In Episode 8 of “The Search for the Shield”, Swifty Taylor takes a call from his mother.
My mum has a phone plan that is the envy of all in her retirement home. For a few measly bucks per month, she has a golden hour from 6pm to 7pm each night during which all her calls, texts and data roaming are free of charge. She won’t use the phone for the other 23 hours of the day, and for years has fiercely resisted Telstra’s attempts to “transition” or “upgrade” her to a new plan. So many times has she threatened to go to the communications ombudsman that Telstra don’t even bother her any more.
So when I am sitting at the kitchen table eating chicken soup for dinner and my phone chirps at 6:20pm, I know who it will be. “Swifty, my dear boy, have you found anyone yet?” It is her standard greeting, and she finds the question’s double meaning hilarious. She always disliked my ex-wife and constantly urges me to “check out the other fish in the ocean”. She also hates my line of work, and tells her friends that my job is ‘finding missing persons’. “No, I haven’t found anyone, mum. Most of the fish in this sea are flatheads, unfortunately”. She stifled a laugh and said “even when you were a boy, you always were a man of mystery. I remember your favourite tv show…” She tails off before she can remind me that I was a devotee of Scooby Doo. Yeah, so what if I loved that show? I was only a kid back then, and spent hours wondering what Fred got up to with Daphne when he sent Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby off on their way. Ah, the Mystery Machine indeed! I was starting to feel wistful when, before she could rake over any older coals, mum thankfully announced that she must move on because she had a few more phone calls to make before the clock struck 7.
I had resolved to go back to the very start. How had the Tony Williamson Shield come into being, and what made it worth pilfering? I called up an old acquaintance and he answered at the first ring. “S Taylor. Haven’t heard from you for some time”. It was the voice of Ralph Schmidt, an old Willy CY’s teammate who had the annoying habit of abbreviating first names to first initials. A merchant banker, he had made a fortune for himself in the derivatives market and moved to the Gold Coast to join the white shoe brigade. But, while in the business of making truckloads of cash, he had also been in the business of not paying his fair whack of tax. And the taxman was definitely someone you wanted as a friend, not as an enemy, as Ralph eventually learnt to his peril. I had only heard the rumours that “Schmidt was in the shit”, but he seemed in good enough spirits. Probably because I was the least of his worries.
“I hear you are looking for Tony’s shield,” he says. “Just to be clear, I don’t have it up here in Queensland”. “I know that,” I respond, “I just wanted to get some better detail. Was there anything about the shield that might attract a nefarious type to take it, sell it, pawn it, hold it for ransom?” There was a long pause as he ran through the scenarios. “I remember the shield, but it wasn’t much more than just a standard wooden plaque, with fake gold nameplates on the front. It cost us about $150 to have made, just after the great man sadly passed away. He devoted much of his life to the CY’s did T Williamson”. He was telling me nothing that I did not already know. “I am starting to develop a few theories, Ralphie. None of which make any real sense”. He bids me adieu with one last morsel of personal information. “They want me back in the supreme court soon. But by then I will be in the Caymans. Good luck, Swifty”. As the phone went dead, my heart had visions of Schmidt in goggles, flying into the Cayman Islands in an old twin-prop, like Biggles himself. But my head told me that when he got to the airport, there would be more sheriffs laying in wait for him than Jesse James ever saw in Dodge City.
I was convinced that the only value which lay in the shield was to those whose names were on it. Legends like Macleod, Clerk, Welsh, Ryan, Deller, Dawson. But they were the least likely to have had anything to do with its disappearance. That night I slept heavily. I dreamed of how satisfying it would be to grab the head of the shield-thieving culprit and reveal his identity by ripping the mask from him, Scooby-Doo style. Velma and Shaggy would gasp, and Daphne would bather eyelids at me. And I would be lying if I said that Daphne did not also feature in my dreams, sharing more than just chicken soup with me.
You can read Part 1 Here.
You can read Part 2 Here.
You can read Part 3 Here.
You can read Part 4 Here.
You can read Part 5 Here.
You can read Part 6 Here
You can read Part 7 Here
You can read more from Smokie HERE
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