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

“She’s an army officer?”

“Yes, Lieutenant Watson is attached to the army base in High Street, down behind the hospital. She works on this ward, which is dedicated to armed forces personnel, firemen, and police officers. It’s part of the accident and emergency unit. She’ll be able to take her experience with her when she’s posted overseas to our next area of engagement.”

“I’ll apologise.”

“And to me?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“And?”

“You make this hard for me, you know.”

“I’m just trying to get you to behave like any other decent human being on the planet, Mark. I came here in good faith after attending your crime scene to give you information that I’m not really at liberty to disclose. I want you to acknowledge that I’ve gone out of my way and to think about why I might possibly want to do that.”

He fiddled with the edge of his sheet for a moment and then squirmed in his bed. I told him to lean forward and fixed his pillows.

“Thank you, Clyde. I mean it. Thank you and I’m very sorry.”

I patted his shoulder. It had come from the heart.

*****

“Our witness noticed the man hanging around under the street light about thirty feet away from the start of the path,” I said, after giving him the broad strokes of what had happened and what I’d learned.

I had to admit he was on the ball—investigative-wise, that was. Perhaps his interest was showing me he did care about his job, despite reports to the contrary that he was a display detective rather than a dinky-di gumshoe.

“Under a street light? That’s a bit obvious isn’t it?”

“Not only that but the man was also dressed very peculiarly.”

“In an overcoat and with the brim of his hat pulled down over his eyes, yes, you said.”

“That’s right. It’s really unusual for this time of the year, and it was very warm last night. An overcoat? Who wears an overcoat in the middle of a Sydney summer? It was only later the witness realised it was one of those lightweight, dark blue Aquascutum coats, made from waterproofed cotton.”

“To cover over the fact that he wasn’t wearing anything under­neath …”

“He wasn’t totally naked, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, gaiters, and socks. Apart from that he was naked, yes.”

“So we suppose standing under the street light with his hat on would have been to hide his face. It would have been in shadow.”

“Those were my thoughts.”

“And the witness approached him?”

“No, according to what he told me, the witness was busy talking to the victim when the perpetrator wandered down to the bushes and asked the victim if either of them wanted to go into the toilet block with him.”

“And that’s when he opened his overcoat.”

I nodded. “The witness said the man was well-endowed, but skinny. Very hairy legs, with a dark stain above his left knee. Looked like a birthmark. But it was the oddness of him being basically naked under­neath the coat that made our witness decline and then move away.”

“And then?”

I referred to my notebook to make sure I got the words right. “I watched them kiss for a bit, and when the victim began to perform fellatio on the bloke in the overcoat, I left them to it.”

“But he didn’t actually leave them to it, did he?”

“No, according to our man, he felt there was something not right, so he thought he’d linger at a distance, to keep an eye on things. After five minutes or so, the killer led his victim into the toilet. Then, not long after, the witness decided he was out of luck for the night, thinking no one else would turn up, and lit one last cigarette before heading home. He’d just finished his smoke when he heard what sounded like a cut-off scream. The witness, who’d been standing under one of the big trees, about ten yards away, had heard the sound and wondered if things might have got a bit rough, so he waited for a few minutes, but then curiosity got the better of him—the killer had been very strange after all. So, he lit up another smoke then wandered down to the edge of the building just in time to see the murderer tearing out of the convenience and running across the oval. He didn’t see where the killer went after he disappeared behind the ladies’ convenience on the other side of the park.”

“The R.S.L. you said the victim belonged to is on the other side of the oval, a few streets away from the women’s toilet block?”

“Yes, and Carr Street runs directly behind the ladies’ convenience. The problem is he could have gone anywhere, because the entrance to Melody Street is on the other side of the road and there’s a dunny cart lane not twenty yards away too, parallel with it. Early this morning before I left him, Vince said he was going to organise a door knock to see if anyone saw anything.”

“So, your witness watched the man run across the field for how long? A minute, two?”

“Less than that. What is it at that point, maybe a hundred yards from the back of the men’s toilet to the women’s? Fifteen, twenty seconds. Anyway, he stood in the doorway of the toilet and called out inside. There was no sound and the other bloke hadn’t come out, so he edged his way through the change room. As the toilet area’s bulb had blown, it was dark in the cubicle area. The only illumination was the spasmodic flickering of the fluorescent light in the changing room behind him—more off than on, like I told you. So he stood in the doorway for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, before making his way around the corner of the stalls. That’s when he saw an arm poking out from under the cubicle door. He pushed it open with the toe of his shoe and found the body. Ran