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

and perhaps approval. Will you be up to another visit later tonight?”

“Maybe tomorrow, if you don’t mind. I’m sure my grandfather will come tonight, and he’s very touchy around people he doesn’t know.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll see you in the morning, then. I hope you enjoy your lunch. Merry Christmas, Mark.”

“Merry Christmas, Smith,” he said as I put my jacket back on and picked up my hat.

Smith, not Clyde. I didn’t mind. I’d caught a glimpse of his humanity. I kept reminding myself that his bravado was a huge wall he’d built around himself to protect the Mark Dioli inside—a young, frightened, and severely abused child.

“Later, mate.”

“Later.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The house in Newtown was my first stop.

I checked my watch, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. It was just on ten o’clock. I planned to spend half an hour here and then …

He came around the side of the house, smoking a pipe, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. I jumped out of the car.

“Lionel Greyson?” I asked, holding up my army investigation identification card.

“Never served, Mr. …”

“Smith, Clyde Smith.”

“Still, as I said, never served.”

“But you might.”

“Might what?”

I pulled Howard Farrell’s business card from my wallet, the one he’d given me at dinner. I showed him the back, on which was the name and address of the former director of Petersham Boys’ Home.

“That’s me. But you didn’t answer my question. Serve what?”

I turned the card around. “Serve time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, Mr. Greyson.”

“Look, I don’t have to talk to you. I’ve no idea why you’re here, and I’d like you to leave my premises. It’s called—”

“Trespassing? Is that what you were going to say? Let me give you a little enlightenment about the law, sir. I was a detective sergeant in the N.S.W. police force until a year ago. We can do this one of two ways. We can go inside and talk in front of your son, daughter-in-law, and your three grandchildren, or you can come for a little drive with me. If you decline either of those options, then I can offer you two more choices. The first will be an undignified trip in the paddy wagon to Randwick lockup, or the second will be an even more undignified and far less caring trip in a military vehicle to an undisclosed destination from which you may never return.”

He stared at me for what seemed an age. I wondered if he’d gone into shock for a minute or two. “What for?”

“Let’s start with statutory rape, sodomy, dealing with a minor, immoral earnings from the sale of a child … or should I say children, over the period of, how many years was it you were the director of Petersham Boys’ Home? Thirty?”

“You better have good proof,” he said, his eyes wide and spittle collecting at the corner of his mouth.

“If I didn’t have it, why do you think I’d be here, Greyson. But, I won’t need it, because you are going to provide me with a full confession that you’re going to sign and which I’ll have witnessed by two other interested parties.”

He laughed in my face and started to turn away. I grabbed his arm and opened the left side of my jacket. He stared at my Luger and then snarled, “You going to shoot me here in the side passage of my house?”

I grabbed both of his trouser braces in one hand and pulled him to me so our noses were almost touching. “I spent three years in a prisoner of war camp, Greyson. First few years were a holiday, starved and mistreated by the Italians, but then later, when the Germans came, I learned things you’ve never dreamed of. I’ve always wanted to try out some of the things they did to me on someone else … someone who deserved the pain.”

He gulped.

“Now get in my car. I’ve made the choice for you. We’re going for a little drive first, just you and me, so we can have a bit of a chat. No rough stuff … yet. But after that, I’m taking you somewhere quiet, where you’re going to sit down with my assistant and an army colonel and tell them everything, and I mean everything that went on at the boys’ home.”

“And if I refuse?”

I laughed. “That’s the sort of thing a man who’s been a perpetrator would say; never one who’s been on the other end of a brutal fucking or having the shit punched out of him.”

For a moment he tried to stand me down, but eventually his body relaxed ever so slightly. He’d been searching my eyes trying to find the truth of what I’d threatened.

“I need to tell my family—”

“You’ll tell them nothing. You can telephone from the lockup. That’s it.”

“But you’re asking me to do something that will have me in jail for the rest of my life.”

I let go of his braces. They twanged against his chest. “There’s always a deal to be done, Greyson, even for shitbags like you who deserve the rope,” I said as I smoothed down the front of his shirt with both hands.

“A deal?”

I nodded. “That little chat we were going to have? You remember? I said we were going for a drive?”

“I’m sure your definition of a little chat is something rather different than mine,” he said.

“That’s very perceptive of you, Lionel,” I replied. “But, I said there could be a deal. Don’t get your hopes up too soon … let’s say it all depends on you giving me what I want.”

“And just what is it you want? I’m not a rich man.”

I snorted at the idea. What I really wanted to do was slap him around the head, bend him backwards across the bonnet of my car and give him a few wallops, but there was a woman with her kid waiting for the bus on the other side of the street.

“Your family’s going to need your money, Greyson. That’s not what I came for. While we’re driving we’re