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

in his flat in the bathroom. Douche kit, prophylactics, and a few vials of hospital-grade morphine and a reusable syringe.”

“Morphine?”

“His right knee is a mess. Probably reconstructed during the war by the look of it. I’d say a field hospital. The wires holding his patella in place would have allowed little flexion in his gait, and the calcification around the joint showed severe progressive arthritis as a result.”

“You’re saying he had a limp?” Harry asked.

“Yes, and the poor bastard lived with a lot of pain. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did … and before you ask, the tissue samples and other fluids have gone to the hospital for forensics. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for results because of the holiday season, but I’d say he’d given himself a shot for the pain and then, while flying as high as a kite, decided he needed a bit of extra-marital enjoyment, cleaned himself out, and then went out on the prowl. Jar of Vaseline in his coat pocket, too.”

“Extra-marital?”

“Sorry, bad choice of words. He was single.”

I threw back the sheet. “Nice man too,” I said and then examined the cross-shaped wound above the man’s pubis. I noticed there was no Catseye marble, so turned to Jack and raised an eyebrow. He stretched behind his back and rattled a stainless-steel kidney dish. The glass ball clinked around inside it.

“Terrible world we live in when attractive men like this need to go tomcatting in the dark, risking injury and worse,” Jack added and then took another enormous bite of his sandwich. A slice of tomato slid from it and slithered onto the floor.

“Lots of unattractive men out there have needs too, Jack. No need to be judgemental about it. It’s not all about physical attraction. Why, just look at me and Harry, for example.”

Jack Lyme nearly choked on his sandwich. He went so red in the face I had to thump him on the back. Harry merely smiled at me and gave me a surreptitious wink.

“Levity in the mortuary?” Vince said, after throwing open the door.

He looked exhausted. I’m not sure I looked much better.

“It’s not a mortuary, Detective Constable Paleotti, as well you know,” Jack said, having recovered from his coughing fit. “It’s a forensic department.”

“I see a corpse on a slab. That’s good enough for me.”

*****

We sat outside, at the back of the police station. There was an empty patch of grass with a bench, which had once been used for lunches, long ago abandoned for that purpose as everyone was too busy to take their official lunch break and usually ate at their desks. Besides that, the enormous jacaranda that used to cover the area and give shade in the hottest months had been cut to the ground by some council vandal who couldn’t be bothered cleaning its leaves from the gutters.

“Ex-R.A.A.F., as we originally deduced by the wings on his wallet,” Vince said, handing me the folder in which he’d written some case notes. “Shot down in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea, hauled out of the water, and his leg saved from amputation by a quick-thinking military surgeon who happened to be on the American PT boat that rescued him. Distinguished Flying Cross and two other decorations.”

“Poor bastard,” I said, feeling terribly angry that such a person should have come to such an end.

“There’s this too,” Vince said, handing me a framed photograph.

A profound silence fell between the three of us. The photograph was of the victim, his arm around another man of a similar age, both smiling at the camera. In the bottom corner of the frame was a death notice, placed by the man who was lying on the slab, bidding farewell to “the best mate a man could ever have and who was loved and would be missed dearly”.

It was heartbreaking. We three all realised it was one man paying tribute to his deceased lover. The obituary was dated February of this year.

“I need a smoke,” Vince said.

We sat quietly for a while. I didn’t know what the other two were thinking, but my mind couldn’t help going to the mates I’d lost in the war. Good men, who’d deserved to have a chance of living a good life, surrounded by those who loved them.

“Clyde …?”

“Yes, Vince. I think I owe you an apology. When I took the piss out of you for suggesting the Bishop case and the Silent Cop murders could be connected, I had no idea … and I still don’t by the way. I have no blasted idea what could be going on, and why I’ve been linked to both cases. It just doesn’t make sense.”

“I have an idea,” Harry said quietly.

“You do?” Vince asked.

“That’s why he’s here,” I said. “Not just a pretty face.”

We both chuckled at Harry’s deep blush.

“Well, I think it’s payback,” Harry said. “Someone is deliberately tying Clyde into both of these cases in an effort to get him to solve something they think is unsolvable. It’s revenge for something, trying to humiliate him, it has to be.”

“That makes no sense, Harry—”

“Think about it, Clyde. You’re sent mysterious messages, boxes with clues, all leading to a psychic who knows nothing about it. And then the murders. The timing of them hasn’t escaped me. When did they start again?”

“The day after Dioli arrived at my office with the business card of mine that had been sent to the Bishops.”

“And the same week the first envelope was delivered under your door. The first of the green ink signatures with your name.”

“Hang on, what you’re saying is the kidnapper and the serial killer are one and the same person? It doesn’t make sense. Child murderers and those who kill adults are two different personality types.”

“Who said it was one person, Clyde?”

*****

Could it have been two people? I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind. The puzzle felt like two huge boulders rushing down from the top of a tall mountain, each heading in a different direction.