Beyond the Horizon (4 page)

Cursing, Matthew used the intermittent starting and stopping of his engine to limp towards the enemy airfield. His pursuer sensed that his plane was in trouble and when Matthew flew abreast of the Albatros he could clearly see the leather-helmeted and goggled enemy pilot. German, Matthew thought, signalling with his free hand that he intended to land and surrender. The enemy pilot waggled his wings to indicate that he understood and took up a position behind Matthew as he nosed down for a landing.

A curious crowd of pilots and ground crew were rushing from tents and pits as Matthew, his engine spluttering and coughing, brought the Nieuport to flop down with small bounces along the airstrip. He passed Turkish soldiers sporting big moustaches and almost friendly smiles – it was not every day they captured a intact enemy aircraft that could be repaired and put back in service for their own air force. Behind him the pursuing aircraft landed and taxied. Matthew could see the enemy running towards him and it was only a matter of seconds before he would be forced from his cockpit to surrender.

For a moment he reflected on what he would take into captivity with him. He looked down at the photo tacked up next to his knee. A pixie-faced young woman smiled back at him. It was the photo of the woman he had fallen in love with while serving further south in the Sinai. The beautiful and mysterious Joanne Barrington had used her role as a neutral American archaeologist to gather intelligence for the British government against the German–Turkish forces in Palestine. Joanne and Matthew had briefly been lovers, but Joanne had disappeared from Matthew's life after being captured by the Turks and ransomed to her extremely wealthy family in the United States. Matthew had also learned that she had returned home pregnant with his child. He had written to her but his letters had been returned unopened.

Angrily, he flicked over the ignition switch and was stunned to hear his engine roar into life without any sound of the spluttering interference. The first enemy soldier had reached his aircraft and was yelling to him in Turkish. Matthew could see that he was a huge man and was already gripping the edge of the bottom wing. Without hesitation Matthew gunned the engine; his aircraft picked up speed, leaving the startled enemy behind. They had seen how his plane was in trouble when it landed and now, as if by a miracle, it was hurtling down the strip with its tail already in the air. The Turkish soldiers often referred to the Nieuport fighter plane as the instrument of Allah, and the stunned Turkish soldier Matthew had left in his wake must have thought that was true after the engine's miraculous burst of life. The German pilot who had followed Matthew down the runway had turned off his engine and was now desperately attempting to get it started again for the pursuit.

Matthew's aircraft rose gracefully into the air and he pulled his stick to gain altitude, avoiding a burst of anti-aircraft fire. He held his breath, hardly daring to believe that he had escaped. God knew how, but the engine was performing magnificently and he was soon up to his maximum speed of one hundred miles per hour.

He flew low for the first few miles in the hope that he would not be seen from above by any enemy planes. At one stage he was so close to the ground that when he crested a hill he found himself in the midst of a Turkish cavalry encampment. Startled men and horses scattered everywhere. Matthew's heart almost stopped beating when he saw that he was level with the men on horseback flashing past him. The plane shuddered as its tail skid collected a clothes line hung out at the end of the campsite. Trailing washing he clawed for altitude and the clothing eventually spun away to the arid lands below.

Suddenly bullets tore into his fuselage. He craned his neck around to see who was firing at him. It was the Turkish fighter plane flown by the German pilot. The German had closed the gap when Matthew's plane had collected the washing. Matthew groaned – there was not much he could do now; he'd run out of manoeuvres. As a last resort, he wondered whether he could find a cleared, level area to land his plane. He had done that once before during this campaign and survived. He turned his head and that's when he saw them.

‘Bloody beauty!' he shouted. Three AFC Nieuports had appeared at his twelve o'clock high and were racing after the Turkish aircraft, which had now wisely broken off the attack on Matthew to defend itself against the new threat. When Matthew stared out across the nose of his plane he could see his airfield through the blur of the propeller. He had survived, and with his first two kills for the war. Three more would make him an ace.

When Matthew brought his Nieuport to a halt at the end of the strip he could see his ground crew running towards him. That was all Matthew remembered until he awoke hours later in the hospital tent. He had collapsed under the mental strain of flying, fighting and trying to stay alive.

‘Are you feeling better, old chap?' asked the squadron medical officer.

Matthew eased himself onto his elbows and felt the dull throb of a headache. He was thirsty.

‘Got any water?' he croaked.

The medical officer, who had once had a country practice in a South Australian village, passed Matthew a tumbler of heavily treated brackish water to drink. Gratefully, Matthew gulped it down. ‘Intercepted Turk radio signals confirmed that you shot down two of their Taubes,' the doctor said. All enemy aircraft were referred to as Taubes by the Australian flyers, regardless of their actual manufacture. ‘Well done.'

‘I just got lucky,' Matthew said. ‘Not my day to go west.'

‘Well, the CO wants you to debrief him and it will be your shout in the mess tonight,' the doctor said with a smile. ‘I'm discharging you.'

‘Thanks, doc,' Matthew said, easing himself from the bed. His limbs felt heavy but his head was clearing. ‘I'll get over to HQ now and give my report.'

As he made his way slowly to the HQ Matthew halted for a moment to gaze across at the horizon now sheltering under the blaze of a setting sun. There was a strange peace in this troubled land which he was coming to love. He knew that if he survived the war, this country would always call him back.

3

T
he sun was setting over the scrub-covered plains of Glen View; already the first chill of the coming winter was in the air.

Giselle Macintosh loved this time of year; at last the sweltering heat of summer had passed, and sleeping at nights was comfortable again. She sat in her chair on the verandah of the sprawling station house, shelling peas for tonight's roast. The peas had been grown in her own vegetable patch, watered by the towering windmill that pumped up from the creek. Her toddler son, David, was covered in dirt. He was outside, playing with the local Aboriginal boys, sons of the property's stockmen and their families. David would need a bath before he went to bed, Giselle thought idly, dropping the shelled peas into a colander.

Since she and David had been exiled to the remote family property by her hated brother-in-law, George Macintosh, Giselle had actually found a peace beyond any Sydney could offer with all its hustle and bustle. She still missed her beloved Alexander, killed in action on the Western Front barely a year ago, but somehow the grief was more bearable out here. She'd lost her much admired father-in-law, Patrick Duffy, too, but she was grateful that her mother had been able to move out here with her. Karolina Schumann was living on the mission station adjoining Glen View. Giselle was puzzled by the fact that her mother had chosen to live in sin with the Lutheran pastor, Karl von Fellmann, although her mother never spoke about the relationship and Giselle did not ask. It was a strange affair, especially because she and her mother were Jewish.

In the distance Giselle could hear the Aboriginal stockmen calling to each other as they brought in their horses to be unsaddled. It was a soft and pleasant banter in a language she was attempting to learn. The stockmen and their families lived a mile from the homestead in their own camp, and Giselle sometimes attended to their medical needs there. They were paid in the basics of flour, sugar, beef and tobacco, and Giselle thought they seemed satisfied with that. Still, she knew the intrusion of the whitefellas, first with their sheep and then with their cattle, had disrupted their nomadic way of life forever, and very few in the district remained outside the station's influence. The only exception was old Wallarie. His home on the sacred hill was shunned by even the European stockmen, most of whom respected the beliefs of their indigenous colleagues. The years had brought Wallarie a reputation as a mystical man not to be crossed lest he become vengeful.

Giselle smiled when she heard her son chattering in the simple words of a child in the local Aboriginal language. He was a very bright boy and already had a rudimentary grasp of German, which was the language his doting grandmother talked to him in at night. He spoke some English too, but with a Scottish brogue picked up from the station manager, Hector MacManus, and Giselle's family servant, the tough Scottish former soldier, Angus MacDonald. Both Scots vied for the little boy's attention and played a role as de facto fathers in his life. Although very young, David could already sit astride a horse and occasionally use some of the bad words of the stockmen, picked up when he was allowed to join them around the yards. Needless to say, his grandmother and mother chastised him severely for the use of such profane and blasphemous language.

‘Come inside, Davy,' Giselle called.

The little boy reluctantly broke away from the game of throwing miniature spears at an empty bully beef tin. He was covered in dust and Giselle wondered if Karolina would bathe him tonight. Giselle had to oversee the portion of prime beef roasting in the oven with vegetables, to be served to the hungry men invited to the dining table tonight. There would be the two Scots and a couple of the station hands, and business would be discussed as the gravy jug was passed down the table; later the whisky bottle would come out, along with mugs of hot, sweet tea.

Later that night, after dinner had finished and the men had gone back to their quarters, Giselle took out the two letters the postman had brought today in his horse and sulky. The man drove the long stretches between the isolated cattle stations of central Queensland, delivering the precious cargo of letters and parcels.

These letters were about Giselle's only contact with news beyond station life. Newspapers that arrived were often a couple of weeks old, and Giselle had little interest in reading the latest war news – the pain of losing Alex was still too great. There were nights that she would hug herself in the privacy of her room and sob for the loss of her beloved husband. Oh, how she missed the feel of his strong arms around her and the smell of his skin lingering between them after they had made love. That she was not the only young wife missing her husband was a fact of war, though, and she guessed that there were nights when the tears of women – wives, mothers, sisters and lovers – could have filled an ocean.

Giselle savoured the moment when she could sit alone on the verandah after all the day's work had been done and read the letters under the yellow light of a kerosene lantern. She looked forward to the tidbits of gossip from Louise Macintosh, her sister-in-law in Sydney. It was rare to receive a letter from her solicitor, Major Sean Duffy, but the embossment on the envelope that had come today indicated that the second letter was from his office.

Giselle sat down and opened it. When she'd read it she stared out across the moonlit yard to the shadowy trees beyond. She could hear the curlew's mournful song far away in the direction of the creek, where, it was said, a clan of Aboriginal people had been massacred many years earlier.

‘He's asleep,' Karolina Schumann said, joining her daughter on the verandah. ‘He didn't put up much of a resistance this evening – he was absolutely exhausted . . . Is that a letter from Louise?'

‘No, it is a letter from Mr Duffy. It appears that Patrick left a will superseding the one that exiled us to Glen View. It seems that David is a major shareholder of the family company, although of course he is unable to assume direct control until he is twenty-one.'

‘My God,' Karolina said. ‘You're not as poor as a church mouse after all.'

‘I'm afraid the change of circumstances will not return Alexander's house to us, or even return us to Sydney,' Giselle said. ‘Until my son turns twenty-one we will remain at George's mercy.'

‘You do not wish to return to Sydney?' her mother asked.

‘This is my home now,' Giselle replied softly. ‘This place makes me feel closer to Alex, it's where he grew up. David will grow strong here. And he'll be safe from George. I'm afraid that my brother-in-law will try to harm David in some way. He is a very dangerous man.'

The two women sat in silence for a while. Eventually Giselle sighed and looked over at her mother. ‘What do you plan to do when the war is over?'

‘If the Australian government grants me permission to leave, I wish to return to New Guinea and take back our plantation,' Karolina said. ‘It is all I have – other than you and David.'

‘But what of the pastor?' Giselle asked in surprise.

‘Karl is a very good man,' Karolina replied, ‘and a part of me will always be grateful for the love and understanding he has shown, but we are too different.'

‘Are you intending to leave him?' Giselle wondered why she should feel so concerned when she had always frowned on their relationship, living as man and wife when they were not so.

Karolina looked at her daughter with a sad expression. ‘There have been letters from his ministry admonishing him for living in sin – and with a Jewess too. God knows how they found out about our circumstances from the other side of the world, but they have, and even though Karl says that he's not concerned about the accusations, I know they could ruin his career in the church. No, it is best if we separate.'

‘I'm so sorry it has come to this,' Giselle said with genuine concern. ‘But I also understand.'

Karolina reached over and touched her daughter on the cheek. ‘You and David are all I have left in this world. For years I carried hate in my heart, blaming your husband for the death of your father. But when I look at David I can't help but see Alexander. A child so beautiful and so much a part of his father makes up for the years of pain.' Karolina shook her head. ‘But enough of this gloomy talk. I see that you have a letter from Louise and I expect her news will make us smile. She is a good friend to you.'

Giselle opened her sister-in-law's letter and began reading aloud about parties, balls and afternoon teas. Outside, the curlews continued their cry under the crystal-clear night sky.

The room stank of decomposition, and rising damp had added to the stench. Inspector Jack Firth stood at the feet of the woman's bloated body. She was lying on her back in the middle of the tiny living room. On the walls were faded prints of the Sacred Heart and a couple of popular landscapes. Clothing hung on string from one wall to another and it was already smelling musty. Jack had seen many such scenes in his long career; they were not uncommon in the slums of inner Sydney. Those who could afford the real estate were already moving to the leafy suburbs ringing the city; only the poor and desperate remained in the overcrowded, unsanitary shacks bordered by narrow, rubbish-strewn laneways.

The victim was in her late forties and had probably been stabbed to death, Jack mused as he stood staring at the murder scene.

‘You know who she is?' he asked, turning to a young constable in his dark blue uniform and white pith helmet. The constable was staring at the decomposing body with an expression of morbid interest. The dead woman's floral dress was up around her hips and she was naked from the waist down.

‘Er, not sure, sir,' he replied.

‘You bloody well should know everyone on your beat if you want to be a good copper,' Jack growled.

‘Think I know her,' the police photographer said, squinting through the camera's aperture to frame his subject. ‘She was one of the girls who worked for a bloke called Lenny Johnson. She mostly worked around Railway Square. I was on a job over there about a month back and noticed her with Lenny. I don't know her name, though.'

‘Thanks, Sid. When you've finished, let the fingerprint crew in. Constable, arrange to have the body moved to the morgue.'

‘Yes, sir,' the constable replied. ‘What do you think happened, sir?'

‘Pretty bloody obvious,' Firth answered. ‘She was raped and stabbed to death. A client probably left his wallet at home and she said that she didn't put jobs on a chit.'

Jack Firth stepped out of the room onto the narrow landing, but the smell of rotting flesh followed him. From experience he guessed that she had been dead for at least a week and in this part of town no one talked. This was Frog Hollow, an area of Surry Hills into which even police were reluctant to venture. Jack reckoned that his only chance of nailing someone for this murder was to lean on his informants. He patted his suit pockets to locate his packet of cigarettes. He removed one and struck a match. It helped with the smell a little.

There were heavy footsteps on the wooden stairway leading to the landing.

A constable appeared and said, ‘Got a message from Phillip Street that you are wanted by the inspector general, sir.'

Jack frowned. It was very rare for the head of the New South Wales police force to request to see one of his subordinates unless something was awry.

He stubbed out his cigarette and made his way to the street. He hopped onto a tram and got off at the corner of Phillip and Hunter. The Star Hotel had once stood on the site but it had been razed and in its place was the multistoreyed police headquarters.

Jack went directly to the office of Inspector General James Mitchell. He knocked and was bid enter. Jack stepped inside the office and looked across to a desk where a man with spectacles and intelligent eyes stared up at him.

‘I got a message that you wanted to see me, sir,' Jack said.

‘Have a seat, Inspector Firth,' Mitchell said politely. ‘There is a serious matter I wish to discuss with you before anything gets committed to paper.'

Jack eased himself onto a leather chair. He felt distinctly uncomfortable – he had a lot in his past that might come back to bite him. But he also reassured himself that he was the best in the business of snatching criminals and his reputation outstripped his rank. ‘Well, sir, I have nothing to hide.'

‘That's good,' Mitchell said. ‘It has come to my attention that while you were seconded to the intelligence departments some impropriety may have occurred on your shifts. What do you have to say to that?'

Jack squirmed but attempted to keep his composure. His focus was drawn to a thick folder on Mitchell's desk; it was marked with his name. He recognised it immediately and felt a cold chill of apprehension.

‘Sir, with respect, you have to be more specific.'

Mitchell glanced down at the thick folder. ‘I have before me information in regards to certain irregularities concerning an alien prisoner, Karolina Schumann. Possibly you could explain.'

‘I am not aware of any irregularities, sir,' Jack protested.

‘The matter of having her released last year from Holsworthy internment camp – without authorisation from either our department or that of the military,' Mitchell said. ‘That constitutes a serious breach of police regulations.'

‘I am not sure what you mean, sir,' Jack lied. ‘I may have been negligent in some of my reporting but I have not contravened any regulations. Any investigation into what I did when I was detached will clear me.'

‘You sound very sure of yourself, Inspector Firth,' Mitchell said. ‘I hope not only for your sake but also for the department's that you are right. You are one of my most senior police and a damned good detective. It will look bad for us all if it turns out there was some wrongdoing in relation to this case.' Mitchell closed the file and pushed it to one side of his desk. ‘That will be all, Inspector Firth.'