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

stuck in my mind was the mention of his tyrannical grandfather.

“Tyrannical grandfather?”

“Great War veteran with more medals than bloody MacArthur on his chest. Cranky old bastard,” one of the older detectives said. “Dioli lives with him. Adopted, so he’s not his real grandfather. The parents went down on the Greycliffe.”

“The ferry that collided with the steam ship? That Greycliffe? How did he survive then?”

“Four or five months old, I heard. The whole family was lost. One of the ship’s crew pulled him and his mother out of the ferry as it went down. She died three days later from an infection after swallowing too much water, and the kid was put into an orphanage.”

I shook my head. What a start to life. Maybe that’s why he had such a streak of blustering arrogance. Maybe it was in compensation for the guilt at having survived? He’d probably grown up with the story of how lucky he was.

“I heard the old man’s only surviving relative, a brother, went down on it as well and then years later when he found out the boy was still in a home, adopted him,” one of the other old-timers added.

Half an hour later, after they wandered back to work, I got stuck into local branch copies to see if I could find Dioli’s service record. Hurlstone Park, Dulwich Hill, Enmore, Stanmore … ah, here it was, Marrickville. I asked if I could use the phone and called the senior sergeant who’d worked there during Dioli’s tenure. Fifteen minutes later, I had what I’d been after. Gotcha, you silly bastard! My smile as I hung up the phone was truly gratifying.

Negligence of duty was as bad a crime as corruption. I wonder how Detective Sergeant Mark Dioli would react if we were to summons him to our tribunal to answer questions? And then I told myself that I’d save the information for the right time, when I really needed him to cooperate with me.

The other thing I learned, which really made me bristle, was a letter in Dioli’s current file pertaining to his sudden appointment as detective sergeant at my old nick. One of the guys from records had dug it out and handed it to me just as I was about to leave to go home. In the letter, the assistant commissioner, having met Dioli a few times, had selected him, on the basis of his charm and careful grooming, as one of the first for rapid advancement to try to give a new, fresh face to the detective branch of the N.S.W. police force. It hadn’t hurt that Dioli had scored a perfect one hundred percent for his sergeant’s exam either.

I guess all us old-timers had been tarred with the same brush of corruption, sloth, and indifference as many of the men I’d worked with when I’d first started out. I couldn’t give a shit, I told myself, as I stomped off to find my car, hoping it hadn’t been towed away from a half-hour parking zone outside the records office, and reminding myself for the umpteenth time that I wasn’t a copper anymore.

I guess I really did give a shit, and it annoyed the hell out of me that I did.

CHAPTER SIX

All the way along my run this morning, I couldn’t shake one of the songs out of my head from the movie last night. “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, one of the catchiest tunes from High Society, was still buzzing through my brain as I jogged past the tennis courts one block from home.

I’d taken a different route this morning, following the footpath that ran next to the tram lines from the hoop at the terminus up to the top of Carrington Road and then down again to the western end of my street. Had I not gone that way, no doubt I’d have missed the constable directing traffic away from Brook Street and down Dolphin Street.

“Hey, Dave,” I said as I slowed down to find out what was going on.

“Oh, gidday, Clyde,” he said.

“What’s the stoush?” I asked.

He shrugged. “As if they’d tell me. I’ve just been told not to let traffic through—not even locals. There’s another one of us up at Ormond Gardens doing the same—new bloke since you left.”

“Nice to see you, mate. Take care,” I added over my shoulder as I turned to head off home.

I guessed the reason for the stoush would have to be connected to the man leaning against one of the gate posts at the entrance to my block of flats—the last person on earth I’d expect to see.

“Morning,” he said, taking off his sunglasses and placing them in the breast pocket of his summer jacket. I couldn’t help but notice it was a very expensive, obviously tailor-made linen number.

“Hello, Detective Sergeant,” I said. I tossed my head in the direction of the oval on the opposite side of the road. “I suppose you’re here because of whatever kicked off over there.”

“I wondered if you’d like to come up to the station. There’s some­thing I’d like you to see.”

“Can’t it wait? I haven’t had a shower yet.”

He looked at his watch. “The post-mortem is scheduled to start at seven, and Jack Lyme more or less ordered me to fetch you before he starts. He told me you’d be out running, so I’ve been waiting for you to get back.”

“Any clues, or are you just going to let me stew?”

“I know you don’t consider me much of a detective, but one thing I do know is not to suggest, but wait for people to speak for themselves after they’ve seen things with their own eyes.”

I was determined not to lose my rag with him again, so I ignored the jibe about his perceived opinion of my thoughts on his detective skills—I had none as yet.

“You can either wait down here while I shower and get changed or you can come up and I’ll make you a cup of coffee while I get ready.”

He followed