I Catch Killers

by Gary Jubelin

  One day at home when I am six or seven, I find a black and white photograph from before I was born, of Mum wearing a winner’s sash at a heat of the Miss Gold Coast competition. She tells me she was on holiday with a friend at the time. She didn’t expect to win, but when she did, the beauty pageant organisers drove her around the Gold Coast in a convertible. When she got home, Dad refused to let her go back and compete in the final.

  It is almost impossible to imagine Mum had a life before she had us kids. She’s the person who gives us breakfast, dresses us, takes us to school, and then is there to greet us when we burst into the house again in the afternoon. She makes our dinner, sits with us to do our homework and puts us to bed. In the evenings, she works at the knitting machine in our crowded living room, making us clothes. But because she’s always there, we take those things for granted.

  Mum’s softer than Dad is. She’s the one we cuddle up to when he’s away on work trips. When he’s at home, he sometimes dominates her, which upsets me. There are some things that I don’t like to think about, like when I’m 10 or 11 and we go on holidays to the New South Wales South Coast. Afterwards, when we get home, something inside Dad explodes.

  My sister Karen and I cower behind the heavy bifold doors that separate the dining room from the kitchen, peering around them at where Dad is getting angry and smashing plates. Mum is crying, she pushes him away, only that doesn’t stop him. Outside, it’s a peaceful summer afternoon. The sun is shining. But in the kitchen it is dark, with heavy, timber cupboard doors and furniture.

  The argument continues. It’s getting worse. I know I have to do something, so I walk into the kitchen and stand there, silent, staring ahead of me. I want to step between them, thinking that I should be the big man who stands up to my father, but I’m frozen with fear. So I watch him, feeling helpless.

  Afterwards, I tell myself that I was a coward. That I needed to protect Mum. That what Dad did was bad, but he’s not a bad person. It’s confusing. He’s my dad and I love him.

  I’m not sure who makes the call, but Mum’s dad, Charles, turns up and takes us away for a week to live with him. I look up to him without question. He boxed when he was younger and has a fighter’s busted nose. We play together, with him kneeling on the floor and teaching me how to throw my punches.

  During that week, he tells my mum, ‘Don’t worry’, and points at me. ‘He won’t be able to do that shortly with him there,’ he says.

  He means that I am growing up. That I will be able to protect her. He shows me how to stand with my right foot behind the left one and how to lift my heel and twist my hips to put some power behind my fist.

  I Want to Become a Detective

  21 November 1986: one year in

  Debbie and I marry in a church service in Beecroft, near where we both grew up in Sydney. She wears white, I wear a suit with a bow tie and my groomsmen are my brother, Jason, a schoolmate called David and Mark, my elder sister Karen’s ex who used to take me surfing growing up. When Debbie and I walk out of the church, I look up and see a group of drunken mates who’ve climbed up to sit on the awning of a nearby bottle shop. I laugh as they start cheering.

  Debbie’s still doing secretarial work and, after my year on probation, I’ve recently been back to the police academy for six weeks’ secondary training to become a full constable. This time, being apart was easier. The relationship feels solid. Neither of us doubt that we are meant to spend our lives together.

  We’re renting an apartment behind a pub, and when we’re not at work we do a lot of partying. We honeymoon at Noosa Heads, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and then, in 1988, we follow Sydney’s suburban expansion and buy a house further out, in Dural, where my parents have also moved.

  Nobody’s talking about children yet, but we know they will happen.

  On the weekends I turn up at my parents’ house with one of my mates, wearing boardshorts and usually hungover after a night on the drink, to play doubles against Dad and his partner, who wear proper tennis whites, as if they’ve just stepped off the courts at Wimbledon. The four of us have some epic battles; the older men are better players and my mate and I are often playing not to lose, but I like that feeling. It brings out something deep inside me. A determination. I find I’m often at my best when the match is going against me.

  Facing Dad across the net also marks a change in our relationship. We are men now, I’m married and starting out in a career, just like he did. I’ve started to appreciate the responsibilities he carried as a husband and to leave my own childhood behind me when, too often back then, I hated him. Instead, I now remember how he was always there when I needed him.

  He is my mate. I have his name – Gary Kevin Jubelin.

  One weekend, walking past the Dural squash courts, I see a sign advertising a kickboxing class. That looks cool, I think. I did judo briefly as a kid but lost interest, though I’ve watched countless Bruce Lee and other martial arts movies over the years since. I also remember the boxing moves my grandfather Charles taught me and follow the sport so keenly even Debbie’s started to get into it – on the first day of our honeymoon, we watched Mike Tyson win his first world title on the TV in our motel room.

  I go inside. A woman’s leading the kickboxing class, and judging by size, my first thought is that I could knock her out. But there’s a confidence about her that catches my interest. I sign up and quickly learn she could knock me out any time she wants to. At first, watching her fight, it’s like watching Bruce Lee, as if she has superpowers. But the classes focus on drills, not one on one combat. We line up and practise how to kick and punch. I realise the secret. It’s not a superpower. Anyone can do it if they’re prepared to put in the work. It’s simply repetition, repetition, repetition.

  A class a week turns into four or five. I love the discipline and the physical exertion. I learn to love the feeling of fear and excitement when you do face your opponent. In those moments, nothing matters, not what is going on at work or home. You can live a thousand lives in each sparring session and, afterwards, I learn to love the feeling that you have survived, when you are soaked in sweat, your breath feels hot and your mind races in wild exhilaration.

  The classes become more advanced and the instructors start to talk about the mental side of the martial arts. We line up on the mats in horse stance, legs bent at the knees, thighs at 90 degrees to the floor, until our thigh muscles are screaming. The instructors tell us to not fight the pain. Let your mind wander, they say. Let the pain pass out of your body with your breathing.

  I feel myself becoming stronger. My uniform is growing tighter round the shoulders. I like the confidence that comes with knowing I can handle myself when someone comes at me during an arrest, or on a Friday night when everyone’s been drinking. Knowing how to fight helps you deal with some of the fear that comes with being a policeman.

  * * *

  The uniform itself does not protect you, especially in some of the isolated semi-rural areas we cover, like Dural, Arcadia and Wisemans Ferry, where there’s no radio contact. During night shifts, I wonder what is hiding in the shadows. Fear is a familiar feeling now, a mix of adrenaline and excitement, which leaves your stomach churning afterwards.

  Even in daylight, that feeling can be on you in a moment, like when you’re surfing and a wave crashes down and tumbles you beneath the water. That’s how it feels on the morning of 4 August 1987, when the car radio crackles ‘16-1’ and then: ‘Armed hold-up in progress.’

  Armed robberies are a serious problem for the cops. They seem to happen all the time. People get shot. Three months ago, in May, a man was shot and killed during the robbery of his jewellery store in Cabramatta, southwest Sydney. Right now, Australia’s most wanted man, Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, is an armed robber and on the run after escaping prison. The radio tells us to head to the nearby Hornsby branch of the National Australia Bank and my first thought is, Mad Dog might be there ahead of us.

  Pulling up, we see a red Toyota Hilux has dri
ven straight through the bank’s plate-glass window.

  We watch as a policeman seems to fly out of the building and land in the shattered glass on the sidewalk. Has he been shot? I think: It’s on here.

  I draw my gun and run into the building.

  Inside, whoever’s robbed the bank is gone. A young teller is bleeding badly from a head wound and I’m not sure he will make it. Witnesses tell us how the Hilux hit him when it smashed its way in, driven by two men, both armed with guns, who must have been sitting outside, waiting for somebody to open up the night safe.

  A photographer arrives. The robbery will make the morning paper. Mad Dog has not been seen, it seems, although that doesn’t stop the journalists from saying he might have been involved somehow. It turns out nobody got shot either. That policeman I saw had tripped and fallen through what was left of the window.

  With no one to arrest, I put out a description of the two men and the car they were seen driving away in over the police radio, then stand guard on the scene until the detectives get here. It’s only after, as the fear drains away, that I get that familiar sick sensation in my stomach.

  * * *

  There are other arrests. One night shift, we discover a firearms store’s been set alight. A witness gives me a description of who lit it and, remembering somebody I pulled up just the day before who looked like that, we talk our way into a house and find an Aladdin’s cave of stolen jewellery and electronics.

  Soon after this, Glen asks me if I’ve considered coming over to join the detectives.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve considered it,’ I say, almost too shy to admit it’s what I want. Being a detective means more of the excitement I’d seen with Glen during that car chase. It means more responsibility for solving crimes, not just dealing with whatever trouble comes your way on the night shift. The detectives are the elite, I think, and I would never have the front to knock on their office door and say, ‘Hey, I want to join you.’

  I’m also uncertain because Glen recently chewed me out in public for making a sloppy entry in the occurrence pad, where we record what’s happened on each shift and which hangs by the front counter of the police station. It is a pain to fill it in, you have to put the sheet of paper into the typewriter with another carbon sheet behind it to make a copy and start the whole thing again to correct a mistake. But I misspelt a word and Glen picked up on it.

  ‘The occurrence pad is what you’re judged by. This is the first report of a crime. Take some pride in your work,’ he told me. I knew he was right, and said it. So I’m surprised to now receive an invitation to step up and work beside him.

  But, even though I want it, I’m conflicted. The detectives wear plain clothes and part of me wants to stay loyal to the mates I have in uniform.

  We’ve been through so much together in the two years since I joined up – faced life and death and grief and triumph, sat in police cars at night talking shit until the sun came up, rolled around with crooks in the streets and gone into houses together without knowing what was waiting for us. Every time, I knew I could rely on the guy in blue beside me.

  Leaving all that and putting on a suit will feel like a betrayal.

  I seek advice from an older cop, Russell, who used to work as a Homicide detective and who manages my soccer team. I’ve loved the game since I was a kid, and it suits me. I play defence and, while I’m not the most skilful player on the pitch, I make sure you have to work to beat me.

  ‘Go for it,’ he tells me. ‘It’s a good thing.’

  With his blessing, I allow myself to be excited and can’t stop thinking about a move to the detectives’ office. Next time we play a soccer match, I slide into a tackle, mis-time it and my opponent comes down hard with his knee on the back of my head. It knocks me out.

  I came round, stunned, but feeling euphoric. As my head clears, I realise why.

  That’s it, I think. I’m going to be a detective.

  I’ll Fight You

  1973

  Not long after we spend the week with my grandfather Charles, Dad and I are blueing in the driveway, in full view of all the surrounding houses. Dad wants me to register for the upcoming soccer season, I love the game but don’t fancy the commitment. I just want to spend my weekends with my mates.

  ‘I don’t want to play soccer this year,’ I say to him.

  ‘You gotta play,’ he tells me.

  ‘I’ve got other stuff I want to do. I’m not playing.’

  ‘You’re bloody playing.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  He screams at me.

  ‘I’m not playing,’ I say again.

  He lashes out, but I square up and tell him that I’m ready to fight him.

  He looks at me and something shifts between us.

  * * *

  I still want to be like Dad when I am older – he works so hard, and can put his hand to anything. But nothing I do is good enough, no matter how hard I try to impress him.

  When he watches me play soccer, he never says that I played well. Instead it is: ‘You shouldn’t have let in that goal.’ If I bring home a school report, he’ll find the one subject where I’ve done badly.

  One night, he comes into my room while I’m sitting at my desk and asks, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Doing my homework.’

  He leans over to look and doesn’t think it’s good enough. I say something and he grabs my hair, smashing my face into the desk.

  I tell myself it doesn’t hurt.

  * * *

  I have my first organised fight, with a kid from school called Trevor. He and I play soccer together and have a disagreement over something.

  Trevor’s not the type you’d want to fight – he’s one of those kids who look like they’re carved from granite – but neither of us will back down, and so it is decided we will settle this in person when the school day is over.

  We agree to meet at North Epping Oval, near Trevor’s house. It’s out of my way, so if I wanted, it would be easy for me not to show up. I could just make my way home and go nowhere near the oval. Only my pride will not allow it.

  I’m frightened, walking there alone, still in my school uniform, but am not about to show it. Instead, I accept I am going to get my lumps. When I get there, Trevor’s waiting.

  A group of other kids is crowded near the roller on the pitch to watch us, but there’s not much we can show them. There is no skill or science to our fighting. A few punches are thrown. We wrestle each other to the ground and grapple in the dirt. I’m in a headlock when Trevor hits me in the face. His punches hurt.

  In that moment, every sense is stronger, the red blood on our hands and faces brighter, our classmates’ shouts are clearer, the smell of earth and grass being ground into our skin more powerful than I have ever sensed them.

  We punch each other out, then something breaks us up and we each look at the other. My shirt is torn, my eye swollen and my nose is bleeding. I don’t think I’m the winner, but I’ve held my own. I’m proud of myself.

  Afterwards, I think our differences are settled, particularly as we play soccer together the following weekend. But I’m wrong.

  I never tell anyone about this, but a year later, after school is finished for the summer, I walk out of the shops in North Epping and see Trevor on his bike across the road. He calls me out: ‘Come on, come on, I’ll fight you!’

  This time his aggression scares me. I say nothing and don’t move. I am frozen.

  He throws some more abuse, then turns his back on me and rides away.

  I watch him go. I feel relieved but also shameful. His family are moving north, to Newcastle, a couple of hours away, so this will be the last time I see him. Maybe if there had been a crowd watching us, I would have acted differently, I would have fought him. But I didn’t.

  It makes me doubt myself. Am I a tough guy, or do I only care about my reputation? Am I actually a coward? Have I let myself down? Have I let my dad down, even though he didn’t see me?

  Trevor is
gone. I look around. No one has seen us.

  I decide never to talk about it, ever. It is my secret.

  I’ll think about that moment constantly. It drives me. It dictates how I live my life from that day forward.

  If a Killer Offers Me His Hand

  1987: two years in

  I start working as an A, meaning I’m wearing plain clothes and have a desk in the Hornsby detectives’ office but haven’t yet qualified as a designated detective. My first partner is Jim Williams.

  A decade older than me, Jim’s in his mid-30s but looks younger and is a dead-set charmer. If Jim wants people to like him, then they like him, whether it’s crooks or women or whoever. He knows his law and makes sure he’s across every detail of our cases. He pushes me hard, so hard that it’s exhausting, and I like that. It’s like when I play soccer, what I lack in skills I can make up for in commitment.

  Best of all, Jim teaches me to interview a suspect.

  ‘You need to be good at this,’ Jim tells me, ‘because we rarely have much in the way of forensic evidence.’ This is the late 1980s; fingerprints are manually checked, there are hardly any CCTV cameras, and a bloodstain might tell us a victim’s blood type but little else. Instead, Jim says, the measure of a true detective is how he or she can talk to victims and witnesses, and how they get confessions.

  As the months pass, the different people that we interview start to blur in the memory, but each one starts the same. Jim and I stand together outside the door of the small, dark interview room at Hornsby. Inside, our suspect will be sitting at a bare table with two more empty chairs. They might be a man or a woman. They might be a hardarse or a softhead – someone who thinks that they’re a hardarse when they’re not. Depending on the crime, they might be handcuffed to the table beside the overflowing ashtray.