The Gilded Madonna Page 13

  “But surely when you heard what Keeps was up to …?”

  “Ah, I chose my tenses carefully, Clyde. What I said was ‘he wished he could still return’. The name I wrote on that card is of the man who not only sexually abused me as a young teenager before I was adopted but who also offered up Mark Dioli as a whipping boy to visitors. He’s retired now, and from what I can gather, since the change of staff, the abuse at the home no longer goes on.”

  I lit another cigarette. Not only was what I’d heard immensely disturbing, but there was something else …

  “Why now, Howard? I mean why did you call me on Saturday evening?”

  He reached into his pocket and passed me a split-image composite photograph. On the left, yours truly, all tough-cop looking, and on the right, Mark Dioli in his smart business suit.

  “This was posted to the editor of the Australian magazine, Clyde. He’s an old friend who lives in one of those big houses on the hill overlooking Coogee Beach. He knows my involvement with children’s charities, and interviewed me once about my work to help kids in need, so he rang me the moment it arrived on his desk, asking for advice, wanting to know who he should pass it on to. He had no idea I knew who you were and I didn’t let on that I did. Neither of us have any idea who sent it, but there’s an odd inscription on the back. I picked it up from him this afternoon, just after I arrived in Sydney from Bowral.”

  I turned it over. Scrawled in elongated capitals in green ink was “Bishop, Smith, Dioli”. Along the bottom of the back of the photograph was the stamp of the local newspaper.

  *****

  At nine the following morning I was waiting at the reception desk of the local newspaper for the junior reporter to arrive. No one had been behind the desk when I’d arrived or had turned up during the ten minutes I’d been hanging around, returning at frequent intervals to tap on the counter bell. I’d even tried to open a locked glass door, knocking loudly and yelling out “hello!”

  Along one side of the reception area was a large glass-fronted display case, separated off into several sections, each with its own door, and no more than about four inches in depth. Bored with waiting, I checked all the doors one by one and they opened freely, despite the mortice for a key in each one.

  I did notice one thing, however. The very last display case I checked held a very conspicuous empty space where a photograph had been, but which was now missing. In the tightly packed rows of photographs in the display case in question, there were two six by fours of Dioli and me, taken at a distance, standing outside the door of the forensic lab, snapped before I’d kneed him in the nuts, when we’d still been relatively civilised and I’d been trying to give him some friendly advice. The empty space next to them stuck out like dog’s balls—especially as one could barely see the green baize lining of the cabinet to which all the other photos had been pinned, so close they were to one another.

  I surmised it had held the side by side composite photo of Mark Dioli and me, and it was from this cabinet that the person who’d used green ink as his or her signature had taken it and then forwarded it on to Howard’s friend—if not, then they’d paid someone else to pinch it. However, in my years of detecting, I’d learned most people who sent mysterious letters, or indeed photographs, liked to have full involve­ment—they had their own cleverness to prove. I’d bet a fiver it was him or her who’d taken it from an unlocked display case in an unattended newspaper reception area.

  I held up the photograph Howard had given me. It fitted perfectly into the empty space.

  Eventually, the reporter arrived flustered, telling me he’d missed his tram. I gave him a rather curt bit of advice about keeping the display case locked and suggested he should tell his editor to never leave the front counter unattended.

  It wasn’t unknown for newspapers—if you could elevate our local rag to that level—to sell photographs of local events to anyone who wanted to buy them. I’d often thought it must have been their major form of income after advertising, because the “news” content tended to be of the kindergarten dress-up day variety. Okay, maybe I was being uppity, I did remember sending them articles on surf carnivals, Anzac Day parades and the like when I’d first started out. That twelve shillings for every published column had sometimes been a welcome bonus.

  “I was intending to write an article about the boss cock giving tips to the new rooster in our local cop shop, but the editor didn’t like the idea much,” the young man said to me.

  “Neither would I have, had you bothered to ask. Now did you make this composite photograph?” I showed him the one Farrell had given me last night after dinner.

  “Yes. It went missing last Tuesday.”

  “Next time, when you match negatives like that, mask one of them with a filter when you’re doing the exposure, so that the contrast between them isn’t so strong.”

  “Oh, yes, I never thought of that—”

  “Now, these two in the display case of Detective Sergeant Dioli and me standing outside the forensic lab at Randwick police station. Are there any more from that session?”

  “No, Mr. Smith. Honestly, I swear I only got those two snaps. It looked like you tripped and you both moved out of sight and that’s when my taxi arrived. I’d heard there’d been a commotion down at the oval and I went up to the nick to see if I could find out anything.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, son,” I said in my most thinly veiled, growly voice. “But do you mind if I see the negative strip?”

  “No, of course not.”

  He returned a few minutes later with the strip of negatives and a proof sheet. It was as he’d said, there were only two pictures of Dioli and me in the sequence of snaps he’d taken.

  Of course I asked him if he’d noticed anyone hanging around. I was also curious to know how the person who’d sent the photo to Howard Farrell even knew it existed, and I asked if it had been published.

  “Didn’t you see the page three spread in Monday’s edition?” the reporter asked me with the most incredulous tone I’d heard in years.

  I shook my head, so he moved behind the reception counter and proudly opened a copy of the edition, which came out once a week. It was, as he said, on page three. A photo of me on Anzac Day, standing next to Harry in our uniforms in front of the cenotaph, the composite photo of Dioli and me and then the third photo of Dioli in a set of tails, looking like a movie star, taken at the premier of That Certain Feeling at the Prince Edward Theatre in November.

  Under the photographs was a welcome to Mark Dioli, written by the editor himself. The last paragraph asked the readers whether the newcomer could live up to the reputation of Clyde Smith, the toughest cop in town.

  No wonder Dioli hated me.

  *****

  I was running late when I finally got to the office. I poked my head around Harry’s office door to ask Tom whether he’d arrived yet.

  “There are two people waiting for you, Clyde.”

  He looked very anxious. “In my office?”

  “No, in the vestibule outside. I opened the front door for them and asked them to wait. They’ve been here since nine, just after I arrived … it’s the Bishops, Clyde.”

  “What? What are they doing here?”

  “My first instinct was to ring D.S. Dioli, but they said they wanted to talk to you first.”

  I sighed and raised my eyebrows. I didn’t need this complication. Why had they come to me?

  “Harry?”

  “I’ve phoned him. He’s on his way.” He checked his wristwatch. “He’ll be here in about fifteen minutes. There are a few other messages for you from Brenda.”

  “Anything important?”

  “Nothing that can’t wait.”

  “Can you make tea please? I hate to ask you this, but …”

  “Already done, Clyde. All I have to do is put the kettle on the stove. Everything’s ready.”

  “Thank you, Tom. I mean it. I think you need to come in with me. Just give me a few minutes t
o get them settled. I’d really like a witness, in case there’s any accusations of impropriety from the police later on.”

  “I’ll put the kettle on now. That’ll give you a few minutes.”

  “Ta, mate. Thank you.”

  The Bishops sat quietly on the bench just outside my main office door. I took one glance and noticed how neatly dressed they were and carefully groomed, but I’d seen the look many times before in my life—they were dirt poor … and scared.

  “Clyde Smith,” I said, introducing myself.

  “I’m Cyril Bishop and this is my wife, Margaret,” the man said, returning my handshake. I noticed his palms were clammy, and his wife’s shake, even through her cotton glove, was tremulous.

  “Come into my office and take a seat,” I said.

  They took their time to settle and while they did I offered them a cigarette. She declined but he took one and began to puff furiously.

  “Now, may I ask you why you’re here?” I asked.

  “We’ve come to see you, Mr. Smith, because a package arrived this morning.”

  “A package?”

  “Show him, Maggie,” he said to his wife.

  She reached into her straw shopping bag and withdrew a long rectangular parcel, loosely wrapped in brown paper. She placed it on the edge of my desk and carefully undid the bow of the string around the package. I watched transfixed as the outer covering of brown paper unfurled.

  “I retied it, Mr. Smith,” she said nervously. “We didn’t look inside—”

  “Tom!” I called out, interrupting her.

  I heard him running down the corridor, and he burst into the room.

  “Call Dioli, tell him to get down here right now.”

  Inside the loose outside covering was another layer of brown paper, wrapped tightly, and covering what seemed to be a box. On it, written in elongated caps and in green ink, was my name.

  “Wait, before you go,” Cyril Bishop said. “Just let us speak.”

  “Let’s have tea. It’s nearly ready, isn’t it, Tom?” I asked.

  “I’ll help,” Mrs. Bishop said, starting to rise from her chair.

  “No, please. Tom’s a good lad, he won’t be a tick.”

  In fact, the kettle must have been boiling, as he returned less than a minute later with our large tea tray laid out with cups, saucers, a milk jug, and our best “tennis teapot”, a large, white-enamelled affair that could hold a dozen cupsful.

  “Please, allow me,” Margaret Bishop said, insisting it was her role to be “mother”.

  “As you wish,” I said.

  “We’d like to engage you to assist the enquiry, Mr. Smith,” she said. I noticed she was a milk-after woman, like my mother had been. I was a heathen; milk in first.

  “We haven’t got much in the way of savings, Mr. Smith,” her husband replied. “I’m not sure what your fee is, but we have twenty guineas put aside for our eldest’s trousseau that would be best spent trying to find her.”

  “Look, Mr. Bishop, I’m delighted you’ve come to see me, but I couldn’t possibly interfere with an ongoing police investigation—”

  “We read your bit in the paper, on page two of the Mirror, Mr. Smith. The article about violence inside men … and women, and I made a circle in my red ink around the paragraph about you working hand in hand with the Victorian police. If it’s good enough for them, well it’s good enough for us. And besides … your reputation. You’re famous here, whether you like it or not. Local boy made good, cracking the skulls of the villains—”

  I couldn’t help but force out a half-smile, despite my constant glances at the package on the corner of my desk. “I’m not a skull cracker, sir, no matter what you read about it. But, hear me out. I’m happy to lend a hand if Detective Sergeant Dioli is in agreement. I can perhaps spend some time following threads—the local boys are very, very busy. But, as I said, it would all depend.”

  “He’s such an unfriendly sod,” Mr. Bishop blurted out. “Margaret’s gone to bed sleepless and crying over his callous remarks more than once. And, he’s younger than me. Surely you—”

  “There are regulations and fines, Mr. Bishop. I’m sorry, but I can’t break the law. Now, please, let me call him and ask him to come here, and we’ll discuss it like civilised human beings.”

  “Hello,” Harry said from the doorway, his hat in his hand, looking as cute as a button. It was perfect timing, so I introduced him and then asked Tom to pour him a cup while I went to the other office and put a call through to Dioli.

  *****

  He didn’t take long to arrive; perhaps fifteen minutes. I went down to the street to intercept him before he went upstairs to my office. I had something to get off my chest.

  “What the hell, Smith?” he said to me as he climbed out of his car.

  “Don’t blame me, they turned up out of the blue and I rang you straight away.”

  He jammed his hat on the back of his head and started towards the doorway that led to the stairs. “One moment, there’s something I need to say before you go upstairs.”

  “What?”

  I offered him a cigarette, which he took and then leaned forward for me to light it.

  “I owe you an apology, Detective Sergeant. I was way out of line last Saturday and I’m very sorry. Sometimes stuff from the past just boils up, and I was wrong to take it out on you.”

  He almost gaped, but not quite. “Did someone put a rocket up you? Because I never mentioned what happened to anyone—”

  “No one said anything. The only thing that spoke to me was my conscience. I can’t blame you for having the shits with me, and my violence was inexcusable. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me, Smith. I was surprised that’s all.”

  “The man who had my place at the station before me died—that’s how I got to be in charge of investigations. I’d have been just as annoyed as you, had he lived, and if he’d interfered with any of my cases from the sidelines too. I just wanted you to know that I’m very, very sorry, and in the long run, all of us, whether in the service or private, like me, simply want to put wrongs right.”

  “Oh—”

  “Anyway, my apology is heartfelt. And, I think we might be forced to cooperate, so I felt it best to clear the air.”

  “Cooperate?”

  I handed him the composite photo of us Howard had given me and told him to turn it over.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “It was sent to someone who’s peripherally involved in the investi­gation for the commission I’m sitting on. So, I’m not at liberty to tell you who it is. I know it’s a pain in the bum, but as it was given to me last night, I’m showing you now.”

  “Someone is linking you and me to the Bishop case?”

  “Most likely. Wait until you see what’s upstairs.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  The tone of his voice told me that wasn’t the absolute truth, but I ushered him through the doorway.

  *****

  It didn’t take me long to work out what Mrs. Bishop had interpreted as brusqueness was in fact an extremely dispassionate investigatory technique that was much the fashion among newly trained detectives who’d been taught using the new Scotland Yard manual.

  I wasn’t fond of it, but for an inexperienced dick, it did help to keep one’s emotions out of the picture. Unfortunately, for someone like Dioli it came across as cold and callous.

  He wasn’t at all happy one whit about the Bishops’ insistence that they wanted to hire me to work privately. However, I’d already had time to work out a few ways to pour oil on the expected troubled waters.

  “I promise you I won’t step on your investigation, Detective Sergeant, and whatever leads I’ll follow, I’ll report to D.C. Paleotti before I do anything. I’ll even send you a written weekly report on what I’ve done.”

  “I’m not sure the Bishops will be able to afford such a thing to be honest, Mr. Smith. However—”

  “Consid
er it my pro bono work. I don’t intend to take more than one guinea from them to make our contract legal and binding, and so I can lodge it. I consider it part of my contribution to the community. Someone with my experience should be able to augment the policing forces available, especially at a time like this when there are other important investigations under way. I wrote a paper about cooperation between the police forces and private investigators, which I presented to the first-year detectives of the Victorian Police Force a few weeks ago. I can send you a copy if you like. There’s a large section about working within the law and the policing system, but without taking any responsibility away from operational officers.”

  “A paper?”

  “Yes, it’s to be published in the January edition of the N.S.W. Police Force magazine.”

  “We’ll talk about this privately, later on, if you don’t mind. Now, what was it you wanted to show me?”

  Tom handed him a pair of cotton gloves and then retrieved the box the Bishops had brought with them and placed it on the desk. His eyes bulged when he saw the telltale writing on the package.

  “When did this arrive?” Dioli asked.

  “While I was hanging out the washing,” Mrs. Bishop said. “About eight o’clock this morning. Cyril was in the bathroom having his shower. I heard the doorbell go and when I got there, this was on the doormat.”

  “Well, we’d best have a look then shall we?”

  “If I might suggest that Mr. and Mrs. Bishop wait in the other office while we have a look, Detective Sergeant?” I suggested.

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  “I’ll take them,” Harry said. He’d twigged right away. Wouldn’t be nice to open the box to find a severed limb or a piece of clothing belonging to one of their children.

  Although they were reluctant to leave, eventually Harry was able to convince them. I took my camera from my desk drawer and began to take photos as Dioli unwrapped the second layer of brown paper and placed it into a large white envelope about the same size as an evidence bag. The inner covering was destined for fingerprinting. As we proceeded slowly, it stopped being about him and me, and soon became two detectives working as they should do. He seemed to know what he was doing and paused in all the right places to allow me to take photographs.