The Gilded Madonna Read online

  By Saturday, I’m sure I’d have a million questions to ask, and perhaps not one or two ideas to suggest to help Vince with his case. Besides, it would be an excuse for Harry to stay over after a bottle or two of wine and a tummy full of good food.

  *****

  Harry phoned as I was saying goodnight to Vince and Tom at my front door, so we didn’t spend long on the phone. I walked down to the street with them and waved goodbye as they got in the car and drove off.

  I wasn’t prepared for the quick flash of loneliness that swept through me as I walked up the stairs to my top-floor flat. Harry and I had spent the past ten days living in each other’s pockets; it was going to be hard to climb into bed and not have him at my side. How we’d manage I had no idea. We hadn’t discussed the ways in which we could spend nights together. His parents, although still quick-witted and lively, were elderly and needed looking after. It was the reason he’d left the army—when his sister had died there was no one to care for them. Perhaps we could arrange a weekend or two away, ostensibly for our work on the investigation tribunal, but that couldn’t go on forever.

  I had a fairly good idea that Mary, his mother, had realised what was going on between us. She’d been a nurse, and from what little I’d gathered from their conversations, her brother Percy, who’d been killed during the Great War, had had a “special friend” too. There was a photo of the two men with their arms around each other, dressed in their uniforms, on the lid of the grand piano in Mary and Arnold’s living room. It nestled up front among the rest of the family photos arranged in silver frames on a Spanish shawl that was draped over the instrument.

  We’d work it out. I knew we would, but we’d have to sit down and talk it through first. It had been a subject that had been on my mind while we were in Melbourne, but I hadn’t wanted to spoil our time together. I’d kept putting it off and then, by the time we were on our way home, I hadn’t wanted to dwell on it.

  I turned on the water of the gas geyser at the foot of my bathtub and lit the flame. Once the water was at the right temperature, I swivelled the stopcock so the warm water was diverted into the showerhead and then half closed the shower curtain to stop any splashing onto the floor. After turning off the bathroom light, I let out a tired sigh as I stepped into the tub. The only illumination in the room came from the flickering blue flame of the geyser—it played over my shins and toes.

  At night, with the lights off, the sound of the falling water, and steam rolling around me, it’s where I did my best work—uninterrupted by the world, I found it easy to piece together the jigsaw of unrelated facts, or juggle around possibilities in my mind, or even to mull over the meaning of life—that’s what I told myself anyway. More likely, in recent times, I’d thought of Harry. Being in love was so new to me that more often than not I either felt like a child in a sweetshop or the bull in a china shop. I simply didn’t know what I should or should not be doing or saying when I was with him.

  I wet my face washer under the warm water and folded it over my eyes. Tonight I wanted to try to make sense of what Vince and Tom had told me about the Bishop case.

  Why would someone snatch two children off the street in the way they’d been taken? It seemed Mrs. Bishop wasn’t usually in the habit of sending them out by themselves. The boy, David, who was only five years old, had been unwell, and she’d thought perhaps treating him like a little grown-up and sending him to the shops without her, even if he’d been accompanied by his sister, with a threepenny bit tied in the corner of his handkerchief, might have cheered him up. She’d promised they’d even have some sweetened condensed milk in their tea when they returned.

  The kidnapping—for that’s what we’d decided it had to be—had to be opportunistic. There’d been no ransom note, and the parents were barely able to make ends meet, so there was no money to extort from them. It left only very unsettling possibilities. There’d been a series of child murders in the 1920s, and during the war there’d been a string of young girls abducted and sold into what they called the “white slave trade” in the movies. There was also the most gruesome possibility, one that I really didn’t want to even consider at this stage, that the children had been kidnapped and then sexually abused and killed. It wasn’t as uncommon as most people believed, mainly because those cases were nearly always kept secret and details never disclosed to the public.

  I had one hope. I called them “Mrs. Keepit cases”. Lonely women, unable to bear children of their own, were known to kidnap kids and try to bring them up as their own. This would be the best possible outcome in my opinion. As scary as it might be for the children, at least those sorts of women never harmed the little ones they’d kidnapped, and sooner or later nosey neighbours usually reported something strange going on. Shopkeepers who noticed their regular clients buying unusual items was another way we’d got to hear about youngsters who were being kept against their will.

  Meow.

  I smiled and removed the washcloth. I reached over the side of the bath, and despite the wetness of my arm, Baxter rubbed up against it and began to purr loudly.

  Turning onto my side, I rested both arms on the edge of the bathtub, placing my chin on the backs of my hands. “What do you think, Baxter? Time for bed?”

  He meowed again and then weaselled his way through the partially opened bathroom door. I knew where he’d be: curled up in a ball in the middle of my bed waiting for me.

  I turned off the shower and dried myself while standing in the bathtub, before padding down the hallway to my bedroom, turning off the lights as I went. Baxter meowed again faintly as I tossed my bath towel into the laundry basket in the corner of my bedroom. I didn’t turn on the bedside lamp, but threw my bedroom window open and gazed out into the night over Coogee Oval.

  Besides the case of the kidnapped children, there’d been something else eating at me most of the day. I hadn’t allowed myself to dwell on it. “Who sent me a photo of ‘no holes barred’?” I asked myself as I rolled a cigarette and then leaned against the window sill while I smoked it. The December night air was warm and balmy, just a gentle breeze running over my body.

  I didn’t even remember who’d taken the picture of us. Johnny, the guy I’d had a crush on, and Billy, the man who still loved me with an intensity I’d never been able to return, and then, at the back of the motorbike, the quiet one of us four, Sonny Mullins. I hadn’t thought of him in years. Not because I didn’t care, but every time I did, I couldn’t get the image of how he’d died out of my mind—I’d been given the police report when I’d asked for it when I’d finally returned home and had had to prepare myself before I’d had the courage to read it. What I hadn’t been prepared for were the photos of his corpse.

  He’d come home with the rest of the 9th after it had been ordered back to Australia, and poor, lovely, kind Sonny had been beaten to death with a brick by a gang of louts outside the Garden Island docks. They’d driven over his head in their car to make sure he was dead, all because he’d tried to stop one of them beating up a young sailor on leave, who’d been out walking with his girlfriend and had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  I’d still been in Italy when it had happened, and Billy had been fighting his way with Americans through Sicily, but when we’d got home, we’d heard that there’d only been three people at the funeral service. Two representatives from the army board and his mother, who’d relocated to Western Australia to be with her cousin almost immediately after the funeral.

  The photograph of the four of us puzzled me. No note, posted with a return address of a post office box that didn’t exist. People didn’t do that sort of thing for no reason. I’d let it bubble away in the back of my mind. Maybe some connection would come, or a reason for it to arrive in the way it did would blink on in the recesses of my unconscious. However, what I did know was that dwelling on it late at night would get me nowhere.

  I flicked my cigarette butt out of the window and then crawled into bed.

  “Move over, B
axter,” I said and then angled my body around my cat, who, of course, didn’t move. I stroked his fur and wished my big man was here with me. The last thought I remembered was wondering if somehow the empty envelope with my name written on it in green ink was somehow connected to the photograph?

  I snorted at the improbability and then snuggled into my pillow, booting Baxter back in the bed with my bum as I turned onto my side.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I woke at half past five, the sun casting patterns onto the wall through the sheer curtains of my bedroom window. I’d left the window partially open during the night, and the rippling shapes on my wall moved as the material waved with the breeze. It was mesmerising for the few minutes I lay on my side while I got my mind into gear.

  Baxter had forsaken my bed during the night. I guessed he’d be where he was most mornings when he wasn’t playing with my toes: curled up in the laundry basket. My cat could open the lid, even though it was secured with a peg through a cane loop.

  “Morning,” I said to him as I scrunched behind his ears. He ignored me, but rolled onto his side with one paw raised. I was wary of that move—it invited not only a tummy rub but also a forearm held in place with claws if I dared retrieve my hand before due time. “Later, when I get back,” I said, and then I pulled on my swimming costume, a pair of shorts, and a clean singlet, before sitting on the end of my bed to tie up the laces of my sandshoes.

  The sun was glorious at this time of the morning. Barely a few finger widths, held at arms length, above the horizon, its rays glinted over the ocean, shooting bright diamonds of refracted light from the tops of waves as they semi-crested on their rolling journey towards the beach.

  There were already a few people in the water, even though the beach itself was deserted. I ran along the promenade and then up through Dunningham Reserve, peering at the entrance to Craig’s baths as I ran past, thinking I’d call in for a quick swim on my way back.

  The eastern seaboard of Sydney was spectacular. I’d tried to describe the beauty of its tall sandstone cliffs rising directly out of the deep-blue Pacific Ocean to some of my fellow inmates in the camp, but only my mate, Reg Gibson, a Kiwi, had fully understood. Pietra di sabbia, I’d erroneously tried to explain in my early years before I’d learned Italian well enough to know the correct word for the golden stone from which most of Sydney’s impressive buildings had been constructed. “Ah, arenaria!” one of the Italians had exclaimed when he’d finally worked out what I’d been trying to say. It wasn’t just captured foreign fighters in the camp—there’d been gypsies, antifascists, and not a few other political dissidents. Out of the three hundred men or so I’d shared my life with for three years, perhaps a dozen of those had been Poms or Kiwis. The majority had been Italians, with a larger subgroup of captured allied fighters from North Africa. They’d suffered worse than anyone, especially after the Germans had taken over the camp.

  My run took me down the path around Gordon’s Bay—which we locals had always called Thompson’s Bay, or Thommo’s Bay—along Cliffbrook Parade to Clovelly Beach. There were wooden swing scaffolds for the children, erected by Legacy ex-servicemen in the park behind the beach, so I did a couple of dozen chin-ups and got a wolf whistle from a few young ladies who walked past on their way for an early morning dip while I was doing my set of fifty push-ups.

  I was almost old enough to be their father, but I threw them my brightest grin and then headed off back the way that I’d come.

  *****

  The young attendant recognised me and passed me through the turnstile, saying his boss was down in the water, but when I got to the sea pool, Craig was nowhere to be seen.

  I stripped off, jumped in, and did a few lengths before sitting on the edge of the pool. One of the regulars offered me a smoke on his way to the change room. I took it, waited for him to light it, thanked him, and then looked out over the edge of the pool and the ocean beyond it. Small white caps were breaking around Wedding Cake Island—that meant a decent surf would be up by mid-morning, and even though it was the middle of the week, the beach would be full of people out to catch a wave.

  I was almost down to the filter of my cigarette when a young man, probably in his late twenties, appeared from behind one of the large rocks on the eastern end of the swimming enclosure. He caught my eye and blushed. I’d been checking out his assets and it was obvious that he’d just been putting them to use—one learned to recognise recent activity when a man was totally naked. I watched as he busied himself with his towel at the benches behind me and then disappeared into the changing room. As he walked through the door, I noticed two red ridges across his buttocks. It meant he’d been sitting on a folded towel until a few minutes ago.

  Not more than thirty seconds later, the towel in question draped over his shoulder, its also naked owner appeared from behind the same rock the man had. He grinned when he saw me wave.

  “I thought you’d stopped that, Craig,” I said, slapping his shoulder as he sat down at my side.

  “You were the one who stopped, Clyde,” he said. “Man has his needs. He’s an off-again, on-again regular. Works as an usher at the Boomerang Cinema. Carries a big torch—and not only in the dark while he’s showing people to their seats in the stalls.”

  “So I noticed. Wanna tell me all about it?”

  “Not unless you’re suddenly back on the market, my friend. I know my limits, and I know how much you like dirty talk.”

  He was right on both counts. It had been Craig who’d first showed me what went where and that was way back in the 1930s when we’d both been teenagers. Until I’d met Harry, we’d continued to have a once-in-a-while physical relationship. However, as he’d already been married once, and was having the longest engagement known to man with another woman, we’d cut back our shenanigans to maybe once every few months, even though we’d still continued to see each other a few times a week at the pub, or when I went for a swim. We’d been friends since childhood and continued to be mates now we were both adults—I respected his boundaries and never made the first move.

  “I got a message you’d called while I was away?”

  “Oh, yes, sorry, Clyde. I’d forgotten you were in Melbourne and then when your answering service picked up I felt too embarrassed to hang up on her, so I just said to say I’d called. How was it?”

  “Melbourne? Fantastic. I had the best time—”

  “Your page two in the Mirror was spot on, Clyde. Everyone was talking about it all afternoon.”

  “What, you mean it was published?”

  “Yesterday, my friend. We all agreed it’s something needed to be said but no one wants to talk about.”

  “Well, blow me down,” I said. “A page two … that’s really moving up in the world.”

  “I called to tell you it’s off.”

  “What’s off?”

  “Me and Connie.”

  “Jesus mate, what happened?”

  “She caught me at it.”

  “What—?”

  “Don’t panic. She’s not going to the cops or anything. I made the mistake of thinking a career senior nurse wouldn’t have an idea, but she told me she’d already suspected, and if we wanted to continue, she’d turn a blind eye as long as I didn’t bring anyone home, was discreet, and wore a raincoat.”

  I shook my head. That was the last thing I expected to hear. “But?”

  “But, I couldn’t do it, Clyde. You’d think it would be every bloke’s dream for a man in my position, but I simply couldn’t. You see—”

  I was a detective. It’s what I did. I picked up on clues.

  “The guy she caught you with … it’s serious?”

  “Ah, Jesus, Clyde. How do I tell you? That’s why I rang. I wanted to meet and tell you to your face—it’s been going on ever since you and Harry went to Tasmania in the middle of the year.”

  “So it’s obviously someone I know. But unless you’re fucking Sam or Billy, why should I care?”

  “It’s Harley, Clyde
.”

  Everyone knows the old saying, “taking the wind out of someone’s sails”. Harley Yaxley, the son of the local grocer, the boy with the dick of death, had been the only other regular partner I’d had in my stables in all the years I’d been “managing” my off-and-on open relationship with Sam.

  “I—”

  “I know you’re going to be angry, Clyde, but when you got together with Harry and then closed the door on both me and Harley …”

  “I’m not angry, Craig. Honestly, mate, far from it. In fact I’m delighted. A bit pissed off I never got to do it with both of you, but I wanted Harley for myself, and you were so off and on, about—”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “But …?”

  “There’s no but.”

  “I’ve known you since we were six years old, Clyde. I know your buts better than anyone else.”

  “No really, I am happy. But, yes there is one thing … you’re ten years older than him, Craig.”

  “I can keep up, Clyde, no need to worry on that score.”

  “And?”

  “You’re a filthy bastard, you know that, Smith?”

  I laughed.

  “Remember those cobwebs I told you about after that threesome with you and Billy? Well, let’s just say young Mr. Yaxley seems keen to remedy that situation.”

  “You never used to like doing that too much, Craig.”

  “Only because you were too quick off the mark yourself, Clyde. So selfish …”

  “It’s my middle name.”

  “No it’s not, I know you don’t have one.”

  “Makes it easy to make one up to suit the situation.”