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

“I’m just going to be embarrassed about going through photos of myself copping a root with him watching, that’s all.”

“Tell you what, Steve. How about we put you in Harry’s office to go through them by yourself. When you’ve finished, just tell Tom, and if you can identify anyone in the photos, just write the serial number from the back of the print and the man’s name in the shot.”

“How many photos are there, Clyde?”

“Close to sixty, Steve. You were quite the popular lad it seems.”

*****

I poked my nose into the nurses’ room before I went to visit Mark Dioli. It wasn’t just to say hello to Shirley, I was procrastinating. There was stuff I needed to tell him and I was trying to summon the courage. If I hadn’t known what he’d been through, I would have put my old “cop hat” on and just been blunt. But, as we’d be working the same patch for the next however many years, I didn’t want to make things rough for either of us.

“Hello there,” I said, after knocking and having been invited to enter.

“Oh, hello, Clyde. Forgive me, just taking the weight off my feet,” she said. “You look all calm and collected.”

I snorted. “It’s all an illusion, Shirley. I’ve had about six hours sleep since Christmas Day.”

“Troubles with the gorgeous one?”

I patted my chest over my heart. “Only these sorts.”

“May those be the only pangs you ever suffer, Clyde.”

I sat down on the day bed next to her and kissed her cheek.

“Tell me something, Shirley.”

“What’s eating you, oh stoic one?”

I laughed. “You’re the second woman in the space of a week who’s described me as stoic.”

“Oh really?” she said in a very good Eve Arden, sardonic sort of way. “Two women saying the same thing. You’re the detective, Clyde. I wonder what that might mean? Could it be a clue, or something closer to the truth, perhaps …?”

I slapped her arm playfully, mindful I was swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, like a kid. “I’ve decided to go see a psychiatrist.”

“Oh, my! You almost sound like an adult, Clyde. I think I might faint.”

I laughed loudly and then put my arms around her.

“War stuff biting you in the arse is it?”

“Every time I think of what Mark Dioli’s grandfather and other men at the boys’ home did to him, it brings back terrible memories of the camp, Shirley. I don’t know anyone else who went through the same thing as me. I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t bring it up with you, but you’re the only other person I know who shared the same experience and who came back with their head on their shoulders after years as a prisoner of war.”

“Shh, Clyde,” she said, leaning her head against my shoulder. “Bloody men, honestly! I bet you never shared your fears and your terror and your pain with anyone while you were captive. Am I right? We women, that’s what we do. We express ourselves. We tell our girlfriends about the humiliation and the pain, we unburden ourselves, we describe our rapes and tortures and share our burdens. But you guys? I’ve heard it before. No, it becomes a competition between yourselves to see who can be the blokiest, the man who’s able to put up with anything and yet not show the teeniest flaw in his armour and then who can scoff at the men who break down, who appear to be too weak to survive. Ever wonder why there are so few suicides among the women who came back from the war compared to the number of men? The answer’s in what I just said.”

“It’s the way we’re brought up, Shirley. And don’t misunderstand me, but our mothers were and are implicit in teaching us that behaviour too …”

“I know, Clyde, I know. But I think it’s a terrific thing you’re going to have therapy. You can channel all the shit in your life that doesn’t belong to either your work or to your life with Harry into the relationship you have with your therapist. They’re punching bags for your anger, depositories for your fears, backstops for your hopes and dreams. You’ll be fine, I promise you.”

“Thank you, Shirley. I mean it. But now, I have to go tell Mark Dioli that I’ve just sent his grandfather to prison for the rest of his miserable life, with the possibility of a court martial and possible firing squad.”

Shirley chuckled. “You and your exaggerations, Clyde.”

“Who said I was exaggerating, Shirley? They might just go shoot the old bastard for what he did in the Great War.”

“Oh …”

“‘Oh is the least of it. Wish me luck.”

“I’m sure you won’t need it, Clyde.”

I hugged her and then stood, playing nervously with the brim of my hat for a moment before leaving the room. She looked very wistful when I said goodbye. Well, wistful wasn’t really the word. It was the same sort of expression my mother had used when she’d sent me off to school of a morning when I was tiny. A combination of sadness and fondness. I liked Shirley, a lot.

*****

“So your theory is still just a theory, Smith?”

“What else do I have to go on, Detective Sergeant?”

I’d arrived just as Warwick was checking his bandages. I couldn’t help wincing when I noticed opened shallow cuts along some of the long narrow bruises left by Terrence Dioli’s steel quad, where the edges had bitten into Mark’s flesh. Evil old bastard, I thought, as I watched Warwick inspect them carefully, making notes in his hospital folder. Christ, that walloping must have hurt—I rather hoped I’d repaid the favour when I’d laid the miserable sod out on his kitchen floor and given him a good thrashing with the same implement.

“So your preference is that the Bishop case is opportunistic?”

“Unless it’s two people, yes. However, I can’t remember ever reading about a couple with such different agendas. A murderer and a kidnapper paired up is