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

The middle pile is requests for information about ongoing investigations—as you can see it’s the smallest—and this last one is mostly advertising and inappro­priate correspondence.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Lonely women and crackpots I suppose?”

He nodded. “Mostly, but there’s this one here, I didn’t know what to do with.”

I checked the envelope first, turning it over to read the return address. It was a G.P.O. post office box number.

“Before you ask, no such post box exists, Clyde. There are none that start with a nought.”

I have to admit I was more than a little impressed he knew that, but the feeling soon changed to shock as soon as I opened the envelope and found what was inside.

“No letter?” I asked. “Nothing else? Just this?”

“Just the photograph,” he said. “Nothing else … Clyde? Are you all right?”

“I just need to sit for a moment, sorry, Tom. You can close up and go home if you like.”

“Vince will be here in half an hour. Have you forgotten?”

I shook my head, although that wasn’t the truth. I had totally forgotten I’d told him to pop in after work to get me up to speed on the Bishop case, and to see how I could help him.

“I didn’t want this to be part of your job, Tom, but would you mind popping down to the milk bar across the road and grabbing us something to keep us going until it’s time for dinner?”

“I don’t mind at all, Clyde. What would you like?”

“Hamburger, egg, and bacon, no beetroot. Share a small portion of chips?”

“You betcha,” he said and then refused the brown ten-shilling note I took from my wallet.

I’d wanted Tom out of the road for fifteen minutes while I got my head around what was in the envelope. It was, as he said, a photograph. A photograph taken in 1941 in North Africa only a few months before I’d been taken prisoner in Italy where I’d spent three years in a P.O.W. camp near Macerata. Four smiling boys in khaki shorts, sitting on a captured German motorbike, all giving cheeky grins to the camera. My pal Johnny Edgar up the front, me close up behind him with my arms around his waist, and then Billy Tancred behind him. Finally, pretending to hold up the motorbike at the back, was Sonny Mullins.

“No holes barred”, we’d called our group, due to our shared nocturnal, and sometimes diurnal, activities. Only Billy and I had survived the war.

I stared at the photo, my eyes misted with tears and a lump in my throat. I couldn’t help myself, I stroked each of my friend’s faces with a finger until I could bear it no longer. I crossed my arms on my desk and lowered my head into the crook of one elbow and ground my teeth, fighting back tears.

Billy would never send me anything like this. Sonny’s father had died in Changi and his mother now lived in Perth. Johnny was an orphan. I’d never seen a copy of this particular photo—there were others, and I had one or two myself, despite wartime prohibition of taking personal photos in an area of engagement. My hand hesitated over the telephone. Billy would be home from work by now, and I didn’t want to call in case Sam answered. I still couldn’t bring myself to speak to him about anything other than work-related stuff.

I slipped the photo into my jacket pocket and had just rinsed my face in the men’s lavatory room when I heard Tom’s “cooee”. I decided I’d think about it later tonight when I got home.

We sat on the floor of the empty office, our backs against the reception desk, while we tucked into what for most normal people might have been considered a meal. However, my metabolism still worked as though I was Tom’s age; I could eat for Australia in an Olympic competition and still not put on any weight. I’d have dinner at whatever time I got home. I’d imagined in advance my evening meeting with Vince would take a few hours, at least.

Before leaving this morning, I’d phoned Trixie my … I didn’t know what to call her … cleaner, housekeeper, cat minder, cook … and had asked her to pick up ingredients for a shepherd’s pie on her way to my house. She’d offered to cook it for me, and I’d readily accepted. I kept a jar at the back of the pantry with about ten quid in notes and coins for emergencies. I’d told her to help herself if she was ever stuck, but she never had. She was far too proud to ask for help. I’d never once noticed in ten months she’d been “doing” for me that there wasn’t a penny less than what she’d used to buy cleaning products and food, and she had always left a receipt in the jar for what she’d spent.

“This is the list of telephone messages from Brenda Brighteyes, Clyde,” Tom said, licking his fingers clean and then retrieving his notebook from the breast pocket of his shirt. “I’ve used coloured pencils to mark those that belong together. I’ve grouped them slightly differently than your mail. A red line under the name of the person calling means it’s about investigative work. Orange pencil lines are messages from the newspapers or people who should be calling the police, not you, and the green lines are personal messages.”

I leafed through the twenty or so messages, only two were green. One was from a person who asked me if I was related to the Smiths of Annandale—the answer was no—and the other was from my mate, Craig Whitcombe, who I’d known since I was a kid, and who owned the men’s sea baths at the other end of the beach.

“I’ll sort these out in the morning, Tom.”

“You see the blue star on the right of the messages, Clyde? Well they’re the ones I can take care of. Unless you want to check them out first and then …?”

“Nah,