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

“What is it?” he asked the moment I’d closed the door behind him.

“Outside. A quick cigarette and a bit of advice on your case—free, gratis, and for nothing.” It irked me, but there was a case to be solved, one I’d worked on for over two years.

He offered me one of his cigarettes. Mother-of-pearl case with gold fittings. Gold Ronson lighter. Did this guy go around proving his self-worth with everything he did? He lived in Rozelle, for fuck’s sake. I’d looked up the “grandfather’s” address. They lived in a suburb that was known as a den of thieves, filled with dirt-poor families and tumble­down, Victorian-era, semi-detached weatherboard houses.

“Listen,” I said. “You’ve made it perfectly clear you want to do it your own way. But the gossip around the traps says you need to spend more time on the job.” He was about to object, but I held up my hand. “Hear me out. It’s just what I’ve heard. Don’t shoot the messenger, okay? You’ve got more of a reputation for shaking hands than for doing police work, and I can guarantee you that’s a recipe for disaster if you want help from the other guys at the nick.”

He looked fit to explode but said nothing.

“Let me tell you something about me, mate. I might be a shitbag tough cop who plays rough, but I left the police force because I didn’t want to do it any more—I’d had a gutful. I didn’t get fired, or moved on, or encouraged to leave. But if this victim in there on the slab is army, you’re going to be working with some real hard-arsed bastard from the military who won’t give a toss about pleasing anyone in the police force or treading on anyone’s toes. I guarantee he’ll make your life hell if you don’t seem to be pulling your weight. He’ll eat you for breakfast and then write so many complaints the chief superintendent won’t be able to see out of his window over the top of the pile.”

As he didn’t speak, but continued to glower at me, I continued. “That bit of advice I said I was going to give you? I don’t give a shit if you take it on board or not, but put your head down, do your policing, and don’t pass on your cases to junior detectives. Once the new D.I. arrives, he’ll rip you a new arsehole if you aren’t seen to be pulling your weight. I would, if it had been me coming in as your new boss.”

“Rip me a new arsehole? I bet you’d like that—”

My anger boiled over before I could stop it. I looked around quickly and then grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him into the recess of the entrance to the forensic department.

“Fuck you, Dioli,” I said, my face two inches away from his own. I was furious. “I’ve tried to help you, but you’re too far up your own arse to see it.” I kneed him in the nuts and he doubled over. “Now go report me for assault, and see how far that gets you.”

I turned around when I reached the roadway. I was perhaps twenty yards away, and couldn’t see clearly, but he was crouched on his haunches, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. Although I couldn’t be sure, I was pretty damned certain he was trying not to cry.

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered under my breath, hesitating whether to turn back, but then I decided I need to find time to cool down. I knew myself well enough that if he gave me any more lip, it wouldn’t be a friendly tap in the goolies with my knee, but I’d be tempted to rearrange his face. I’d given him good advice—albeit grudgingly—and he couldn’t see it for anything but me being arrogant and condescending; behaviour he was guilty of himself on both occasions I’d run into him.

In our whole interchange since he’d arrived at my front door earlier that day, he hadn’t once used my name, or had even called me “sir”, as I’d suggested was an appropriate way of addressing a civilian. I didn’t know what had happened to him to give him a chip that big on his shoulder, but I had a choice these days: I could turn my back and walk away, which I’d just done. I realised I was feeling too angry again over nothing, so lit a smoke and stared at the clouds for a while until it passed.

As I got into my car to head back home to have some breakfast, I couldn’t shake the image of the dead lance corporal from my mind. It had affected me in the same way as the previous four victims. I’d seen no end of dead men both during the war and after, but it was the desecration of their bodies and the unspoken, cryptic message of the slashed X below each man’s navel with its embedded Catseye that still had me guessing—I’d never stopped trying to work out what the hell it meant. When crims left something at a crime as obvious as that, there was always a reason. It invariably was either a message or a symbol for something else. At first we’d focused on the Catseyes, but as they were prized by every kid in every school in the State, we’d found most silent cops were missing at least one or two. A whack of Dad’s chisel with his hammer and most boys’ collections of marbles would be complete.

Murder at the moment of orgasm. I’d never thought of such a gruesome thing until Quinton Halloran had sent me some case studies from America after the second killing. Days at the police archives and at the specialist reading room of the State library had led me to discover that it was a recognised psychopathology—the new word they used for mental disturbances of different types. In the literature, most often it was