‘If it’s all in my head then at least I won’t have to kill him,’ said Therese, with a kind of furious humour. ‘Or her.’
Cora sighed. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Did you know that in France, if you kill your husband because he’s cheating on you, or if you kill the woman he’s cheating with, you don’t go to jail? It’s called a crime passionnel,’ said Therese, in a terrible French accent.
‘Is that true?’ asked Cora doubtfully.
‘It’s true,’ said Therese. ‘Because the French are sophisticated. And sometimes I think Ed should take me to Paris, not to the Riverside.’
Cora sipped her tea and stared at Therese, who really was an awful person. Earlier, when Cora had excitedly told Therese what Elsie had said—about the man who died in Adelaide—Therese hadn’t cared an inch about it. How could she not care? Everyone else had cared. Therese had just stood in front of the mirror near the counter and fussed with her hair and she hadn’t asked after Elsie either. And now she’d been outright rude to young Benny.
Cora’s mind went to Benny now, that lost puppy. It was interesting that she had come in. Benny must know that Cora owned the store. Perhaps she wanted to talk? Maybe that photograph had upset her; Cora still wasn’t sure if she should have slipped it into the tin like that. But in the end, she just couldn’t help it. She could sense that Benny needed something, and perhaps Cora could assist her. And with Nathan having moved away, she so missed her son, he didn’t often come to visit, and there was no one to cook for in that particular way a mother cooks for her child.
And then, of course, there was Therese, sour as a grape and ranting away.
‘All that needs to happen is for someone to find out. The husband finds out, or the wife finds out. And that’s it! Honestly, people get murdered all the time for going to bed with the wrong person. Not just in France. Everywhere. And you know what I think?’ said Therese.
Cora didn’t say anything.
‘I think it serves them bloody right!’ said Therese, and she smiled a truly frightening, truly maniacal kind of smile.
39
Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons stood over his large wooden desk, hands on his hips, bent over and staring.
On the desk, upended from an archive box and now in a heaped pile of brown paper bags, of various sizes, was the clothing of the unknown man—items that bore a fresh kind of significance in light of the forty-five-year-old unparalleled mystery known as the Somerton Man.
Simmons’s back hurt. He stood straight for a moment and twisted himself to the left and then to the right, and a noise emanated from his throat while he did that—‘nggghhh,’ he grunted—just like old Neville Simmons used to do when he had trouble with his muscles. Simmons winced at the pain, and he winced at the noise he had made; he was so disgusted with himself when he acted in any way like his father.
‘Shirt in this bag, and that’s the tie,’ said Hall, who had upended the box and was sorting through the items. He looked inside the paper bag with the tie in it. ‘This looks identical to the Somerton Man’s tie in the photos. How did he get one the same?’
Franklin, sitting forward in a chair, shrugged.
‘Jumper,’ Hall continued. ‘This is the jacket and … here we go: trousers.’
Constable Hall opened the bag and very carefully removed the brown trousers, slow and delicate, as if they were an injured marsupial. Then he held them up by the waistband, a prize exhibit, for Simmons and Franklin to see.
‘You say you did check the pockets already?’ Simmons asked.
‘Oh yeah, we did, boss. We found the tickets and combs and stuff in those main pockets. Maybe we didn’t check the fob pocket properly, though. What is a fob pocket?’ asked Franklin.
Hall laid the trousers on the desk and looked at them, puzzled. ‘It’s usually here,’ he said, pointing. ‘You know that little extra pocket on a pair of jeans?’
‘Oh, that pocket; I never understood that pocket,’ said Franklin.
Hall stared at the trousers. ‘These pants don’t have one,’ he said, looking disappointed.
‘Let me see,’ said Simmons, jostling Hall out of the way. He picked up the trousers and examined them, squinting at the main pockets and looking above them and around them, at the place he too expected a fob pocket to be. He put his hands inside the main pockets and felt around—they were empty. Turning the trousers around, he checked the pocket at the back. Then he looked at the front again, and unzipped the fly, and looked on either side of that. ‘Hmm,’ said Simmons as he turned his attention to the inside of the trousers, running his finger around the waistband.
‘There,’ he said. On the inside of the waistband, just to the right of the fly, was a tiny hidden pocket.
‘Huh,’ said Gussy.
Simmons put a finger inside the pocket. ‘Well it’s easy to miss, I’ll give you that,’ he said, looking down intently as he felt around.
Hall stood still, waiting.
Then, using his thumb and his forefinger, Simmons carefully extracted a tiny piece of paper rolled up tight like a cylinder. It had been wedged right down at the bottom of the hidden pocket.
‘Well, fuck me,’ said Simmons, smiling, as he held it up. It looked like a cigarette.
Franklin and Hall watched as he unrolled the paper with his meaty hands.
‘What does it say?’ asked Hall breathlessly. ‘Does it say “Tamam Shud”?’
Simmons stared at the paper. A bemused look passed across his face. Then he turned the paper around so Franklin and Hall could see.
It did not say ‘Tamam Shud’, and it was not torn from some book of ancient Persian poems.
Written in capital letters, printed small and neat—was a single word: GIFT.
40
After her short visit to Curios, Benny went up Valley Road to the grocery store, where she bought garlic, spaghetti, a can of tomatoes and a jar of olives. The woman at the register with the enormous bosom introduced herself this time—she was Betsy—and she made some small talk with Benny about the weather.
‘It was very dry last year, you know, and that was awful. Farmers lost livestock it was so dry. But this year’s been better. You notice it’s greener.’
‘It is,’ said Benny, holding a can of tomatoes. ‘It is quite green.’
‘You’re Benny, aren’t you?’ asked Betsy.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I thought so. You can’t hide anything in Cedar Valley, love. Just cooking for yourself, are you? I try to do that too on most nights. It’s a good way of being nice to yourself, isn’t it, to cook yourself a meal.’
Benny had never thought about it like that, but she agreed that it was. Then—seeing Benny’s T-shirt—Betsy made a positive comment about the Royal Tavern and said she expected to see Benny up there sometime, and that Betsy would be the one having a schnitzel.
‘That’ll be me,’ said Betsy. ‘Have you had the schnitzel?’ This conversation, which Benny was quite enjoying, ended when a man in blue coveralls, arms covered in engine grease, came in to buy a can of soup, and Betsy greeted him warmly.
‘See you, Betsy,’ said Benny.
‘Hooroo, love,’ said Betsy, and then: ‘Now, Morry, might I sell you a bar of soap as well?’ And Benny walked out to the sound of the man, Morry, laughing.
Benny turned left at the corner outside the grocery store and walked past the weedy vacant lot towards her street. She was hungry. It was a hot afternoon, with no breeze, and she walked the distance to Wiyanga Cresent quickly to get out of the sun. Bees hovered over the flowers of the bottlebrush tree on the corner, and parked cars gleamed brightly. Benny crossed the street to the green cottage and let herself in.
A thought was trying to find her, she could feel it, and she went straight to the bedroom where she kept her box of photos. She emptied the contents onto the bed—photographs and letters and envelopes of pressed flowers—and she sat beside the pile, sifting through it until she had collected all the pictures with her mother in them.
&nb
sp; There was her favourite photo of Vivian Moon at the table with Odette, empty glasses around them. The background was difficult to make out, as it was mostly out of focus, but Benny saw it now as she hadn’t seen it before. The windows behind them were the windows of the Royal Tavern. Benny stared at the picture and she smiled. What a satisfying feeling this was: to recognise something new in the picture she had stared at so often. She turned the picture over to see the 1971 written on the back. The year before Benny was born. The year that Vivian Moon lived in Cedar Valley.
Benny looked again at the photo Cora Franks had slipped into the tin with the banana bread. All those ladies at book club. Benny saw now, in the photo, the woman who had been at Curios earlier, sitting up at the counter with Cora. There she was in the book club photo, twenty years younger, an attractive woman with the same coiffured hair. Benny turned that photo over too, and read the date again: 1971.
Then she set all the other photos in a line.
There were Vivian and Odette at the fence in the field. And Vivian and Frank in the back garden at Rozelle, Frank holding tiny Benny in his arms. Another showed Benny on her eighth birthday, when Vivian had made a rare appearance. Benny was sitting next to a cake—a cheap-looking, store-bought cake—and Vivian had her hand on Benny’s shoulder with the awkwardness of a stranger. Benny looked at herself in the picture, and at her imposter of a mother, and she pressed her eyes shut, filled with unease.
But the thought that had been trying to find her flickered again, and Benny opened her eyes and remembered a different photograph: the one of Vivian Moon standing at a shop counter.
It must still be in the box.
She fished around and found it and pulled it out, and then she sat on the bed and stared at the picture.
Vivian Moon looked the same as she did in the other photos from 1971. She was standing by what Benny now recognised as the counter at Cedar Valley Curios & Old Wares. Vivian was smiling, holding a cup of tea, and looking very much like she worked there.
41
‘So he was on his way in to Curios to buy a present,’ said Constable Gussy Franklin, leaning forward in his chair, as the ceiling fan went around and around.
‘Sure,’ said Detective Sergeant Simmons, still holding the little piece of paper that had GIFT written on it. ‘Wouldn’t that be funny—if Cora Franks was right about that. She’s been saying it: that he must’ve been on his way in to buy something.’
‘And Terri from the Coiffure?’ said Franklin. ‘She was sure he was on his way to Curios because he looked so antique-y. Obviously the ladies are way ahead of us.’
Franklin was smiling, and Simmons chuckled, but Constable James Hall looked serious.
‘If he just needed to buy a gift, why would he keep a note about it rolled up in the secret pocket?’ he asked.
‘More to the point, Jimmy,’ said Simmons, ‘how does a man buy a gift when he doesn’t have any fucking money on him?’
Hall winced.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Gussy Franklin. ‘Good one, boss.’
Simmons wiped sweat off his brow with the sleeve of his shirt and let out an irritated sigh.
‘Because he’s copycatting the Somerton Man, so he needs something in his secret pocket,’ said Hall cautiously.
‘Yeah, maybe he couldn’t find a copy of the Persian poetry book,’ said Gussy Franklin. ‘Maybe he wasted enough time finding the right tie.’
‘Ha!’ went Simmons.
‘But he’s gone to all that trouble,’ said Jimmy Hall. ‘He’s remembered every detail about the Somerton Man and he’s got all the same things in his pockets. It’s not like he’s someone who needs to remind himself to buy a gift, or steal a gift, or whatever. It’s got to be more like the Somerton Man’s note. Like a message. You know—for us.’
Simmons was perched on the edge of the desk now. ‘That’s sweet, Jimmy,’ he said. ‘You think he wrote us a little note?’
‘You know what I mean, boss,’ said Constable Hall.
And it was true; Detective Sergeant Simmons did know what he meant. It was possible that a methodical kind of person would write themselves a reminder note, just as another way of being methodical. But it did seem odd that a man such as this, a meticulous kind of person, would even need a reminder. And if he wouldn’t write himself a note, and the note was indeed some kind of message—a deliberate clue—then what did it mean? And who was it intended for?
‘What does “Tamam Shud” mean, anyway?’ asked Franklin. ‘I mean, I know it means “finished”, but does that mean the Somerton Man killed himself?’
‘That’s what people thought,’ said Hall. ‘My mate says it never became a proper homicide investigation because most people assumed he killed himself and that “Tamam Shud” was his suicide note. But that doesn’t explain why he checked his suitcase in at the railway station, or why he tossed the book in someone else’s car. If he didn’t want anyone to find it, why wouldn’t he put it in a bin? And if he did want someone to find it, why didn’t he just keep it with him?’
Gussy Franklin nodded.
‘I guess it’s possible that someone else could’ve put the note in his pocket,’ said Hall.
‘Oh, mate, that’d be a bit tricky,’ said Franklin.
‘But what about before he got dressed?’ said Hall.
Franklin puffed out a lungful of air, and Detective Sergeant Simmons got up from the edge of his desk and sat down in his chair. The window was open and hot air came in—it was a blistering day—and Simmons could feel the sweat trickling down his sides, and under his shoulderblades and, to his great discomfort, on the insides of his thighs.
Silence ensued for a few minutes, while he tilted his head back to look at the ceiling and think, and Franklin and Hall looked over their papers. Simmons lifted a thick arm and wiped his brow with the back of his hand.
‘You see this?’ said Franklin, tapping a page with his finger. ‘Guess what they found in the stomach of the Somerton Man?’
‘What?’ asked Hall.
‘A pasty,’ said Franklin. ‘He ate a pasty!’
‘No wonder our guy really wanted a pasty,’ said Hall.
Simmons looked up at the boys for a moment—a pasty?—then he shook his head and went back to contemplating the ceiling, his mind swimming with information, all of it peculiar and competing for his attention.
The blonde woman who looked like a soap star; Simmons thought about her. She had been into Curios. She had the shakes, whatever that meant. And she had been looking at something to buy—what was it? Cora Franks had been in that morning and she’d talked to Hall and Franklin.
Simmons sat upright again. ‘What about the blonde? Did she buy anything at Curios?’
‘Ah … no,’ said Franklin. He picked up his statement book and found the appropriate page. ‘Cora Franks said she was in there for about fifteen minutes, and she looked at watches. She tried on a few with gold bands, but she didn’t make a purchase.’
‘Hmm,’ said Simmons. ‘Gold watches. Our guy wasn’t wearing a watch. No wedding ring and no watch.’
Simmons thought for a moment about watches. He thought about antiques in general—watches, clothing, and whatever else Cora Franks traded in—and he glanced back at a piece of the fax paper that had lit a spark of curiosity somewhere in the recesses of his consciousness. Simmons picked up the fax, scanned it again, and then he got up slowly to prod at a large paper bag which contained smaller plastic bags within it, each holding an item found in their dead man’s pockets.
‘Right now I’m wondering more about the combs,’ said Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons, picking up the relevant bag and looking into it.
‘What about them?’ said Hall.
‘Well …’ Simmons held the fax in one hand and a clear plastic property bag in the other. ‘Our guy had the exact same things in his pockets as the Somerton Man, right? He had the cigarettes, the half-packet of Juicy Fruit, the matches, the bus ticket, the train ticket and the combs.’
‘
Yeah,’ said Hall.
‘But the Somerton Man had two combs. That’s what the inquest report says. He had two. And look …’ Simmons held up the bag. ‘Our guy had three combs. One, two, three. So what’s with the extra comb?’
42
Benny Miller was in the kitchen making pasta sauce and listening to the radio when somebody knocked at the front door of the green cottage.
It startled Benny, who was deep in thought and not expecting a visitor. But perhaps in some way, after visiting Curios, she did expect to hear from Cora Franks. Funny old Cora, she was such a pushy person. The way she had made her advances already—barging in with food and secreting a photograph in the cake tin. Benny Miller found this behaviour so unusual, so forward, and yet Cora Franks produced in her a strange kind of compassion. Why was that? Benny had no idea, but she walked down the hall, almost smiling to herself, thinking about the awkward wink Cora had given her from behind the counter at Curios. She was sure it would be her now, and opening the door Benny decided she would invite her in.
‘As I was knocking I realised I probably should have called first. But then, this is the reality, isn’t it? People just pop in when you live in the country.’
It was Odette Fisher—and Bessel, who trotted in past Benny and went on down the hall towards the kitchen.
‘Hi,’ said Benny, blushing a little with surprise.
‘Hello, Benny,’ said Odette. ‘I hope you don’t mind. I needed to come get something.’
‘Of course.’
And Odette too walked in past Benny as if she owned the place, which she did.
‘Oh, that smells good. Are you cooking?’
‘I’m making some pasta,’ said Benny. ‘I was so hungry I didn’t want to wait till dinner.’
Benny followed along as Odette went into the kitchen and put a big cloth shopping bag on the counter and she watched as Odette took out a plastic bag with greens in it, and a carton of eggs.
‘This is for you from the garden. Just some spinach and herbs. And these are from my girls.’ Odette got a bowl and set the eggs in it, and put the empty carton back in her cloth bag. There were some rented videos in the bag, and Benny could see the cover of Bagdad Cafe.
Cedar Valley Page 17