The Hat 1 – Such was the life and death of spies in fraught times ..

The Set-up.

Strapps, Neill and Lyons weren’t looking at Carl Webb that early evening of November 30, they were observing the death throes of The Somerton Man as was the male onlooker Neill observed standing on the roadway above, standing there for a full five minutes, having found his man and was now waiting for complete darkness and the opportunity to move his target from the beach to a waiting car where he was to be laid out in the back seat and made sure there was no recovery from the poisoned pasty he had unwisely accepted from the same gentleman when they met earlier in Glenelg, the gentleman SM had been in a hurry to get away from when he first began to feel the unmistakeable effect of whatever was the foreign substance he had been given to consume and what made it immeasurably worse was that it had been secreted into a bloody stale pasty!

Such was the life and death of foreign spies in fraught times.

This unexpected development, ie the target fleeing the cafe meant that SM had to be moved yet again later that night and carried along the beach from the car to the same spot where he was seen earlier but this time as dead as a doornail though a little suspicious on the lividity side, not to mention that the half-smoked fag our man thought to stick under SM’s chin – the one that didn’t burn his skin or clothing was short of a match to light it. But not everyone is a perfect planner and this chap had had a very busy day.

The Original Body.

The original body as noted above by Paul Lawson for disposal (?) was that of Carl Webb and his was one of about twenty bodies stored in the morgue’s fridge on the 1st of December. Webb had been found dead in an Adelaide establishment some days previously, a stranger in town and unbeknown to him, being dead, his usefulness hadn’t ended on a steel trolly in the morgue’s cold storage and what was also unknown to him was that the body being wheeled in next to him was about to become him.

A Little Background.

Men intent on killing other men are in some instances bound to prepare the ground precisely so that the real truth of the matter may never be known, in this case their clever task was to create a believable scenario, one that hinted SM was a spy as well as being one that hid the truth that SM was a spy.

We are dealing with some very clever people here, probably on the phone to MI5’s Roger Hollis on a regular basis, and who coincidentally was in Canberra at the time attempting to ferret out some traitorous Communists from Ben Chifley’s Federal Cabinet in order to appease the Americans so they might continue the sharing of very secret information. Busy fellow Hollis, and now he had a serious bargaining chip: the body of a very wanted man who had been found lurking suspiciously around some of South Australia’s more secret establishments and summarily dealt with.

The Plan.

The keys to the CIB evidence locker were quietly handed over on the morning of the 30th to an individual of impeccable standing, or so his papers said and a quick phone call by a senior policeman to Canberra confirmed which side he was on.

Nobody saw this gentleman leave the station with Carl Webb’s suitcase just as nobody remembered him lodging it at the Railway Luggage Office or buying the train and bus tickets just as no-one was surprised when he returned to the Evidence Room sans suitcase early the next day to switch the trousers and coat SM had been wearing on the 30th with those he had retained of Webb’s then poke the two recently purchased tickets into SM’s coat ticket-pocket where they were found by PC Moss.

Thread sorted, right?

Striped trousers sorted, right?

Finally, a master’s touch one might think – a small slip rolled tight and tucked into SM’s fob pocket that when found and translated suggested Webb, the original owner of the duds was both well-read and had a touch of the tragics about himself. Something since proved.

To be continued when I can figure out what comes next  ..