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

“Penises?” Dioli asked.

Luka unbuttoned his shirt slowly. “Put your hand on my chest, please, Detective Sergeant. It’s nothing untoward. I have an answer for you, but it’s locked until you touch me.”

Mark Dioli hesitated, looking at me for guidance. I shrugged, so he leaned up the bed and placed his palm over Luka’s heart. The touch looked careful, hesitant, yet gentle. Luka placed one hand on top of Mark’s.

“You must prevent him from killing Clyde,” Luka said. “He cares nothing for you, but he’s chosen you as a witness to Clyde’s death. You must ask him the questions, for he won’t answer any from Clyde.”

“I’m sorry …” Dioli said, and began to withdraw his hand. It was obvious he didn’t believe a word of what Luka was saying.

“Wait! Please. I know you don’t believe, but you must bury what’s happened to you in the same way that your first life was buried underwater. I feel it in the ring on your hand. You’ve had two lives now, both of which are behind you. Mourn neither, for constant grieving for what has happened in the past will never free you for a different future.”

Dioli sat back, as if a snake had bitten him. He was about to jump off the bed, but I grabbed his arm, shaking my head. Luka’s eyes were still covered. I stared at the ring. “My mother’s,” Dioli mouthed silently.

“Don’t hate me, Detective Sergeant,” Luka said. “Like you, I’ve had far too much hate in my life, and it’s time for all of us to find a place in our lives where what comes now is unconnected with what made us who we are. All I ask is you save Clyde and take charge when it’s important.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

After three days had passed since Luka had spoken to Mark and me, I finally had a handle on Luka’s unconscious mind-processing and his professed ability to be one of the people that remembered every tiny detail. I’d mulled on it over and over, and more of what he’d told Mark and me could be more or less rationally explained away.

Blue and pink, horses and cats—typical colours and toys associated with children of the ages of David and Susan.

Care of an animal—perhaps he’d unconsciously seen Dennis tie the dog up on the other side of the road before coming to the shop, or retrieving it after he’d left with his magazines and then had just stored it away in the back of his mind.

Something in his head and which was not part of his body—false teeth were always too perfect. For someone who’d described he and his sister as being able to pick up on the small finger movements or eye movements of clients, it wasn’t impossible for him to have noticed Dennis’s teeth and not have given it a second thought.

Penises and the smell of sex—well, we had told him a bit about the killer’s sexual activities. I’d warned him away from the parks myself—twice.

The mention of Dioli’s two lives. The first when his family were drowned in the sinking of the Greycliffe could be explained away because Luka dealt in second-hand books and magazines, which he inspected to see they were intact and indeed saleable. It would have been easy to leaf through a magazine that held or featured an account of the sinking of the ferry—although how he’d linked that to Mark was for the moment evasive to me. His second life, that of abuse at the hands of his grandfather—I’d told Luka about it, not in so many words but enough that he could have worked it out, especially as Harry had told Luka that Dioli had been staying with Harry’s parents after his grandfather had been arrested and that Mark had cried into Mary’s arms more than once.

However, the connection with Mark’s mother’s wedding ring and the ferry sinking was one of the three things for which I had no logical explanation. The other two were the children being far away, near the smell of petrol and oil, and the target or bullseye, which I equated with the incised cross in each of the victims—I’d never mentioned that to him. It was one fact only known to those directly involved with the case.

“How did he know about my mother’s wedding ring?” Mark asked me for the third time since last Friday, when Luka Praz had told him and me what he’d seen in his vision.

It was Tuesday night, two days after Harry had returned from his weekend adventure trip, and we were staking out one of the only two public toilets in the district known to be frequented by men at night that we’d organised to be left open. We’d left them unlocked last night too, not only so word could get around among those who “did the beats” but also to see whether Kemeny might turn up if he was on the prowl. We hoped it just looked like the same lazy council man had just decided to not bother to lock them up, because both were fairly close to each other.

Brendan and Vince supervised one team and Mark and I the other. Six policemen placed in strategic positions at each of the two conveniences, and with them two of my mates wandering around in the bushes and loitering near the toilets, acting as lures for a man with bright green eyes. Courtesy of Jeff Ball, we’d scored two pairs of the new “night vision” binoculars, developed during the Korean War. We had one pair and Brendan and Vince the other. Last night, despite high expectations, had turned out to be a fizzer. Mark and I had sat tensed-up and waiting for hours, eventually going home at first light. Only a few cars had stopped and Kemeny hadn’t been among the men who’d got out of them to prowl about.

“Your mother’s wedding ring?” I replied. “To be honest I’ve no idea. Until this whole thing