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

were both aware that anyone could have been listening on the hospital switchboard.

“Be careful.”

“I will. You know me.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

My Luger P08 was wrapped in its square of green baize, stashed under the front seat of my car. I didn’t intend to shoot anyone, but that’s what I always previsioned when I took it anywhere with me. It was more for show than for anything. However, there’d been times when …

*****

“Oh, hello, Clyde. How long have you been here?”

Warwick Samson was checking Dioli’s eyes when I returned to the room.

“About forty-five minutes, Warwick. Merry Christmas.”

“Same to you, my friend.”

I sat in the corner while Warwick performed his examination and then told me he’d see me about two that afternoon after he’d finished his shift.

“Two this afternoon?” Dioli asked after the doctor had left us.

“I’m having a catch up for friends I didn’t get to see over Christmas. It’s an annual thing. Gives us all a chance to have a few beers and a chin wag.”

“Sounds great.”

The inflection in his voice indicated he thought it was anything but.

“Jealous?”

“Fuck you, Smith.”

“Braver men have tried and died,” I quipped. It made the corner of his mouth move. It wasn’t quite a smile, but he was amused.

“The Bishops?”

“I went to see them on Christmas Eve. Dropped in a card; forged your signature.”

He went slightly red. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. I also went to see our friend Marigold Leeks.”

“Ah!”

“It’s not what we thought it was.”

“Explain?”

“Someone stole the statue that was sent to me via the Bishops and left one of my calling cards in the place it was taken from. My name was on the back in the same elongated capital letters in green ink.”

“So, you think …”

“They knew nothing about the Bishop case, apart from what the sister had heard on the wireless—”

“They?”

“Brother and sister. He sells bric-a-brac and second-hand books, she reads tea leaves. Marigold is the English translation of her name in Romanian. Just like Violet or Rose, or Hyacinth, she was named after a flower, and their surname is the word for leek in their own language.”

“I can understand some crazy person leading us to a fortune teller, as bizarre as that might seem, thinking they might have ‘insights’ into the Bishop case, but what I don’t understand is that same person stealing something from them and leaving your name and business card at the scene.”

“I don’t understand it either. It makes no sense at all.”

“I—”

He was just about to say something when the orderly knocked on the door and then entered with a food trolley. “Wouldn’t mind a bit of this myself,” the attendant said as he placed the food onto the movable table that sat at the end of the bed.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s some of the food Mr. Smith brought for you, Detective Sergeant. The rest of it’s in a section of the fridge in the kitchen with your name on it.”

“I left instructions when I first arrived,” I said.

“What’s this, then?” Dioli asked, lifting the stainless-steel food cover from the plate.

“You’re lucky the man in charge of the kitchen is a chef, not a cook, Mark,” I replied. “Eggs benedict, soft pickled asparagus, and my own double-smoked bacon.”

“You can smoke bacon?”

“On the back landing of my flat. I’m on the top floor so the smoker doesn’t bother anyone.”

It was pretty obvious that as much as he was a sourpuss, Mark Dioli liked to eat. I’d noticed it on the day he’d had lunch with Harry and me, when we’d discovered Marigold Leeks at the same time in the local newspaper. He was one of those rare men who smiled while he ate. I could see he savoured every mouthful.

“Crickey, this is delicious,” he said.

“Plenty more where that came from,” I replied. “But there’s a proper Christmas roast ready to heat up for your lunch so you might want to keep some room.”

He actually smiled at me while he was wiping his mouth.

“Is there anything more about the witness you can tell me? Please … Clyde?”

I wasn’t unaware that he’d used my Christian name, probably for the first time.

“All right. I know this whole thing hasn’t been fair on you. But, you must swear that what little I can tell you, you’ll keep to yourself. Promise?”

“It goes against the grain, but all right, I’ll promise.”

“What do you know about the commission I’m working on?”

“All I know is that you work next door to the nick in the old lockup, and there are military men go in, D.S. Telford, your mate Harry Jones, and a high-flying senior legal eagle.”

“That’s my war buddy, Billy Tancred Q.C. Do you know who runs the commission?”

He shook his head. “No idea.”

“It’s run by Herbert Campbell, the Special Crown Advocate. It’s not just a normal commission, it’s the step below a Crown investigation. We look into crime and corruption in the police force, and the connection between the drugs syndicates across the State of N.S.W. and beyond.”

“And our witness?”

“All I can tell you is our witness is an ex-cop, and we hope he can identify a high-ranking politician in a compromising photograph.”

“Compromising?”

“Sexually compromising.”

“Why can’t you identify this person yourselves?”

“Because this high-ranking person is facing away from the camera, chock a block up to the balls in our witness.”

Dioli gaped.

“But you said he was a—”

“Cop, yes. And the man we want to finger was sodomising him.”

“I don’t know how—”

“It’s not up to you to make judgements or to understand why and how it happened, Mark. I’m sorry. That’s all I can say. But perhaps you need to understand that we can identify this man, it will most likely bring down the Queensland Government. That’s the reason I can’t reveal the witness’s name.”

“Well I’ll be—”

“You’ll be confined to your hospital bed for a few days yet.” I looked at my watch. I’d be pressing it if I didn’t leave now. “Sorry, I have to go. I have a few ideas about the Silent Cop case I’d like to run past you for your input