Ha ha ha. Simmons had such a scraping laugh. ‘Of course he did, the lazy prick,’ he said, and Kurnell shook his head and went back out to his desk laughing, and Simmons heard Gussy Franklin’s voice, talking softly with Hall, and the high-pitched alien calls of the fax machine.
Simmons was waiting for Ping Williams to return his call. He’d left her a message an hour ago, enquiring after the second analysis of the dead man’s organs. He’d hung up and busied himself with paperwork, ignoring a note on his desk, in Franklin’s writing, telling him that Cora Franks wanted to talk to him, regarding his mother. The last thing Simmons wanted to do was talk to Cora Franks about anything, especially his mother. So he worked and he waited and at some point, staring at the fan, it occurred to Simmons that he had a lonely man’s yearning for Ping Williams.
The first time he met her was many moons ago, at Clarke Base Hospital, after a dreadful car crash from which he had dragged a child. Ping Williams was the size of a child herself, in a white coat and thick glasses. ‘Will she make it?’ Simmons had asked her. Simmons remembered that day well—how his shirt was dark with blood. Ping Williams had looked at the blood, had looked at him, and said softly, ‘We do all we can, don’t we, Sergeant? Perhaps a singing bird will come.’
The young girl had died and Simmons was nauseous for three days. The bird had not come.
Now, years had passed, and the voice on her answering machine had moved him in an uncomfortable way. Then the phone finally rang and Simmons picked it up like lightning, and he felt a stirring in his loins for Ping’s calm whisper when she said, ‘I still feel the only possible cause to be an undiscovered barbiturate or glycoside, but as you can probably tell by my use of the word “undiscovered”, I’m sorry to say we still haven’t found any.’
‘Right,’ said Simmons.
‘I should tell you that Dr Stanton disagrees with my analysis. He feels the findings exclude the possibility of a poison—or certainly a common poison. But Dr Stanton does agree that a physical specimen such as this man would not just sit down and die. There must have been a cause, you see? And after further examination of the stomach, I am certain we are looking for something injected, but we can’t find any mark of a hypodermic needle. It is truly perplexing, Detective.’
Simmons felt a little jolt when she called him ‘Detective’ and he had spoken to Ping for a while longer, realising he was asking more questions than usual—he liked having her there on the phone. They went around in circles, positing various theories and then hitting brick walls. No matter how they came at it, the fact was that Ping Williams’s conclusions were frustratingly inconclusive.
‘I can’t really say, Detective. I feel certain that this man was poisoned, but the evidence does not warrant that finding. And even if I was correct, I can’t say whether the poison was self-administered or administered by some other person in the form of a murder.’
Simmons thanked her and hung up the phone and he watched the fan for a few moments, smiling absently at the way Ping said the word ‘murder’.
Hall was on the phone. Simmons could hear his muffled voice out there in the common area. The boys had been preoccupied all morning. Simmons stood, stretched and went out to the kitchenette, where he made himself a coffee and ate a biscuit, crunching it with his mouth open while standing there, thinking. Hall was over at Franklin’s desk now, showing him a fax.
‘Morning, boys,’ said Simmons loudly across the room. ‘Sit rep.’ And he strode back into his office for a situation report, invigorated by his conversation with Ping Williams.
Franklin came in first, and then Hall, who was carrying a notepad and the lengthy-looking fax. They assumed their positions and, as was customary, waited for Simmons to speak.
‘Ping Williams still reckons it’s poison, even though she can’t find any trace of it.’ Simmons was in a good mood now; he smiled while he said this. ‘She doesn’t know if it’s murder or suicide; she basically doesn’t know bloody anything. But she’s a feisty little woman, isn’t she? Very sure of herself.’
‘So what happens?’ said Hall.
‘Well, it’ll have to go to an inquest, I imagine,’ said Simmons. ‘Which is not what I would have expected last week, but there you go.’
Franklin cleared his throat and told Simmons about the sightings of the blonde woman, the sedatives, the shakes. ‘It seems that she definitely talked to our unknown man, so now we definitely want to talk to her.’
‘Shit, yes,’ said Simmons. ‘Very good.’
Simmons was the one to check in about the sketcher. Hall was organising someone to come down from Sydney to do it, based on the photos he took in the morgue.
‘Amazing we haven’t had one person come forward to report him missing,’ said Simmons. ‘Who the hell was he not to have anyone asking after him? That’s why we need to get a good drawing done. Someone will see it and they’ll recognise him. What about the prints?’
‘Nothing,’ said Hall. ‘Parramatta sent them Australia-wide and got nothing.’
‘Hmm. Anything on the chemist angle?’
‘Nah, but it’s pretty hard to run with. Suffice to say no one’s reported a missing chemist,’ said Hall.
‘It’s starting to feel like we’ve got nothing, boys,’ said Simmons.
‘Yeah, but your mum might have something,’ said Gus Franklin with a broad smile.
‘What’s that?’ said Simmons, who would be certain to level any person who said a lewd word about his mother, Elsie Simmons.
Gus Franklin realised the mistake in his tone and his face went pink as Simmons glared at him—a sharp and flinty stare—and Gussy shuffled in his chair.
Hall, the earnest saviour, swooped in. ‘Boss, Maureen Robinson told us that your mum said our dead ’un reminded her of a case back in Adelaide. I understand she’s from Adelaide originally. And look, we thought it was probably nothing, but you know me—I made a call.’
Tony Simmons was squinting across the table now in disbelief. He didn’t want to lose his temper with Franklin or Hall, they’d been good boys. But why were they sitting here talking about his mother? Hall was not prone to practical joking, yet that’s what this nonsensical information sounded like—some strange kind of joke.
‘It turns out that there’s this old unsolved case in Adelaide,’ said Hall, speaking quickly. ‘This guy in a brown suit sat down at the beach in Somerton and died. This was in 1948. But it happened on the first of December, just like our guy. Isn’t that weird? And they still don’t know who he was or how he died. I have a mate who’s stationed at Norwood, in Adelaide, so I called him, and he knew all about it. He thought our guy sounded pretty curious. He’s sent over a few pages, and he’s gonna call me back.’ Hall held up the fax paper.
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ said Simmons.
‘Listen to this. The guy in 1948—the Somerton Man, that’s what they call him—well, they think he died of poison, but they couldn’t find any poison. He had no ID and, get this …’ Hall paused.
‘Get fucken what, Jimmy?’ said Simmons.
‘All the labels on his clothing had been removed,’ said Hall.
‘Ha!’ went Simmons loudly. He was sitting forward in his chair now, his hands on the pinewood desk. ‘What else?’ he said, smiling now, back in the game.
‘And the only things he had on him,’ said Hall, reading now from his pile of folded fax paper, ‘were cigarettes, a box of matches, half a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a bus ticket, a train ticket, and two combs.’
36
Benny’s Royal Tavern shirt did indeed swim on her. It was a men’s small, but the sleeves still went down to her elbows, and the shirt itself fell midway to her knees. She found a pair of scissors in the utensil drawer at the cottage and cut it shorter, then she tucked it into her denim shorts and rolled up the sleeves. After that it was okay, and she liked that she got to wear one while she worked behind the bar and made conversation with the locals.
The Sunday shift had gone well.
The rest of Cedar Valley was closed on a Sunday—roller shutters down, deadbolts fastened, unlit interiors along Valley Road. Even Fran’s World Famous Pies shut at 1 pm and then Fran herself, pie-round and bonny, wandered up the road to the Royal for an afternoon beverage. She was like a minor celebrity in Cedar Valley, Benny discovered, and when Fran was at the bar the main thing you could hear was Fran. She was well versed in community matters, and was diplomatically opinionated. At one point that Sunday afternoon, Ed Johnson had said, ‘Frances, with all your ideas on what this town needs, maybe you should run for mayor.’
And Fran said, ‘I’ll be thanking you for your vote, Edward. I’ll be thanking our whole street for their votes,’ and the two of them clinked their glasses and chortled. Evidently, Fran and Ed were neighbours.
‘Seriously, though, this guy we’ve got now—what’s his name? Watson? Awful! We haven’t had a good mayor since Neville Simmons, in my opinion,’ said Ed Johnson.
‘Hear, hear,’ said Don in the terry-towelling hat.
‘Dear old Neville Simmons,’ said Fran. ‘I was, what, thirty-five when he died? I couldn’t care less about politics then, but I was as sad as if he were an uncle. The way he made fun of himself in those big speeches at the Clarke Show? I loved that.’
That led into a discussion about the good old days in general, and how things were changing with the technology and the tourism, then talk turned to federal politics and the issue of native title, and finally wound its way back around to local politics and the brilliance of the former mayor, the late Neville Simmons. Benny fixed drinks and found this all to be genuinely interesting, and then she chatted a while with two sisters, Maureen and Barbie Robinson, who lived together in a house near the school. Maureen was clearly the older and more dominant sibling, while Barbie sat there obediently and smiled in agreement at everything Maureen said.
‘And now we have Neville’s son tending to our law enforcement,’ Fran was saying.
Ed Johnson nodded.
Then Tom Boyd said, ‘Tony Simmons has his work cut out for him this week.’
And this seemed to be Fran’s cue to speak at length about the dead man, and how odd it felt to her that she’d missed the whole thing. There’d been a terrible crash on the coast road and traffic had been backed up for hours.
‘You were a couple of cars ahead of me Edward. I saw you when we finally started moving,’ said Fran.
Ed Johnson appeared surprised. ‘Big hold up, that was,’ he said.
‘I just keep thinking how sad it is that not one person knows him,’ said Fran. ‘Nobody! I just think that’s awful for him—and that’s on top of dying.’ And she went on to say that Betsy Dell, who owned the grocery store, had raised the idea of holding some kind of funeral service in his honour, and Fran thought Betsy was right on the money. Ed laughed at that but Fran persisted. A wake could be held there at the Royal, she suggested, and Tom said that would be just fine, and then Tom took his break in the little back room that he referred to as his office.
•
On the Monday, Benny sprayed Norsca on her shirt and wore it again. She worked the lunch shift, smelling like a forest. Her confidence grew by the hour and she spent a good while talking with the red-faced woman called Linda, who had a rostered day off from the chicken factory but lied to her husband about it in order to drive to the Royal Tavern to drink all day.
‘He’d just want me doing housework, and I’m done with all that, I’m done,’ Linda slurred, and Benny saw that underneath the beer puff, Linda Carlstrom (who had held out her hand for Benny to shake and introduced herself by her full name) had once been a pretty woman. And Benny listened to Linda talk about her son and her deadbeat husband, who cared a whole lot more about car parts than he ever cared for Linda. Then Linda cupped Benny’s hand in both of hers and said, ‘You’re a good egg,’ in an emotional way, just as Odette Fisher appeared in the doorway, with Bessel beside her.
‘Here’s trouble,’ said Tom Boyd as Odette approached the bar.
‘Hi, Benny,’ said Odette warmly. She sat on a bar stool and, although Benny would not have imagined Odette Fisher in a pub, she looked just as at home there as she did in her wooden farmhouse on the mountain. Bessel sat down on the floor beside her.
‘Hello,’ said Benny to Odette, and Odette put an arm across the bar and rubbed Benny’s shoulder.
‘You got a T-shirt,’ she said. And then, ‘I thought I’d pop in and see how you were going. Hi, Tom.’
Benny stood there grinning, for she was so pleased to see Odette.
‘You having a drink?’ said Tom.
‘I should think so,’ said Odette. She assessed the beer taps. ‘I might get a beer. A small one.’
So Benny poured Odette a middy of beer, and before Odette could get her purse out of her big leather bag, Benny had pulled money from her own pocket and paid for the drink herself.
‘Please,’ she said, when Odette protested, so Odette nodded and said, ‘Thank you.’
Odette sipped her beer. ‘How’s Annie?’ she asked Tom Boyd.
‘She’s good. She took the girls up to Port Kembla yesterday to get pipis.’
‘Oh, I love pipis. Tell her Carol’s finally decided on a book for January. We’re going with The English Patient.’ Odette looked at Benny. ‘Annie and I are in a book club together.’
‘I thought you were in a book club with Cora,’ said Benny.
Odette paused, surprised. ‘I was in a book club with Cora. That was years ago. How did you know that?’
‘Cora told me,’ said Benny. ‘Kind of.’ Odette seemed a little bemused, and Linda Carlstrom burst into a coarse laugh at the other end of the bar, where she and Ed Johnson were smoking together.
‘Well, now I’m in the splinter group,’ said Odette. ‘Me, Annie Boyd and about six others. A couple of us used to be in Cora’s club, but there was a rebellion.’ Odette laughed and sipped her beer again. ‘I might get a packet of chips,’ she said.
Tom Boyd opened a packet of chips and emptied them into a basket and set the basket in front of Odette.
‘This lot think they read better books,’ said Tom to Benny.
‘We do,’ said Odette, and she ate a chip.
‘Have you spoken to Annie about our dead guy?’ Tom asked Odette. ‘She’s got wind of some theory.’
Odette pushed the basket over and Benny leaned across and took some chips.
‘I love it how everyone’s calling him our dead guy,’ said Odette. ‘And no, I haven’t. Why?’
Tom explained: Annie had spoken to Maureen Robinson. Maureen had been round to see Elsie Simmons, and now they were all on about some other man who’d died in the 1940s. He, too, had been sitting on the ground in a suit and tie. And there was something Tom didn’t quite catch about codes or poetry.
Odette stared at Tom. Her mouth opened a little. She looked as if a penny was dropping inside her.
‘Elsie’s from Adelaide,’ she said, thinking. Then she looked at Benny. ‘That’s the case I was talking about the other day.’ She set her beer down and slapped the bar. ‘That’s right—he had a message in his pocket! They found it much later, and it was linked to this old book of poems. God, doesn’t that sound mad? But it’s all true.’ She shook her head, grinning.
‘How do you know about all that?’ asked Benny.
‘Well …’ Usually so composed, Odette seemed suddenly unsure of what to say. ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it was Vivian who told me about it. I mean, she knew the story because she’s from Adelaide, but she was really fascinated by it. I remember her telling me all the details.’
Benny stared back blankly. ‘Oh,’ she said.
‘It all sounds very weird,’ said Tom Boyd, arms folded, leaning back against the bench.
‘It does, doesn’t it?’ said Odette. She gave Benny a look of concern, and then she smiled. ‘But don’t you think someone needs to check our dead man’s pockets?’
37
‘Not only did he have this note in his poc
ket,’ said Tony Simmons, ‘but it was in bloody Persian and it had some special connection to a poetry book they found in a car!’
It was as if Simmons was performing sketch comedy, the way he was speaking about the Somerton Man. A bead of sweat had formed near his ear and soon enough it dripped down to his jawline as he laughed at the pure ridiculousness of the revelations before him. ‘This is fucking mad is what this is.’
‘So your mum never told you about it?’ asked Hall.
‘I wasn’t born yet, Jimmy,’ said Simmons. ‘So no, she didn’t.’
‘What’s with Adelaide?’ said Franklin after a pause, and the others didn’t know what to say.
Hall and Franklin and Simmons had spent the past couple of hours making enquiries in relation to the Somerton Man. The fax machine had beeped and emitted its stuttering groan as ancient newspaper articles were sent through. The men had read things quietly to themselves; they had read things aloud to each other; they had applied highlighters and made notes. Simmons had become so excited by the sheer number of similarities between the two cases—the Somerton Man and the Cedar Valley Man—that he made a call to regional homicide to share the recent developments.
The detective who took his call was unconvinced. ‘So you reckon because your unknown sounds like this—I’m sorry—this unsolved homicide? Was the one in Adelaide a homicide?’
‘Oh, well, I’m not sure; no one’s sure,’ said Simmons, wondering then if he’d jumped the gun by calling homicide.
‘So what was it?’ asked the detective, who seemed to find the circumstances presented to him rather preposterous.
‘Ah, well, it’s still a bit of a mystery, as I understand it,’ said Simmons. ‘It’s an unsolved possible homicide,’ and a few moments later: ‘I’ll call you back.’
So he hung up the phone and gathered his thoughts, and by the end of that Monday they lay out what they knew so far about the enduring Australian mystery known as the Somerton Man.
Cedar Valley Page 15
