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

themselves. I explained that when I first went through the shorthand notes, that promise had stuck in my mind. I sincerely hoped it was the reason that if he’d taken them, Dennis Kemeny would never have harmed the Bishops’ children.

Johnny had left for war on the lunchtime train. Later that same night, Dennis had been tied down and repeatedly violated by the groundsmen and his two mates. He’d sunk his teeth into one of them, and for his “uncontrollable behaviour”, on the next visit from the itinerant dentist, and with a convenient letter from Bishop’s friend, the local doctor, he had been restrained while all his teeth were extracted.

Howard’s contacts had all said this was the act that had started his rapid decline into what they variously described as “fits of madness” and periods of disassociation from the world.

“Was it him then who sent you the photo of us four?” Billy asked after I’d reached this point of my explanation.

“In 1942, when Sonny got shipped back with the 9th, he brought back the canister of undeveloped photos that Trafford Olsen had taken of us, which included that one I passed around of all four of us on the motorbike in North Africa. Sonny Mullins visited Dennis in Mudgee and told him that Johnny was dead and gave him the roll of film, telling him about us four close friends. One of the men who my source interviewed was present, had known Johnny, and was witness to the conversation.”

“How did Sonny know about Dennis Kemeny when we didn’t?”

I held up my hand, my forefinger twisted around my middle finger. “They were like that, Billy, just like you and I were. They shared a two-man tent. I guess we’ll never know, but I can only assume that there was some sort of conversation along the lines of ‘if I don’t make it home, make sure you give that reel of film to my pal, Dennis Kemeny, in the boys’ home in Mudgee’. If I know Johnny, he probably also told Sonny that Dennis was to look us up when we came home and we’d take care of him. I don’t know, Billy, to be perfectly honest. They’re both dead so we’ll never know.”

I let what I’d said sink in for a moment. And then, just as Brendan was about to say something, I interrupted him.

“I have something that might link the way in which Dennis Kemeny kills and mutilates his victims to Johnny’s death,” I said. “My mate Billy Tancred has been busy investigating on his own. He got in touch with our old C.O., who’s now retired, and asked him a few questions.”

“In 1947,” Billy said, “a young man presented himself at the army base in Enoggera, asking to speak with our ex-C.O., introducing himself as Dennis Edgar, brother of Johnny, and begging for details of how Johnny died.”

“Wait!” Brendan Fox said. “How is this relevant?”

I explained the story of Johnny’s squad targeted by improvised mines made from terracotta pots jam-packed with artificial star sapphires and tiger’s eyes made for the jewellery trade. When I finished, Mark, Vince, and Brendan could not have looked more astonished had they tried.

“The cross-shaped incision above the pubis of the victims is the sign for a target. A Catseye reflector marble is in lieu of the gemstones used for shrapnel,” I explained.

“But the cut throats? How is that part of Kemeny’s modus operandi?” Brendan asked.

I waved the shorthand pad in the air. “The superintendent at the home had a very good memory and some serious concerns about Dennis Kemeny. Although he reported his suspicions to the local police, our friend with the green eyes had disappeared into thin air.”

“Serious concerns?”

“In 1947, just after Dennis visited our ex-C.O. and learned the details of Johnny’s death, the superintendent remembered Kemeny turning up on the doorstep of the Dr. Bagshaw’s Home in Mudgee, asking if Bishop or the groundsman were still around. Kemeny had left the home four years before, when he turned sixteen. The superintendent told him he was new, but had heard that the groundsman had died eighteen months beforehand, stabbed in his sleep while dead drunk by persons unknown, and Bishop had retired shortly after to a property not far from the old shale oil works at Glen Davis.”

“And?” Brendan asked.

“Four weeks later, Bishop’s body was found, his throat slashed and his penis severed, stuffed in his mouth. We can most likely assume that Kemeny killed him in revenge for what Bishop had done to him.”

“And to the other boys at the home,” Mark said, shaking his head slowly. I could see the tightness in his jaw—no doubt there were a few people he’d known that he wished could end up like Bishop.

“As I said, the superintendent spoke to the local police about his concerns and the coincidence, but Kemeny seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.”

While I’d been speaking, I’d noticed Billy’s articled clerk had arrived and had handed a document to Billy. Billy’s eyebrows shot up while he was reading it—obviously he had news.

“May I?” he asked.

“Please, Billy,” I said.

He held up the document. “My very assiduous articled clerk has spent the morning trawling through the register of births, deaths, and marriages, and has just given me this document. Dennis Kemeny changed his name legally to Dennis Edgar in 1943, apparently just after he left the Dr. Bagshaw Home in Mudgee. He’s assumed the fantasy of being Johnny’s brother and remade his life with a new identity. That’s obviously why the police hadn’t been able to find him. He’d been living with a new name for four years before he returned looking for the groundsman and Bishop.”

“Where was he in the time between when he returned to the home, killed Bishop, and the first time he resurfaced? Any clues, Clyde?” Brendan asked me.

“According to the local men I recently interviewed, he was first seen in Hyde Park in town in January, 1951, two years before the first killings. One of