The Gilded Madonna Read online

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AUTHOR BIO

  ALSO BY GARRICK JONES

  COPYRIGHT STATEMENT

  This is an IndieMosh book

  brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

  an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

  PO Box 4363

  Penrith NSW 2750

  https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

  Copyright 2021 © Garrick Jones

  All rights reserved

  Licence Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

  Disclaimer

  This story is entirely a work of fiction.

  No character in this story is taken from real life. Any resemblance to any person or persons living or dead is accidental and unintentional.

  The author, their agents and publishers cannot be held responsible for any claim otherwise and take no responsibility for any such coincidence.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author would like to thank the archivists at the N.S.W. Government Police State Archives and Records and also those at the State Library of N.S.W.

  However, I cannot fully express my gratitude to the four brave men who shared the histories of their lives as youngsters in Government and private institutions during the 1950s. Institutions is my word—they called them orphanages and boys’ homes. But the treatment they individually received in houses in different parts of the State was more like incarceration and punishment rather than care for their well-being and instruction for future lives as young men in a land of opportunity.

  Luke, Joe, Miley, and “Grubby”, you all deserve medals.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The story of The Gilded Madonna is based on three real life events that took place in Sydney during the 1950s and early 60s, fictionally altered in time and with names changed.

  The first of these was the kidnapping of Graeme Thorne in 1960, creating as much of a sensation in Australia as the Lindberg kidnapping had done in the USA in the early 1930s. The second, the case of the “Mutilation Murderer” William MacDonald, who, between 1961 and 1962, was responsible for a string of grisly murders in Sydney. One of his victims was found in a public toilet in the park next my high school at the time I was a student there. The final event is one with a long history, starting well before the beginning of this book: the physical and sexual abuse of young men over the course of decades in orphanages and religious homes in N.S.W.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “There’s blood in the water!”

  Harry leaped to his feet so violently he nearly knocked my notepad out of my hand.

  The crowd at the water polo Olympics final roared, and I jumped onto my bench seat to get a better look. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Zádor,” a man yelled over the noise of the spectators from directly behind me. He leaned forward and grabbed my shoulder. “Fucking commie bastards.”

  I helped him clamber up next to me; he’d lost a leg and was on crutches. His accent told me he was from an Eastern European country, and as the water polo final was between the favourites, Hungary and the Russians, I guessed he was on the side of the red, white, and green.

  “Szabadság Magyarországért!” he yelled. It nearly deafened me.

  I was about to ask him what he’d called out when the punches started flying. Obviously the two toughs seated in front of Harry and me had understood what he’d said and didn’t like it one bit.

  “Clyde!”

  Harry should have known me better by now to understand if someone took a swing at me, even if I wasn’t the target, I wasn’t one to hold up my hands and step away. Bozo number one fell backwards into the crowd in the seats behind him. That’s when the real fisticuffs started.

  The new aquatic centre, purpose-built for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and only recently finished, was packed. How were we to have known, when we’d bought our tickets months ago on the way home from our holiday in Tasmania, that the playoff for the Olympic gold medal in the water polo would be fought out by representatives of one country whose opponents’ nation was not only its suppressor and invader but also most hated enemy. On the fourth of November, just over four weeks before this match, the Soviet army had finally and brutally squashed a nationwide Hungarian uprising, killing thousands on both sides, and causing over two hundred thousand people to flee their country.

  Police appeared out of nowhere, and had not both Harry and I produced official identification cards, we’d have been pulled out of the aquatic centre along with half-a-dozen of the more violent spectators.

  “No, not him!” I said to the young constable as he was about to haul off my unknown Hungarian friend. “He’s with me.”

  “Hey, you’re the bloke from the other day—”

  “Yes, that’s me,” I said, shaking his hand. A week ago, the day after we’d arrived in Melbourne, I’d given a lecture to an audience of seventy or more new police, and it seemed that Clyde Smith, the Sydney former detective sergeant, crime fighter and private investigator, had been recognised by the Victorian policeman who’d been about to cart us away.

  A roar of outrage made me turn back to the pool. Ervin Zádor was being helped from the water, blood streaming down his face. I grabbed my binoculars; the water polo player’s injury looked like a split eyebrow. As members of his team checked his face, turning it to show the spectators and pointing, the crowd roared its disapproval, and a large number of men and women left their seats to gather at the edge of the swimming pool, shaking their fists, shouting and spitting at the Russians.

  “Your friend’s hurt,” my one-legged pal said.

  I glanced at Harry, who was holding a handkerchief to the corner of his mouth. He rolled his eyes at me and shrugged.

  “He’s a big boy. He’s had worse than a cut lip,” I said to my new pal, who returned my smile with a hesitant one of his own. “Clyde,” I said, holding out my hand. “Clyde Smith, and this here’s my partner in crime, Harry Jones.”

  “Farkas, János,” the man replied, shaking mine and Harry’s in turn. “But everyone calls me Jancsi. It’s Hungarian for Johnny.” He pronounced it Yon-shee. “Thanks for helping me with that policeman. Are you important? He seem
ed to know you.”

  “Life of crime, my friend,” I said. He looked at me puzzled and then shrugged.

  “Clyde used to be a policeman,” Harry offered.

  “It seems I am in your debt, Mister Clyde Smith, former policeman and man with a life of crime.”

  His crooked smile made me laugh.

  “Well, Jancsi, how about you do me a favour, and we can call it even-stevens.” I handed him my notepad and pencil, which I’d left on the seat behind me. “Write down what you yelled out in Hungarian, please, and what it means in English.”

  “Szabadság Magyarországért! Freedom for Hungary,” he translated, clicking his tongue and passing me a bright white smile. “What else would I be calling out?”

  “I could think of one or two things I might have said in your place,” Harry said. “And none of those would bear repeating.”

  “I think we have those same things in Hungarian, Mr. Jones.”

  “What you called out before about commie bastards? Teach me,” I said.

  I knew what he repeated several times was probably not a direct translation, but I gave it my best.

  “Oroszok szopd szét a faszomat!” I yelled.

  Jancsi slapped me on the shoulder, shaking with laughter. Those who heard mostly cheered me and laughed, and those who didn’t applaud, gasped.

  “What did I just say? I bet it wasn’t ‘fucking commie bastards’.”

  Accompanied by a few loud whistles of approval and some raised fists punching the air, he informed me that I’d just told the Russians they could suck my dick.

  *****

  “Ouch!”

  “Harry Jones, you know better than to play the sympathy card with me.” He was sitting on the edge of the bathtub while I kneeled between his legs and tried to get a look at where he’d been hit in the face and what damage had been done.

  “You know what I’m angling for, Clyde.”

  “You know you don’t have to ask.”

  “But it’s more fun when I do.”

  “Open wide,” I ordered. He waggled his eyebrows. I returned his gesture with an eye-roll.

  He’d cut his gum against his teeth when the brawny guy in front had missed me and had landed one on Harry instead. He batted my hand away from his face and wound his arms around the back of my neck and pulled me to him. What was I to do but give in? I kissed him.

  He tasted of blood. “Mm …”

  “You turning into a vampire?” he murmured into my mouth.

  “No,” I said, drawing away to look in his eyes. “I always moan when I kiss you. Haven’t you noticed.”

  “Try it again, and I’ll concentrate on listening this time.”

  I’d never been in love before. Infatuated? Sure. In lust? More than once. I’d even convinced myself I had strong feelings for my ex-partner, Sam Telford, who’d run off with my best friend, Billy Tancred. But now, with Harry Jones in my arms, I had a comparison. Love was something altogether different.

  What I felt for him wasn’t movie romance, or even mushy book love, it was something far deeper. On one hand less tangible, but on the other the connection with him was something I’d never felt in my entire life. And that went for outside the bedroom too.

  I’d been afraid that at the age of thirty-six, I’d never find “the one”, and after I’d recognised my feelings for him, I’d fought against my better judgement for far too long. I’d thought myself unworthy of someone like Harry Jones. But then, when I’d eventually given in, it had felt as if my life was finally complete. Poetic way of saying it perhaps … but I was a writer, I used words. Those had been my first thoughts when I’d kissed him in the middle of the night, both of us squashed into the confined space of a phone box, in full sight of passers-by.

  My life was finally complete.

  The words flowed across my mind in a picture, like those on the screen for a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball during a matinee at the cinema.

  I loved him far more deeply than the inadequate utterances I managed to stumble through when I tried to tell him how much I cared, so I let my actions speak the intensity of my feelings on my behalf. I gave him bits of the real Clyde Smith in tiny portions at a time. Morsels he devoured without begging for more. He accepted everything about me—both the good and the bad—and I had no fear in opening up my inner being to him without the slightest doubt he’d pass judgement. That was true love, and I was the luckiest of men in the world to have found it in six-foot-two of ginger crew cut, short bristly copper beard, and the yellowest eyes I’d ever seen.

  “Do you want to …?” he asked through barely opened eyes. He almost purred, like our shared cat, Baxter.

  “I always want to, Harry, and you know you don’t have to ask.”

  “Violence makes me amorous.”

  “Kissing is amorous, you’re talking of something else,” I whispered.

  I kissed both of his eyelids as he began to unbutton my shirt.

  “Kissing your mouth is amorous, I’m thinking of osculatory adventures elsewhere.”

  I laughed. “So was it you getting socked in the jaw started your motor running?”

  “Nah, Clyde. It was watching the muscles in your shoulders and neck straining against your shirt when you slugged that Russian spy and knocked him onto his arse. You know I love it when you get all blokey.”

  “And there I was thinking you liked my other, less-physical assets.”

  “Oh, I love those too, don’t worry. Now, about the commie agent who missed you and hit me—”

  “How do you know he was a Russian spy?”

  “Play along, Clyde.”

  “Ah!”

  I got it. Harry liked make-believe. He loved games—amorous, pretend games, usually done and dusted five minutes into the action when lust overtook his sense of adventure. I was more than happy to play along. In fact, more than once it had been the way I’d broadened his sexual repertoire. He’d had a basic bedroom education and had even taken part in a few tussles with groups of friends before he’d met me. However, there were things he’d seen, but had never had the courage to try. Not more than once we’d played “Clyde says” and Harry had obeyed.

  “So do I call for room service, ambush the hotel steward, tie him up and make him watch?”

  He laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “One day, I’ll feel confident enough to share, Clyde.”

  “I’ve got a little list of contenders …”

  “Your former playmates?”

  “Harley Yaxley, the delivery boy with the dick of death, is high on the list.”

  “Uh huh.” He knew I was teasing. Well half-teasing. Even though he’d been the only one in my bed since we’d decided to become an “item”, it didn’t stop me getting hot under the collar thinking of two of the guys I’d been sleeping with regularly before Harry had staked his claim on my bed and my heart. There’d been two others, but regular wouldn’t be a word I’d necessarily use to describe our sporadic get-togethers.

  “You’re the only person I know who can look as sexy as all get-out wearing nothing but his shirt, Clyde,” he mumbled into my mouth.

  I knew what he’d said, even though it had sounded like a navy diver trying to communicate underwater—all glugs, gurgles, and muffled moaning sounds.

  “What about now?” I said, triumphantly, as he released my tongue from his mouth. My shirt landed in the bathtub behind him. I took his hands and ran them around my waist.

  “Where’s that room service man, Clyde?”

  My reply was from the heart. We’d had enough teasing play. “You’re enough for me, Harry Jones,” I said.

  I meant it too. We’d shared stories of my former sex life, and his comparative lack of it. I hadn’t held anything back. I’d shared my fantasies with him, and he’d done the same. They weren’t much different from my own, merely variations on the same thing. But, ultimately, when the chips were down and the talk no longer held meaning, al
l I needed in my arms was my big passionate man who, in my opinion, deserved an Olympic gold in the making-love event.

  *****

  We’d chosen to stay in the Windsor Hotel at the top of Bourke Street, opposite Parliament House. It had been Harry’s dad, Arnold, who’d insisted we stay there. I had to admit it would normally have been way above my budget, but of late I’d been making a motza. What with my earnings from journalism and the wage I was paid for being a member of an official ongoing investigation into a case I’d broken earlier in the year, I was sitting far more comfortably than most people I knew.

  It was a very luxurious, old-fashioned hotel with a well-earned reputation for offering the best of the best. The dining room still served meals that might have graced menus in the late nineteenth century, and I liked the food, but as it was usually a choice of traditional Australian home cooking with a flair or French haute cuisine, I found the former boring and the latter indigestible. I’d lost my gall bladder after a stabbing–shooting incident, and fatty foods really gave me a great deal of discomfort and at times even severe pain.

  The great beauty of the hotel was not only its central location and easy access to public transport, but it offered amazing in-house facilities. I’d made good use of the secretarial service over the week we’d been there. The purpose of our trip was not only to attend events at the Olympics but also for me to talk to the local cops about how we did things in Sydney—each Australian State had differing laws. My information session had been arranged as a deal for the mutual benefit of both forces. The investigative unit in Melbourne, unlike that in Sydney, cooperated with local private investigators who helped augment their ongoing cases. I’d had experience in that exact same scenario, but in Sydney I’d been forced to work outside the local police force and without their direct help.

  Making use of the secretarial assistance in the hotel had allowed me to write a few articles on the theatre and cinema life in Melbourne, and to keep up with my regular crime reports for the Sydney Morning Herald. I dictated, the ex-military secretary—a stern-looking man in his mid-fifties—took shorthand notes, typed out my text, gave it to me for correction, and then sent off the articles by express post to the two newspaper editors that employed me.