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

my business card over. “Did you wonder why I’d write my own name on the back of the card if it’s printed so clearly on the front?”

“Well, of course,” he protested, unconvincingly.

Okay, I was tired of playing games with him. It was obvious he was out of his depth. I opened my desk drawer and threw the envelope that had arrived for me when we were away in Melbourne onto the desk.

“I got one of these while I was away. Empty too. But same hand­writing, same coloured ink …”

“And you think …”

“Jesus,” I muttered, wondering who this guy could be rooting to get a D.S. job straight after his sergeant’s exam. “Someone obviously thinks I should be involved in the Bishop case.”

“No way,” Dioli said, sitting back in his chair and shaking his head.

“Very well, Detective. As there’s nothing more to discuss, I’ll bid you good day and wish you all the best with your investigation.”

He looked for all the world like one of those sideshow clown amusements. The type that twisted their heads from side to side and into whose mouth you had to insert a ping-pong ball, aiming it to fall into numbered slots below.

“Hang on, Clyde,” Harry said, giving me one of his looks. “Perhaps if any information comes your way you could hand it on to the detective sergeant, as a gesture of goodwill.”

I’m sure my fake smile would have curdled milk, but I tried, the best I could. “For sure. If anything comes up, I’ll surely give it to the chief superintendent.”

“No, please. Send it to me. I’ll make sure it gets the attention it deserves,” Dioli said, a little too quickly for it to be anything other than an intercept.

“It’s no problem, Detective Sergeant. In fact, I’ll see him far more regularly than I will you, so I’ll just pass it on to him …”

“I tell you what, Mr. Smith, if you do run across anything, please just telephone the station and I’ll come down in person myself to collect it.”

I hadn’t missed the slight hesitation before he’d said the “mister” before my name.

As I stood to shake his hand, he hesitated before he took mine. “By the way, I’ve been wondering, how did you know the Bishop case was being handled by D.C. Paleotti?”

“When a former cop never has to put his hand in his pocket to pay for a drink with his ex-mates at the pub after work, nothing’s a secret, Sergeant. Surely you know that by now? Station chatter at the local, that’s how I know,” I lied. The last thing in the world I wanted was to get Vince into any trouble.

Dioli didn’t quite jam his hat back on his head or stomp down the stairs noisily. But the moment I returned after having escorted him down to the street, I found Tom leaning out the window laughing softly to himself. Harry was in my chair shaking his head at me.

“Really, Clyde?” he said, but with a grin.

“What?”

I wasn’t really good at feigned innocence but I tried my hardest.

*****

“Tom said you were very hard on him.”

“Maybe I was a bit too hard, yes, Harry. But anyone who bullies a keen young constable, picks apart everything he does, and then calls him a poofter for no other reason than for bolstering his own ego, doesn’t deserve any respect. The way he barged into my office and started mouthing off had me angry before he even said a word. I have way too much anger inside me to control sometimes.”

We’d gone for a walk after having lunch in the beer garden of the local pub, and were now sitting on the raised sandstone wall of the promenade, gazing out over the beach, our jackets by our sides, and our feet dangling over the twenty-foot drop down to the sand.

“You look very handsome in your new sunglasses, Clyde,” he said, surreptitiously rubbing his little finger against the outside of my thigh.

“Thank you again, Harry. I really like them.”

My birthday had happened to be on the same day as the water polo match in Melbourne: the sixth of December. When we’d dined in the Hungarian restaurant that night, he’d slid the beautiful kidskin case across the table to me. They were expensive Persol glasses, made by Ratti, and must have cost him a fortune. Worn by all the major Italian male heartthrobs in the movies, I could have only dreamed of buying a pair. “Per il sole,” I’d remarked to him, when I’d seen them for sale in the window of a Bourke Street jeweller and then had explained Persol was a contraction of the Italian phrase I’d just uttered—for the sun.

“You’re handsome, Clyde. The sunglasses do nothing but accentuate your good looks.”

I blushed red-hot. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to being paid compliments, even as heartfelt as the one Harry had just thrown at me.

“I’m sorry you heard about me losing my rag, Harry.”

He chuckled and then patted my shoulder. “I’ve seen you stab two men to death and shoot another through the head, Clyde. Seeing you get annoyed doesn’t count in the greater scheme of things. But I know you well enough to realise something else must have made you kick off like that. Want to share?”

“I want to have a swim,” I said, gazing off over the breakers, avoiding a direct answer for the moment. I looked up into the lifesaver tower and watched the young man on shark duty, perched some twenty feet above the ground atop a sharply pointed pyramid of Meccano-like struts, scanning the sea with his binoculars. “Or be up there where he is …”

“Go ahead,” Harry said. “Strip off and jump in the water. I’ll look after your clobber.”

I grinned at him.

“You asked why I kicked off? I haven’t had time to tell you yet, but Billy rang me before you arrived. He told me that Sonny Mullins’ mother died six years ago. She drank a bottle of rum, posted a suicide letter in