Tamam Shud (20 page)

‘Yes, sir, of course you can have her,' he agreed with insulting alacrity. ‘I'll send her right over, sir.'

Hammond stood up and straightened her seams.

‘You're on loan to the Funny People,' said the sergeant unpleasantly. ‘And I hope they keep you.'

‘Thank you, sir,' agreed Hammond, and walked out of the office.

***

Sir Archibald was affable, kind and rather distinguished, though dreadfully old. Hammond liked him. He sat her down at his imposing desk and stated, ‘This is the situation, Miss Hammond. Your dead man appears to have had some rather nasty friends. Now you know the dead man's face and you also will be shown rather a lot of pictures. Your chief says that you have a photographic memory; I want to know if you've seen any of these men on the streets. Take your time, now.'

Hammond began to leaf through a pile of pictures. Notes about the subjects' colouring, height and build were on the back. Eventually she sorted out three.

‘You're sure?'

‘Yes.' She gave the photos to Sir Archibald. ‘The top one has red hair and a scrubby sort of complexion and is tall and thin. The second one is small and dark, with brown eyes and black hair. I saw them together outside the Railway Hotel in Hindley Street yesterday morning.'

Sir Archibald matched the descriptions to the written legends on the photographs and raised an eyebrow. ‘And the third?' he asked.

‘He's slim and has pale brown hair and pale eyes – perhaps they are blue. He's hard to remember – hard to get a fix on, if you see what I mean. Taller than me but not much. Nicely dressed.'

‘Where did you see him?'

‘In Rundle Street, sir. This morning.'

‘Right. Now, Miss Hammond, let me tell you who these people are. The dark one, Brian Sean Ryan, was found dead under a train this morning. I would suggest that the red-haired one is his partner in a lot of nasty enterprises. His name is Damien McGuire. And the pale-eyed person is Patrick Heaney, an IRA murderer.'

‘My gosh, sir, in Adelaide?'

‘Indeed. Now, what I want you to do is to walk around to where you saw Mr Heaney this morning. It is Heaney we really want. And if you see McGuire you can pick him up as well. There will never be less than three men following you and they will come at your signal. All right? Will you do it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good girl. Off you go now.'

Hammond left, three men falling in as she moved like hounds to heel. Sir Archibald's secretary watched the young woman pace idly down the street, looking in shop windows as though she had hours to kill.

‘Do you think she can do it, sir?' he asked.

Sir Archibald smile. ‘Oh, yes, she can do it. If they are there to be found, she will find them.'

***

Hammond found her first prey by his fiery hair; he was waiting in a queue outside the shipping office not a hundred yards from Sir Archibald's office. She pointed him out to her followers, who closed in on the tall seaman, spoke very quietly to him, and walked him along the street as though they were close friends. Hammond followed behind, and never heard the shot that clipped the feather off her absurd little hat and lodged in Damien McGuire's chest.

The pale-eyed young man replaced the rifle in its case and drove out of the city toward Melbourne in a very lawabiding manner. Petrol rationing was not a problem for the IRA. The faithful kept them well supplied with coupons.

Hammond and her three attendants dragged Da– mien McGuire off the road onto the footpath. He was badly injured. Blood bubbled up from his lips when he
tried to speak. ‘A priest,' he gasped. ‘Get me a priest.'

One of the attendants ran across the road to the church. Hammond tried to ignore the stench of blood and desert dust and fear that infected the quiet street. She stared into the man's watering eyes and said compellingly, ‘Tell me. The man on the beach.'

‘It was the new stuff, they gave it to us, a truth drug, they say. He had taken money from the Cause, and he was running, Keane was. But he intercepted a message that told him that we was onto him; and he hid the suitcase, and we never found out where. We shot the stuff into him, into his scalp, and he just said, ‘I will tell you nothing,' then he closed his eyes and he was gone. ‘Get me a priest, for I've death on me!'

‘Yes, yes,' soothed Hammond. ‘We will get a priest.'

‘Don't leave me!' He gripped her hand. Hammond wiped the bright red arterial blood from his lips with her only linen handkerchief, carried for this important day.

‘I won't leave you,' she promised.

The priest came in time to give the last rites to the dying man.

After murmuring the correct responses, Damien McGuire never spoke again.

***

Phryne Fisher, Hammond and Sir Archibald gathered in his office the next day to pool their information.

‘He knew they were onto him,' murmured Phryne. ‘He had discovered or stolen the coded message and then, just in case, he tore off the tamam shud page and hid it where they would be unlikely to find it. He left us clues to his murder. Then he went to his meeting, having hidden a suitcase full of … what?'

‘What does the code say?' asked Hammond.

‘AUR. Gold. Money, I suppose. Belonging to the IRA. And he was running away with it.'

‘Yes. And they shot him full of some truth drug – there's some stuff they have in America called scopolamine. It's been used as an anaesthetic, but a few people have a sensitivity to it – and it kills them. And there's no way to test for it yet,' Sir Archibald told them.

‘They injected it into his scalp so there was no mark,' said Hammond.

‘Yes. And it killed him.' Sir Archibald was staring out the window.

‘And he died with his secret intact. How frustrating.' Phryne got up and began to prowl the room. ‘Come along, I haven't been on the tram for ages,' she said. ‘Let's go out to the beach.'

‘Now?' asked Sir Archibald, shocked.

‘Yes, now.'

‘Oh, very well,' he agreed grumpily.

***

On the journey he refused to be interested in the landmarks and would not enter into the spirit of the ride at all. Phryne was disappointed in him.

‘Well, here we are – Somerton Beach. What are we doing here?' he demanded.

‘We're going paddling – at least, I am. Excuse me.' She turned her back to him, removed her stockings from their garter belt, and took off her shoes.

‘This is where you saw him, isn't it, Hammond? By the way, what is your first name?'

‘Dulcie, Miss Fisher,' replied Hammond, running the stockings through her fingers and wondering where Miss Fisher got quality like that.

‘Oh. Now, he was sitting on the bottom step, wasn't he, with his feet about here? The tide doesn't come up this high. It rarely gets wet.'

‘Yes,' said Hammond, getting the idea.

Phryne began to dig with her hands in the soft yellow sand.

‘You see, I wondered why he came down to sit here; I also wondered where he could leave a valuable thing when he didn't seem to know anyone in the city. Where safer than under his feet? And here we are.' She had scraped away the sand from a leather suitcase. ‘Lift it carefully, won't you? These things have been known to be boobytrapped.'

Sir Archibald lifted the suitcase very gently by the sides. There appeared to be no wires attached to the handle.

‘Aren't you going to open it?' asked Phryne, brushing sand off her legs and putting on her stockings and shoes. He stood back a little.

‘No,' he said quietly. ‘Look.' Smoke began to trickle from the suitcase; thick yellow smoke with a pungent smell.

‘We would never have got it open,' he added. ‘There's always a phosphorous bomb in them, just sufficient to destroy the contents. It's activated by any movement But not to worry, my dear ladies,' he said as he strolled back toward the police guard. ‘I know what was in it. Cheques, mostly, from prominent members of the Melbourne Irish community. There have been … er … rumblings about it. But all gone now.'

‘What about that murderer?' asked Hammond indignantly. ‘He's not been found.'

‘No, but he will get his comeuppance. Some other place, some other time. Intelligence work requires one to be philosophical, you know.'

‘And the
TAMAM SHUD
mystery?'

‘Will remain a mystery, I'm afraid. But your assistance has been essential and much appreciated, Miss Hammond. I expect to see you rise high in your chosen profession, quite high. Quite soon.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘And as for you, Miss Fisher, if you would care to lunch with me…'

‘No, thank you, Sir Archibald, I have another engagement.'

Phryne, in her Dior New Look red dress, straw hat and sunglasses, led Dulcie Hammond off Somerton Beach and took her into the city for a quiet drink and a comfortingly good lunch.

***

Phryne went home. She poured herself a glass of red wine and deliberately summoned up the image of Keane's face, the unassailable smug face, and found that the image had lost its intensity. Taking a deep breath, she deliberately called forth the dead young soldier. There was the scent of mimosa, and of salt, the slime stench of stagnant water in the ditch, and the guttural Provençal voices, the torchlight, the concern over the fate of Jean Moulin. She waited for the pain. But she could no longer see with aching intensity the face of the young German soldier, or the countenance of the dead man on Somerton Beach. With the solution, however disappointing, of the tamam shud mystery, they had been obliterated from her mind, as frost-images melt off glass. She felt light. She felt as though she had recovered from an illness.

***

She was lying on a sun lounge in the shade of her own fernery, sipping at a glass of a rather good Adelaide Hills burgundy, when a telegram was delivered.

It said:

CONGRATS DEAR CHATTE STOP. HAVE REMEMBERED MEANING OF LAST PHRASE IN RUBAIYAT STOP IT MEANS AN INDISSOLUBLE MYSTERY STOP COME BACK SOON TO YOUR LOVING BERNARD STOP.

Phryne picked up
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
and opened it at random.

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain

And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd

As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

What, without asking, hither hurried whence

And, without asking, whither hurried hence?

Another and another Cup to drown

The Memory of this Impertinence!

‘Marie!' called Phryne into the cool house. ‘Marie! Another bottle!'

Bibliography

Andrew, Christopher 2010,
The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5
, Penguin Books, London.

Bouda, Simon 1991,
Crimes that Shocked Australia
, Bantam Books, Sydney.

Clegg, Edward (His Honour Judge Clegg QC) 1975,
Famous Australian Murders
, Angus and Robertson, Sydney.

Coupe, Stuart and Ogden, Julie (eds) 1993,
Case Reopened
, Allen and Unwin, Sydney.

Feltus, Gerald Michael 2010,
The Unknown Man: A Suspicious Death at Somerton Beach
, Gerald Michael Feltus, Adelaide

FitzGerald, Edward (trans.) 1965,
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
, Ward Lock, London.

Glaister, J Dr 1954,
The Power of Poison
, Johnson, London

Goldsworthy, Kerryn 2011,
Adelaide
, NewSouth, Sydney.

Heller, Joseph 2000,
The Birth of Israel 1945–1949
, University Press of Florida, USA.

King, Stephen 2005,
The Colorado Kid Hard Case Crime
, New York.

Lowenstein, Wendy and Hills, Tom 1982,
Under The Hook
, Melbourne Bookworkers, Melbourne

Miller, James William 1984,
Don't Call Me Killer
, Harbourtop Books, Hawthorn.

Munro Hector Hugh (Saki) 1967,
Reginald on Christmas Presents in The Penguin Complete Saki
, Penguin Books, London.

Mytka, Anne-Marie 1981,
It's A Long Way To Truro
, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne.

O'Brien, Bob 2002,
Young Blood: The Story of The Family Murders
, HarperCollins Publishers Australia, Sydney.

Phillips, John Harber (His Honour Judge Phillips),
Criminal Law Journal
, Vol. 18 1994, pp108–110.

Pudney, Jeremy 2005,
Snowtown
, HarperCollins Publishers Australia, Sydney.

Reich, Chana 2002,
Australia and Israel: An Ambigous Relationship
, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.

Smith, Sir Sydney 1984,
Mostly Murder
, Panther Books, London.

Resources

On snake venom:

Dr Ken Winkel

Director, Australian Venom Research Unit

Department of Pharmacology, University of Melbourne

On forensic pathology:

Dr Shelley Roberts is a forensic pathologist with 25 years experience.

Websites:

Wikipedia is a good start, and then I suggest you progress to Ask Reddit, where everything that anyone has ever thought concerning Somerton Man will be vouchsafed to you. I have tried to contact persiankitty, who tried the code in the Persian language, and whom I believe has a really good idea, but she did not reply. If you can talk to her, do ask her for the rest of her translation.

And all of the documents in the case, including the police notes and both inquests, are to be found at

<
www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/wiki/ index.php/Primary_source_material_on_the_Taman_Shud_Case
>

which should tell you all you have ever wanted to know about Somerton Man, except who he was, and why he died. Sigh.

Acknowledgments

Tamam Shud
could not have been written without the devoted assistance and skill of Michael Warby, researcher extraordinaire; David Greagg, duty Wombat and mathematician; anthraxia and other internet geniuses; Jenny Pausacker; Vanessa Craigie; Nick Clenmann; Dr Ken Winkel; the learned forensic pathologist Dr Shelley Robertson; my poor friends, who had GBH of the ear after listening to me rabbit on about Somerton Man for months; and the sterling example of Gerald Feltus, who never let go of the coldest of cold cases.