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

“Work pressures? The need to clear his desk before he sat his sergeant’s exam? I don’t know to be honest. All I know is he signed off on it, and no action was taken. That’s a way more serious breach of conduct than making copies of investigations for your own private records. I could easily have argued that at the time I simply made them to refer to while I was working the case at home and then, when the investigation went cold, just forgot to destroy my copies.”

“So what happened when you revealed what you’d found?”

“He didn’t quite go white, but it’s a long time since I’ve seen a man gape for so long that his cigarette almost fell from the corner of his mouth onto the floor. I hinted that if I didn’t think what he was working on was so important, I might ask him to come in to have a little talk with you, me, Sam, Billy, and your boss.”

“So then, cards on the table, eh? What was the outcome of your little file-measuring competition?”

“The outcome might irritate you, but he’s coming for lunch today, and before he arrives you and I are going to spend a few hours sorting through the photographic copies I have of the Silent Cop case to get them into order.”

“Why here?”

“Because I won’t be tempted to strangle him and then throw his body out the back window if you’re sitting beside me, Harry Jones.”

*****

Mark Dioli and I had spent an hour or so before lunch while I’d talked him through my filing system and had handed him manila folders, on the fronts of which I’d outlined the contents of the photographs of documents inside. I’d explained to him that what I’d given him were the bare bones of each of the four murders, and that there was enough for him to get on with until my files were eventually unearthed at central records. I had plenty of other photographs, but there simply hadn’t been enough time to make copies of everything.

After lunch, while I’d been cleaning up, I’d listened to him and Harry “shooting the breeze” as the Yanks called it. Dioli had been very interested in Harry’s deciphering work, but as most of it was still classified, my pal had wheedled the conversation around to his adventure tours and bush survival business.

“Harry’s put an advertisement in the local paper,” I said from the pantry.

“Really?”

“Here,” I said. I kept newspapers after I’d read them. I found the paper underneath today’s copies of the Sun, the Mirror, and the Herald, opening it to the page with Harry’s advertisement, and laid it out on the table.

“Why did you choose a local newspaper instead of one of the major city papers, Harry?” Dioli asked.

“To start off with, I thought I’d just see if there was any local interest. I’m thinking of holding a few introductory lessons to stir up interest in the basics of rappelling for people who might want to sign up for a Blue Mountains survival course I plan to run in March or April next year. The cliffs around the headlands at both the northern and southern ends of the beach would be—”

We both spotted it at the same time, Dioli stabbing his finger on another advertisement a few inches below Harry’s.

“Well, I’ll be …” I said at the same time as Dioli’s, “Well, would you look at this …”

“What?” Harry asked.

“This, where the sergeant is pointing.”

“It’s an advertisement for a fortune teller?”

“Yes, Harry, but look at her name.”

He looked amused when he saw what Dioli was pointing to, but we were anything but.

Fortunes and Divinations

Tea leaves, Tarot cards, and Psychometry.

Consultations by appointment only.

FX-1122

Madame Marigold Leeks.

“Mary, gold, leeks. The statuette of the Madonna, gold, and leeks,” I said.

“Leeks? As in the vegetable or taps?”

“The long green vegetable. With the daffodil and the red dragon, it’s one of the national symbols of Wales.”

“That explains the piss, too,” Harry said.

“Taking a leak” was pretty common these days, mainly because our Australian expression of “having a slash” seemed to have been overtaken by the slang the Yanks had brought with them during the war.

“Blasted psychics!” Dioli said, folding the newspaper up angrily.

He was furious, and rightly so. Public offerings by those “gifted” with the sight, or with knowledge from the spirits, or from their dreams, were some of the more irritating bits of information that were constantly sent to the police from mystics or mediums, or in this case, fortune tellers, or even grandmas who’d had a “feeling in their waters”.

“I’ve got every mind to—”

“Don’t waste your energy, Detective Sergeant,” I said. If he wasn’t going to use my first name, I’d be buggered if I was going to use his. “You’ll get used to this sort of nonsense after a while.”

“I’m not unused to psychic ratbags, Smith. We had a drawer in my old nick labelled ‘hocus pocus’ in which all these weird and wonderful tipoffs would end up.”

“This whole stupid business seems aimed at me. My name is on everything so let me sort it out. I’ll pay her a visit and read her the riot act—in the nicest possible manner of course, no one wants to antagonise the public. You don’t need to get involved, you need to get on with the Silent Cop case, which is far more important.”

“Why she just didn’t telephone and speak to the desk sergeant with whatever it is she’s had a vision of, I’ve no idea. I don’t know about here, but other than phone calls, my few encounters at Marrickville were long, rambling letters. Never anything on this scale, with clues here and there and all over the shop. Gives me the right shits, to be honest.”

“I’ll speak with her. The last thing we want is her going to the mainstream newspapers with some hare-brained notion and end up saying you wouldn’t listen to her. There’ll be letters for months from outraged readers of the daily