by Gary Jubelin
Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of:
James Kelly
Eileen Cantlay
Martin Davidson
Bernadette Matthews
Colleen Walker-Craig
Evelyn Greenup
Clinton Speedy-Duroux
Barbara Saunders
Jayden March
Caroline Byrne
Terry Falconer
Michael Davies
Michelle Pogmore
Bob Ljubic
Ian Draper
Ryan Pringle
Matthew Leveson
William Tyrrell
Tori Johnson
Katrina Dawson
Courtney Topic
Mengmei Leng
Theresa Binge
Clint Starkey
and to all the other victims, their families and the cops who try to solve these cases.
The trauma ripples out.
Epigraph
Compassion leads to courage.
– Lao Tzu
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
Round One
Not Giving Up
That Looks Good
I Look Like a Policeman
16-1
Afraid That I Will Fail Her
I Want to Become a Detective
I’ll Fight You
If a Killer Offers Me His Hand
Diving into Cool Blue Water
A Whale in the Bay
Molotov Cocktails
You Don’t Give Up
Perfect Formula for Happiness
You Don’t Leave the Fucking Stick-Ups
Do What Your Mother Tells You
Don’t Hurt Him
You Don’t Go Straight to Homicide
This is Not Right
Scar Tissue
The Path That You Have Chosen
Bowraville
Round Two
No Good to Anyone
Innocent Little Boy
Paris. London.
I Don’t Think It’s Going to be Easy
U Love Me
Walking Evil
Just Pure Anger
You’ll Have to Wear a Uniform
Double Jeopardy
Gary, Gary, Gary
Norco Corner
Stone-Cold Killer
This is Personal
Underbelly
Round Three
Enough to Walk Away
Justice Comes in Different Ways
What Other Options Have You Got?
Bring Him Home
The Right to Silence
There’s No Death That’s a Good Death
What Do We Want?
A Million Dollars
I Thought I Would Get Blamed
White Spider
Knock ’em Down, Bowra!
Is Everyone Happy?
I Know Where William Tyrrell Is
The Pain and the Sorrow
Broken Beyond Repair
Why Are They Doing This to You?
A Decision Made in Anger
Nothing Here to Celebrate
Red Sun
He Was a Boxer
Don’t Cry
They Were His Words
I’ve Been Waiting for a Year to Say That
I Own It
Postscript
Acknowledgements
Photo Section
About the Author
Back Ad
Copyright
PROLOGUE
This is Not Going to be Simple
‘Fuck you, policeman!’
The voice comes through the closed front door beside which I am sheltering. ‘We’ve got a warrant,’ I shout back.
‘Fuck off!’ The man’s voice gets louder and more violent.
‘We’re not going anywhere. Open the door.’ You’re trapped in the fucking unit, stupid, I think. If you don’t open the door, we’re going to knock it down.
‘Fuck youse. Go on, get fucked!’ he shouts.
I look across the doorway at the other detective who, like me, has his pistol drawn and his back flat against the wall. A tough unit who played reserve-grade footy and goes by the nickname Strongboy, his eyes tell me he’s thinking the same as I am: This is not going to be simple.
Two other cops standing in the shadows of the stairwell are also waiting for my decision on how to play this. If only this fucking idiot would unlock the door, then I could turn, reach out and force it open. Then we’d be through it and inside his place in a few seconds.
Except, we don’t know who is in there with him. And we don’t know if he is armed.
‘Just open up and talk to us,’ I shout.
‘Get fucked!’ he shouts again from inside the unit.
‘Drop the knife!’ Another voice.
What’s going on?
The quick sound of a gunshot.
Silence.
A woman screams.
We start kicking the door – only it doesn’t buckle.
With Strongboy, I shoulder-charge the door, one at a time at first, then both of us together until it breaks off its hinges and falls down flat, sending the two of us crashing into the apartment.
Inside, a man’s body is lying on the floor in front of us, with a long-bladed knife beside him.
The woman is on my left, bent over, still screaming.
In front of me is a policeman, still holding his gun.
Round One
Not Giving Up
Late 1960s
My father stands above me, forcing one of my arms back and up until it hurts, then forcing it further.
The easy thing would be to cry out.
Like every time he does this, it started off as a wrestle, the two of us grappling on the floor of our little house in North Epping, me in my pyjamas, a kid of five or six. Then he started twisting my arm behind my back until it feels as if the shoulder will pop free of its socket.
The pain makes me gasp.
‘Do you give up?’ he asks. It is a test.
‘No,’ I tell him.
Another twist.
I could beg him to stop, but Dad’s trying to teach me something. Something he doesn’t seem to need to teach his other children. I am his first son, and he wants me to be tough, like he is. He’s teaching me to be a man because he knows that life is hard.
‘Give up?’
‘Not giving up.’
However much he hurts me, I won’t cry out. I am as much a part of this as he is. I am not going to fail him.
He laughs and lets me go. I’ve passed the test. The pain subsides.
I look at him.
My dad, Kevin, can hold a room’s attention. Sometimes it seems as if he’s too large for any room to hold him. A tradie, Dad is working his way up and will one day retire as General Manager of the New South Wales Building Services Corporation, one of the last people to get to the top of the public service without formal qualifications. I want to be like him myself when I am older.
When he’s at work, I know that Dad is smart, decent, a leader. When he’s at home, he’s different. If he’s cranky then the house is full of tension, but if he’s happy the whole house relaxes. During the summer evenings, he sits outside by the barbecue with men from work or with our neighbours late into the evening, playing cards and laughing. As kids, we don’t understand what getting drunk is, but they seem to be happy and we like it when he smiles.
There are fun times, when Dad leads the athletics competitions at our birthday parties, leaping over lounges and hitting the walls, or when he pours so much petrol on the bonfire at Cracker Night that we all run, screaming, at the explosion.
Other times I think I shouldn’t have to take this.
&nb
sp; My father is a bully. You can dress it up, say that he’s a hard man or whatever, or that it’s just the way men are. But I’ve seen him control his temper when he wants to. He chooses to let it control him at home.
At home, I am often in trouble. I’m the kid who’s crying in the corner, unable to get what he wants but too proud to back down. ‘Men don’t cry,’ Dad says, leaning down and holding my shoulders with his big hands, his face close to mine. The way I understand it, he’s telling me: You don’t show weakness.
Sometimes, he also hits me. I think it’s more out of temper than chastisement. There is never a closed fist, he never knocks my teeth out. It is a slap, or he’ll grab me and throw me around.
Sometimes, he takes the feather duster to me, whipping me with the hard, wooden handle. One day, when I’m six or seven, we’re having lunch in the backyard and I think about that feather duster. I decide to throw it on the barbecue.
My dad sees what I’m doing and warns me, ‘I dare you.’ I throw it right into the flames and watch it burn with satisfaction. It is gone.
He stands above me, suddenly enormous. He’s angry, but to my surprise I realise he’s also proud of my rebellion. Dad laughs. It’s confusing.
I think my father is a decent person, despite all his anger.
Born in 1936, so long ago I can’t imagine what the world was like then, and the youngest of four, he was called ‘Tiny’ by the rest of his family. His lost his mum when he was eight, not much older than I am when I destroy the feather duster. His elder sister married and started her own family when he was in his early teens, leaving Dad with just his brothers and his father. The three boys stole the few clean clothes that they had from each other.
My only memory of Dad’s father is from the hospital before he died. Dad was a young man then himself. He told me about how hard his father found it, bringing up four children on his own.
One time, his father refused to let him in the house. Another, his father shot at him through the closed front door but missed.
Maybe Dad wants to make sure I’m better able to deal with what life is going to throw at me than he was. He didn’t have a mother to teach him how to deal with his emotions, and so I like to think that when he grew up and thought, What can I give my son?, the only answer he came up with was to teach me toughness.
I know that he loves me, but neither of us ever says ‘I love you’ to the other. Instead, I learn my lessons. Don’t show weakness. Swallow your anger and resentment. Let them burn inside you.
So when he asks me: ‘Do you give up?’ I reply, ‘Not giving up.’
Not giving up, no matter how much it hurts.
That Looks Good
Early 1984
Two policemen run past as I’m having lunch with my girlfriend Debbie on the grass in Ryde Park, in Sydney’s northwest suburbs. They’re chasing someone down the main road towards the local shopping centre.
‘That looks good,’ I say to Debbie. She looks at me and frowns, but can’t see what I’m thinking.
I’m five years out of high school and working as an electrician. It’s all right. I go to work from Monday to Friday, then great, the week is over. On the weekends I surf, taking wild trips along the coast with mates, partying beside a fire on the beach at night, then camping out or sleeping on a mattress in the back of my Mitsubishi L300 Express van. I’m tall and thin, my skin is tanned and my unruly hair, which curls around my head on each side in a tumble, has grown long, with streaks of blond in it from the sun and saltwater.
I live my own life and tell myself that I do exactly what I want to. If I’m looking forward at all, then it’s only to imagine a succession of other surf weekends stretching out in front of me. Debbie is my first steady girlfriend, she and I have been together since the end of school and we are going good. She is a little wild, like I am.
One day, maybe, we’ll probably get married.
Only, something pulls at me like an underwater current. Sometimes, when I’m paddling back towards the shore after a surf, it feels like life onshore is just a little empty. I’m free of responsibilities, but still my happiness is dictated too often by the ocean: I ride high when the waves are good, then crash into depression when the conditions are not right.
I guess I’m looking for some deeper meaning. Something to fill those days between the weekends. Except, at 22, I don’t know what that looks like.
Watching those two cops chasing that crook, I feel that pull again, but stronger. I don’t want to come to terms with a life spent in the building game. I don’t want to do the same thing, day in, day out for 20 years. I can do it if I have to but nothing about the prospect excites me. I like the thought of catching bad guys, just like I grew up hating bullies. Staring down the empty road, where the two cops have turned a corner and run out of sight, I find I like the thought of having purpose.
After lunch, back at work, I tell one of the other blokes about seeing the foot chase.
He grins. ‘Mate, I’m just about to join the cops myself.’
He has all the application papers on him. He gets them out and starts showing me what I need to fill in where. It is exciting. We are feeding off each other. Being a cop beats sitting amid the dust of the construction site getting ready to go back into the ceiling cavity and start crawling around in the dust and dirt fixing the wiring in place.
Both of us want more from life, we tell each other.
The next day I go to the local police station at Eastwood and get my own application forms. Suddenly I’m leaving Debbie in Sydney and driving my surf van down the Hume Highway, heading inland, away from the beaches where I’ve spent all my weekends, to the New South Wales Police Academy in Goulburn.
I fight a battle with my feelings the whole there.
Have I sold out? I’ve been enjoying freedom, I think. I surf, I drink, I get into a few fights. My nose is slightly crooked from where it got busted during a brawl on the Gold Coast one New Year’s Eve. The cops are not my favourite people. For starters, I don’t like authority – I ask too many questions. The people I look up to do not wear uniforms, they’re surfers, who’ve made a life out of doing what they want to do.
I can’t be a cop.
I drive on, staring out at the low scrub on either side of the empty highway. But then, I’ve always liked the idea of being tough and having discipline. Maybe it’s growing up with a strict father, but I crave it. When I was younger, I thought about joining up and becoming a soldier, although I never did it. I like the thought of being part of something bigger than I am.
I have these two parts to my character. The surf bum and the kid who refuses to show weakness. They’re both a part of me, I’m not one of the other, like how some of the older hippies I’ve hung out with on surfing trips talked about yin and yang. The light and dark. I don’t really understand it, but it seems to make sense.
I think about turning the van around, then hear my father’s voice, or something like it. I remember how he used to look at my school reports and tell me they weren’t good enough. How I felt like I could never do enough to please him.
Running a hand through my hair, which is now cut short, ready for the academy, I tell myself, If I’m going to go through with this, then I’m going to give it everything.
I remember what Dad taught me.
Do you give up?
Never.
I drive on down the highway.
* * *
The squat accommodation blocks at the academy in Goulburn are as bleak as the bushland that surrounds them. It’s January 1985 and the summer sun seems to have bleached the life out of everything.
The little window in my bedroom faces the boiler tower. From outside, I can hear the sound of marching feet as new recruits are drilled on the parade ground.
When my turn comes, I line up for inspection and the instructors walk along the line of wannabe police officers, stopping only to shout at us. My collar isn’t straight. My spit-polished boots aren’t shiny enough. My hair is still not s
hort enough, so they send me to the barbers, who cut it even shorter. As the days pass, these inspections are a regular routine. ‘Jubelin, what are you doing?’ becomes a familiar cry.
This treatment breaks you down. Makes you conform. I learn that, at first, you ask yourself: Why am I marching round this oval in the middle of the day? Later, you learn the answer is: Because it’s an order. Eventually you stop asking the question.
In our first week we have a gym session, working in pairs. My partner, Bill, is doing the leg press, lifting a stack of weights, and starts to shake with exhaustion. An instructor puts his hand into the weight stack and says to Bill, ‘Drop it and you’ll crush my fingers.’ I’m impressed. That is hardcore. Bill manages another repetition.
Nearby, another of the recruits collapses and starts throwing up. The instructors make him do press-ups over his own vomit.
Fucking fantastic, I think. It’s weird, I’ve given up my freedom, and found this is exactly what I wanted. It’s yin and yang. The physicality of the endless drills seems real, while being an electrician who went surfing when he wanted feels like a dream from which I have awakened. It is as if the cops know who I really am, better than I did myself.
The instructors watch as I take my turn on the leg press, pushing myself to my limits. Each exercise they give us, I aim to finish first or, at worst, second among my recruit intake.
If you want someone who will not give up, then I’m that person, I tell them silently, straining at the gym equipment.
‘OK, Jubelin, maybe you can ease up now,’ they tell me.
* * *
As much as I am loving my new life, it’s difficult being apart from Debbie.
She’s a year younger than me, slight and slender, with long dark hair and a smile that makes you want to smile along with her. We went to the same primary school, then separate high schools, then became friends again after school was over. I liked the fact she was a little bit rebellious. During a surfing holiday with mates around Byron Bay, we drank and partied, slept in cars or on beaches, and realised the two of us had another shared history from when we were kids; both of us had gone bushwalking separately with our fathers when each family got lost. The two groups found each other in the bush and worked together to find our way home, making it back well after dark had fallen.