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

a question of resources, Clyde. There are only so many of us.”

“Well, I might suggest we get the army involved. Harry’s boss, Jeff Ball, could easily arrange for us to get a few dozen blokes to help out. We’ve become quite good mates since working on the tribunal together. If I can get him to agree, I’ll have to find the best way to let Dioli know, so he doesn’t get offended.”

“He’s struggling with the Silent Cop killer investigation, Clyde. Did you know a lot of your old case files are missing?”

“Missing? How can that be, Vince? It’s only three years ago. They should be in storage in the basement.”

“Remember last year, just before you left, when HQ reorganised the filing system and ordered in all those big cardboard boxes? Well, cold case files were sent into Darlinghurst to be centrally collected, and when Dioli ordered up your old files, he was told they were still in their boxes in a warehouse, packed away with thousands of others from all over Metropolitan Sydney, waiting to be catalogued, ready for that new punched-card system from America. No one knew where to start looking. There’s so many to sift through it could take weeks or even months before they find yours.”

“For fuck’s sake, Vince. Really?”

“Clyde …”

“Yes, Vince?”

“How long did we work together?”

“Five, six years maybe.”

“Long enough for me to know you’ve got copies of your own, haven’t you?”

“Okay, T. Junior—”

“That’s the first time you’ve called me by that name for months, Clyde.”

“It’s because it was Sam’s name for you.”

“I miss him—”

“I don’t. Now, about my copies. If, and I say, if I did have my own records, you know that would be against the law.”

“So, what can we do about it?”

“We? I’m working the Bishop case, not the murders.”

“What if they’re connected?”

“How much have you had to drink, Vince? The abduction of two children and the sexual assault and murder of men in public toilets? I don’t follow your reasoning.”

He shrugged. “All I know is what you taught me, Clyde. Nothing is a coincidence. You get sent odd messages in green ink at the same time one of your old cases resurfaces?”

“Well, in this particular instance I can’t see how they could be connected.”

“Besides, if you did tell the D.S. you had copies of the previous murders, no doubt he’d love to use it against you, even if what you had was really important.”

I chuckled. “Ah! But then, Vince, what makes you think I haven’t got something over Dioli that might even up the balance?”

“Have you?”

I tapped the side of my nose. “See you tomorrow, mate. Drive carefully.”

After he turned around in the intersection and drove back past me, he flashed the high beam on his car. Had it been the daytime, he might have honked the horn. I remembered he liked those little gestures.

As I walked into the entranceway of my block of flats, I was thinking of Dioli. I might just have to have a little talk to him privately when I dropped in the copies of Harry’s blackboard notes in the morning and let him know I still had photographic copies of the Silent Cop case.

No doubt, he’d have a field day, but I never laid myself open to any suggestions of bending the system without some escape plan up my sleeve.

CHAPTER TEN

“And what did Dioli say?”

“He hit the roof!”

We were having breakfast on Saturday morning after Harry’s first official “sleepover”. I’d been describing how I’d met with Mark Dioli in the room we used for our official investigation in the old lockup next to the police station.

“He yelled and ranted, saying he was sadly disappointed in me and expected better of someone with my experience …”

“What did you do?”

“I waited for him to calm down and then when he finally took a breath, asked him if he wanted copies of my files or not. It was only when he started saying he should report me for misconduct while being a serving officer, that I slammed my own file down on the table in front of him.”

“Which file was that?”

“Something I found while I was looking up his police service records on the day I found out about him and his grandfather.”

“Are you going to tell me?’

“Of course,” I said. “I need more coffee first.”

“I’ll make it.” Harry stood and was about to walk past my chair to go to the stove, when I grabbed the edge of his boxer shorts, pulling them down to his knees.

“Clyde, I don’t know if I can—”

I laughed. “Me either, but I just wanted to check it’s still there.”

He raised both arms in the air and did a hip wiggle. I kissed it.

“So, the file?”

“Remember the day of Daley Morrison’s funeral? I was sitting in front of Larry the Lamb and Rinaldo Tocacci, taking notes of their conversation about the protection racket in the inner west.”

“I remember. That’s the day you took off and left me sitting in the graveyard.”

I went to the stove and folded my arms around him, kissing his neck while he fiddled with the mocha pot. “I sent a report to the relevant police stations with the names of the crooks, where they were operating, and included notes about the crime gang operations that Tocacci managed.”

“And?”

“And, of course, as I was no longer a serving police officer, they mostly got ignored.”

“What’s this got to do with Dioli?”

“One of the biggest areas of interest was in Marrickville.”

Harry turned to stare at me. “The station that Dioli came from?”

“Uh huh. You got it, Harry Jones. The file I’d sent had been signed off by him, dated the day he’d received it, with ‘no action required’ and his initials. He probably didn’t even open it. When I saw that, I knew I had him by the short and curlies. That negligence of action is one of the things that could quite easily fall within the purview of our investigation into crime and corruption, especially as it’s connected to Tocacci and Keeps.”

“Why