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

there and before I’d handed in my notice in a fit of indignant rage. Oh yeah, I was that guy too. Once I’d had a gutful of anything, I’d slam the door behind me with a kind invitation to all those on the other side to go get stuffed.

At first, I’d pleaded with Vince that I was far too busy to help with the Bishop kidnapping.

Although we were at the point of finalising our official investigation into crime and corruption involving the former drug lord Rinaldo Tocacci and Deputy Police Commissioner Marvin Keeps, there was still the issue of my weekly newspaper reviews and the monthly crime report to do, not to mention my fledgling private investigator business—the mound of correspondence that had been on the floor inside my office when I’d first walked in the door that morning had made my heart sink.

However, at the back of my mind was that hook, same shape and purpose as the one you tied at the end of a line when you were out for a day of trying to catch a fish for dinner. Just as sharp, and once it was embedded, almost impossible to remove. I was a detective, a detective torn by the love of writing and journalism, but a detective nonetheless. As Vince had stood in my doorway last night when he’d wished me goodnight, he’d thrown me one of those sad, “I suppose I’ll manage … somehow” looks, and I’d found myself reluctantly agreeing to have a look.

Baxter dug his teeth in. “Ow!” My hand had been motionless for more than his three-second rule allowed. I’d been punished. I picked him up and held him in the air, nuzzling his soft tummy against my nose before depositing him back on the desk and then brushing down my trousers with my hands. Grey tabby cat versus charcoal grey slacks: cat 1, trousers 0.

The biggest surprise when arriving this morning at my office had not been the pile of mail, but a removal van parked out in the street. Mr. Kovacs, the stocking mender who’d run his business out of the office next to mine for thirty years, had decided to call it a day. He’d explained that no one, except the very wealthy, wore silk stockings anymore because imported American nylons were not only very, very cheap, but had flooded the market and weren’t worth the price of repair. He’d shaken my hand and had wished me good luck.

I’d wandered through his empty space. Had it not been for the view over the beach from my big easterly-facing window, through which I’d been staring when Baxter had bitten me, I’d have rung the real estate agency and offered to move into Mr. Kovacs’ much larger, three-room office suite. There was a reception area with a built-in desk, off it a large room in which he used to keep his machinery, and then a storeroom that looked out over Waltham Street.

It had given me an idea and I’d phoned Harry, having only left him less than an hour before, inviting him to come and meet Tom with me at ten. Harry arrived a few minutes before Tom turned up. I smelled the sausage rolls even before he’d opened my office door. The bakery was two blocks away.

“Milkshakes?” I asked, without looking up.

“Nope,” he said, leaning over my desk and kissing my forehead. I raised my mouth for a return, but found half a cream matchstick hovering a few inches away from my face. Harry’s beard was smeared with cream, just under his chin. He knew I loved matchsticks—the pink-icing-coated, crunchy puff pastry slices, filled with a layer of raspberry jam and half an inch of stiffly whipped, sweetened cream. I gobbled it down and then got my kiss.

I laughed through the stickiness of it, wiping my mouth after he’d sat on the edge of my desk. I handed him my handkerchief.

“More in your beard than in your gob,” I said.

He waggled his eyebrows, and I smirked, realising far too late what else it could refer to.

“You say the sexiest things, Smith.” He grinned at me, so I squeezed his knee and then ran my hand over the top of his thigh.

“Go next door, Harry. Have a look around.”

He raised an eyebrow, but shrugged and did as I’d told him.

“Oh, hello, Tom,” I heard him say from outside my door. He’d been gone a couple of minutes, and I suppose he’d run into the young former detective at the top of the stairs.

“What’s that I can smell?” Tom said, holding out his hand to me.

“Sausage rolls for morning tea, courtesy of Mr. Jones.”

“I’ll go make some tea, shall I?” Harry asked.

“You better be quick about it, or there’ll be none left by the time you get back, Harry,” I said.

“You think I’m stupid, Clyde? I ate three in the car on the way here.”

*****

“Honestly, I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Harry said, after I’d laid out my plan.

“When I saw that Mr. Kovacs had moved out, I rang Griff Llewellyn at Lowry’s real estate agency and enquired about the empty office. He said he’d been finding it tough to lease business premises, so if we could make it a fiver a week all up, we could take over Mr. Kovacs’ lease and have this whole floor to ourselves.”

“Instead of driving my parents crazy and working from home, I’d run my adventure tours company out of there—”

“And we’d share Tom. He could organise your groups, and at the same time do leg work for me. I’m snowed in with the backlog of jobs I’ve got on.”

“How much were you earning as a policemen, Tom?” Harry asked.

“Four pounds ten, Mr. Jones.”

“So we’re looking at eleven quid a week between us, then. Five pounds ten apiece. Reckon you could cope with that, Clyde?”

“Hang on, Harry. How do you come up with eleven quid?”

“Five for the two offices and six for Tom.”

“Six pounds a week?” Tom’s eyes bulged in disbelief.

I was about to say