***
Three: The Body in the Tomatoes
'We found the body in the tomatoes, he'd hung himself from the rafters in the tomato house,' said Bigfoot. 'I will never forget that sight. I've seen it all, I was in the Vietnam War but I nearly threw up when I saw that body. Then I saw the tomatoes, they looked too good to waste, red and ripe and plump and juicy, so I took a bagful home to have with my tea. I fried them up with sausages, bacon and eggs, delicious.'
I was writing a report for Head Office, the report was of an investigation into a murder that happened quite a few years before I joined TURDS, the Tactical Urgent Response Detection Squad a wing of APES, the Australian Police Executive Service. The squad back then consisted of Bigfoot, the head honcho and Littlefoot, who thought he was the head honcho but now they had me, Sergeant Elizabeth West, so all the backlog of reports, going back years, was getting written up.
'I need the name of the deceased,' I said
'Angelonia Messioni.'
'Italian?'
'Italian decent.'
'Age?'
'Early 40's.'
'Can you be more precise?'
'More or less forty five.'
'I need to know exactly.'
'Forty five years, three months and seven days.'
'Height?'
'Oh about this high,' said Bigfoot waving his arm about in the air.
'Which would be?'
'Five foot five inches.'
'Eyes?'
'Brown or were they blue?'
'Exactly.'
'Brownish.'
'Hair colour?'
'Brown.'
'Any distinguishing marks?'
'He had a mole on his left cheek.'
'Okay, from the beginning, what happened?' I said.
'We were in Adelaide on a secret mission,' said Littlefoot, 'tracking down a Russian spy.'
'We were after a girl who jumped ship, it was a Russian ship and the girl was Russian, she'd asked for political asylum and then gone to earth,' said Bigfoot.
'The Russian embassy was stirring up a stink,' said Littlefoot.
'She did a photograph session for playboy.'
'We used that for identification purposes.'
'She had some lovely distinguishing features.'
'I don't want to know,' I said.
'We decided that we needed a full frontal visual identification.'
'The report fellas, on the body in the tomatoes!' I said.
'Yes well, we were in Adelaide interviewing Natanya,' said Bigfoot. 'I told her that she had an interesting personality.'
'She liked me from the moment we first walked into the room,' said Littlefoot.
'She did not, she thought she could win you over by flashing her eyes at you.'
'We were mutually attracted,' said Littlefoot.
'Anyway she was a looker so we were giving her the first degree.'
'And enjoying every minute of it no doubt,' I said.
'And wouldn't you just know it…' said Bigfoot.
'…the telephone rang,' said Littlefoot.
'There was a suspicious suicide in the Riverland.'
'And they wanted TURDS to look into it.'
'So Lambkin and I…'
'Don't call me that and anyway my name's soon to be Commander Lambkin…I mean Commander Littlefoot.'
'In your dreams.'
'Call me Lambkin and I'll kill you.'
'You are cruising for a bruising Littlefella,' said Bigfoot.
'I'll tear out your bloody heart and eat it while it's still beating,' shouted Littlefoot jumping up and sparring with the air.'
'Enough!' I said, 'the report.'
'Right, the telephone rang...'
'…a suspicious murder in the Riverland...'
'…in a hot house...'
'…in the tomato house to be exact.'
'So we drove north up around the Barossa Valley and off to the Riverland to a market garden on the banks of the Murray River near Waikerie,' said Bigfoot. 'I remember when we reached the orange groves we stopped and picked oranges, I ate so many oranges that I started to fart orange.'
'And what a bloody smell that was,' said Littlefoot.
'I don't need to know about flatulent oranges,' I said.
'Just adding local colour,' said Bigfoot.
'We drove to an organic tomato farm…'
'…we pulled in the local boys were already there...'
'…and we were taken to the tomato house and there we examined the body.'
'He was about middle height and fairly non-descript and was wearing just farm worker's clothes.'
'Forensics went over the body…'
'…nothing there, just marks around the neck where he had strangled himself, his face looked horrid, ice pick white and stretched as if he was screaming for help,' said Bigfoot.
'We found nothing.'
'Nothing whatsoever.'
'We thought it was a bit of a wasted trip really, it was obviously suicide we decided.'
'If someone wants to kill themselves why should we interfere we thought.'
'He must have been desperate.'
'Then Littlefoot noticed another hot house off amongst the trees.'
'We wandered over and it was full of marijuana plants.'
'God we could have had some party.'
'And we got another telephone call.'
'Another fatality.'
'As well as the bloke, a woman's body had been found in the toilets of the local pub. She had committed suicide. Shot herself in the head.'
'She was young, well about twenty five.'
'Name?' I said.
'Bubble.'
'Bubble?'
'Short for Bubble Gum,' said Littlefoot.
'She was married to Angelonia Messioni.'
'We suspected foul play what with both of them committing suicide and the hot house full of marijuana.'
'So we immediately retired to the local hotel,' said Bigfoot, 'set up our incident room in the bar and had a beer.'
'You had the incident room in a bar?' I said.
'West, you don't always have to be in the office. These days you can set up an incident room pretty much anywhere, all you need is a computer, a phone and maybe the odd gadget or two, Littlefoot usually has it all under control.'
'I'm a very controlled person,' said Littlefoot.
'And, of course, it makes it so much easier for ordering a pint or two.'
'Okay,' I said. 'So you are in the 'incident room', then what happened?'
'Well, the toilet, of course, was cordoned off and a policeman stood blocking the door, but there was still a few people in the bar, an old guy having a quiet drink up the back and a couple of good looking young blondes playing pool, I walked over to have a quiet word with them but they knew nothing about the dead girl. Littlefoot tried to chat them up and they told him to get lost and they left.'
'I did not.'
'I need to know more about the girl?' I said.
'Ah West, this report writing is so boring,' said Bigfoot.
'It has to be done.'
'Well you do it.'
'I am doing it!'
'Shall we retire to the pub?'
'No!'
'Have it your way.'
'I will.'
'Okay, we were in the incident room having a drink when we got a third phone call,' said Bigfoot.
'I don't know how he got our number,' said Littlefoot.
'He wasn't police.'
'He was a plumber.'
'Jack the Plumber he called himself, like Jack the Ripper West, but this one was Jack the Plumber.'
'"I know you are police so I thought I would confess to you, I killed my wife," said the man over the phone, he sounded old and a bit gravelly,' said Littlefoot.
'His voice was deep but not real deep, so we decided that he was a base baritone,' said Bigfoot.
Apparently Bigfoot had been in a choir when he was a boy so he knew about voices.
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bsp; 'You see if he was a real murderer we had to take him seriously.'
'So we listened to what he said and to his intonation and his accent.'
'Mostly we thought he was Australian but he didn't have a broad Australian twang.'
'More a clean cultivated accent.'
'We thought that his parents were probably European migrants.'
'Hold on I said to him,' said Bigfoot, 'I've got to go to the toilet. I wanted time for Littlefoot to get out his equipment and put a trace on the phone call.'
'I'm usually pretty quick at getting out my equipment,' said Littlefoot.
'Yeah but not quick enough this time,' said Bigfoot, 'the guy hung up on us.'
'We didn't have anything to go on really.'
'And we had the body in the tomatoes and the girl in the toilets.'
'We didn't think that anyone would confess to murder over the phone,'
'We thought it was a prank phone call.'
'So we forgot about it.'
'We had work to do.'
'So the man on the phone was Jack Plumbing?' I said.
'He was a plumber,' said Littlefoot, 'and he called himself Jack. I established those facts early on with my superb analytical brain.'
'Good for bullshit,' said Bigfoot.
'I am a deadly advocate of the sport of Karate, you should watch your step,' said Littlefoot.'
'Best bullshit artist I have ever met.'
'After yourself of course.'
'Yes after myself of course. Anyway we set up the police incident room in the local pub.' said Bigfoot.
'We have done that bit,' I said.
'And finally they let us in to have a look at the body in the toilets, it was not a pretty sight.'
'She had blown her brains out, there was blood everywhere, she was in a cubicle, it was locked from inside, poor bastard.'
'What makes people kill themselves I said?' said Bigfoot.
'Fucked if I know, I said,' said Littlefoot.
'Life is so good but short and death is forever.'
'We were having another beer.'
'Sorting out the troubles of the world.'
'As you do.'
'We had organised world peace.'
'Ended all the wars.'
'Decided how to feed the world.'
'And we had fixed up global warming.'
'And climate change.'
'Every problem was solved.'
'Peace was restored and the world was at one.'
'Paradise on earth had come into being.'
'Everybody was happy and smiling.'
'And then the plumber rang back,' said Littlefoot.
'"My father was German, my mother was Australian. My father came to Australia because he thought the roads were paved with gold they weren't," he said,' said Bigfoot. 'I waved to Littlething to get moving with his equipment and I kept the plumber talking. Who are you? I said, can you tell me your name? "I am the murderer," he said, "You can call me Jack the Plumber." What's your real name? I said.'
'Ask him where he is, I said,' said Littlefoot.
'Where are you now? I said but he didn't answer. Turn yourself in. I said. "I want to see if you can track me down," he said. So I told him we don't play games and then I said to Littlefoot, Have you got a tap on him yet?'
'Working on it, I said,' said Littlefoot.
'"Life is one great game," the plumber said.'
'Is all this relevant to the body in the tomatoes?' I asked, after all I was writing the report.
'Just listen West and take down the story. "You want to lock me up," the plumber said. No we want to help you, I said.'
'The tap's on the phone, I said,' said Littlefoot.
'"I might go out and shoot someone," said the plumber. I told him that wasn't such a good idea.'
'Phone tap's not working, I said,' said Littlefoot. 'I couldn't get the darn thing to work, I also had a position finder and all sorts of other high tech equipment but I got some of the cables in a mess and had them plugged into the wrong thing.'
'"Why shouldn't I just go out and shoot somebody?" said the plumber. So I told him it wouldn't help his case very much if he did but he just laughed.'
'Then I got the range finder, position finder thing working,' said Littlefoot.
'"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't go out and shoot somebody,"' said the plumber.'
'Then the range finder, position finder thing wouldn't work. I said Bigfoot this thing is cactus,' said Littlefoot.
'Get it working, I said,' said Bigfoot.
'I'm trying, but it's a heap of shit, I said.'
'"I know that you are trying to trace this call", said the plumber, "I have excellent hearing, I think I'll go out and shoot somebody after all." Don't be like that, I said. We could get together and have a beer and a few laughs.'
'He knows you're trying to trace him Littlefoot, Bigfoot said to me.'
'"I spent so long married to my job that I forget why I got the job in the first place," said the plumber. Life is shit, I said, I had to say something and it's difficult thinking up things to say when you have a serial killer on the end of the line. Life is shit comes easy as something to say but it gets a bit déjà vu-ish.'
'So did you know that he was a serial killer at that stage?' I said.
I needed to know the exact situation for the report I was writing.
'No we didn't, we were in two minds whether he was a prank call, a lunatic or a practical joker,' said Littlefoot.
'You had better give me your name, age and a few details, I have to fill in a report, I said,' said Bigfoot. 'Then I got Littlefoot to get the computer fired up, so that we could see what we could find out on the internet. "Murder is exciting," said the plumber. So I told him he was a sadist, I had gone past life is shit by this stage. "No it wasn't like that, I loved my wife, he said. I said he had a funny way of showing it. "I worked all hours but I should have considered my wife. I got up at 5am went to work, home to dinner 6.30pm, then back to the office to take care of the paper work. I even worked on weekends. My reward was that I loved to travel, I've been all over the world I would take four weeks off a year and go." Did your wife enjoy these trips? I said to him. Then I said to Littlefoot we are looking for a plumber who ran a small company, Eastern States, retired say ten years ago, European origin. "My wife didn't come, she stayed at home with the kids, she was a home bird, he said. Things got worse, I was so busy, I had no time for her or the kids, I had a business to run, I worked hard 24/7 I put in a lot of hours, they had everything they wanted, the wife and the kids, but it wasn't enough. Then she went off with another man!" Life can be like that, I said. "Took the kids, took half of everything claimed mental cruelty, claimed I'd been seeing another woman! I didn't have time for one woman," he said. I tried to get some more info out of him. Listen mate tell me your name, we can't just call each other hey you, I said. But he wasn't falling for that. "You're not going to get my name out of me that easily," he said. I tried a different approach, I asked him if he got lonely and he said: "Very, I'm staying in a caravan park now, somewhere in Australia, and no one talks to me, what has happened to this country, fifty years ago everyone was so friendly." I can be your friend, I said to him, then I told Littlefoot to get registrations on this fella for a caravan and a four wheel drive purchased about ten years ago and to then check caravan parks in the Territory, Western Australia and South Australia over the past month or so.'
'Bloody hell, talk about a big ask, I said,' said Littlefoot. 'Shame we didn't have you back then West, that's the sort of thing that you are really good at.'
'I told him again I could be his friend but he reckoned I only had one objective and that was to get a rope around his neck and see him swing. Look mate, I said, the death penalty went out years ago. "Life is a living death," he said. You need help, you need people, I told him. "I need nothing and nobody, anybody comes near me they are dead, I have a fantasy to take up position on the top floor of a tall building in Sydney's CBD and with
a sniper rifle to pick people off, just shoot them as they wander by," he said. Then he said something that made me sit up and listen. "That man in the tomatoes," he said. You know about the body in the tomatoes? I said. "I know nothing, don't ask me anymore or I will get mad and when I get mad I do bad things to people but they deserve it," he said. Are you wanting to make a confession? I asked him. If you are we have people here ready to help. "Don't make me laugh," he said. Are you going to confess or not, I said. I was getting fairly cheesed off by this stage, the bar were serving food and it was smelling pretty good and it was a long time since I had had any fodder and Littlefoot was still getting his knickers in a knot with his position finder thing.'
'I couldn't get the cables sorted out,' said Littlefoot.
'You are just playing with me, I said to the plumber. "Maybe," he said, "I'm like a cat, I like to play with my victim before I kill him." Is that a threat? I said. As you know West, I don't take kindly to threats. Unless they come from Littledigit here. Anyway he said: "Take it any way you like." So I told him these murder mysteries where the murderer confesses, in the real world you have to beat a confession out of them, I'm quite prepared to beat the shit out of you, I said,' said Bigfoot. 'My patience was running out and my blood sugar levels were getting low, I really needed some food. "You can't beat a confession out of the phone," he said. He was a smart arse. "She set up house by the sea with her lover," he said. I asked him who he was talking about and he said his wife of course. He said she went walking on the cliff tops one day, they found her body at the bottom of the cliff. "I met her and tried to make her see sense she wouldn't. The verdict was accidental death." Did you kill her? I asked him. "We talked, I was quite rational, she went troppo, I may have been a little forceful, I didn't mean it to happen," he said. I advised him to give himself up. "Give myself up," he said, "you have got to be joking, I'm too clever for your lot." I can get this phone traced, I told him, and when I get you I will throw the bloody book at you, and it will hit you so hard that you will be knocked half way into next bloody week, I said. I throw in an angry aggressive line now and then, keeps the bad guy on his toes,' said Bigfoot.
'But is he a bad guy or really a sad result of our disjointed society?' I said looking up from my report writing.
'Ah West,' said Bigfoot.
'Don't ah West me,' I said. 'So then what did he say?'
'He told me about his accountant. He said: "In 1972 I asked my accountant about superannuation. I was forward looking. One day he was found dead. He had his fingers in my super pie," he said. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind getting my fingers in a super pie, I said, an egg and bacon super pie or a steak and kidney super pie? "You're a funny man," he said. I have to be I said when dealing with loonies. "I am not a lunatic," he screamed, "I am a fully rational human being." I ask you West, would a fully rational human being phone the police and carry on the way he was? Anyway, I steered the conversation back to the body in the tomatoes. "I enjoyed killing that one," he said. So I asked him why he killed him and he said you're the detective, you work it out. I asked him if he had killed any other people. "You will find out in due course," he said. I asked him about the accountant with the pies and he said: "The accountant was found dead in a car park, he had been accidently run down." This guy was really pissing me off by this stage so I said: Right, just give me all the homicides in one lump, after your wife. "After my wife died I met another woman," he said. "We married and went around Australia in a caravan but she got tired of caravanning and wanted a divorce, she would get half of everything, I accidently backed the caravan over her." It had got to the point where I wasn't surprised by anything he said anymore, but the coroner should have had his head examined. "There was a police inquiry," he said, "the coroner's verdict was accidental death." You could turn yourself in, that would save a lot of trouble, I said and then he told me he had lived an impeccable life. If you don't count the fact that you are a serial killer, I said. "Apart from the fact that I killed half a dozen people, who all had to die, I am a model citizen, I always give money to charity," he said. So I told him that as he was on a roll he may as well tell me about all the people he had killed and he said: "When I was a boy at school, one of the teachers would pick on me, when I grew up I became a plumber as you know and one day I got called out to fix a blocked toilet. It was my old teacher, he was found dead in the bathroom, he slipped in the shower."'
'This is awful,' I said. 'I hope he got his just deserts.'
'And to make it worse,' said Littlefoot, 'I still couldn't get all my cables sorted out.'
'Littlefoot's never been very good at what connects up with what.'
'Watch it.'
'It gets worse,' said Bigfoot. 'He had a competitor from another plumbing company who would always quote lower prices. The plumber's competitor went on holiday and was found drowned in the sea and then Jack the plumber won a government contract worth millions but when the job was done he made nothing. Someone had their hand in the till and that someone was found lying dead in the gutter. I tell you West, the guy was a killing machine, I'd never come across anything like it. Finally we got to the man in the tomatoes. You'll never guess what happened there West.'
'Quite probably not,' I said.
'"I bought tomatoes from him," he said, "he sold me a bag of tomatoes with bad ones in it, he was trying to rob me, I don't agree with stealing."'
'He killed him because of a few rotten tomatoes?' I said.
'Too right, I told him he was a rotten tomato. "I am a perfectly rational human being," he said, "you might say that I have done society a favour, that I am the caped crusader." I will track you down, I said. "You amuse me, how can you track me down?" he said. I told him what I knew. I know that you ran a plumbing company on the East Coast, I said. Littlefoot had come up trumps and got a fair amount of info on him'
'I'm not just a pretty face,' said Littlefoot.
'You're not a pretty face at all,' said Bigfoot.
'Are you calling me ugly?'
'Well look in a mirror mate you got to admit that you are not pretty. Now West here is definitely a pretty face,' said Bigfoot.
Flattery was all very nice but we had a report to write and the sooner it was over the better.
'So who else did he kill?' I said.
'Well next I asked about the girl in the toilets in the pub where we had our incident room. "She saw me kill the tomato man, he said, she had to die, she tried to get away, I gave chase, I didn't want to hurt her but she bit me, she shouldn't have done that, she made me mad." Then I told him we knew he was of German decent but he said he had already told me that, which was true but then we got into details. I know that you have a four wheel drive vehicle and a caravan, I said, and that they have been registered in your name for the last ten years and I know that you have been hiding out in the Outback. "Yes," he said, "but that's a big area, it covers most of Australia." Then I played my ace. I know that your name is Wolfgang Munch, I said. He was impressed with that one. "Excellent," he said, "now you are getting somewhere, you are cleverer than you look." And I told him that he had been recently camping in Wilpena Pound in South Australia. "You are fooling yourself," he said, "you know nothing, me in South Australia, what a laugh." But we had contacted a small caravan park in a place called Port Param and they said he had been staying there only two days ago, I told him this and then I also said that Port Param was only half a day's march in a four wheel drive from where we were. He didn't like that, he tried to tell me that at that very moment he was looking out on palm trees and a beautiful sunny beach up in Queensland. I know exactly what you look like, I said, I have a computer printout of you, you are not a pretty sight and I will get you and have your guts for garters but only if you throw down your gun! "What are you talking about?" he said.
'I look in the mirror every day,' said Littlefoot, 'and I am not ugly.'
'Well you must be blind then,' said Bigfoot.
'Will you please finish this story,' I said.
&
nbsp; 'Okay,' said Bigfoot. 'I know that you are sitting at the other side of the bar and have a gun pointed at my back, I said. I swung around and there he was, sitting at a low table at the back of the bar, he had been hiding behind a newspaper. He was one of those tall athletic German types, ruthlessly efficient, if a little predictable and unimaginative, he held a Luger, a German World War Two handgun. What he didn't know was that my mate Littlefoot here had secretly called in reinforcements, after finally getting his equipment up and running, and that the SAPS had turned up. Drop your gun and put your hands up in the air where we can see them, I said. "Don't make me laugh," he said. I told him he needed help. The guy was obviously a fruitcake.'
'Bigfoot's like me, cool under fire,' said Littlefoot.
'This isn't the time for shooting, I said. But all he said was: "Your life is in my hands." Well there's not a lot you can say to that when the man is pointing a gun at you, but I advised him that we had him covered from all angles.'
'Put down your gun or you are dead meat, I said,' said Littlefoot.
'I stood up slowly,' said Bigfoot, 'I'm not here to pass judgement on you, I said. You will get a fair and proper trial, you need help. "Bang you're dead," said Jack the Plumber raising his gun and pointing it at me. The SAPS, who had sharpshooters hidden in various locations throughout the building, shot him dead.
Report written, we decided to adjourn to the pub, we all felt in need of a little lubrication, even if it was only mineral water on my part. Littlefoot produced a banana. Where he got it from I do not know.
'You've got a nice big banana Littlefoot,' said Bigfoot.
'You're not getting any.'
'I don't want any, I just didn't think your banana was that big.'
'Well it is big, it's the biggest I've seen for a long time.'
'I like a big banana.'
'You're not getting any.'
'Go on.'
'No.'
Littlefoot started to peel his big banana very slowly, waving it in the air, as if he was very proud of it.
'A juicy looking banana,' said Bigfoot.
'You're not getting any.'
'Nice and firm.'
'Go away,' said Littlefoot.
Bigfoot sidled up to him.
'Give me.'
'A man's banana is a man's banana.'
'Just a little bite of your big banana.'
'A man should be left to enjoy his banana in peace.'
'Go on.'
'Get out of here.'
'He's very protective of his banana,' Bigfoot said to me. 'If I had a banana like that I'd want to share it around.'
'Get lost.'
'A man can always have a bit of fun with a banana,' said Bigfoot.
'Don't be crude.'
'Go on, give me a tidgy bit.'
'Get lost…what…get off…get off…' said Littlefoot.
Bigfoot made a grab for Littlefoot's banana and bit the top clean off. Bigfoot munched the banana. Littlefoot almost cried.
'He bit the end off my banana,' he said.
Normal service had been resumed.
Death in the Australian Outback Page 3