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

the east, the sun hadn’t yet crept over the horizon to give good clear light. In a minute or two, the wall behind the cubicles would be patterned in squares of gold and orange when the sun shone through the ventilation holes in the wall above the long, old-fashioned porcelain urinal.

The body was still in situ. I was about to turn around and walk outside to ask why, when Vince spoke from behind me. “Left him here until you got here, Clyde.”

“Thanks, Vince, but no need. I’d have been happy with photos.”

“Who was it told me not to touch anything until after the experts had done their bit?”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me it was me?”

“Jack’s been. He’s gone down to the workers’ café at Bondi to get something to eat. Should be back soon and then we’ll take the victim back to the forensic lab. But, from initial examination, same modus operandi—it’s our guy again.”

“Any identification?”

“Yes, local man. Bit early to wake his wife and tell her the news.”

“How do you know he’s married?”

“He’s got form. Some bastards still work through the night at central records, even on New Year’s Eve. Phoned through an hour ago on the off-chance. Petty crim, married with three kids. Two formers of indecent exposure—playing with his sausage in the change room at the Domain baths, and caught with another bloke’s dick in his hand upstairs on the Many ferry—the rest is typical minor-gang stuff, you know the sort of thing: extortion, street fighting, language.”

“Most of those street thugs have arrangements, Vince. They either have a girl in the local knock shop or a bloke or two on the Q.T.—if that’s their thing. Never heard of a crim being caught in a public place before.”

“Warm night, ants in his pants, wife with a headache. ‘I’ll just take the dog for a walk’. Men are men, Clyde.”

“Have you ever …?”

“Never needed to,” Vince replied. “I’ve always had a secret stash of willing helpers.”

“Then why Augusto, mate?”

“Oh, you know about that.”

“Howard let it drop …”

“We were going to tell you, but I was worried how you’d take it, and he’s still pretty hung up about what he gets up to …”

“I couldn’t be happier, if that’s what you want, Vince. He’s a great guy.”

“I like that he’s a bit rough around the edges. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fond of Philip, but Augusto’s like a beast gone wild under a full moon sometimes.”

I was about to say something completely inappropriate, when Jack’s voice rang out with a soft “halloo!”. He appeared in the doorway behind us, munching on an egg and bacon roll. Despite my avowals to Harry, not more than three hours ago, that I didn’t think I could eat food ever again, my stomach rumbled.

“Have you seen the other one yet, Clyde?”

“No, I was just about to ask Vince.”

“Follow me,” he said.

I’d always taken it for a given that forensic people did their job because they were immune to blood and guts, same went for doctors, ambulance men, and field medics during the war. Jack had once confessed to me that the only thing that turned his stomach was child mutilation, either deliberate or as the result of a car accident.

Therefore, I wasn’t at all surprised to see him take his handkerchief from his pocket and press it to his mouth, not to supress the urge to throw up, but to blot a bit of runny egg from his roll that had gathered at the corner of his mouth.

“Jesus!” I said, after Jack had pulled back the tarpaulin covering the body, exposing it down to the midriff. The man had been disem­bowelled. His guts neatly placed in a pile on his right-hand side.

“Done while he was still alive,” Jack said, taking another mouthful of his breakfast. “There’s too much blood soaked into the ground and spread about for it to have happened post-mortem.”

“Cause of death?”

Jack kneeled and turned the man’s head. There was a bullet entry wound on the left-hand side, a little behind and above his ear.

“Distance or close up?”

In reply, the forensic officer lifted the man’s head from the ground by the hair on the top of his head and gestured for me to kneel to have a look. The back of the man’s skull was missing.

“Deflected exit wound. In the side and out the back, shattering the occipital bone and removing the scalp and flesh from the back and base of his skull. Didn’t die straight away. Poor bastard was probably aware the murderer was reeling his intestines out and piling them up at his side.”

I dry-heaved a bit and then asked, “What’s that in his mouth?”

Jack pulled back the rest of the tarpaulin.

“His penis,” he said.

I turned my head and threw up.

*****

We sat in a briefing with D.I. Fox, who’d been pulled out of bed after not much sleep himself. The factory explosion and associated bank robberies had made for a very time-consuming case, especially with the families of so many victims demanding answers.

“So, D.C. Paleotti, perhaps you can fill me in on the two victims?” he said.

“The victim found inside the men’s toilet was definitely one of the Silent Cop’s. Same method of murder, throat slit from behind at the time of, or shortly after ejaculation. Same cross-shaped incision below the navel and above the pubis with an embedded Catseye marble. Bite mark on the upper area of the torso on the left-hand side between the point of the shoulder and the neck.”

“What do we know about him?”

Vince handed him the victim’s record, which some poor bastard had had to retrieve from central records at six in the morning and then return to the clink to wait outside our room in case we needed a runner for anything else.

“He’s one of the Marrickville gang. I recognised his street name,” I volunteered.

“Tell me, Clyde,” Brendan Fox said, perching on the edge of Dioli’s desk.

“Last year, at Daley Morrison’s funeral, I overheard a conversation between Rinaldo Tocacci and his right-hand