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

our wealthy friend’s informants told him that Dennis Edgar had been arrested in January 1948 for soliciting on Katoomba railway station, for indecent behaviour in the station toilet, and for assaulting an officer. He got five years, reduced to three for good behaviour, in Lithgow jail.”

“Away for three years?”

“And, Brendan,” I added. “As that’s the standard sentence for that sort of arrest, I bet now we know what name he’s been using since 1943, we’ll find a similar term of confinement in 1953, after the last of the Silent Cop killings when I was running the case. We know he gives gobbies for money, I bet he’s got a charge sheet.”

“I’ll get onto it,” Brendan said. “It would explain the hiatus of three years between the last spate of murders and these more recent ones. At least if he’s got a record, there’ll be a last known address, and it will give us something to start off an investigative trail.”

Vince had been curiously quiet during the time we’d been discussing the killer and his associations with Billy and me and our group of four.

“Vince?” I asked. I’d been watching him tap his pencil on the desk for the past five minutes with his head down, puzzling over something.

“Why did you bring Luka Praz in to see the statue? I know you well. There has to be a reason other than him having a tenuous link to the Bishop kidnapping.”

I wasn’t sure how I should proceed, or what I should say.

“Tell them, Clyde,” Harry said.

I took a deep breath and then spoke. “I met Luka Praz for the first time on Christmas Eve when I visited his shop to read the riot act to him and his sister. Mark and I believed they were somehow trying to draw attention to their business by sending me the notes and the statue. Instead of a pair of charlatans, I ran into a situation that has made me reassess much of what I believe in.”

“Why, Clyde?” Brendan asked.

“Because he asked for my tiepin and then told me nearly everything about Johnny Edgar’s death, where and how it happened, in more detail than a random guess.”

“Why your tiepin?”

Billy spoke. “Because I had it made from the gold outer casing of Johnny Edgar’s cigarette lighter, and Luka Praz linked me to him as well, two days before he even laid eyes on me.”

I rifled through my briefcase and then threw a file on the desk in front of Brendan and Mark Dioli.

“In there you’ll read a police report that Tom obtained from the Nowra cops on how he discovered the body of a missing child by merely holding the ten-shilling note the girl’s mother gave him in payment for advice from his sister.”

Fox and Dioli were both speechless.

*****

I was surprised when Jack telephoned me later in the day to say that Luka had awoken and wanted to speak not only to me but also to Mark Dioli. Just the two of us. He hadn’t explained why, but said what he had to say involved us both. Jack also told me the razor was useless. It had rusted badly in the years it had been put away and the ivory of the handle had split and splintered. No blood or usable fingerprints remained.

I’d been back in my office, Harry in his, playing with Baxter, who somehow seemed to sense that my man was going away for three days, when Jack’s call had come through. Of course, now he knew more, Harry had become worried for my safety and didn’t want to go.

I’d told Harry to stay where he was, and I’d phoned Dioli and told him I’d come by the station to pick him up … Luka had asked to see us alone. I parked outside the police station and we walked to Luka’s shop, which was no more than a few hundred yards away. Gălbenele was serving a customer when we arrived and raised her eyes towards the ceiling, indicating Luka was up in his room.

When we entered, he was lying on his back on his bed, a wash cloth covering his eyes.

“How are you feeling, Luka?” I asked, perching on the edge of the bed.

“Shaken, Clyde. Please, Detective Sergeant, either pull up a chair or sit on the end of the bed. Hovering so anxiously only makes me nervous.”

“I don’t understand why you want me to be here,” Mark said, sitting at the end of the bed, one leg crossed over his knee.

“Because what I saw has to do with both of you. You must listen, because whether you believe what I have to say or not, you are both in danger, but for different reasons.”

Dioli took out his notepad. At least he was being serious about the situation.

“First of all, you are looking in the wrong place. He’s not in a steep-sided ravine with water running through the middle. However, he is underground and very near water.

Mark and I exchanged quick glances at the mention of the steep ravine. Jeff Ball’s men were still thrashing through the undergrowth in Glebe Gully. There was no way Luka could have known we were interested in it.

“He’s near the sea, the water is not underground, but he is. He hates you, Clyde. I don’t know why. His mind is either like a vortex at one moment or a room full of frogs, jumping from one place to another randomly. He has the mind of a madman. I saw colours of blue and pink and glimpses of horses and cats, but they were far away from where he is now—they’re made of fabric and are near somewhere that smells of petrol and oil. He’s like a child, Clyde. He wants to be protected. Someone he loved abandoned him and he blames you. There were four images I saw: a target, like a dartboard or a bullseye; an animal he cares for; something in his head that’s not part of his body; and a room in his head that’s