The Bodysurfers

by Robert Drewe

  I leave this aspect to you. By detailing the events chronologically I hope you will have a clearer picture of this affair which has distressed all of us in the Company.

  On Saturday, 22 November last year, ten P&M executives arrived by North Queensland Airways Sikorsky helicopter on Sweetlip Island, the venue for the Company’s annual sales and marketing conference. Following Company safety policy of staggering our executives’ flights, another eight arrived next day, and the final six on Monday.

  As Managing Director, Rex Lang, one of the first arrivals, headed the twenty-four-man party. He was joint chairman of the working parties with Kevin Brownbill, Manager of the Services’ Division.

  Their convention agenda was full. From Sunday until Friday — with Wednesday a lay day for a fishing cruise — they assembled each morning at 8.30 in the Marlin Hotel’s conference room. They worked, with meal and coffee breaks, until 5.00 p.m.

  However, that still left time for rest and recreation. Each morning some exercised before work. For example, Brownbill kept up his jogging. Lang would go for a walk along the lagoon, then swim before breakfast, his custom for the past twenty years.

  Some of the party apparently nursed hangovers. No names are forthcoming here. There are six bars on Sweetlip Island, including one disco, ‘Randy’s’, which remains open till 4.00 a.m. It would be perhaps unreasonable not to expect that at night some of the party discussed sales and marketing strategy in some of them.

  One who touched hardly a drop of alcohol, however, was Rex Lang. He had decided to spend a ‘dry’ convention week in order to lose some weight.

  It goes without saying he was not an habitué of ‘Randy’s’.

  He resisted his colleagues’ teasing. On Tuesday, 25 November, he sent a postcard to his wife (I report this with Mrs Janice Lang’s permission), saying ‘Darling, here I am in a little beach hut, just like that holiday on Maui in ’73. Great weather, feeling fine. The only way to work! Starting Day 3 — still no booze! See you Sunday. Love, Rex.’

  As for the food question, the Sweetlip Island brochures say, ‘Eat, drink and be merry.’ The guests can be expected to comply. Each week there is a South Sea Island Night where the guests feast on pigs cooked in the traditional Polynesian manner on hot stones. There is also an Oriental Night, a Roaring Twenties Night, a Left Bank Night and a King Neptune Night, with the menu varying accordingly. Lunch is a variety of hot fish and meat dishes or a ‘mouth-watering smorgasbord served from a real Pacific Island canoe’.

  The local reef fish form a staple part of the resort diet.

  Rex Lang marked with a cross on the postcard where his ‘beach hut’ was located. It was actually No. 1 in the Frangipani Lodge, at $103.50 a day among the most expensive accommodation on the island. Facing the lagoon, and almost out of range of the demands of the public address system, it was also the farthest cabin from the resort complex.

  The first member of the party to become ill was Derek James from Perth. He reported ‘an upset stomach and diarrhoea’ on Monday morning. On Tuesday he was joined on the sick-list by Dick Scrutton from the Sydney office, suffering from ‘a swelling on the face’. Hugh Gillam from Adelaide also complained of ‘stomach pains’.

  The convention continued, in its relaxed way, with Rex Lang chairing most of Tuesday’s meetings. After some indecision about tides and weather the party spent Wednesday cruising the Barrier Reef, bottom-fishing for sweetlip, coral trout, red emperor and groper.

  Nigel Donnelly from Sydney was the next to report sick, experiencing ‘sea-sickness and diarrhoea’ an hour after departure. His illness paled, however, beside that of Ian McPhee, the Perth sales manager.

  He recalled, ‘We set off on a launch around the outer islands. I had been off-colour the night before, but I became much worse, with severe vomiting and stomach cramps. The spasms got worse and worse until I was paralysed down my left side. The others thought I’d had a stroke or coronary.’

  McPhee was put aboard a sea-plane which flew him back to Sweetlip. There the resident nurse gave him a pethidine injection and he was transferred by boat to the mainland and then by ambulance to Petersen Hospital.

  ‘The matron gave me another needle,’ McPhee reported, ‘and this quietened me down. The doctor gave me an electro-cardiogram test and said my heart was OK — it was food poisoning. They kept me in hospital overnight and I spent the rest of my time on Sweetlip in bed.’

  The Petersen Hospital records have McPhee admitted for ‘gastritis’ on the twenty-sixth and discharged the next day.

  (According to Personnel, McPhee is fifty-three. He was last hospitalised three years ago for a hernia operation. Further promotion is not envisaged.)

  On Thursday, while McPhee was recuperating, the conference continued. That night there was a jolly atmosphere at dinner. Brownbill and Lang, sitting together, chose the same main course, beef tournedos, and had a friendly argument over the wine Brownbill had ordered.

  Lang, in his sixth day of abstinence, laughingly bolstered his argument by tasting and swallowing a mouthful of Brownbill’s wine, a Lindeman’s 1963 Hunter River burgundy.

  He drank no more wine. In good spirits he left the dining room at 9.30 and went to his cabin.

  The sixth Company man to become sick was Peter L’Estrange of Melbourne. He succumbed to ‘an attack of vomiting and diarrhoea’ in the early hours of Friday, 28 November, which was to last the whole day. In the hubbub of that morning, however, his troubles were ignored.

  When the conference assembled at 8.30 a.m. three men were missing: McPhee, still recovering from the illness which precipitated the air-and-sea mercy dash, L’Estrange, then in the middle of his gastric attack, and Lang.

  At 9.15 a.m. Brownbill sent one of the Sydney team, Jim Beech, to Lang’s cabin to see if he had over-slept. Beech knocked on the door, received no answer and walked around to the lagoon side of the cabin and peered through the window.

  Beech reported later; ‘I noticed the bathroom light on, vomit on top of the bed and Rex’s wallet and pens on his desk top. I hurried back and told Kevin Brownbill.’

  Brownbill obtained the key to Lang’s room and opened the door. He saw vomit on the bed and remembers seeing two silver pens, a watch and a wallet on the bedside table.

  ‘I found Rex lying face up on the bathroom floor. He was naked, with a wash cloth covering his genitals. I rushed to get the nurse. When she examined him she said, “He’s dead.” ’

  I travelled up to her home at Whale Beach to interview Mrs Janice Lang on 9 December, 15 January and 23 January. She was obviously under much stress and increasingly anxious to see the matter resolved. Here I must say that her emotional state was heightened by the presence of her stepson, Max Lang, on the first occasion. He appeared especially tense and fatigued by events, to the extent of making unnecessary legal threats against the Company.

  Mrs Lang remembers the morning of Friday, the twenty-eighth, with great clarity. ‘It was 11.15. As soon as I saw the Chairman get out of his car I knew something had happened to Rex. It’s amazing how you behave at a time like that. I found myself acting the perfect hostess. I heard myself ask, “Would you like a drink?” I got out the gin and tonic in a dream.’

  According to Mrs Lang, a Constable Grundy telephoned her from Sweetlip at 11.30. ‘He told me the police were taking Rex’s body to the mainland, to the town of Petersen, for an autopsy and that they’d let me know the results in three weeks. He volunteered, “It’s not food poisoning — he wasn’t dehydrated.” He repeated that four times. He said, “You realise we may never know what killed him.” ’

  * * *

  Four days later the body arrived in Sydney with permission from the local coroner for cremation.

  ‘I saw him at the funeral parlour,’ she said, ‘just to make sure he was dead. I was surprised. He looked wonderful, so marvellously fit and sun-tanned from the island.’

  The funeral service and cremation were performed.

  Rex Lang was sixty-two.

 
As you will see later, cremation seems to have been a mistake.

  For chronology’s sake I insert two occurrences here without comment. When Lang’s belongings were returned to his widow his two silver Parker pens, one a ballpoint, the other a fountain pen, each with the initials R.W.L., were not among them.

  Six days after his death an elderly kitchen hand on Sweetlip Island, Tom Eden, died suddenly after a big meal of coral trout and tiger prawns.

  When, almost two months later, Mrs Lang had still not received any autopsy results from the police, she phoned the Petersen coroner. He said he had never heard of her husband and had no record of him.

  ‘I am being stone-walled,’ she told me the next day. ‘A great wall of silence comes down when I ask why my husband died.’

  I travelled up to Petersen on 9 February, accompanied, on his insistence, against my wishes and with the Chairman’s approval, by Max Lang.

  Time has stood still at 1955 in Petersen — that must be understood by the Company in any of our dealings with the town and the district. The people are predominantly cane farmers and fishermen though tourism is becoming the main money earner. The green and white chimneys of the Petersen Sugar Cane Co-operative dominate the skyline, the pace is slow and the main event in town during our visit was the Petersen Live Theatre’s presentation of Hello, Dolly at the Alhambra Theatre.

  I learned that the Lang post mortem had been performed at Egerton, fifty kilometres north, by a local G.P., a Dr Reginald Davies. He was agitated at our appearance in his surgery and assumed the full dignity of the provincial medical practitioner.

  ‘I am most annoyed at being asked about this. I just performed the autopsy,’ he said. ‘Let’s leave matters in the hands of the proper officials.’

  ‘So much for professional compassion,’ Max interposed.

  The doctor looked furious but controlled himself sufficiently to say he would average one post mortem examination a year. He had performed this one on the sudden absence of the resident medical officer down the coast. He had suspected a heart attack in the beginning, but after conducting several tests had found the heart ‘OK’. He had not been told before the autopsy about food poisoning on Sweetlip Island.

  He would expect any food poisoning sickness in Lang’s case to be more prolonged, with attendant dehydration.

  ‘This man was not dehydrated,’ he said. ‘Apart from a fatty liver he appeared in good physical condition for a man his age.’

  ‘Your father liked a drink, did he?’ he asked Max, rather unnecessarily.

  He could find nothing to establish the cause of death so he had declined to issue a death certificate.

  He had taken samples of the heart, lung, liver, kidneys, blood, and stomach contents. He had handed the specimens to Constable Grundy, suggesting he freeze them before sending them down to the State Pathology Laboratory in Brisbane for testing.

  Some time after this transferral some of the organ samples disappeared. One was the heart.

  * * *

  This situation was revealed in a telephone conversation immediately afterward with the Chief Pathologist in Brisbane. He reported that he had received specimens of liver and kidney only, and then not until three weeks after the post mortem.

  Unfortunately they had been frozen instead of being sent in formalin. Freezing had altered the tissue structure and rendered the histological results useless. As a matter of fact the freezing process itself had been bungled, the organs having been allowed to thaw.

  ‘They look as if they might have come down here in the back of a car,’ said the pathologist. ‘This is summer we’re talking about. This is the tropics. Do I need to spell it out?’

  No request had been made for a food poisoning test, and no stomach contents had been received in any case. ‘What we’d be looking for here would be bacteriological infective staphylococci clostrida. Therefore we’d need to study the intestinal contents for bacteria, culture growth and so forth.’

  I discovered that Mrs Lang had also contacted the Chief Pathologist. He said he told her ‘We have no heart specimen and I believe it was never sent.’

  These people are extraordinary in their lack of subtlety. Then he told her he had written to the police to check if the heart was ‘lying around somewhere’.

  He told me he had no evidence to show the cause of death.

  The symbolism of the missing heart affected Max Lang. There was a scene that night with a drink waiter in the dining room of the Aloha Motor Inn in Petersen which did the reputation of P & M no credit at all.

  Max’s antagonistic attitude carried over next day into our meeting with the policeman who had first taken his father’s body from the island to the mainland and had then been entrusted with the organ samples. Constable Donald Grundy, a heavy-set, officious young man, was extremely defensive about his role in the affair.

  ‘Where is my father’s heart?’ Max began.

  ‘I couldn’t comment on that. A court hearing is pending,’ said the constable.

  ‘What about the other missing autopsy specimens?’

  ‘I couldn’t comment, I said. Listen, I don’t have to talk to you people. This is all sub judice.’

  I said, ‘There was at least one case of food poisoning of another of the P & M party the same week as Mr Lang died, but I believe you insist he didn’t die from food poisoning?’

  ‘There is always dehydration with food poisoning and Lang wasn’t dehydrated.’

  At this stage Max asked Grundy brusquely, ‘Who knocked off my father’s pens?’

  ‘You’re upset about the missing pens, but I didn’t see any pens in the room. I made a list of the valuables in my book. See, there’s no pens on the list. The island management checked the list and signed my book. I even sent his valuables down to Mrs Lang at my own cost to do the right thing. The police force doesn’t pay for those things.’

  Max returned to the attack. ‘You’re covering up. What did you do with the body samples?’

  Grundy was barely controlling himself. ‘There’s no cover-up. I do my report and send it to my boss, the district inspector. He reads it and sends it to the Coroner, who sets a date for the hearing.’

  There was no stopping Max. ‘You were the last person to have all my father’s body samples. What did you do with them?’ He was becoming hysterical. ‘Where did you freeze them? In your bloody kitchen fridge? There are lots of implications there, constable. I suppose your fucking cat ate them!’

  The station sergeant said either we left or he would lock Max up.

  Our conversation with Barry McGlynn, who is Clerk of the Court and Registrar as well as Coroner at Petersen, was less tense but equally circuitous. A certain Alice in Wonderland aspect began to enter the investigation at this point.

  ‘When will the Lang inquest be held?’ I asked him.

  ‘We don’t have a date. We’re waiting for the files to come back.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘From where they’ve been.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘You better ask the police. It’s just a matter of hoping the damn things come back.’

  At this stage I switched tack. ‘When did you know that parts of the body were missing?’

  ‘Not till some time later when we started checking up. If they are lost, that is. That’s what the files are away for.’

  ‘Why did you give the OK for cremation even though the specimens were lost?’

  ‘I didn’t have a clue anything was missing when I approved the cremation. I didn’t have a clue in the wide world that parts were missing.’

  ‘How were the specimens lost?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have a clue. You’d better ask the police.’

  ‘What is the normal procedure in cases of sudden death where specimens are taken for testing? Was this procedure followed?’

  ‘The procedure is for the police to arrange for the specimens to go to the State Pathology Laboratory. I don’t know whether this or that happened or what happened.’
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  Max had been quiet until then. ‘Where were the specimens frozen?’ he asked.

  The Coroner said, ‘I couldn’t help you there.’

  ‘There must be a policy,’ Max shouted. ‘Are they frozen in the hospital, the police station, a domestic refrigerator?’

  ‘Goodness knows.’

  Max and I booked in overnight at the Marlin Hotel on Sweetlip Island. We took the helicopter across from the mainland and checked in to two cabins in Frangipani Lodge, Nos 3 and 4. The staff, presumably tipped off about us from the mainland, were cool but efficient.

  I asked Max to allow me to question people alone, not wishing any emotional outburst to jeopardise our position. He agreed, though unwillingly, busying himself taking photographs from all angles of Cabin No. 1 where his father had died.

  The bar staff, cocky and talkative earlier, were nervous when I introduced myself over a glass of beer. The bar manager announced in a loud voice, ‘We haven’t heard anything about people getting food poisoning. No one we know has been sick. That goes for all my staff.’

  The nursing sister who examined Lang’s body, Rhonda Lynch, was slightly more forthcoming. ‘I don’t know what was the cause of death,’ she said. ‘The other man in the party who was taken to Petersen Hospital was diagnosed as suffering from food poisoning.’ This statement was volunteered without prompting.

  ‘Sometimes people on holidays eat and drink more than usual,’ she added, ‘and food they’re not used to.’

  I asked her if she entered in her medical records every case she treated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could I see your treatment records for November-December?’

  ‘That wouldn’t be ethical. All records of illness must be kept confidential.’

  I asked whether an island employee, Tom Eden, had died shortly after Lang, perhaps from food poisoning.

  She said he was an old fat man who had died in his sleep.