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

a child’s death, no matter what the age of the victim. During the war it had been telegrams, blunt and cruel; but somehow, even though never expected, the possibility had always been in the minds of those who’d remained at home. However, young blokes having their throats slashed while being sodomised in a public convenience late at night? Had I been forthcoming with details of the deaths, I may have ruined many families’ lives forever. Grieving over a murder was bad enough. But, in my opinion, exposing the secret lives of young men to no avail was somehow rubbing salt into wounds that need not be aggravated.

In other cases, where parents had discovered their son’s homo­sexuality—charged with indecent exposure, or public indecency, for example—they somehow usually blamed themselves for his sexual preferences. In the Silent Cop cases, I’d felt it would have been simply cruel to expose that detail. No one wanted them to blame themselves for obliquely being responsible for their child’s murder. Had we not done something to make him queer, he wouldn’t have been in a public toilet at night soliciting strangers for sex—the reasoning didn’t make sense to me, but I’d had the foresight to prevent any family falling into that well of erroneous self-blame.

I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t be Dioli to break the news of last night’s murder. With luck it would be an army investigator.

It took some effort to get the topic back to the Bishop case. We tossed around ideas, but with no real results to show—just an ever-growing list of maybes in Vince’s notepad.

However, although he’d not said much while we’d been chewing the fat, it was Harry’s sudden query that had made us stop, sit up, and take notice.

“The woman who’d reported the mannequin missing … which fruit shop was she going to? She’d supposedly said she’d only been away twenty minutes.” Although he didn’t live in the area, Harry noticed things—especially if they had anything to do with food. “There’s no greengrocer she could have got to on foot, bought whatever she needed, and then returned in that amount of time. I’m sure the newspaper report said twenty minutes?”

Vince nodded. “I didn’t hear that detail at the briefing, but it was all over the news.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t hear it at the briefing. It’s your case, why the hell didn’t the desk sergeant come straight to you?” I couldn’t have been more amazed if I’d tried.

“Because he went to Dioli instead. I was with the Bishops when it happened. Cyril Bishop had telephoned me saying his wife had found a reel of undeveloped film in their camera and there were very recent pictures of the children on it we might find useful. He offered to drop it in, but I needed a breath of fresh air, and as they only live a few blocks away from work, I went to pick it up.”

“I still don’t understand why you weren’t told the details, Vince. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I swear to you, Clyde, in the briefing we were told the woman had come to the desk to report it missing and the desk sergeant hadn’t taken her name—it made me so ropeable I was fit to burst—but never once was the twenty minutes mentioned. As I said, I only read that bit in the papers, just the same as you did.”

“But you were part of the plan to put the mannequins out on the street …?”

“You don’t understand how Dioli works, do you, Clyde. Consultation doesn’t fit his style. The first I knew of it was when I arrived at work and saw them outside the shop. It was the desk sergeant who’d had to explain it to me … Clyde?”

I’d jumped to my feet and with my hands behind my neck, craning to look up into the sky, stunned at what I’d just heard. It was a setup—it had to be. A fucking inappropriate, ill-thought-out scheme to get publicity and to get the case back on the front page of the papers, and—

“Who did the press briefings, Vince?”

“Well, it was Dioli of course—”

I knew it. Even though he’d handed the case over to Vince, or plonked it on his desk—that’s what Vince had said—Dioli still wanted to be seen as being in charge of the investigation.

“You think …?”

“I think you’ll find that the desk sergeant might be extremely evasive if you confronted him about details of the woman who supposedly reported the mannequin had gone missing. No one, and I say it again, absolutely no one at Randwick nick is so blasted stupid and derelict of duty they’d forget to take a statement or to ask one of the plods to interview the woman. No one! It’s a little publicity stunt cooked up by your favourite D.S. to put himself in the spotlight while you—”

“Clyde, you’re shouting!” Harry said, grabbing me by the shirt­sleeve and patting the blanket, inviting me to sit down.

I glanced around. Everyone nearby was certainly staring. I was saved further embarrassment by loud cheers from those spread out on the grass of the embankment.

“Howzat!”

Someone had been bowled out and I’d missed it.

*****

We’d been getting dinner ready when the phone rang. Vince and I had made and rolled out pasta sheets and were preparing mushroom and spinach tortellini while Tom helped Harry bone out two chickens. I dusted my hands off on my apron and went to take the call.

“Is that Clyde Smith?”

“Yes, that’s me, operator.”

“Long distance call. Putting you through. One moment please.”

“Hello, Captain Smith?”

“It’s a long time since anyone called me that, but yes, you’re speaking with him.”

The man chuckled. “I used to be a lieutenant colonel, too, I know how you feel. My name is Howard Farrell, and I believe you’ve been trying to find out about Terrence and Mark Dioli.”

*****

“Howard Farrell, that guy who owns Zephyr, the big racehorse stud outside Bowral? That guy who was mixed up with the Daley Morrison case?”

“Yes, Harry, and you and I are meeting him for