, but he’d hardly be willing to talk to a former police detective knocking unexpectedly at his front door. If he was going to speak to me, it would have to be because of his two friends.

“Unlikely, Clyde. But I’ll ask.”

“Tell him we can meet anywhere and it can be as anonymous as he likes. There’ll be a fiver in it for his trouble. You know where to find me.”

“No job too big or too small?” Neil said with a smile.

“That was my assistant, not me,” I replied, shaking my head in disbelief. I’d known that ad would turn around and bite me in the bum one day.

“I was there when Max told that story, Clyde,” Boyd said. “Neil left out a few of the dirtiest bits, but other than that I can affirm what he told you was more or less what Max reported at the pub when he told us what had happened.”

“I believe you, Neil,” I said to him. “Please don’t think I believe you’re making it up, honestly. But, if Max won’t speak with me, could you please ask him if he remembered what time it was he saw the cab arrive and if he remembered which cab company it was?”

“I will, Clyde. Don’t worry.”

“Can one of you give me a hand?” Boyd asked at that moment, trying to get out of the water. I grabbed his arm and helped him out. He landed neatly at my side and then ran his hands over his head to squeeze the water from his hair. “Is that big redhead I saw you with in the pie shop just before Christmas your latest squeeze?” he asked.

“Latest and last,” I said. “I’m definitely off the market, fellas. This one’s for keeps.”

“Good on you, Clyde,” Boyd said. “Nice to know that sort of thing still happens in our world.”

“Be a lot easier if everyone wasn’t so blasted afraid of being caught all the time,” Neil added.

“Find your friends and don’t stray far from home, that’s my motto,” I said. “Why do you guys go out tomcatting anyway? Surely you have a few regulars.”

Boyd shrugged. “Sometimes the blokes you like are the ones who are the most scared of being caught out. The anonymity of the beats is the reason pickup places are so popular.”

“Never been my thing, to be honest. Although I did see my fair share of it during the war. The dunes in the desert in North Africa and the deserted docks at night in Malta. It was different back then though. You didn’t know whether you’d be alive the next night, and a bit of company …”

“Neither of us is a stranger to that either, Clyde,” Boyd said. “I meet lots of ex-servicemen because of this,” he added, slapping the thigh of his missing leg. “I don’t see their interest as pity, it’s more about knowing what we all went through together.”

“I think it’s more about how fat your cock is, Boyd, to be honest,” Neil said.

His crude, but pointed, jibe made us laugh very loudly.

“Anyway, Clyde, is that all you want to know about this man in the photo?”

“If I remember anything, I’ll sit up back at the Boomerang in the stalls and wait for you to wander past with your torch shall I?” I said to Neil with a grin.

“Sit up the back and you might get more than a flash of my torch, Clyde.”

“Really?”

“The short session on Fridays that starts at five and finishes at quarter to seven? All sorts—mostly married men, but a few people who should know better. I like that session.”

“I suppose you get to see a lot?”

“Nah, Clyde, but you wouldn’t imagine the size of the tips I get to turn my head the other way.”

*****

I walked up the stairs from the pool to the office and checked the clock on the wall. Quarter past five. Luka would be here shortly, and there was one more thing I wanted to ask Craig before he got here.

“That painter who fixed up the rail after the man I showed you in the picture had sat on it. Do you have a receipt for his work?”

“Sure, Clyde. If you give me a moment, I’ll have a look in the filing cabinet. What do you want it for?”

“You said that bloke was visiting fairly regularly for about three months until you banned him, is that right?”

“Yes, about four years ago or thereabouts.”

“You know, Craig. It’s the ‘thereabouts’ that’s often the key to most mysteries. If you can somehow link the date of the painter’s work to the last time you saw him, it will give me a confirmed timeframe around which to start laying out my timetable.”

“Timetable?”

“His first round of killings was just over three years ago and then he stopped. I can’t work in a vague vacuum of dates. Investigation doesn’t work like that. The more precise we can be, the easier it is to trace—”

“First round of killings?”

“Craig, this stuff is highly sensitive, you have to understand I told you only what you needed to know.”

“Wait a minute, Clyde. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Oh?” The small hairs on the back of my neck pricked up. I called it my copper intuition. I knew I was going to hear something unexpected.

“Boyd, the guy you were just talking to? The bloke sitting down near the pool?”

“Yes, what about him?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you this or not, Clyde. It’s pretty private.”

“Go on, Craig.”

“No, sorry. It’s nothing probably.”

“Do I have to grab you by the nuts and squeeze it out of you?”

“You know what you’ll squeeze out of me if you do that, don’t you,” he said, grinning cheekily.

I raised my eyebrows and sighed. “Give me a hint.”

“Go ask him about what happened to his mate Allan in January of 1953.”

“Allan who?”

“Dead now, so it doesn’t matter. In the meantime I’ll look for your receipt.”

“Luka will be here in about five minutes, can you look after him