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

anus through my trousers and underwear and began to twist it that I flinched. “No need for that, I’ll lie on my face and let you have a turn,” I said through gritted teeth. “Just leave Mark near a phone box and call an ambulance. It’s me you want, not him.”

“Nice try, but no, Clyde,” he said, moving the gun up my spine to the base of my skull. He pushed my handcuffed arms up behind my back with the other hand and pressed himself against me, grinding a few times and chuckling at my reaction. He was hard. I felt sick, prevaricating whether to do something now or wait for a better opportunity. If whatever I did went wrong, I’d never find out where the Bishop children were, or what he wanted from me.

“Maybe I’ll take advantage of your offer,” he said, thrusting against me once more. “I don’t trust you of course, but I can give you something that will make you not care what I do to you. You’ll be so out to it, I could ride your arse for a week and you still wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

I was about to speak when he moved away from me suddenly. “Get in the back of the van,” he said. “We’re going for a little drive.”

It was only when Kemeny slammed the doors shut of the panel van that I regretted arguing with Harry earlier that night, before I’d left home, telling him I didn’t need a third person watching out for me and that he should have dinner with his parents.

The noise of the engine and the fact we were driving over an unsealed road made it difficult to make conversation, but I rolled next to Mark and spoke into his ear.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded. “Don’t do anything stupid. Choose your moment, Clyde,” he said. His voice was strained. He was obviously in a lot of pain, but with my hands behind my back there was little I could do.

“Are you still bleeding?” I asked.

“Yes,” he grunted through clenched teeth. The van gave an almighty lurch and he groaned very loudly. A few seconds later it stopped. I heard the driver’s door open, the engine still running, and then a few minutes later Kemeny returned to the vehicle and we drove a short way. The sound of the engine was muffled. I guessed we’d driven into a garage or some other confined space, and when he’d got out of the van he’d gone to open its doors.

The back of the van flew open. “Get out!” he ordered.

“I can’t get up,” Mark said.

“Pull him out by the legs, Smith.”

“I’m handcuffed, in case you forgot.”

“Move aside,” Kemeny said, and when I did so, he fired another shot into the back of the van. Mark yelled and then scrabbled out, falling onto the ground.”

“Get on your feet, copper.”

I felt impotent. There was nothing I could do to help, but, moaning with pain, Mark eased himself onto his knees and then used both fists on the bumper bar to help himself get on his feet.

“Get outside, both of you,” Kemeny snapped.

He’d driven the van into a flat–topped wooden garage. Behind it was a long wire fence, about eight feet tall, that ran down towards the ocean, stopping at the edge of a cliff, not fifty feet away. I instantly knew where we were, because we’d played there as kids. It was one of the old disused motor sheds at the back of the Malabar rifle range.

“Stand back,” he ordered. “I’ll shoot you both in the legs if you try anything. Your lives and whatever pain you suffer are of little interest to me.” His voice was so devoid of emotion I instantly knew it to be his truth.

We leaned against the fence while Kemeny closed and locked the garage doors. In the moonlight, I could see the dark stain of blood soaked into the left–hand side of Mark’s jacket—it glistened wetly.

After unlocking a gate in the fence, Kemeny urged us to follow a narrow path that meandered through knee–high scrub down towards the cliff edge. Looming in the dark in front of us were the backs of the row of twelve–feet–tall concrete towers, used as targets for light artillery practice. I knew, from using the range myself as a teenager, that a line of rifle targets spread some one hundred yards across the length of the towers and about ten feet in front of them.

“Stay where you are,” he said and then unlocked a metal door in the back of the tower nearest the sea. “Go down the stairs and move to the wall on the opposite side of the room.”

As I helped Mark down the stairs, the dog ran past us. It sat at the bottom of the stairs and then quickly moved away when the metal door clanged shut behind us.

We were in a concrete bunker. One of the dozens along the tops of the sandstone cliffs along Sydney’s eastern seaboard. I recognised the bare concrete walls that had been poured between sheets of plywood. We’d built huts and bunkers ourselves, using the same construction method, during the early years of the war. Although the bunker’s QF three–pounder, Hotchkiss cannon had been removed, its circular footing remained in the floor as did the opening through which the shells were fired. I could hear the sea.

We were underground and near the water but a long way from Glebe Gully, where we’d concentrated our search efforts.

“Sit,” he ordered.

I squatted slowly. Mark’s knees seemed to give way when he was halfway down. He landed on his arse with a thump beside me.

“I need to piss,” Kemeny said. “Don’t think of trying anything stupid, Smith, I can hold two weapons at the same time.”

His stupid attempt at being witty merited no reply, so I ignored it and took my time inspecting the room while he stood at the toilet with the door open, pointing his gun at me and pissing noisily