The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

to the curb, leaning on a telephone pole, having just said goodnight to Boyd. I wasn’t even out of the car when he tapped on the passenger side window and asked me if I wanted a gob job. Took his teeth out and slurped his tongue over his lips.”

I laughed, more from slight shock than anything. “What if you’d been a cop?”

“Who me?” Neil said and then snorted with amusement. “Anyway, my dick told me to open the door, and he had his head in my lap before I knew what was going on. When I got home, I told Boyd the story and we compared notes. Same man no doubt. How many other young blokes wearing the same outfit do you meet who take out their false teeth and then ask for money once the job’s done?”

“He never gave you a name?” I was hopeful, but they both shook their heads.

“No one gives their real name at beats, Clyde.”

I shrugged. I knew little about what went on, except second-hand.

“So, you initially met him what, nearly six years ago, is that right?” I asked.

They nodded.

“And have you seen him since, other than here at the baths, four years ago?”

“Well, I don’t remember him here at that time,” Neil said. “I was in a new relationship, but I do remember Boyd telling me he’d turned up at Craig’s and was popular in the steam room. However, in answer to your question, Clyde, yes, we’ve both seen him walking his dog—fairly recently too. We were only talking about the coincidence last week.”

“His dog?” I was so surprised I nearly fell into the pool.

“Yes, he’s got a large, furry-looking thing that he lets run loose in the park. It’s very friendly. He always keeps well away from everyone else, and if it runs up to say hello to anyone, he whistles to it, and it goes straight back to him.”

“Large and furry?”

“Bitzer,” Neil said. “Not a breed.”

“And where does he walk his dog, anywhere specific?”

“In the parks around here, usually late afternoon or early evening. The dog sits or lies down while he goes about things.”

“When you say ‘goes about things’ I suppose you mean …”

“He likes to expose himself to men and then he’ll either play with them or take his teeth out and you know. But, I’ve never seen him let anyone return the favour … let anyone give him a blowie, I mean.”

“That’s odd,” I said. “Tell me something, have either of you ever seen him or heard of him having anal sex with anyone? In the steam room or in the parks? Have you heard from other friends who might have run across him, who might have seen him going the full hog?”

“He could have, but I never saw it. In fact, whenever I saw him doing the beat at the park I made myself scarce. I found his over-enthusiasm a little off-putting, to be perfectly honest. That one time with him was enough.”

“Do either of you recall when you started seeing him again … you said it was recently, didn’t you, and with his dog?”

The two men looked at each other. “Probably early September was the first time, I think,” Neil said. “I live opposite the park up in Wolseley Road—funnily enough there was something going on there in the early hours of this morning, cops everywhere.”

I wasn’t going to tell him about the double murder that had taken place opposite his flat, but encouraged him to continue. “September you said?”

“Yes, I was on my way to work at the cinema, and I passed him coming up from the tram stop with the dog. I only remembered it because he looked me straight in the face but didn’t smile. I was about to say hello, but he didn’t seem to recognise me and just kept going. I knew it was him though—who could forget the colour of those eyes?”

“The colour of his eyes?” Although I hadn’t mentioned it, the man’s eye colour was his most salient feature. I wanted to make absolutely sure we were talking about the same person in the picture Art had drawn from Steve’s description.

“Yes, Boyd and I discussed it several times. Neither of us had ever seen anyone with such bright green eyes. They looked almost artificial, and—”

“Wait a moment, Neil,” I said. “You said he was coming up from the tram stop? You can’t take dogs on trams.”

“That’s the direction he was coming from. I didn’t say I saw him getting off the tram. He was walking down Havelock Avenue, just where the trams leave the Bundy.”

“That’s only a short way up the road from my office,” I said.

“When I thought about it, after having seen his pooch, I thought he must have been following what we used to call the ‘dog walk’. All us kids used to follow it with our pooches. While we exercised them, it gave us a chance to play on the swings and roundabouts in each of the parks along the way.”

“The dog walk?” I’d never had a dog as a pet. Mum had cats, and therefore we always had moggies.

“Yes. It’s called the dog walk because you can basically travel through the back streets from the park opposite mine, Trenerry Park, down through Grant Reserve and then alongside the tram tracks up to—”

“Baker Park?”

“Yes, Clyde, and then farther on from that there’s that patch of grass outside the Prince of Wales hospital at Randwick, and finally Alison Park at Peter’s Corner … Clyde? Are you all right?”

I’d just realised three of the murders over the past four years had occurred in the parks they’d just mentioned. Grant Reserve and the patch of grass outside the hospital were the only two that didn’t have public toilets. However, I snapped to and moved on. “Can I ask you one last thing, fellas?”

“Sure, Clyde.”

“Do you know of anyone else who might have run across him … more recently and at night?”

There was a moment when they looked at each