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.