It was true. Between phone calls, of which there had been several that morning, he had been sitting there in his chair, suppressing difficult memories, staring at the combs, thinking about them, wondering about the significance of a comb.
The Somerton Man had been carrying two combs. One was a narrow, aluminium, American-made comb; the other was plastic, most probably bakelite. The fact that the Somerton Man had two combs was clearly stated in the coronial inquest; Simmons had read over the faxed document. ‘Two hair combs’ it had said. It was public knowledge. And, accordingly, sitting in front of Simmons on his desk, in two separate sealed bags, was a narrow aluminium comb, and a brown plastic comb—what looked like bakelite—both found in the pocket of the unknown man who’d died on Valley Road.
How this guy had managed to get his hands on two antique combs to fit these exact descriptions, in 1993, Simmons had no idea. But it must be said: Simmons admired the attention to detail.
The more interesting thing though was the third comb, which Hall had retrieved from the man’s other pocket. It sat on Simmons’s desk in a separate bag and there was no mistaking that this comb was fancy. Sterling silver, it was stamped with small hallmarks declaring its authenticity, and Simmons had spent a good time squinting at them. The number 935 he could make out easily, but the symbols were more difficult. One of them looked like the outline of a bird flying left, its wings pointing north and south. Or perhaps it was a waning crescent moon?
And the symbol next to it?
That one was harder still. The hallmark stamps were so small and indistinct. Was it a house, a circus tent, a pentagon with something else inside? Simmons stared at it and could not tell. All he knew for certain was that the comb folded down neatly into its sterling silver handle and, while Simmons had never been a comb man, even if he had been, he’d have found this one far too pompous for his liking.
When he’d raised this whole extra comb issue yesterday, none of them had any idea what it meant. But they did know this: it had to mean something. It had to be significant, like the note in the hidden pocket. GIFT.
‘What do you reckon, boss?’ asked Constable James Hall.
‘I think it’s lucky we haven’t had someone hand in a Persian poetry book with codes in it,’ said Simmons.
Ha ha ha, Franklin laughed. ‘True,’ he said.
‘Did you get onto your mate in Norwood again?’ Simmons asked Hall.
‘I did, after you left yesterday. I got nothing. He said the combs were never an issue. The Somerton Man just had two combs. That’s it. He doesn’t reckon anyone thought any more about it.’
‘Did you think of a comb expert we can talk to?’ asked Franklin, half smiling.
‘Yeah, fuck, I don’t know,’ said Simmons. ‘I made a call this morning to a mate in Sydney who should be able to help. He’s got a contact who knows about hallmarks; he’s calling me back. But it’s hard to know how far to chase the goose, you know?’
Franklin nodded.
And then Simmons couldn’t help himself—he leaned forward and picked up the bag with the fancy comb in it. ‘Does that look like a flying bird and a house to you?’ he asked, pointing at the hallmarks.
‘Oh,’ said Hall, ‘I would have thought the one on the left is a moon maybe?’
‘It looks like a banana and a skull,’ said Franklin.
Simmons stared at Gussy Franklin and then put the bag with the comb back on the table and said, ‘Brilliant.’
‘We could ask Cora Franks,’ said Hall. ‘She knows about antiques.’
Simmons snorted out a laugh, rather defensively; he had no inclination to involve Cora Franks any more than was necessary.
Franklin turned to Hall. ‘Maybe he was just really into hair products. He might have meant to sit down in front of the Coiffure and fucked it up. Got the wrong shop.’ He grinned.
‘Yeah, maybe we should ask Therese Johnson about combs,’ said Hall. ‘Hairdressers know about combs.’
Things were becoming troublesome when Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons could not even tell if Jimmy Hall was joking—about asking Cora, or asking Therese—and he couldn’t tell if he should be taking any of this seriously either. The boys were obviously having some fun. There was nothing like detective work when some unknown individual has taken the time to plant clues in his own pockets.
Therese Johnson floated around in Simmons’s mind—so much rouge and hair—she always seemed so put upon. Simmons barely knew the woman, but thinking of her brought to mind to something Elsie Simmons used to say: that some people connect to the world through their complaints about it.
Jenny had said something along those lines too: that when Therese would do her hair she’d just snip away and list her grievances; how she was so hot and cold on her husband, Ed; and how Jenny would rather just read a magazine.
‘Maybe we should ask Therese Johnson about Ed, while we’re at it. Like how is it that she hasn’t turfed him?’ said Franklin.
Jimmy Hall nodded. ‘Fair,’ he said.
‘Why’s that?’ asked Simmons.
‘Oh, Ed likes to get himself into strife,’ said Franklin. ‘He gets a bit on the side.’
‘A bit?’ said Jimmy Hall. ‘I think Ed’s been getting a lot on the side for a long time.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Simmons.
‘Everyone at the Royal knows,’ said Franklin. ‘Ed’s not discreet. He loves the drama.’
Ed Johnson. Really? Simmons supposed Ed was funny, in a ribald kind of way, and he guessed he could probably turn on the charm. But the paunch, the pall of heavy drinking. Simmons thought, if Ed Johnson was some kind of ladies’ man then he could not be sure of anything in this world.
‘Are any of these women he has on the side married? Or is Ed the only one who’s married?’
Franklin and Hall looked at each other and then back at Simmons.
‘The one he’s got right now’s married,’ said Hall. ‘Linda. She works at the Ingham factory. She lives up in Goodwood.’
‘Goodwood’s a shithole,’ said Simmons.
‘Yeah, and she’s a shocker. Her family are shockers. Ed usually goes for classier ladies. I think he’s slipping,’ said Franklin.
Simmons looked up at the ceiling, thinking, staring at the fan. ‘I wonder what Linda’s husband would do if he found out?’ he said. ‘I mean, just take her as an example. Small towns. People find things out. I wonder what any husband would do?’
Franklin did a slow nod.
And Hall said, ‘Oh, well, yeah. There’s probably a long list of husbands who’d do something pretty drastic if they found out what Ed Johnson’s been up to for the past twenty years.’
48
Benny Miller sat in the early light of the garden on Tuesday with a cup of coffee and a bowl of Weet-Bix. She ate her breakfast slowly, facing the bush, listening to its morning noises. In her bare feet, she walked down to the shed and left a peeled banana on the shelf for the possum. She stared up at the cardboard box of books, considering them. Then she watered the wild garden and, at the base of the back fence, under the shade of the giant gum trees, she took a small rock from a crop of grey siltstone, carried it inside, and set it on the bedhead with the rest of her collection.
Benny dressed and put on her sneakers and it was already hot as she walked up to the town—for some exercise and something to do. She went the usual way to Valley Road and crossed the wide street towards the park, where galahs were eating at the grass. At the war memorial Benny stopped and looked at the plaque: OUR GLORIOUS DEAD with a list of names engraved. Then she walked in a new direction, away from the shops, past the library, her mind crowded with fragments of the previous night, and her long and winding conversation with Odette.
That Odette was beginning to ‘understand’ Vivian—well, that was a mystery to Benny still. Benny knew that Vivian had pulled away—this was what Odette had already said. Vivian had left Cedar Valley abruptly and returned to Frank in Sydney without much of an explanation. The t
wo of them had settled into Frank’s terrace in Rozelle, while Frank fixed furniture and Vivian worked at odd jobs way below her intellectual capacity. Then the news came to Odette—via a letter—that Vivian was pregnant, and expecting a girl.
Well, it took the wind out of her, this news. For Vivian hadn’t seemed especially devoted to Frank, nor especially keen to have a baby. Not like Odette, who had wanted a child so badly. This she told Benny while they picked at the leftover salad. She yearned for a child, and Lloyd did, too. The first miscarriage was a disappointment. The second, a great distress. But the third—the miscarriage she had in 1971—was a devastation. Odette Fisher was seventeen weeks pregnant when it happened. She was well and truly on her way, and the pain of it, the sorrow was an agony.
But, oh, how wonderfully caring Vivian had been.
‘She soothed me more successfully than Lloyd did, really,’ said Odette, putting her fork down and leaning back in her chair.
Then Benny had made tea and served the rest of Cora’s banana bread on yellow plates. All the while the thick pile of letters and postcards sat in full view, just next to Odette’s keys.
Somehow the conversation diverted back to the Somerton Man, and Vivian’s interest in him, and that led to a discussion of Vivian’s letters in general, and Benny sat unmoving in her chair, trying not to glance too obviously at the pile.
‘I remember her talking about it. She was thrilled by it, really—just the mystery of it. She was fascinated by the Kennedy assassination, too; she loved conspiracy stories. And I guess the fact that the Somerton Man died right near their house when she was little—the story of it had been with her since she was a little girl.’
Benny nodded, wondering how she could find out everything there was to know about the Somerton Man: every single mysterious detail. If she were still in Sydney she could go to the State Library and look at the newspaper archives. There surely would have been articles. Perhaps someone had written a book about it, if the case was so famous in Adelaide. Benny could have searched through all of it and read everything available if she were in Sydney. But she wasn’t.
Odette sat there, eating banana bread, relaying all the details fresh in her memory. She’d called Elsie Simmons as soon as she got home from the Royal. The Somerton Man, 1948. Found dead with nothing but a few simple items and a piece of paper that said ‘Tamam Shud’, torn from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
‘Elsie’s convinced he was a Soviet spy, and she’s really not one for histrionics,’ said Odette—and she explained it all to Benny, about the copy of the Rubaiyat that was found discarded in a car near Somerton Beach and handed in to police, with the phone number and the unbreakable codes written in the back. Elsie Simmons couldn’t remember the actual code, but she did recall that, back in Glenelg in the early months of 1949, she and her mother had tried to crack it. They’d sat in front of that odd string of letters on and off for weeks before giving it up.
‘I wish Elsie had a copy of The Rubaiyat so we could have a look at it,’ said Odette. ‘Just for fun. I was sure Vivian gave me a copy when she was living here, but I couldn’t find it on my shelf. It’s a funny book. It’s all about passion and living in the moment and enjoying wine. Quite hedonistic. I never really took to it, but I guess Vivian was so obsessed with it because it’s all tied up with the mystery.’
Benny wrote the name of the book and its author down on the brown paper beer bag, and Odette laughed. Neither of them were quite sure how to spell it. And then Odette finally reached over and picked up the pile of letters and took off the rubber band that held them all together, and she spread them out on the table, sifting through them, turning some of the postcards over and looking at the pictures.
‘Here,’ she said, and, with some sense of gravity about the gesture, she handed Benny a postcard from Vivian.
It was sent from Paris, addressed to Odette Fisher in Hydra Town.
Benny knew her mother’s writing so intimately, so hopelessly, and it pained her to see it there on the postcard, which said little more than ‘hello’, with a scant description of Vivian’s activities. It recommended Odette read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It has helped me with my ‘sickness of the soul’ and ‘the quarrel of the universe’. This was what Vivian had written, and Benny flinched at the thought of her mother being so afflicted, and expressing it in lofty quotations.
Odette glanced up at Benny, as if checking in on her, to see that she was coping, and then she handed another card, this one from London, and then another, from Brighton.
Benny looked at the pictures and then turned them over and read them anxiously. Why was it that she half expected to find a mention of herself? How utterly ridiculous, when she knew full well that she hadn’t been born yet at the time of their writing. How urgent it felt, to read them, and how desolate too, to find they contained very little of interest.
Odette had opened some envelopes and was reading over a letter—Benny could see the double-sided pages teeming with words.
‘This one is from Paris, but most of the letters are from Berlin.’ Odette put one letter down and picked up another, and then another. ‘This is the one I was thinking of—she’s writing about the Somerton Man.’ Odette kept reading, her eyes moving down the page quickly.
Benny looked down at the postcard from Brighton again. It was a colourised photo of a beach with a big, impressive pier. Vivian had written, A little different from the Brighton Jetty in Adelaide! in pen on the photo.
‘Oh, how amazing,’ Odette said. ‘I’d forgotten this.’ She turned the page over and read to the end of the letter, and then she set it down on the table.
‘Vivian’s talking about books she’s been reading. We would often talk about that. She was saving some money to buy a German translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam she found in a bookstore in Berlin—even though she couldn’t read German. She never had any money, I don’t know how she managed to travel for so long. Anyway, then she goes on to talk about the Somerton Man. God, I remember being so intrigued by this letter! She lists all the facts here. I didn’t need to call Elsie after all. Jestyn. That’s the name of the nurse. And listen, here at the end …’
Odette picked up the letter and began to read aloud: ‘“He’d never tell me yes or no. He’d just smile at me when I asked, and Mum wouldn’t say anything about it. She thinks Dad is too caught up in it and she doesn’t want to encourage him—and I think she honestly believes it would be dangerous to our family if people found out. The problem is it happened when I was six, and I remember it! I remember my parents talking about it, and there was something more than just being interested in the newspaper articles. So when I got older and read in the reports that the man who handed in the Rubaiyat to police was a chemist—and my father is a chemist—I asked him straight out. I said Dad, did you find that book in your car? And he just smiled at me and didn’t say yes, and he didn’t say no!”’
Odette looked over the top of the letter with her eyebrows raised.
Benny stared back, fascinated.
‘Well,’ Odette had said. ‘How about that? Clive Moon. Your grandfather. Maybe he was a chemist with a secret?’
Benny Miller, walking now in Cedar Valley, thought about it all—the utter strangeness of it—and some of her sadness diminished. She walked, fast and springy, and the air was filled with bird sound as she let out a small wondrous laugh.
49
‘He’s pretty off, yeah,’ said Constable Gus Franklin to Constable James Hall after their brief visit with Dieter Bernbaum, the chemist at the Cedar Valley Pharmacy.
Dieter Bernbaum, egg-like in his balding, had sat on his chemist’s stool—a modern-looking white leather contraption—and been oddly evasive for a man in possession of somewhat innocuous information: what time he had seen the blonde woman; any further details of the blonde woman. He hadn’t looked at all closely when shown a photograph of the woman in the crowd, just to be sure they were talking about the same blonde. Instead, he kind of waved a hand, as if t
he photo were a bad smell, and went mmmm impatiently. In fact, Dieter Bernbaum went mmmm in response to almost every query, as opposed to the more direct ‘yes’ that Franklin and Hall would have preferred.
‘Is that a yes?’ Hall had to ask, so many times.
Mmmm, went Dieter Bernbaum, with his white clogs and his unconvincing smile.
‘Why was he smiling like that?’ Franklin asked Hall as they walked back up to the station, past the Old Paris Coiffure where Therese Johnson was standing in the window, looking out pensively.
‘I think he was nervous,’ said Hall. ‘Seriously, that guy has creeped me out since I was a kid.’
Mmmm, went Franklin, which made Hall laugh.
Then back at the station, Franklin went to the kitchenette to make a coffee, and Hall went to his desk to call Telecom, hoping to discover what number was dialled from the phone box on Valley Road on December 1st 1993, at approximately 2.20 pm.
•
Simmons, in his sweaty office, was staring down at the completed sketch that lay on the desk before him. It was good—very good—and Simmons was pleased.
The unknown man, who looked a little grim in the photographs, especially the ones from the morgue, now appeared pleasantly alive, staring forward, his features captured in surprisingly lifelike detail.
‘Nice work,’ Simmons had said to the sketcher, and the sketcher—caressing his beard—asked if he might take a biscuit on his way out, and left via the kitchenette.
Now, sitting forward, his elbows on the desk, Simmons meditated on the dead man’s face for a time—and he couldn’t help but notice a particular quality about his countenance, his expression. What was it? It was something old-fashioned, something intrinsic. Was it character? Dignity? Simmons had seen a lot of dead faces in his time. He’d met a lot of men. But this man, this face—there was some attribute there that Simmons found commendable. Even in death—the way he sat up so neatly. What kind of man can accomplish such a neat and tidy death?
Simmons frowned and blinked, and then he yelled for Gussy Franklin to come in and take the picture away, write up the press release, and get it faxed out to the media, far and wide.
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