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

“You’re going to ask me if I’ve seen him anywhere else aren’t you?”

“Yes, that was one of my questions,” I said.

“Very well, but before I answer you, may I use your telephone?”

“Of course.” I moved it across the desk. He dialled a number and then spoke rapidly, in what I assumed was Romanian. I heard a woman’s voice replying; Gălbenele for sure. Then he gestured for a pad and my pencil, which I gave to him. He scribbled for a bit and then said “Goodbye” in English.

“What’s this?” I asked, as he showed me what he’d written.

“The two magazines the man bought, Clyde. Second-hand dealers have to keep an account of everything they buy or sell.”

“Australian War Digest, March and April, 1941,” I said, reading from the pad.

“Where were you at that time, Clyde?”

“In North Africa and then Malta,” I said. “Not long before the siege of Tobruk, and a month before I was sent to Italy and then captured.”

“In answer to your previous question. No, I’ve only seen the man twice when he pottered around, leafing through the magazines, and then a third time, on the day he came to the shop to ‘case the joint’. Is that the expression you investigators use?”

I smiled. “It’s the expression they use in American gangster movies, but I understand. Presumably it was him who stole your statue of the gilded Madonna.”

“Saint Sarah? Well, now that I’m putting two and two together, I suspect it must have been him. Sometimes we leave the window open at the top of the staircase at night if it’s hot. Someone light-footed could scale the drainage pipe and climb in without waking us. When we found your business card on the plinth from which she was stolen, we originally assumed that person must have been you.”

I nodded and began to take notes. When I realised he was waiting for me to finish so he could say something, I looked up from my writing.

“Clyde, there’s something else I might be able to do to help you; but before I tell you what it is, may I tell you a bit about my ‘gift’?”

“You believe it, and that’s what’s important, Luka,” I said. “I sincerely believe you when you say you see what comes to you in your visions. But to be honest, it’s not important that I believe it myself.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, Clyde. Because the way in which I can help you depends on you understanding. It won’t take long, and it’s you who said you were trying to keep an open mind, remember?”

“Very well,” I said, putting down my pen. He was right. I’d said I’d try not to be so close-minded. Listening to what he had to say wouldn’t hurt, I supposed. “Would you like coffee first? It’s not your dense, Turkish style, but I have a mocha pot and good Italian beans.”

“Thank you, yes please, and a cigarette while we talk. May I offer you one of mine?”

“I’d be honoured,” I said and then buzzed Tom on the intercom. When he popped his head around the door, I introduced him to Luka and then asked if he’d mind making us some coffee.

“The human brain is an amazing thing, Clyde,” Luka said. “Most people see and notice everything, but they quickly forget it, replace it with other, newer things. I’m sure you’re used to that. Ask someone at the scene of the crime, I’m sure they give you details, even tiny ones, and yet when you get a statement a week later, the details are fuzzy and some other particulars are overblown, out of proportion, and some observations made more important than what the witness first mentioned. Am I correct?”

“Yes, that’s true. I’d say that except for rare occasions, it’s one of our biggest problems—witnesses coming to court and then when examined by a skilled barrister unable to corroborate precisely what they’d written in their statement, and when asked to elaborate have changed details enough for their testimony to be deemed either unreliable or inadmissible.”

“Well, it’s my theory that there are some of us who don’t forget everything. Of course, those people don’t dwell on every tiny little thing or obsess over details otherwise they’d go mad. But they don’t forget, naturally, like the rest of the world—they store every little thing away in the dark recesses of their minds, available, under certain circumstances, for retrieval. I believe I’m one of those people and my ‘gift’ is to recall tiny details of what I’ve seen or heard, or read, and then pull the threads together, just like any detective or investigator does when solving a crime, except that the amount of energy that I need to process that information overwhelms my brain, and it closes my body down in order to get on with the task—that’s when and why I have convulsions.”

“What? You’re saying your mind works like one of those new electronic brain machines?”

“Yes. The object I hold in my hand or touch is merely a tool to start the internal investigation—something on which to focus and perhaps get feedback. Psychometry isn’t hocus pocus. It’s the same as when you use clues to come up with lines of enquiry, probabilities based on evidence, but we do it without direct input—we’re the victims of the process, we can’t take charge or lead where our minds take us.”

“Has this been proved, Luka?”

“No. How could you prove such a thing, Clyde? It’s merely my explanation by me to myself, so I can try to make sense of my gift. I’ve learned to explain it to myself that I’m simply putting clues together and coming up with leads based on what I’ve filed away in the back of my mind of things I already know.”

At that moment, Tom knocked on the door and then brought in the tea tray.

“Where did these biscuits come from, Tom?” I asked, picking up small round layered biscuit with a jam-filled centre hole.

“I don’t know, Clyde. They were in the kitchen when