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

semi-precious stones for costume jewellery. It wasn’t a leap of faith to imagine that if there had been an article in the magazine, perhaps a good journalist who did his research may have mentioned the fact. It’s something I would have done, for sure.

It was all conjecture until we could get our hands on copies of the two issues Green Eyes had purchased.

“Luka said he was a human computer, am I right, Clyde?” Billy had asked.

“Those were my words, Billy, but yes. There’s one thing that bothers me about the whole affair though.”

“What?”

“Even though Luka’s mind might have been able to link all of these things to the deaths of our boys at the hands of Arab collaborators, how the hell did he connect Johnny Edgar to me through the tiepin you had made from his cigarette lighter casing?”

Billy had shrugged and then said, “Who knows, Clyde. But can I tell you something? Something that’s made me less of a sceptic than you are?”

I’d leaned my head on his shoulder, a place it had rested more times than I could remember since I’d first met him almost twenty years ago, and told him to speak.

“After I left you in Rome, in forty-four, we made our way up the east coast of Italy, reconnoitring the Germans’ positions and fortifications, making contact with partisans and generally causing mischief. As you know, until a few years ago, I was still pretty religious. Roman Catholicism is something that’s engraved into your soul as a child. When we got to Arezzo, I was lying in bed—well, I was actually sleeping rough under a hedge—when I had a vision in my dream. It was the Virgin Mary, hovering in the air above me, telling me to go to what I thought she said was Lavender.”

“Lavender?” I’d asked. “That’s not an Italian word … lavanda?”

“That’s what I thought first, lavender, washing, the word is the same for both meanings. But then, in the morning, I went to confession and told the priest what I’d seen. He told me the mother of Jesus was telling me to go to La Verna. I’d never heard of it, Clyde, but it’s the place where St. Francis received the stigmata—”

“And?”

“And so I ordered my men to meet me at Urbino in five days, and I made my way there. I can’t tell you what it was like, Clyde. It truly was mystical, not religious. When I was on my knees praying, it felt like something in the earth under the tiny Cappella della Stimmata was swirling away, directing energy from deep down below and up through my body. I’ve never forgotten that moment, Clyde, because the roundel on the wall, made by Andrea della Robbia hundreds of years ago, spoke to me.”

“Spoke to you?”

“Yes, Clyde, I know it sounds stupid, but a voice spoke in my heart and when I turned around to look at the beautiful blue-and-white ceramic plaque, the Virgin seemed to lean forward and blessed me, like priests do during Mass. She told me my mother had joined my father in heaven and She was watching over them and keeping me safe.”

“You didn’t know your mother was dead at the time?”

Billy had shaken his head and had taken his handkerchief from his pocket to blot his eyes. “I’d had a letter from her five weeks before, Clyde, in which she wrote about the weather, her new austerity cooking classes, the plans for the anniversary of Dad’s passing, and just day-to-day stuff. Said she’d been to the doctor, who’d told her she’d never been healthier. I didn’t find out she’d died until we moved into Florence with the liberation forces a month later and the message was waiting for me at military command. I know this vision, or whatever you want to call it, sounds fanciful, but believe me I had absolutely no idea she’d had a stroke while she was watering the geraniums on the balcony of the flat and had fallen over into the garden, two floors below. Mercifully, she was dead before she hit the ground.”

“Is there no way anyone could have hinted, and perhaps you’d stored it in the back of your mind, Billy?” I’d asked.

“No, Clyde, you see she suffered the stroke on the very day I’d had the dream telling me to go to La Verna, three days before the Blessed Virgin Mary had spoken to me in the chapel.”

*****

I didn’t go straight back to the office. I was too disturbed after my visit to Billy and what he’d told me of his own “mystical” experience—in all the years I’d known him, he’d never lied. He might have lied by omission, but had never told me a falsehood. I couldn’t begin to understand how he could have learned of his mother’s death in the way he had. It disturbed me, mainly because I had the same feeling about what Luka Praz’s letter had revealed. And I was still in shock after learning the details of Johnny’s death—especially the likeness of moonstones and artificial star sapphires and their similarity to the Catseyes used in the Silent Cop killings.

I had no doubt now, after all I’d learned, that the murderer was somehow targeting me and it had to do with Johnny Edgar in some way. The photograph I’d received of the four of us sitting on the motorbike, and now these other connections, had my mind going at ten to the dozen, and not in a pleasant way. I was becoming more and more convinced that the Bishop kidnapping was a red herring, intended to draw my attention away from the vicious slayings of men in public toilets.

When I’d asked Billy why he’d never mentioned the artificial sapphires, he’d told me he didn’t learn the details for months afterwards, and only when he’d pressed our C.O. for details. Besides, when we’d next seen each other, I’d been in a P.O.W. camp for years and talking about Johnny Edgar had been the last thing on my