The Gilded Madonna, Garrick Jones [best fiction novels txt] 📗

Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

AUTHOR'S NOTE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AUTHOR BIO

ALSO BY GARRICK JONES

COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2021 © Garrick Jones

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

This story is entirely a work of fiction.

No character in this story is taken from real life. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional.

The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author would like to thank the archivists at the N.S.W. Government Police State Archives and Records and also those at the State Library of N.S.W.

However, I cannot fully express my gratitude to the four brave men who shared the histories of their lives as youngsters in Government and private institutions during the 1950s. Institutions is my word—they called them orphanages and boys’ homes. But the treatment they individually received in houses in different parts of the State was more like incarceration and punishment rather than care for their well-being and instruction for future lives as young men in a land of opportunity.

Luke, Joe, Miley, and “Grubby”, you all deserve medals.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The story of The Gilded Madonna is based on three real life events that took place in Sydney during the 1950s and early 60s, fictionally altered in time and with names changed.

The first of these was the kidnapping of Graeme Thorne in 1960, creating as much of a sensation in Australia as the Lindberg kidnapping had done in the USA in the early 1930s. The second, the case of the “Mutilation Murderer” William MacDonald, who, between 1961 and 1962, was responsible for a string of grisly murders in Sydney. One of his victims was found in a public toilet in the park next my high school at the time I was a student there. The final event is one with a long history, starting well before the beginning of this book: the physical and sexual abuse of young men over the course of decades in orphanages and religious homes in N.S.W.

CHAPTER ONE

“There’s blood in the water!”

Harry leaped to his feet so violently he nearly knocked my notepad out of my hand.

The crowd at the water polo Olympics final roared, and I jumped onto my bench seat to get a better look. “Who is it?”

“It’s Zádor,” a man yelled over the noise of the spectators from directly behind me. He leaned forward and grabbed my shoulder. “Fucking commie bastards.”

I helped him clamber up next to me; he’d lost a leg and was on crutches. His accent told me he was from an Eastern European country, and as the water polo final was between the favourites, Hungary and the Russians, I guessed he was on the side of the red, white, and green.

“Szabadság Magyarországért!” he yelled. It nearly deafened me.

I was about to ask him what he’d called out when the punches started flying. Obviously the two toughs seated in front of Harry and me had understood what he’d said and didn’t like it one bit.

“Clyde!”

Harry should have known me better by now to understand if someone took a swing at me, even if I wasn’t the target, I wasn’t one to hold up my hands and step away. Bozo number one fell backwards into the crowd in the seats behind him. That’s when the real fisticuffs started.

The new aquatic centre, purpose-built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and only recently finished, was packed. How were we to have known, when we’d bought our tickets months ago on the way home from our holiday in Tasmania, that the playoff for the Olympic gold medal in the water polo would be fought out by representatives of one country whose opponents’ nation was not only its suppressor and invader but also most hated enemy. On the fourth of November, just over four weeks before this match, the Soviet army had finally and brutally squashed a nationwide Hungarian uprising, killing thousands on both sides, and causing over two hundred thousand people to flee their country.

Police appeared out of nowhere, and had not both Harry and I produced official identification cards, we’d have been pulled out of the aquatic centre along with half-a-dozen of the more violent spectators.

“No, not him!” I said to the young constable as he was about to haul off my unknown Hungarian friend. “He’s with me.”

“Hey, you’re the bloke from the other day—”

“Yes, that’s me,” I said, shaking his hand. A week ago, the day after we’d arrived in Melbourne, I’d given a lecture to an audience of seventy or more new police, and it seemed that Clyde Smith, the Sydney former detective sergeant, crime fighter and private investigator, had been recognised by the Victorian policeman who’d been about to cart us away.

A roar of outrage made me turn back to the pool. Ervin Zádor was being helped from the water, blood streaming down his face. I grabbed my binoculars; the water polo player’s injury looked like a split