Night of a thousand whis.., p.6
Night of a Thousand Whispers, page 6
Kate dropped Des home immediately after their encounter with Austin. Des was feeling ill anyway and as the whisky had gone straight to his head, Kate considered him as useless to talk to, as a toupee on a platform diver. So she took her own thoughts home – thoughts of a strange, drunken man, and a secret tale of horrific atrocity. After parking the MX5 beneath the building, she made her solitary way up to her apartment. She sifted through her key ring to find the door key, momentarily being surprised that it did not fit, before remembering what had happened earlier that day. It seemed a long time ago. So much was happening and so quickly. Little wonder she felt disoriented. There were pieces everywhere and, as yet nothing made any sense.
Her fingers went to her handbag and she fished out the new set the locksmith had given her before he left. Opening the door, she half expected to see her place trashed again, but happily, it was just as she left it, the only reminder of what she had found earlier that day being a damaged television set, empty crockery shelves in her sideboard and scuff marks and dents in her gyprock walls. Laying her bag on the living room settee, Kate went to her freezer and retrieved a container of last week’s bolognaise. She then heated it in her microwave and sat down beside her bag, while she pensively chipped away at the meal with her fork. Her mind was on Derek Austin. If that afternoon had been any indication of his worth, she imagined he needed a therapist more than he needed a challenge. Still, one thing was for certain. If she was in a scrape of any kind, there was little doubt in her mind that he had the experience and the physical power to assist her – assuming he stayed sober. But, on the other hand, could not he also present a danger to her? After all, he was trained to kill… and he was unstable. Suddenly she began wondering about the wisdom of her promise to return… and to return alone.
Laying aside her empty plate, Kate opened her bag and pulled out the paper upon which she had scrawled the little diagram. She scribbled out the word ‘Dutch’ and wrote ‘South African’ in its place – then folded it once more and put it back into her bag. Then she picked up the remote and pointed it to her television mounted on the wall. The screen had been cracked when the apartment was ransacked, but happily the set still worked. There was a puerile sitcom playing about an equally puerile couple of oddball flatmates, so she turned down the volume and waited till the late-night news commenced. There was no mention of the murder at Botany Bay. It surprised her. Perhaps crime stories were somewhat trite, perhaps even banal, and it was true that the visit of the American Secretary of State dominated public imagination, but this was not Chicago and murders did not occur on the hour. Switching off the television, she tossed the remote away and went to bed. Just as she was drifting off to sleep, the bedside phone rang.
‘Hello,’ she mumbled sleepily.
‘Kate – it’s Morrie.’
‘It’s late Morrie,’ she protested.
‘I know. I just thought you should know. We were called out on a shooting today.’
‘Oh?’ she responded. ‘It’s not like you to call me over these things. I usually have to find out myself.’
‘It’s just that it concerns your friend, Greg O’Rourke,’ he said patiently.
‘What!’ Kate exclaimed, sitting bolt upright in her bed. ‘Is he hurt?’
‘Don’t worry… Greg’s okay,’ he quickly reassured her. ‘O’Rourke was with someone else. Dropped him off at the front of the house and then while he was parking his car down the back of that obscene acreage he owns on the north shore, his friend was shot through the head with a semi-automatic. Looks like a professional hit. Whoever the shooter was, he must have been there waiting for O’Rourke. Or he might have been following him and looking for the right moment. Case of mistaken identity, I guess. Good luck for O’Rourke – bad luck for his mate.’
* * * * *
One week earlier, on a hot Saturday night when the cicadas kept up a constant chorus of accompaniment, the Sea Wind was loaded with supplies. The high tech, thirty-two shining metres of white fibreglass lay at anchor, anachronistically beside Hercules, the old, fifty metre former cargo vessel about to make the nightly ferry crossing to the port of Auki on the island of Malaita. The native passengers on Hercules watched the activity from the rusting ship rails, joined by a score of fascinated locals who lined the dimly lit pier, chewing betel nut and gazing in astonishment at the tri-deck visitor from another world. Ferraro watched impatiently. As captain, he was anxious to move the motor yacht back out to sea before Sea Wind attracted too much attention from the local constabulary. Honiara was a backwater, but in the last few years the Australian Federal Police had far too high a profile in the islands for his liking. And DIAC agents were everywhere – mostly watching the islands surrounding Australian shores for illegals, but he also knew that anything out of the ordinary would be relayed back to the mainland quicker than he could unload a piss. He bit off the end of a Cuban and then lit the tightly rolled tobacco, leaving it to smoulder between his yellowed teeth, while his eyes darted constantly back to the dormant township.
‘You are too anxious, my friend,’ Kamil chirped optimistically. ‘Worry too much and it will kill you.’
Ferraro looked down at the fat and complacent little businessman standing beside him in white suit pants and brightly patterned shirt. ‘Being anxious is how I stay alive, Kamil,’ Ferraro muttered scornfully. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about that. You don’t take the risks. It’s my life on the line.’
‘I risk my money,’ the Arab reminded him. ‘If you fail, I lose the value of my share in the enterprise – half a million US dollars.’
‘And if I don’t fail, you triple your investment.’
Kamil shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I invest what I have. You invest what you have. And our employer pays you well enough.’
‘A hundred thousand doesn’t make up for ten years in the pen or a bullet in the brain.’
Kamil let out an unsympathetic laugh. ‘And where could you earn a hundred thousand in a week. You must be grateful for the benefits that our master offers you. But, if you wish to change your mind, go back to Manila and that little hovel you came from. I am sure Sondhi can navigate this ship to New South Wales. All he needs to do is point it to the south-west and let the instruments do the rest.’
Ferraro watched Sondhi as he leaned against the pier bollard, chatting up one of the local girls. She was one of the salt-water people. Dark-skinned like any of the islanders, but her coastal origins betrayed by frizzy black hair that had turned yellow from salt and sun. Pretty enough, though Sondhi would be disappointed if he imagined he could lay her. The islanders were not like the girls in the Asian ports. Religion and culture had far too strong a hold.
‘He’d run it aground on the reef… or worse still take off with the boat and your investment. You can never trust a Thai pirate,’ Ferraro grunted disparagingly. He did not like Sondhi, nor did he trust him. The man had joined the ship in Java. A thirty-five years old Thai fisherman. Yellow smooth skin, flaccid muscles that hadn’t seen honest toil for years and an evil face that grinned constantly. Not a happy grin, but a sly, cruel and calculating grin that suggested all kinds of hidden malevolence. Ferraro wouldn’t normally trust his kind to take out the shit can, but felons could not always choose their bedfellows.
‘That is exactly why my two Malaitan friends are making up your crew,’ Kamil pointed out carefully. ‘I have been in these islands for a long time, my friend. I know who to trust.’
‘And that includes me?’
‘I have full confidence. Confidence in the fact that you need the money too much to let a little risk deter you from continuing.’
He was right. As the son of a high ranking civil servant in the Philippines and an English mother, it was always considered likely that Ferraro would make good in business. Unfortunately, his business interests had included gambling himself into bankruptcy eight years ago and the loss of the hotel he owned in Manila. He had gone to Bali and tried his hand at drug running, but got caught with a small amount of ecstasy in his possession and spent the next five years in a stinking Indonesian cell. With a wife in Manila and a mistress in Bali – and a total of eight children between the two – his desperation for money had been noticed by a dark-eyed stranger shortly after his release from gaol. In a seedy Asian bar, Ferraro had been persuaded to sell his soul, and ever since then had run drugs, arms and alcohol at the stranger’s bidding throughout Asia and the Middle East. Perhaps this was the last run he would make, the last real risk he would take. He’d paid off his debts at last, and this windfall was free money. A hundred thousand was hardly a fortune, but it would give him another start in Manila.
‘You put the diamonds in the safe?’ Ferraro asked the Arab.
‘A cigar box. At least fifty million on the street. The safe is to keep them from your shipmates, remember. If you are intercepted by the ADF, place them in the secret panel above the cupboard in the Master’s cabin. If they search the ship and find the safe empty, you can claim to be on a ’cruise’. If they don’t believe you, they will only be able to charge you with violating their borders.’
‘I understand. Let’s just hope they don’t think we’re running drugs and decide to strip the ship down.’
‘That will not happen, I am sure. Why should they suspect diamonds? They may have a tracker dog sniffing for drugs and there will be none aboard, so why should they pull the boat apart? No, my friend, soon you will be back in the arms of your young mistress in Bali, enjoying the fruits of your labour.’
Ferraro’s mouth twisted into a sneer as he looked down at his plausible and parasitic confederate. How many others had been sent to their deaths by the assurances of this self-serving little weasel? It angered Ferraro, and angered him even more that he had to associate with such scum. He had been meant for better things – and perhaps he would at last realise his more noble ambitions. And in one respect, Kamil was totally deceived. Ferraro wasn’t thinking of the warm embrace of the young Balinese girl. It wasn’t drunken orgies and nights of stolen pleasure. It was his lawful, wedded wife and their seven children. It was a solid and profitable business in the Philippines. It was a good Catholic home in one of the more salubrious Manila suburbs, far away from Kamil, Sondhi and anyone like them. It was the respect he so desperately wanted and in pursuit of which, he had already suffered far too much.
At last the two Malaitans had finished bringing the food, water and diesel aboard and sat on the stern rail while they waited, muttering to each other in their strange dialect. Sondhi threw the stub of his cigarette into the bay and tried to take the island girl’s arm and lead her into the boat. From nowhere four men appeared, yellow haired, long machetes in their black hands, their angry eyes fixed resolutely on the Asian. Sondhi shrugged in resignation and, still smiling, waved the girl away and taking a coin from his pocket, flicked it in the direction of the four men. As they struggled with one another to retrieve it, he climbed onto the stern deck, laughing to himself.
‘You had better set out before your first mate gets himself into a fight,’ Kamil advised Ferraro.
* * * * *
Kate didn’t go into the office the following morning. It had been a restless night, with tortured dreams of strange men and murder, interspersed with wakeful periods spent staring at the dark ceiling above and worrying about O’Rourke. She telephoned him early. He sounded fine, though Kate knew that men were prone to burying their pain beneath bravado.
‘I’m okay really, Kate,’ he assured her. ‘It wasn’t as though me and Dougherty were close. I hadn’t seen him for years and we only met when we were in training. Bloody shock though. I never saw anything when I dropped him off at the front of the house. But then, if I had seen anyone, they would also have noticed me, and probably Dougherty would not have taken the hit.’
‘Do you have any idea who was behind it? Does it have anything to do with what happened at Brotherson docks?’
‘I dunno, Kate. I suppose it could… if anyone is aware that I was there and that there is a connection between us. But that would mean an inside job, ’cos it isn’t general knowledge, is it? No – could be anyone. Someone I picked up for tax fraud, someone I arrested for drugs importation – someone who doesn’t like German cars! Heck, it could be anybody and I’m not about to make myself sick trying to figure out who. I guess, if it’s important enough to them, they’ll try again. I’ll just have to be ready for it.’
‘Does your friend’s family know?’
‘The Department – that is your mate Morrie’s mob – tracked them down and called them last night, as I understand. The body will be flown out as soon as the coroner is finished with it. But really, Kate – don’t worry about me. You just get on with your business and enjoy life. God knows it may be short.’
Kate took his advice. She ate a light breakfast and then took a brief shower, before stepping into her track suit and joggers. Not feeling as healthy or robust as she normally did in the morning, Kate walked down Wylde Street to Cowper Wharf Road. She paused there for a few moments, the realisation dawning upon her mind that the strange feeling in her stomach was fear. She was unaccustomed to feelings of insecurity. Life had always been rather easy, smoothed as it was by her family connections as a growing child and by her natural beauty and innate poise as an independent adult. But, this sense of vulnerability was new. It was true that she had often courted danger in the past and been in the neighbourhood of extreme violence, but things had changed, and not subtly. Not only had a man’s life-blood been on her own hands, but death was stalking closer and closer. Even O’Rourke – irrepressible, roguish and bullet-proof O’Rourke – was not immune. And if O’Rourke were not immune then neither was she. Feelings of loneliness, of naked helplessness threatened to overwhelm her and she felt terribly exposed, as though in that very moment, evil eyes were watching and waiting. She fought against the premonition of doom. If she succumbed to it, her career would be over. It would be impossible to continue walking the tightrope. She decided at last that she would run off her anxieties and if they came back again, she supposed she would run them off again. And she was seeing Austin once more. She comforted herself with that. Perhaps he would prove to be a godsend after all. So, turning her face towards Woolloomooloo she started running – along Cowper Wharf Road beside the Naval dockyard where a barge and an Armidale Class Patrol Boat were moored, up Brougham Street around the Woolloomooloo Apartment Hotel and back down Dowling Street, retracing her steps back to Wylde Street.
When she arrived, panting back at her apartment, she showered again. Her anxiety had gone by now, along with the dark thoughts that had accompanied it, and in its place was a feeling of heady exhilaration. She took more time over her appearance than usual, dressing in a soft and flattering pale lemon dress, before labouring long and carefully over her make-up. She combed out her long, blonde hair, deciding for once to leave it loose and uninhibited, rather than sweeping it up into her customary, matronly bun. Why did she take such care? The child in her may have been prepared to admit some fascination with the strange man she was about to visit, but the adult, or perhaps it was the parent, cautioned against becoming involved in any way with the fellow. In the end though, it was the journalist who made the decision, and so she skipped down the stairs to the basement car park and drove out into another bright, summer morning.
Kate waited on the street outside his Woollahra house for a while, watching the front for movement while she gathered her courage. The house remained quiet. The Land Cruiser lay at rest in the driveway and the blinds were drawn. Perhaps she would once again find him drunk – or at least still sleeping off the effects of the previous night’s binge. Eventually, she took a deep breath and refreshing the perfume behind her ears, she climbed out of the MX5 and walked to the front door. Once again, there was no answer, but she heard a noise from the rear of the house and stepping off the porch, Kate walked around the side of the building. At the back of the rear lawn was a large, but rickety old shed, the double doors open and the sound of metal clinking inside. Summoning her courage once more, she walked across the lawn. Inside the shed, a man – a different man – or so it seemed, was shaved and stripped to his shorts and exercise vest as he furiously pumped iron. He hadn’t noticed her approach, so she leaned against the side post of the garage doors and watched him for a few moments as arm muscles bulged and strained against the crushing weight at either end of the steel bar. He was a handsome man, she decided, almost as good-looking as Greg O’Rourke, and powerful enough to frighten her a little. Suddenly she began to appreciate why Hayek regarded him so highly. If he could leave behind whatever tormented him, perhaps he would be an asset to her cause after all.
‘You look in much better condition than when I saw you last,’ she said, finally announcing her presence. Austin’s eyes immediately darted toward her, and he allowed the bar to drop back into the steel jaws of his bench. As he sat up, he seemed to search his memory for a while before placing her. She was tall, with golden hair capturing the sun’s cheerful rays and hanging soft on her shoulders. Her mouth was wide, sensual and smiling, her eyes well spread and sea blue.
‘You the lady who came around yesterday?’ he asked at length, regarding her with a bold and decidedly insolent stare.
‘I left an impression obviously,’ she grumbled in reply.
‘Sorry – I wasn’t in the best shape yesterday,’ he conceded, wiping the sweat from his brow with the old bath towel that had been draped over the end of his bench. ‘It’s a bit of a blur to be honest. You came with someone else didn’t you?’
‘Yes – but today I am alone,’ she declared. ‘Am I safe?’
It was said flippantly, but he didn’t respond in kind. ‘I hope I didn’t go on a bit too much,’ he replied, watching her somewhat warily. ‘What did I say?’
‘Nothing that I am particularly interested in pursuing at this point,’ Kate assured him.
