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

to me, but to Jeanette, the girl he’d been seeing as a cover for his true sexuality. He’d picked me up and dumped me so many times I’d lost count, and then after I’d finally walked away, I’d discovered all sorts of other trysts he’d been keeping over the six years we’d been close. I’d only ever had one other regular in my life during our fractured years together—Harley. I’d been open and upfront with Sam about him and my other, very infrequent, times with Billy and Craig. But Sam had been duplicitous and had lied to my face, over and over again.

Just how many times he’d been carrying on lengthy and multiple liaisons behind my back had been a real revelation. Of course, the knowledge hadn’t come from him. It was surprising how many people had kept their mouths shut and had tried to protect me. I wished they hadn’t. If I’d known earlier, I would have told him to get lost and then have not felt so torn about getting together with Craig and Harley, and guilty about the few times I’d slept with Billy, who Sam had hated at the time.

It would take a long time before I could brush what Sam had done under the carpet—if I ever could.

We sat around a large table in the old lockup next to Randwick police station, Sam’s and my former workplace. Herbert Campbell, the Special Crown Advocate, at its head and Colonel Jeff Ball, Harry’s boss from military intelligence, with his aide sitting next to him, at the other end. I sat next to Billy, opposite Sam and Harry.

This morning’s meeting was another of our endless discussions about how our investigation had been stalled right from the start. A letter had arrived from the Premier of N.S.W. arguing in the strongest possible terms that we should not proceed with legal action against one of his cabinet members. The government was hanging on by its toenails and had the slimmest of majorities in the house. He felt that if his minster’s transgressions came to light, and a successful prosecution could be launched, he’d lose his majority and there’d have to be another election. The minister in question was a man who’d been laundering bribes through a knock shop that he owned in Palmer Street, the seediest red-light district in the city.

I’d had a sinking feeling, right from the start, that my wish to have a public enquiry into crime and corruption would end up being conducted behind closed doors and with few convictions of major public figures. However, I’d had the enormous satisfaction of being on a panel that had unmasked not a few exceptionally nasty pieces of work. Already six people were in the clink, and four waited trial, albeit in camera. Three more had skipped the country, and another two had taken the “coward’s escape”, leaving their widows and kids to bear the brunt of their shame.

One thing we had managed to achieve was to keep men’s private lives out of the picture. We may have had cause to produce photographic evidence to convince one or two highly placed corrupt officials to own up to their own malfeasance, but we’d also managed to save the reputations of more than twenty men, who’d been extorted after having been photographed without their knowledge in compromising situations with men in powerful positions, usually after the exchange of money. I made no judgement. I’d never been dirt poor with a family to feed. Some of those men had been screwed over for information, but the majority had been coerced into further unwanted sexual liaisons.

When Herbert excused himself to go to the men’s room, I spoke to Billy under my breath. “Can I have a few minutes with you before you leave please, mate?”

“Of course, Clyde. Business?”

“No, not now. I’ve made an appointment with your secretary next Monday to talk business. This is personal.”

“Oh?”

I wasn’t unaware that Sam was pretending not to listen, even though Harry was showing him something in a document.

“It’s about Africa,” I said.

Sam turned back to Harry. He knew Billy and I had history. It’s where we’d met and where we’d fought together against the Germans before I’d been shipped off to southern Italy.

“Clyde …” Billy said under his breath.

“Outside, when we’re having a smoke break, okay?”

“Sure thing.”

Fifteen minutes later, I left Harry deep in discussion with Colonel Ball and Sam about police–military boundaries. Billy and I wandered out into Coogee Bay Road to have a smoke, leaving them to it.

“So, Clyde, Africa?”

I handed him the photo, and he reacted more or less in exactly the same way I had done, except Billy was Italian. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and then blew his nose.

“Simpler days, eh, Clyde?”

I shrugged. “I’m assuming you didn’t send this to me.”

He shook his head and then spoke in Italian. We were out in the street and people were passing by, in and out of the police station and on their way to the local hospital, which was only a few hundred yards away.

“I’ve never seen this photo before, Clyde. Where did you get it?”

“Posted from a false post office box as the return address, no return sender’s name either.”

He held it up so the light shone over the surface. “I don’t think it’s a new copy, Clyde, it’s scratched and there’s a bit missing at the edge of one corner.”

“That’s what I thought too, Billy. Any idea who it could have come from? I don’t even remember when it was taken or who took it.”

“Trafford Olsen took it. Don’t you remember him? He was that lanky Swedish or Norwegian guy who’d arrived in Australia just before war broke out. Remember? He used to tell terrible jokes, translated direct from his own language and they were never funny.”

“Ah, yes, I remember him. He—”

“Povera bestia,” Billy said, shaking his head.

I agreed. Poor thing, he’d said. It was something Italians said to describe someone who’d come to a terrible end through misfortune and who’d