Solomon's Song Read Free

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