by Graham Guy
“Really?”
“Yeah, they’re the two who did that druggie over in Adelaide. Got twelve years.”
“And that was these pricks?” Bourke said, trying to recall the incident.
“That was these pricks,” McLoughlin said, still staring at the radio. Then he smiled lightly. “Another notch on the belt for Branson.”
Dave Bourke offered a puzzled look.
“You don’t know about him?”
“He’s New South Wales, but what he did gained a fair bit of notoriety.”
“I’m intrigued.”
“He got a graveyard confession. A young girl was murdered at Gosford… oh Christ, years ago. Everything led back to her uncle, but his alibi was watertight. No matter what the coppers did, they couldn’t pin it on him. The coroner returned the usual, ‘murdered by a person or persons unknown’ but Branson wouldn’t let it go. He was a bit of a bookworm. Liked to read a lot. He found, even going back hundreds of years, that killers liked to not only return to the scene of the crime…”
“Yeah, well, we know about that…”
“Hang on, it goes further. If they hadn’t been caught and they were close to the person they killed, they liked to actually visit their graves.”
“Jesus, how sick’s that?”
“Apparently it happens. Well Branson got onto this little theory and thought he’d like to try it out. So on the fifth anniversary of the girl’s death, he set up surveillance of the grave, aimed a directional microphone at it and rolled a tape. Bugger me dead if the uncle doesn’t turn up and go into this great long spiel of confession. Branson had it on tape, but he knew he couldn’t use it in court. So he waited till the bloke got home and knocked on his door. He played him the tape… the bloke shit himself and spilled his guts. He got life, and that’s how Branson got famous… in New South anyway. He’s an inspector now, I think.”
“Then he grabbed this joker?” Bourke said, nodding at the radio.
“Yeah… clever bugger, Branson. Want to go and have a look?”
“It’s all over isn’t it?” Bourke replied.
“Crime scenes attract, Dave. Never know who you might spot in the crowd,” McLoughlin grinned.
Forty minutes later, the two detectives parked their vehicle and made their way on foot to the corner of Liverpool and George. The crowd around the scene of the shootout had swelled to several thousand. Policemen on point duty had the unenviable task of trying to move people on, but it was pointless. People came to look and wouldn’t leave until they had. McLoughlin and Bourke eased their way through the masses, with McLoughlin scanning the faces. Then something caught his eye. Briefly. It was on the other side of the road.
What the hell was that? he asked himself, darting his gaze back.
Bourke noticed McLoughlin’s anxious change of expression. “What’s happening?”
“Dunno, mate. I just saw something and I don’t know what it was. But it was something.”
“What… a thing… a bloke?”
“A bloke… I think,” he replied straining his eyes to pick up on it again. Suddenly it reappeared, only this time moving quickly away from them. With no explanation to his partner, McLoughlin took off as best he could through the mass of people. Bourke followed.
“What, Mac?” he called after him.
“It’s him, mate, it’s our man for Christ sakes! It’s the fucking Weasel!”
“Bullshit!”
Still forcing his way, McLoughlin quickly turned his head. “No bullshit! I’d recognise that prick’s walk anytime… come on.”
But by the time McLoughlin had got through the crowd to the other side of the road, John James McGregor-McWeasely had disappeared.
“You sure it was him?” Bourke queried.
McLoughlin turned to him, a knowing grin falling across his face.
“Believe me. It was him. You wait here in case he doubles back. I’m gonna have a real good look. He can’t have gone far.”
“Did he see you?”
“Dunno. If he did, I’m a dead duck ‘cause he’ll know we’re onto him. Why else would we be in Sydney?”
“But that other stuff you told me about was a long time ago.”
“To blokes like that? Yesterday! They never forget.”
“How much of a look at him did you get?”
“Tell you when I get back… wait here for me… and watch out for him. He’s as cunning as a shithouse rat!”
McLoughlin hurried away, taking care to eyeball as much as he could. Every nook and cranny. Every face. But he knew it was a hopeless task with so many thousands of people present. Eventually he returned to Bourke.
“Nothing doing?”
McLoughlin shook his head.
“So how much of a look at him did you get?”
“Not so much a look, but rather his walk.”
“His ‘walk’?”
“Yeah, I told you about it. He sort of takes short steps and hops a bit. Mate, no-one else in the world would walk like that. I did get a glimpse of him side-on.”
“So if you were a betting man, did he see you or didn’t he?”
McLoughlin thought deeply and bit on his bottom lip. “He saw me. Would not have scattered like that unless he did.”
“So what now?”
“We have to assume he’s onto us. Probably even watching us right now. But he’ll go to ground now, the prick! So we find a motel and start tomorrow.”
They were just about to move away when a young female voice challenged McLoughlin. “Excuse me, but aren’t you a detective?”
McLoughlin turned in the direction of the voice and was a little taken aback from the person it was coming from. “Who are you?” he asked the stunning young woman before him.
“Hi. Georgette McKinley, RTN ELEVEN,” she smiled, holding out her hand.
“A bloody television reporter. That’s all I need!” he muttered. Cautiously and hesitantly McLoughlin accepted the woman’s hand.
“My, we are a long way from home aren’t we?” she said.
“Hi… just on holidays really,” he told her unconvincingly, still a little off balance from being caught unawares.
Georgette glanced at Bourke. “You guys always holiday with your partners?” she asked, a note of sarcasm in her tone.
McLoughlin, quickly regaining himself, responded, “Ah, only if inseparable,” he told her, coyly. “Go away, lady” he heard himself urging.
“Somehow you don’t look the type. You are a detective aren’t you? I’ve just been putting together a one-hour special called Crimes of the Decade. This week I cut up the footage from that Mildura bunfight a few years back, and I could swear that you are the man who features in it prominently. Tell me if I’m wrong… er Sergeant McLoughlin. Yes, Ken McLoughlin.”
McLoughlin’s eyes flashed at Bourke then back to the young woman. “Ahhh… so you’ve got me,” he conceded, half throwing his arms in the air. “What can I do for you?”
“What are you doing here?” “On holidays.”
“No you’re not. Where’s your beach towel?”
“In the car.”
“Is this man your partner?” Not waiting for an answer she stepped in front of Dave Bourke. “Hi… Georgette McKinley.”
Bourke took hold of her out-stretched hand.
“And you’re a long way from home too, aren’t you?”
“And you ask a lot of questions!”
“I’m a reporter. That’s my job. Don’t worry, detective, I’m not going to stuff your brief…”
“You don’t know what my brief is,” he cut in.
“I reckon I could take a guess,” she answered thoughtfully.
“You wouldn’t even get close,” he responded.
“So tell me what you’re both doing here?”
“Listen, lady,” McLoughlin began, his patience tested.
“Uh-huh… don’t get mad. I won’t blow your cover. It’s just unlucky for you I recognised you,” she told him. “What do you know a
bout this lot?”
“We just stumbled upon it… besides, as you say, we’re a long way from home… now if you’ll excuse us?”
“So you won’t even give me a clue?”
McLoughlin leaned over into the woman’s ear. “Darling, if we did that, you’d piss yourself with excitement and blow our case. We’re just passing through and dropped in here to have a look after hearing about it on the air. So it’s goodbye from us.”
McLoughlin jerked his head to Bourke indicating they were out of there. Out of earshot, it was Bourke. “Bloody hell! How pushy was that?”
“They’re all the same, mate. Don’t let the glitz and glamour fool you. Most of ‘em have got balls. She wouldn’t be any different. Pretty faces like that have sunk many a good copper.”
Inside though, he knew Georgette McKinley wasn’t convinced. She may well have been onto a monster story here today, but she knows we’re onto a bigger one.
He turned to look over his shoulder and caught her watching them from afar as they disappeared from her line of sight.
* * *
Unbeknown to Bourke and McLoughlin, John James McGregor-McWeasely had also been watching their every move. It was only by sheer chance he had been in the city. John James was responding to a newspaper advertisement for ‘half price jeans for a half day only’ at a major department store near the corner of Liverpool and George. He checked the address and saw the store was close to the Town Hall Station which was also near Liverpool and George streets. This meant his face wouldn’t be publicly exposed for any length of time. And he did need clothes. He sat in the rear carriage of the train on the way into the city and held a newspaper up to his face. When he got off at the Town Hall, the police shootout had just come to an end. Like the rest of Sydney’s shoppers, he couldn’t resist seeing what was going on. As he made his way to the front of the crowd, he looked up and saw McLoughlin on the other side of the road.
For that bastard to be here, he would have to be after me… have to be. Why else would a Victorian copper be in Sydney?… especially that one… he’s the only one who knows me.
At that point, McLoughlin hadn’t spotted him. Quickly he backtracked, but not before McLoughlin caught a glimpse of him and his very recognisable walk. But it was too late. John James scampered away and was actually able to hide behind a stone wall leading down to the underground railway. McLoughlin’s search took him in the opposite direction. Keeping an eye on what was behind, John James waited until McLoughlin returned to the scene of the shooting. Then he saw him talking to his partner.
Haven’t seen him before. Yep. He spotted me all right. And that’s why they’re here. And he’s just been trying to find me. They’re gonna try and nab the fucking Weasel! Yeah, well you fucking-well try, you mongrel bastards, and you’ll get a whole lot more than you’re bargaining for.
John James watched the policemen talk with Georgette McKinley before walking away. He followed from a lengthy distance and saw them stop just short of their car. He couldn’t hear the conversation. He didn’t need to.
“Can you feel it?” McLoughlin said to Bourke.
“What?”
“He’s following us”
“Bullshit!”
“Uh-uh… it’s true. I can feel it. The prick is watching you and me right now.”
“Jesus, boss, you’re getting bloody paranoid!”
“Maybe,” McLoughlin replied, turning his head to look back over the distance they’d walked, straining his eyes to see in the distance.
“Why would he even suspect we’d be looking for him, even if he did see you?”
“For the same reason two goddamned police forces in two separate states haven’t been able to nail the son-of-a-bitch.”
Bourke’s eyeline followed McLoughlin’s. “I’m buggered if I can see anything.”
“I can’t either… that’s not to say he’s not there… and I’m telling you, I know he’s watching us right now.”
From his vantage point a good distance away, John James knew, deep in his gut, that he was the topic of conversation.
Yeah, they’re after me all right, he told himself, they’re certainly after me.
Chapter 9
Gina knew she had a problem. Not with Sebastian McAlister. She already had him just where she wanted him. Her problem was Franco. She knew she simply couldn’t waltz into Lay Lady Lay and say, “Hi Franco, want to rob a safe with me?” He would dismiss her comments as those of a silly, scatter-brained woman. She had to be clever. Most of all, she had to win his respect and trust. She also knew from previous experiences that Italian men were loathe to place all their trust in a woman. Trust wasn’t part of their genes. She would have to be alluring and aloof. She’d have to get angry, thus giving him the impression she didn’t need him… then hope beyond hope that the carrot of greed was too strong for him to ignore. She decided upon a plan of action.
Ring me at the Hilton. Room 797.
Franco looked at the message handed to him by one of the bar staff at Lay Lady Lay.
“What’s that?” Luigi asked casually.
“Gina. She wants me to ring her.”
Moments later he was dialling the number. “Gina?”
“Franco!”
“What the hell are you doing there?”
“Will you come in? We need to talk.”
“To the bloody Hilton! You must be jokin’ Gina! Why the hell do we have to meet in there? We talk one, two, three times a week. What’s so different about tonight?”
“Will you come?”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Never been more serious in my life,” she told him solemnly.
“Something wrong?”
“Not at all.”
“Someone got a gun to your head?”
Gina laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
Twenty minutes later, Franco was knocking on her door.
Gina checked the security-eye then released the locks. As the door opened, Franco was suddenly confronted by a woman he hardly recognised. Gone was the ‘cheap’ look. Her hair was freshly shampooed and shining. The brassy red lips and dark eye shadow had given way to soft tonings which complemented her features and there was no more tight leather mini-skirt, fish-net stockings and excessively high heels. Franco was literally frozen to the spot.
“G… Gina… Jesus Christ… is this you?”
The Sicilian redhead scoffed lightly. “You never would have guessed, would you? Now you know why I wanted you to come in. I could hardly turn up at Lay Lady Lay looking like this.”
Franco closed the door behind himself, totally nonplussed and wondering whether this woman had been conning him all along. “So who the fuck are you? Is this the real you or is what I get at the club the real you?” he asked with a degree of annoyance in his tone.
“Which do you prefer?”
Franco was still suspicious. He checked inside the wardrobe and behind the bathroom door. Even the shower alcove.
“I am alone,” she stated, again trying to convince him.
“Jesus, Gina! You’re two bloody people. If I saw you in the street looking like this I wouldn’t recognise you. What’s going on?”
“Like a drink…?”
“No, I don’t want a fucking drink. What the fuck is going on?” his anger beginning to build.
“OK.” Suddenly she took on her character from the club. “Just sit the fuck down there and I’ll tell you. Jesus Christ! What’s the matter with you?”
“How the hell am I supposed to react? You call me in here and suddenly I’m greeted by some bloody sheila like she’s straight from the pages of Vogue magazine!”
Gina allowed Franco to take a seat and deliberately maintained a silence for several seconds hoping to calm the situation. She pulled up a chair and sat directly in front of him. “Two years, Franco… is that how long it’s been?”
“So?”
“And in that time, I haven’t asked you any questions and you haven’t ask
ed me any… right?”
“OK… right… I don’t…”
“Just listen to me. You asked me if I’m two people. Maybe I am. But no man has ever turned me on like you do.”
She saw his defenses drop a little. Thank god for that.
“That’s probably why I keep seeing you. No demands. No forevers. Not a hell of a lot of conversation. No questions. Just sex. Right?”
Franco shrugged his reply.
“But the time has come for you to know a few things about me. I won’t bore you with all the family crap. We’ve all got our skeletons. But what I will tell you is that I am a fully-grown woman with feelings, ambitions and dreams.”
“Gina, this is crap…”
“Franco this is not crap!” she told him firmly, raising her voice and getting out of her chair to pace the room.
Franco became ill-at-ease with Gina’s change of temperament.
“Bloody hell! You want to tell me what the hell this is all about?”
“I’m trying to, all right? I’m trying to! It might also surprise you to know that by day I have a very good, very responsible and highly professional job. It gives me the opportunity to meet people from all walks of life… and I do mean all walks of life. From the high-powered to the blue collar. It may also surprise you to learn that your little Gina here has always dreamed of being very wealthy.” She laughed at her own words. “Not much chance of that I guess… at least not until now, and that’s where you come in.”
Franco looked hard at her. “Don’t look at me?… Jesus, babe, I’m not wealthy… !”
She spun round, again placing her hands on his knees and stared straight into his eyes.
“But how would you like to be… and I mean really like to be?” she asked, her clenched teeth muffling a tone of deep-seated bitterness.
Franco shifted uneasily in his seat. “I’ve never seen you like this before. What the fuck do you want me to say? Of course I’d like to be rich. Everybody would like to be rich. What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we can be.”
Franco pushed Gina’s hands off his knees and stood up. “What’s this ‘we’ shit?”
Again the Sicilian woman looked hard into his eyes. “As I’ve said, Franco, I’ve never asked you any questions. But I also don’t need to be bloody Einstein to know that you and your brothers are into all sorts of shit. And I mean the kind of crap that gets people locked up.”