[citation needed] In April 1938, while serving as a sergeant in Haifa, he investigated the deaths of two Arab women and two British Police officers who were killed in a bomb blast on a train.
[citation needed] During his service in the Palestine Police, Irgun accused Cairns of the torture of a number of its members,[1] including Benjamin Zerony and Mordechai Pacho.
MI5 files report that the real reason for Cairns' assassination was his and his sergeant’s (Tom Wilkin) success in closing the net on Avraham Stern.
[3] Previous attempts to assassinate Cairns had been made by shooting from the pillion of a motorcycle when he was walking with his German fiancée Marianna Laur in a market.
Cairns, using his service revolver, pushed his fiancée aside and shot the pillion rider dead, with the driver escaping on foot through the town.