Solomon's Song (2 page)

Your correspondent then countered with the suggestion that it was common knowledge that Mr Sparrow was not known to favour the fairer sex and that his

preferences lay, to put it in the kindest terms, ‘elsewhere’. Furthermore, it was a well-known joke among the Sydney lads employed by Mr Sparrow that Fat Fred was usually incapable of dalliance of any sort and that drink rendered him impotent.

Senior Detective O’Reilly then said, ‘You are raking over old coals, sir,’ and declined to answer any more questions from your correspondent.

Miss Mary Abacus and Mr Hawk Solomon, who had earlier visited the morgue to identify the body and later also attended the coroner’s hearing, declined to be interviewed by this correspondent, pleading that they be allowed the right to mourn the loss of a beloved son and brother.

*

Hawk stops off first at the Hero of Waterloo where Mary has her temporary lodgings, and together they go to the Pyrmont morgue to identify Tommo’s corpse. Here they are made to place a tincture of camphor oil to their nostrils to kill the unmistakeable odour of decaying flesh before they are taken into the morgue’s coldroom to examine the corpse which has been stripped of its clothing but, at the suggestion of Senior Detective O’Reilly, the Tiki remains with its leather thong about the tattered and truncated neck.

A square of canvas has been neatly arranged over the top of the neck to conceal the absence of a head, though the Maori amulet can be clearly seen resting on the exposed chest three inches below the base of the neck. A second square of canvas in the form of a loincloth covers the private parts. Mary scarcely pauses to examine the body before confirming to Senior Detective O’Reilly that it is her adopted son, Tommo.

She notices O’Reilly’s bemused and doubtful countenance at so quick an identification of a corpse, which, after all, lacks a head, the most common method of recognition. She points to a large mole high up on the left shoulder. ‘Born with it, big as sixpence, can’t mistake it, looks like a map of Tasmania,’ she states. Remembering her grief, her voice quavers slightly and she touches the corner of the small lace handkerchief to her right eye and then her left and returns it, perhaps a little too hastily, to cover her nose, for the stench rising from the body has even defeated the efficacy of the camphor oil.

Hawk is hard put to contain his surprise for, almost at once, they have both seen that the naked body isn’t that of Tommo. Hawk’s twin has a small but distinctive birthmark on the calf of his left leg and no such mark can now be seen. Hawk bends down to examine the amulet and immediately sees what he is looking for, a small ‘M’ has been scratched into the surface of the green malachite. ‘The Tiki,’ he points to the amulet. ‘That’s his, my brother’s.’ It was given to his twin by his Maori wife, who died in childbirth, and the ‘M’ scratched onto the surface is for her name ‘Makareta’.

It is a certain sign to Hawk of Tommo’s efforts at deception and his determination to make the murder victim seem to be himself. Tommo would have thought long and hard before parting with the Tiki which he greatly cherished as his talisman, the equivalent in his own mind of Mary’s Waterloo medal. Then Hawk realises that it is a message to him, Tommo’s way of telling him that he is still in the world of the living.

In fact, having received Johnny Terrible’s message that Tommo was going after Mr Sparrow, they have each silently concluded the corpse must belong to Ikey Solomon’s most accomplished graduate from the Methodist Academy of Light Fingers, the infamous Sparrow Fart, alias F. Artie Sparrow, the odious Mr Sparrow.

Tommo has completed what he had vowed to do and avenged the death of Maggie Pye. The sudden tears Senior Detective O’Reilly now sees streaming unabashedly down the tattooed cheeks of the giant black man are not, as he supposes, for the grotesque corpse on the zinc tray, but for Maggie Pye and the love of his twin. They are also tears of relief that Tommo is still alive.

Using the only currency he knows, this headless corpse lying on a slab of ice is Tommo’s payback for all the mongrels who have blighted his life. The ghastly manner of Mr Sparrow’s death is paradoxically also Tommo’s last gift of love to his brother. Hawk cannot help but think that the pressure on Tommo’s brain from the wound to his head has finally driven him insane. For this notion as well, he now weeps.

O’Reilly brings his fist to his lips and clears his throat. Hurrmph, er missus, if you’d be so kind as to turn yer back, a matter o’ some delicacy,’ he says, looking directly at Mary.

Mary turns away from the corpse and the detective lifts the canvas loincloth and nods to Hawk. ‘It’s another common way o’ identification,’ he says abruptly, then supposing Mary can’t hear him, he whispers sotto voce to Hawk, ‘Pricks are like faces, every one’s different.’

Hawk sees immediately that, unlike Tommo’s, the penis is not circumcised.

‘Well, what does you think?’ O’Reilly asks.

Hawk sniffs and nods his head, but does not reply, not wishing to openly commit perjury. O’Reilly sighs and pulls the small canvas square back into place. ‘It’s all right to look now, missus,’ he says to Mary. As if he is anxious to conclude the identification, he casually produces a gold watch from his pocket. Clicking it open so that the ace of spades on its lid can be clearly seen by both Mary and Hawk, he pretends to consult it.

‘Goodness, that’s our Tommo’s watch,’ Mary says quick as a flash, for indeed it is Tommo’s. Senior Detective O’Reilly grins, the identification of the headless victim is complete, it’s been a satisfying afternoon’s work all round. He nods. ‘Good.’ He turns and calls over to the morgue assistant who brings him a clipboard to which is attached a form. The assistant also holds a small glass pen and ink stand. Holding the clipboard in one hand and with the pen poised in the other, O’Reilly asks officially, ‘Are you, Hawk Solomon, and you, Mary Abacus, quite certain this is the body of Tommo Solomon?’

‘With me hand on me heart,’ Mary lies, bringing her hand up to cover her left breast. The question is perfunctory, O’Reilly has witnessed a mother’s quick and positive identification and the copious tears of grief still issuing from the giant nigger.

‘You’ll sign here then,’ he says all businesslike, dipping the pen into the open ink bottle and handing it to Hawk. Mary and Hawk sign the paper confirming their identification and the morgue assistant takes the clipboard and departs.

‘When can we take possession of the body of our loved one?’ Mary asks plaintively, her eyes taking on a suitably sad expression. ‘Give it a burial decent folk might attend?’

Hawk is amazed at her assertiveness, her complete presence of mind, she wants the body buried and out of the clutches of the law as soon as possible. ‘It ain’t in a nice state and we wish to preserve the best of our memories, sir,’ she adds, putting the finishing touches to what she hopes O’Reilly will see as a mother’s anxiety and grief.

The corners of the detective’s mouth twitch slightly and Mary reads this as a sign of his sympathy. ‘See what I can do, missus. It’s in the hands o’ the coroner. He don’t like being told his business, though.’

Mary takes a sovereign out of her purse and offers it to him. ‘A small contribution to the Orphans Fund,’ she says in a half-whisper.

O’Reilly now gives her a genuine smile, knowing himself to be the orphan of particular benefit. ‘Might be able to give him a bit of a hurry up, eh?’ he says, taking the gold coin Mary holds out to him.

‘Most grateful, I’m sure,’ Mary says, batting her eyes.

‘Mother, that were a bribe,’ Hawk says to Mary on their return to the Hero of Waterloo.

‘Blimey! And him a detective, fancy that,’ Mary laughs.

The coroner, magistrate M. T. Noyes, is happy enough to oblige and he orders the body’s release from the authorities and also the immediate return of Tommo’s personal effects from the police. Though, unable to resist the temptation to display his infamous wit, and first determining that Mr Cook of the Sydney Morning Herald is not present, the magistrate quips, ‘In making this decision we have lost our head and must quickly bury the evidence or the case will stink to high heaven!’

By sundown every pub in Sydney will be repeating his bon mot. ‘Have you heard the latest from his nibs, Empty Noise?’ they will say gleefully to every newcomer.

*

Mary, never one to take chances, orders an expensive black basalt tombstone engraved in gold with the words:

TOMMO X SOLOMON

1840-1861

R.I.P.

In a simple ceremony conducted by the Reverend Hannibal Peegsnit, the eccentric Congregationalist, with only Mary and Hawk in attendance, the remains of Mr Sparrow are duly buried.

Ikey’s best pupil, Sparrer Fart, the lightest fingers in London Town, the small boy who never knew his real name, ended the way he’d started his life, unknown, unwanted and unloved, his final epitaph a beak’s joke in bad taste. He will lie headless beneath a tombstone, which, when Satan asks him for a reckoning of his life, he won’t even be able to call his own.

Hawk wishes Mary ‘Long life’, which is what Ikey would have done in the same circumstances.

Mary returns to Hobart after the funeral. Hawk gives Maggie’s two-room home and all her possessions to Flo, Maggie’s little friend, now married to the grocer’s son, Tom. He visits Caleb Soul, who accompanied Tommo and himself to the gold diggings at Lambing Flat and has since become one of Hawk’s dearest friends, to say his farewell. Then, after telling all at Tucker & Co. that he is going home to Hobart, and attending a gathering in the dock area of the entire company where he receives a handsome crystal goblet in gratitude for his services from Captain Tucker, Hawk sets sail for New Zealand.

On his arrival Hawk makes his way to the stretch of Auckland Harbour where the Maori boats moor and catches a coastal ketch that will take him to the Ngati Haua tribe under Chief Tamihana, in whose household Tommo’s daughter, Hinetitama, is being raised.

Hawk discovers that Tommo is dying from the wound to his head and is in constant pain. Often he sinks into a delirium but even when he is conscious, the pressure on his brain renders him incoherent, so that the words in his mouth twist into gibberish. But sometimes he has brief periods in the early mornings when he is quite lucid.

During one such period he asks Hawk to leave his daughter with the Maori until she comes of age and can decide for herself whether she wants the life of a pakeha or wishes to stay with her people.

‘The Maori be her family now, even if her name be Solomon. Let her choose later, though Gawd knows why she’d want to be one of us.’ In these coherent periods it is the same old sardonic Tommo, ever on the alert for the mongrels.

‘I shall see she never lacks for anything,’ Hawk promises. ‘I will respect your wish, though Mary pleads she would very much like her, as her granddaughter, to be brought up well at home with every privilege and the very best of education.’

‘Tell her then to leave something in her will for my daughter, my share,’ Tommo replies. ‘Although from what I’ve seen of privilege and education it breeds only greed and superiority.’

Hawk protests and Tommo laughs. ‘The Maori have all but lost their land and it has been took from them by educated men, men of the Church, committing a crime in the name of God and the governor himself doing the same in the name of the Queen. These are all educated men, all greedy and superior, all mongrels.’

Hawk, ever the rational one, replies, ‘That is an oversimplification, Tommo, goodness is not replaced by greed when a man becomes educated nor is greed absent in the poor. Man is by his very nature rapacious and wealth has forever been the precursor of power, the need to be seen as superior. Hinetitama must have some learning, you would not want your daughter to be shackled by ignorance and superstition.’

Tommo looks wearily up at Hawk. ‘You are the only good man I know what’s keen on book learnin’. Let my daughter grow up the natural way of her people, she will be taught to read and count and that will be enough.’ Tommo grins, it is near to being the old Tommo grin and Hawk’s heart is filled with love for his dying twin. ‘Unless you can teach her how to handle a pack of cards, eh? You must give her my Tiki.’ He touches the Tiki Hawk has returned to him and his expression grows suddenly serious. ‘Hawk, there is bad blood in me and it will be in my daughter also. If she stays among the Maori it will not come out so soon. Please tell her to wear it always, that the Tiki will protect her.’

‘Your axe? Is this the bad blood you talk of?’ Hawk does not wait for Tommo to reply. ‘Tommo, there is no bad blood there, what you did was for me and in memory of Maggie Pye. It was justice. You are good, Tommo, as good a man as ever had a conscience.’ For the first time the death of Mr Sparrow has been mentioned.

‘Conscience?’ Tommo smiles ruefully. ‘That is the difference between you and me, you would carry the murder on your conscience forever and I have but scarcely thought about it. Mr Sparrow was a mongrel and when I chopped him there was that much less evil in the world.’ Tommo looks up at Hawk. ‘But it takes bad blood to murder a man, any man, even a mongrel. If they should string me up for it, it would be a fair bargain.’

Hawk sighs and then looks at Tommo somewhat apprehensively. ‘Tommo, will you tell about that night?’

It is Tommo’s turn to sigh, ‘Aye, if you wish, but it weren’t a pretty thing to tell of.’

‘Tommo, I grieve for Maggie every day, every hour of my life, it would make it more, yer know ah… complete…’ Hawk shrugs, not knowing how to continue.

Tommo sees his confusion and starts right in. ‘It takes me five or six minutes to run to Kellet’s Wharf from the World Turned Upside Down, the pub where Mr Sparrow stayed. It’s fourteen minutes to nine o’clock with the tide turning at some time shortly after nine when the Kanaka ship, Morning Star, will sail. I have little time left to swim the two hundred yards out to where she’s moored.

‘I’m sweating and panting from the run and I remove me clothes and shoes and using me belt I wraps them around the axe holster and returns it to my back. Then I wades in and starts to swim. I’m still breathing ‘ard from the run and me ‘ead’s hurting terrible. It’s a calm night and dark with cloud cover, so the moon is lost. The harbour water’s cool and welcoming and I strokes me way to the dark shape o’ the Morning Star, a trading schooner about eighty feet stem to stern. I can see she has her head to the wind, facing the land breeze coming down the harbour and is preparing to sail.