To Ride the Wind (18 page)

Randolph forced himself to tear his gaze away. He ordered a beer and stood alone at the end of the bar, keeping a small crowd of patrons between himself and the group Mick O’Rourke was drinking with. Randolph noticed that the Surry Hills thug had a lot of money and was generously waving around notes to buy drinks for his cronies.

Randolph took his time finishing his beer before leaving the hotel. When he stepped out onto the dark street he immediately scanned the area for locations to ambush O’Rourke. He was fortunate in that there was a narrow alley beside the pub, used to bring in crates of beer and spirits. It had no lighting and appeared to only have an exit into the backyard of the hotel.

Randolph glanced around. The street was deserted. There were lights on in a few of the windows in the surrounding tenement houses and Randolph was not surprised to see that the street was deserted; this was not a place any sane person would want to go wandering late at night. Randolph waited patiently for over an hour and at last was rewarded to see O’Rourke step out onto the street in the company of three drunken cronies, all singing raucously as they stumbled away from the dark alley.

Randolph followed at a discreet distance and was pleased to see that one by one O’Rourke’s companions peeled away, leaving him alone in front of one of the narrow terrace houses.

O’Rourke stepped inside and minutes later Randolph saw a light in a window facing the street. He looked up and down the street, reassuring himself that he was not seen. He approached the front door cautiously, staying in the shadows until he was able to glance inside. O’Rourke was sitting at the kitchen table, attempting to slop down a plate of stew and dumplings he had retrieved from the oven of the wood combustion stove. Beside the plate stood a bottle of beer which O’Rourke swigged from between mouthfuls. The front door was not locked and Randolph pushed it gently open. It creaked but he was inside before O’Rourke could react.

Startled, O’Rourke looked up from his meal and immediately reached into his pocket for the razor. He flipped it open and started to rise from the table, scattering his plate of stew in the process. But he froze when he saw the pistol in the intruder’s hand.

‘What are you?’ he snarled. ‘A copper?’

‘Your death – if you do not answer some questions I have,’ Randolph said quietly, stepping forward into the yellow, flickering light of the candle on the table. ‘So just sit down and shut up, unless I want you to answer a question.’

O’Rourke slumped back into his chair, the razor on the table within reach of his hand. ‘If yer not a copper, then you are a dead man,’ he said with as much menace as he could muster. ‘You don’t come into Mick O’Rourke’s territory unless yer invited, and I don’t ever remember invitin’ you. If yer out to robbin’ me you can have any money I have but I can also promise you that you won’t keep it.’

‘You have just returned from America,’ Randolph said, keeping the pistol levelled on the thug. ‘To be specific, from Los Angeles.’

‘No secret ’bout that,’ O’Rourke replied, shaking his head. ‘So what’s it to you?’

‘Who paid your way?’ Randolph asked.

‘None of yer business, cobber, and from yer voice you have to be a bloody Yank,’ O’Rourke answered in a surly, arrogant tone. ‘I don’ ’member meeting you over there.’

‘You met a dear friend of mine,’ Randolph said slowly. ‘And you killed her.’

O’Rourke paled. ‘I didn’t kill that actress sheila. Yer got it wrong.’

‘Funny that you should allude to Miss Owens when I didn’t say who it was. All you have to do is tell me the truth about killing Miss Owens – including who paid you to do the job – and I will let you live.’

Sweat dripped down O’Rourke’s forehead. ‘You swear on yer word of honour that if I tell you who paid me to kill that Yankee sheila you will let me go?’

‘You have my word,’ Randolph answered. ‘I want the man who hired you more than you.’

O’Rourke seemed to relax but in a split second he had upended the rickety wooden table, slamming it against Randolph. The candle was snuffed out in the process and the room was now pitch black. Clearly, a man’s word of honour meant little in O’Rourke’s world.

Even worse, Randolph realised that he had dropped his pistol when the table hit him and he was now unarmed, apart from the bowie knife he also carried. With great haste, he slid it from his pocket and crouched in the classic stance of the experienced knife fighter. Randolph could hear his opponent moving in the dark and wondered if he had armed himself. Neither man spoke, fearful of giving away their position to the other.

Suddenly, Randolph was aware of a quiet, swishing sound in front of him. He stepped back, but the finely honed steel caught him across the chest, slicing open his shirt and upper layer of skin. Randolph thrust forward with his blade only to meet air.

‘Gotcha, yer Yankee bastard!’ came the triumphant shout in the dark. ‘How’s it feel to die like yer sheila friend?’

Enraged at the taunt, Randolph had no doubt that O’Rourke would pay for killing Nellie. All thoughts of keeping the Sydney criminal alive to question him were gone. Just a red, killing haze filled the American’s thoughts. If it was the last thing he ever did on earth it would be to kill O’Rourke. So intent were they on hunting each other in the dark, neither man was aware of the sound of footsteps crashing down the stairs off the kitchen. Suddenly the room was lit by a kerosene lantern held high by a young woman.

The unexpected illumination gave Randolph the opportunity to see his target in the split second he needed. He flung himself across the small space to plunge his knife into O’Rourke’s chest with all the strength he had. The knife went in deep and the thin man screamed as he fell back, with Randolph still holding the knife, twisting it to cause more damage. O’Rourke’s scream did not last long. The blade had ruptured his heart and he lay coughing up blood, his eyes glassing over as he stared at the greasy, smoke-stained ceiling of the kitchen. Meanwhile, the young woman was no longer screaming but backing away from the kitchen door with the lantern in her hand.

Randolph yanked the knife from O’Rourke’s chest. ‘I’m not here to harm you,’ he said to her reassuringly, looking up from the body of the man he had killed. ‘So please don’t scream again and I will leave you in peace.’

In the flickering light Randolph could see that the young woman’s face was a mass of recent bruises and guessed that the man on the floor may have inflicted them. She must be his wife or mistress – the American did not know – but she at least nodded her head, eyes wide with fear and mouth agape with shock.

Randolph stood slowly. ‘He killed someone I loved more than my own life,’ he said sadly, looking down at the dead man at his feet. ‘I am sorry for your loss.’

The young woman still did not speak and Randolph brushed past her on his way to the street.

‘This belong to you, mister?’ the woman called to him when he was at the front door.

Randolph paused, turned around to see his pistol being held by the woman and pointed at him. She stepped forward and pushed it towards the American. Randolph took the weapon from her and stepped out into the street. Her screaming had not appeared to attract interest. Perhaps it was something the residents of the area were used to and besides, it probably did not pay to become involved in Mick O’Rourke’s regular beatings of his girlfriend.

As Randolph walked away he remembered seeing a look almost of gratitude in the battered woman’s eyes as she passed the revolver to him. He knew that as a witness he should not have left her alive but she was an innocent and seemingly another victim of the man he had just killed.

Before midnight, Randolph had reached his hotel and bandaged the long but shallow wound across his chest. Maybe he should have it stitched but he’d had worse before when travelling with Matthew Duffy in the years prior to the outbreak of war.

Randolph reached for a bottle of rum he had stored in his kit and drank straight from the bottle. The shot helped ease both his physical and emotional pain. In the morning he would contact Alexander Macintosh and tell him that the police reports from the USA would not be needed. Maybe Alex would understand what that meant without becoming an accessory to the killing. Sadly, Nellie’s killer had not admitted to being hired by George Macintosh but Randolph had no doubt he was behind the assignment. Randolph did not believe in coincidences. That the man he had killed had been employed by the Macintosh company and sent to the USA had to have the hand of George Macintosh on it. Confronting George was not an option for the moment as the killing of the Sydney crimi nal would surely attract police attention. No, that could wait for another day when things cooled down in Sydney, Randolph mused, adjusting the bandage strapped across his chest. For the moment he would need to get out of town. One day, he would return and finish his mission to avenge the woman he had loved despite her rejection of him for the glamour of the world of film.

Detective Jack Firth always read the daily police reports typed out at headquarters. One item attracted his attention this morning. It was about the stabbing murder of a well-known criminal from Surry Hills. Not that his death was of a great priority to police resources for the moment, and besides homicide was no longer the counterintelligence officer’s concern. It was the name of the dead criminal that struck Jack – the man he had put in contact with Mr George Macintosh. Jack had a good idea from what he had read that O’Rourke had been involved in the murder of the Hollywood actress. But as he had also been complicit – and the murder had occurred outside Australian police jurisdiction – he preferred to let the matter slide on the off-chance it might in some way lead back to him.

At the change of the shift in the busy office Jack ambled over to the uniformed constable who had compiled the report on the death of Michael O’Rourke. The constable was a man in his early thirties who had served in the South African campaign, where he had been wounded and so was unable to pass the rigorous physicals for volunteer service in this war.

‘Constable,’ Jack said, holding the clipboard with the report. ‘You questioned Molly Canning, Mick’s lady friend, about his death. You think she did him in for all the beatings he gave her?’

The constable looked up from the paper-strewn table where he was writing up the last of his patrol reports before going off duty after a hectic night. ‘No sir,’ he replied wearily. ‘I don’t think she did him, but we do have a description of the man she claims she saw kill Mick. She says he was tall, about in his thirties and spoke with a funny accent she had not heard before. Thinks he might have been from Queensland from the way he spoke. She reported that Mick was killed in the early hours when she got hold of me on foot patrol down near Surry Hills. When I got hold of Sergeant Prowse we went with her and found Mick dead on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. It looked to me like he had been dead for a few hours but she claimed he had been killed just a few minutes before she fetched us. I think she is lying and possibly knew the person who killed Mick.’

‘Interesting,’ Jack mused. ‘Give all you know to the investigators – especially since you suspect she may have been in some way protecting Mick’s killer.’

‘I will,’ the constable replied, returning to signing off his patrol report.

Jack Firth strode away, heading for his office down the hall where he would continue his duties in the world of finding spies. There was no such thing as a coincidence, he brooded. What if the funny accent that Molly, a simple girl who had never been out of Surry Hills, had heard was that of an American? If he remembered correctly from his Wilkes case before the war there had been an American who was keen on the Macintosh girl. What if the Yank had somehow learned that Mick O’Rourke was her killer? Was he capable of murder? If so, would the Yank also suspect George Macintosh’s involvement in hiring Mick? A lot of questions – and the detective inspector knew the best way to get answers was to get the suspect. How hard would it be to track down a Yankee in a former British colony?

10

T
he leaves on the trees in Sydney’s Hyde Park lay limp under the sweltering summer day. Great thunderheads boiled up in the afternoon sky and as he sat on a bench in the park under the shade of a large European tree, George Macintosh knew that one of the city’s cooling storms was imminent.

He was not alone in discarding his coat and loosening his tie as he waited for the meeting. Others in the park moved listlessly along the avenues of trees and George had time to reflect on the state of affairs in his life. He now had an heir for his dynasty and although matters were very strained between himself and Louise she still dutifully carried out her social obligations. People who attended their soirees remarked on what a fine couple they made but that all changed when they were alone. Louise had made it plain that she wanted nothing else to do with her husband and slept alone in another room next to that of their infant’s nanny. Not that George really cared. He had access to other women to slake his perverse desires and the fact that he alone virtually controlled the Macintosh companies was enough to fill his life. All was going well – except for the matter of his brother still being alive.

‘Bloody hot day,’ the large framed man who slumped down on the bench beside George grunted, wiping his brow with the sleeve of his shirt. George did not turn to greet Detective Inspector Jack Firth as this was their way of concealing their meetings. Instead, he slid an envelope containing the monthly payment along the seat to the policeman who deftly pocketed it.

‘Thought you might like to know that I think your life might be at risk,’ Jack Firth said without turning to George. ‘The man you hired to go to America was found stabbed to death a couple of days ago.’

‘Wouldn’t that be an expected means for his demise, considering the world he lived in?’ George asked.

‘The detectives investigating the stabbing leaned on the only witness to O’Rourke’s killing,’ Jack continued. ‘It seems that she finally gave up that a tall man with a funny accent said something about getting even for the death of someone he held dear. You know what he might have meant?’