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

it one bit, but threats of violence always carried rewards greater than physical punishment ever did—at least that was my experience.

“Now, before we get down to the nitty-gritty, I want the names and addresses of Mark’s, I mean Pieter Strickland’s, aunt and uncle in Holland. After you’ve given that to me, we’re going to have a chat. I don’t have a lot of time before I have to leave, but I’ll be back to talk to you, wherever you might be. Maybe not today, but perhaps tomorrow or the day after, or the day after that. Sometime in the future when you least expect it. Maybe I won’t come at all, but I know you’ll keep thinking I might … one day … maybe never.”

The kettle whistled, so I turned off the gas and filled the teapot. He glared at me as I went to the fridge and held up the milk jug. “Milk?” I asked. He shook his head, but didn’t speak, so I continued.

“Just before I leave here at midday, an army vehicle will arrive to take you to Holsworthy army base, where someone else will talk to you about war crimes. It took a bit of arranging, but that’s what men like me who think ahead can do, especially when it comes to garbage like you. And, just in case you decide to tell me porky-pies, I should let you know I’ve had a nice chat with your old friend, Lionel Greyson, who, as we speak, is undergoing interrogation in the old lockup of the Randwick cop shop.”

I think my last sentence was the deal-breaker. The glimmering defiance and anger in his eyes faded quickly, just as if someone had turned the lights off.

There was one thing about the military, they kept to schedule. I was relieved to hear the knock on Terrence Dioli’s front door at precisely three minutes to twelve. I knew I’d be late arriving at Craig’s baths to meet our friends, but the satisfaction of seeing Dioli being escorted into a khaki-coloured Holden with military number plates on it was worth it.

*****

Of course Harry was furious.

I arrived about forty minutes late, only because the Glebe Island Bridge was open to allow a coal hauler to steam past. But my lateness wasn’t the reason he was angry. We’d been standing in a corner at the pool, me with a bottle in my hand and Harry with a scowl on his face, while I’d told him about what had happened since I’d telephoned him from the hospital earlier that morning.

“Clyde—” I kissed him. Right in front of everyone. I put my beer down and grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him. I needed it.

“Next time you pull some stunt like that, I’ll—”

I kissed him again. “Chew me out later if you must, Harry, but for now just hold me.”

I was still shaking after my encounter with Greyson, and my self-loathing for having lost control so completely I might have killed Terrence Dioli, had I not snapped out of it.

Harry put his arms around me and rocked me back and forth slowly.

“Clyde. We’re a team, for heaven’s sake. You could have been in terrible danger. What might have happened if Dioli had a gun hidden somewhere and had taken a shot at you through the door? Did you think of that?”

“I didn’t stop thinking of it, Harry. I know … it was stupid. But you looked so worn out. I didn’t have the heart to wake you. And besides, I don’t care about what happens to me, but if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“If anything happened to you, don’t you think I’d feel the same? Listen, Clyde, you’re speaking to me. Remember? The guy you asked to mind your back, the man who dodged bullets with you on the roof of the Strand Arcade, the man who shot Larry the Lamb’s trigger-happy mate who was holding the machine gun on you, the man who killed Marvin Keeps who was about to shoot you, the man who’d lay down his life for you—”

Craig interrupted whatever Harry had been about to say. “Here’s another beer, Clyde, your bottle is empty. Now kiss the man, tell him you’re sorry for putting him through whatever it is you’ve done without telling him, and get some bloody food in you. You look like you’re about to fall in a heap.”

“You heard the man, Clyde,” Harry said. The annoyance was gone. All I could see was my big man, love and care in his eyes.

I crossed my heart. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’ll never do it again.”

“Until next time,” he whispered, a moment before our lips touched.

*****

I felt a whole heap better after almost half a cold chicken, which I devoured with my hands. I dipped pieces ripped from the carcass into Harry’s excellent homemade mayonnaise, alternating each bite with wonderful, freshly baked, buttered bread slices, cut the thickness of doorstops. I had grease everywhere.

“Hello there, Clyde.”

“Why hello, Luka. Where have you been?”

“I’ve been talking with that man over there, the one sitting on the edge of the pool. He’s an usher at the Boomerang theatre. Thank you for inviting me. Who knew there were so many nice blokes living so close by?”

“Some of them are friends of friends. You know how it goes. There aren’t many places men can meet socially and feel open and free about who they are and what they do. So, when someone throws a party and tells their mates to invite their friends, even if we only have two or three acquaintances the others don’t know, the network gets bigger of its own accord.”

“Is that why you called it your ‘circle of friends’?”

“Sure. Despite the number of blokes here—how many are there? Thirty, thirty-five?—I’ve only slept with three of them since I got back from the war. Three in nine years isn’t a bad score in anyone’s game … well four, if you count my ex, but I think I