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

was Harry who’d been responsible for the careful shot that had killed Keeps. A stray bullet had had nothing to do with it.

Dioli had been adopted at the age of six, having been taken into care while still an infant. According to what Howard Farrell had said, small children were only knocked about—a polite euphemism for being beaten—it wasn’t until they became pubescent that the sexual predation and pimping started. Howard Farrell had said he’d been a teenager when men had started “visiting” him. Maybe that’s why Dioli had never run across Keeps, who was only interested in sexual dealings with adolescents.

Dioli and I pulled up chairs and watched while Harry rolled up his sleeves and then dusted off his blackboard.

“When we worked out codes in the war, we had well-known methods to follow,” he said. “People have been writing coded messages since the days of the Babylonians, so studying most of the regular ciphers is part of our training. However, codes are one thing, but clues are a completely different kettle of fish. A clue is usually something that associates one object to another—like the word ‘cat’ for example.” He pointed at Baxter, who was sitting on the edge of the long meeting table with his paws folded neatly over the edge. “When you think of cats there’s the usual things come to mind: black cats and bad luck, cat fur and allergies, cats and rodents, cats and Ancient Egypt, and so on.”

He drew up a grid on the blackboard of five columns. “This is how I’d go about it—”

“Wait,” Dioli said, pulling out his notebook. Maybe there was a real detective underneath his aggressive and overly protective exterior.

“The package delivered to the Bishops with Clyde’s name on it has to be a message of sorts, right? So in order to figure out that message, we need to hone in on the specific items in the box. These would be my main headings,” Harry said and then wrote one word at the top of each column from left to right. BVM, Metal, Gold, Wales, Urine. “There could be more, of course, but these are a good start.”

“BVM?”

“Blessed Virgin Mary, I believe,” Harry explained to Dioli. “What I’d do next is to list as many associations or synonyms for each of the items at the top of each column.”

Dioli scribbled furiously and then read out what he’d written. “So, for the first column, under BVM, so far I’ve got Virgin, Mary, Mother, Madonna, pure, blue—”

“Blue?” I asked.

“Blue of a particular hue is associated with the Mother of Jesus.” Then when I asked him to explain, he said, “I’m not a Roman Catholic, but I read a lot.”

Between us, after about twenty minutes, we’d filled the board and then some, adding more synonyms around the edge of Harry’s grid and beneath it with arrows pointing to the column the words belonged to.

“So, here’s your, or should I say ‘our’ answer,” Harry said, standing back with his arms crossed. “We just have to figure out which words in each column we can link to give us a suggestion.”

I read out the first words under each heading. “Virgin, brass, wealth, dragon, piss,” I said.

“Nice one, Smith,” Harry said. “For a writer, you have such a way with words.”

Even Dioli laughed, which surprised me. The sound of his laughter didn’t seem to fit with the person I’d come to believe he was. It was filled with genuine amusement and seemed to come from deep down inside.

“All right, Harry,” I said. “I suppose what you want me to do is to find an idea that combines all or some of those words to make a phrase or a sentence that could sound like a clue?”

“That’s my boy,” he said in his best Mr. Magoo voice.

I thought for a moment. “Virgin, brass, wealth, dragon, piss, could stand for a high-class prostitute with a bad temper who specialises in urolagnia for her clients?”

“Urolagnia?”

I was surprised Dioli didn’t know the word. Most detectives who’d had dealings with prostitutes would have known what it meant. “Some guys like to watch women pee, or get them to pee on them. It’s the proper term for a urination fetish. Most clients, when they want it, ask the brothel owner if Yellow River is available, as if it’s the name of a Chinese slapper.”

“Good grief,” Dioli said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“You’ll get to learn the jargon once you’ve been a D.S. for a while. One of the biggest vice problems in the area are the cheap brothels up around the racecourse. On Saturdays, after the meet’s over, there’s not only a lot of grog-fuelled violence, but punch-ups in the knock shops in Wansey Road and Botany Street.”

“I’ll look forward to that,” he said.

“Irony, Detective Sergeant?” I said. “You almost sound human.”

He ignored my jibe, although he did crack a partial smile. “Your suggestion of the high-class prostitute and her Yellow whatsit, Smith. How did you figure that out from those first five words at the top of the list?”

“Some women, especially those who are into those sorts of specialist activities, don’t actually engage in penetrative sex, hence the ‘virgin’. Brass is an expression we still use for money, and gold would mean a lot of money. Dragon—angry, fire-breathing. Piss meaning she was a Yellow River, as I just explained.”

Dioli sat back in his chair, checking his notes and occasionally glancing up at the blackboard.

“Clyde’s is obviously not the answer,” Harry said. “But once you know how to go about it, like I’ve marked it out on the blackboard, it’s one of the best methods I’ve found when trying to deduce clues.”

“I wish I’d known this method earlier, right at the start of my career, rather than swimming through a million ideas trying to find the best one to fit,” I said. “How about I take a photo of the blackboard for you, Detective Sergeant. I can develop a print tonight and get someone to drop it in to you tomorrow. It’ll