I Catch Killers

by Gary Jubelin

Today, Jason and I are working on the killing of a toddler, one-year-old Jayden March. Ten days ago, on Tuesday 22 May, his foster mother, Linda Wilson, took Jayden into his local GP’s practice saying she couldn’t wake him up and he wasn’t breathing properly, but the doctor couldn’t save him. Jayden died. His body was covered with bruises.

  Working the case means being based in Sutherland, close to where Jayden was living, but which is on the south side of Sydney and a three-hour drive in traffic from Copacabana. The tail-lights on the road ahead come to a halt.

  Until recently, Jason and I were working at Kincumber Police Station, just 10 minutes’ drive from home, trying to catch a serial rapist. There’d been five, brutal attacks across the Central Coast that we knew of, as not every rape victim chooses to come forward, and we threw everything we had at trying to find him. Brave undercover policewomen were sent in to sunbake on the beaches where he targeted his victims. We spent days walking the nearby bush tracks, stopping any man who was out alone to ask for his details. We used the media to make sure the rapist knew we were looking for him.

  The attacks seemed to stop, although we hadn’t caught him. Not getting a result means always living with the knowledge he might hurt someone else and I was sorry to see that job end. Being based so close to home had also meant I could wake up and go for a surf with Jake as the sun rose, then afterwards we’d have breakfast together before I’d drop him off at Debbie’s on my way into work.

  Work and family life rarely seem to balance out the scales like that. At its worst, when it was my turn to have the kids and I was stuck at work, the kids ran loose, occupying themselves photocopying their heads on the police station photocopier, but at least I was close to them.

  I think I am a better parent for moving out of the family home. I’ve learned how to plait Gemma’s hair, iron their clothes, pack their school lunches and help them do their homework. All things I would have relied on Debbie for if we had stayed together.

  The traffic isn’t moving and my eyes are starting to close, so I crack open another can of the sickly sweet energy drink I’ve started to rely on to keep me awake during these drives. This morning, I tell myself, I need it. Jason and I are on call this week, meaning we respond to any murders happening across the State, whenever they come in. I managed about two hours’ sleep last night. I’ll spend three times that sitting in traffic before this day is over.

  It will feel good to get home tonight. A year after splitting up with Debbie, home is still the dog-box unit with two work shirts drying outside on the verandah. But at least Pam will be staying over with me tonight, which means she’ll be driving the same road back from Sydney this evening and the two of us can sit together and look out at the ocean together when we get there.

  * * *

  For a few years now, since around 1998, I’ve been lecturing on Homicide investigation as part of the detectives’ course run at the Goulburn police academy. At first, I’d been nervous at the prospect of standing up in front of a room full of people and uncertain what I really had to offer.

  The experience reassured me. It made me realise how much I’d already learned in the police and more comfortable about my ability to stand up and talk in public. The other benefit of lecturing on the course was Pam. She also lectured on the course and was one of very, very few women to prove themselves in the alpha-male world of the Homicide Squad, although we hadn’t worked together as Pam was part of the force’s Northwest region, while I was in North. There was something about her; she had poise and a don’t-fuck-with-me look, as if sending a warning to any man who tried to hit on her that she could bite his head off, but when you got past that, she had a deep compassion.

  It was Pam who came over to me years before, to ask how I was coping after Isaac was shot while I was talking to him outside the front door of his unit. After that, I’d seen her around at work every so often, but usually across a crowded office and was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed me.

  Like me, Pam wore dark suits, but hers were more elegant. She had fine cheek bones like a china sculpture, a graceful way of moving and deceptively soft blue eyes which had seen as many bodies as I had at work. In the past, she’d worked Arson, then the Breakers Squad, going after safe-breakers and professional thieves, and now she was one of only two or three women among the dozens of male cops who worked murders for a living. That took courage.

  Pam was tough and I respected the way she went after what she wanted in life. I recognised something of myself in her, and started thinking she might feel the same way.

  Work threw us together. Around the same time I started lecturing at the academy, the police force restructured into 80 Local Area Commands, with the four different regional Major Crime Squads brought together in one building in central Sydney under the new title of Crime Agencies. It meant the Homicide Squad was now a bigger, single unit, divided into six different teams, each led by an inspector, under which we still typically worked in threes of one detective sergeant and two detective constables. Pam and I were in different teams within the squad, but the change meant I still saw her in the office every day.

  Lecturing also meant we were both away from home for at least a night every few months. After spending our days teaching, we didn’t want to hang out with the students, so we would go out for a drink or dinner. I hated myself for my weakness, but, looking across the table, I could see she was different from Debbie. Pam understood what it took to be a cop and what the job took out of you, while Debbie was my childhood sweetheart. She was part of the world I came from before joining the police.

  Pam represented all the excitement of police work. If working homicides had been the current that carried me away from family life, then listening to Pam lecture or talking about her cases at the bar afterwards, was a voice calling to me to go deeper.

  Eventually, I betrayed Debbie in my mind. One night, after dinner in Goulburn, Pam came back for drinks in my motel room. We shared a six-pack and when it was finished, I told her, ‘You don’t have to go.’

  She laughed, stood up and said, ‘I will be going.’ The next day I apologised, saying I hoped she’d not taken offence. She hadn’t but said she didn’t think staying would be a good thing for either of us at that moment. ‘You do your own thing, but don’t factor me into it,’ she told me, which I took to mean that it was up to me to choose which path I followed. Pam didn’t want to be the one who broke up a marriage.

  I left Debbie. Afterwards, Pam and I started to go for drinks together, both at the big, raucous police functions, like when another detective retired, and during quiet evenings in bars where it was just the two of us and we would not be seen.

  I know I’m falling for her. We’ve both got broken marriages behind us. We both understand the pressures on each other. We both know one of us might be called out at any moment on a job, but we’re together because we want to be and we think it is pretty cool that way.

  We each have our own places. At first, Pam had an apartment in Epping and now has a flat in Chinatown, in Sydney’s centre, which means when I stay over we can walk to work in the Crime Agencies office in Strawberry Hills, rather than drive hours every day to get there.

  Days like today, Pam stays at my place on the Central Coast. She gets on well with Jake and Gemma, which she needs to, not just because she knows how much I care about them but because there have been days when the four of us have all been spending time together, crowded into my tiny bedsit. Eventually, the owners could see it was awkward and let me convert their garage into a second bedroom. Now Pam’s saying we should move in together, further up the coast. There’s a bigger place at Avoca I like the look of, which also overlooks the surf.

  At home, Pam helps me balance out my days at work, leading investigations, making constant decisions, aware that every choice, if it is wrong, could mean a criminal walks free, or worse. She asked me once what my favourite food was and I said, ‘Toast,’ meaning, I like it because it is convenient. Eating toast means I can fix a breakfast wi
thin minutes when I get up at 3.50am ahead of the long drive to Sydney.

  So she drags me to restaurants. To galleries and theatres. She tells me I’m entitled to enjoy my life. She says I’m too austere, that I don’t expect enough from life, or allow myself to have it.

  If I get up at five o’clock on a weekend morning to go training, she’ll say, ‘Just stay in bed, read the papers. We don’t have to do anything today.’

  I try just sitting there, but I don’t find it easy. I ask myself: Is this what life is actually about? We can just do what we want?

  It freaks me out. It comes with guilt. Easier to keep moving, which means working hard and training, and I am now getting private lessons in kung fu and qigong from Ben, the sifu who I met in Dural. Once, when I was sick in bed, Pam tried to put an arm around me but I pushed her away. I didn’t want her to see me when I was ill. She told me my weakness is that I will not accept weakness, in others or myself.

  With Ben, I still talk about yin and yang, but I recognise that life is out of balance at the moment. I have my work. Pam shares my job. Between the two, I don’t have the time to surf, or meditate like I used to, because I spend my hours instead sitting in a line of cars, struggling to get where I am going but halting, stalling and jerking forward, just one link in a chain of tail-lights.

  But soon I will arrive in Sutherland where I can start work, which means thinking about someone else; in this case, little Jayden March. It’s easier to keep moving forward.

  Like I tell Ben, there might be too much yin, the darkness, in my life right now, but it makes me a formidable detective.

  * * *

  It’s Friday 1 June 2001, and the plan is to interview Wilson on Monday. We’ve already got her phones off, meaning under surveillance, but now I want to put listening devices in her home as well, so we can listen before she does the interview and after, to see how she reacts.

  Jason and I are dealing with the police lawyers, formally declaring that our application for a listening device warrant is true and accurate before it goes to a judge, when I get a phone call from Pam.

  ‘Do you want to go to Paris?’ she asks.

  I struggle to make sense of the question. I’ve had so little sleep and have so much to organise, how can I go to Paris? I ask Pam, ‘When?’

  ‘This afternoon.’ She’s been asked to escort a prisoner who is being deported, and it means a free trip to France and back.

  ‘I can’t, Pam, I’m swearing out a warrant for Linda Wilson.’

  ‘Jubelin, you know I love Paris. We can go to Paris for the weekend.’ She’s trying to make me understand this is what couples do, they go on romantic holidays to Paris, but I’m still not thinking clearly.

  ‘Pam, I can’t. I’ve got the kids this weekend. I’ve got Linda Wilson. We’ve got to get her house off and I’ve got to prepare for the interview on Monday.’

  Pam starts to reply, but I cut her off. I tell her, ‘I just can’t,’ and hang up.

  Jason has overheard my half of the conversation. When I explain what Pam was offering, he looks at me like he wants to slap me.

  ‘You’re fucking mad.’

  ‘I’m not mad, Jason. I’ve got the kids tonight, I’ve got to take Jake to swimming practice. My passport’s up on the Central Coast. We’re doing Linda Wilson on Monday. How the hell can I go to Paris?’

  ‘You’re an idiot,’ he tells me. I stare at him, still trying to process everything that’s happening. I wonder if he’s right.

  Pam will understand, I think. She is so similar to me, so ruthless in the way she goes about her work as a detective. I’ve seen her nearly destroy herself working cases, including serious, gangland murders. She’ll understand why I have to be ruthless now.

  What is there to understand, you idiot? Our relationship isn’t some sort of mutually assured destruction pact. She’s right to want some time off. She loves Paris. And I know how long it might take to get this warrant issued and then organise getting the technical and surveillance units ready to fit the listening devices. We could fly to France and be back before it happens. Then I’m not sacrificing anything.

  You can’t just drown yourself in work because you walked out on your family. I’ve got Pam now. She can keep me afloat.

  I tell Jason: ‘You’re right.’

  He offers to work through the weekend on the listening devices and I tell him to call me when everything is ready. I call Pam back and tell her, ‘I’m in. I don’t want to pass this up. I’m coming.’ She doesn’t react. She just says to be at the airport for eight.

  I drive back to the Central Coast, through the same damn traffic heading out of Sydney. At home, I rush inside and grab my passport and some clothes, then pick up Jake and Gemma from Debbie’s, take Jake to swimming practice, phone my parents and ask them to take the kids for the weekend, and arrange for Dad to pick them up from me during a hurried meeting at Hornsby Police Station on my way back to Sydney.

  This is nothing new to Jake and Gemma. With me on call one week in every six, they’re used to being bundled into the back seat of the car at short notice, sometimes still half asleep from being pulled out of their beds at night, while I drive towards a new crime scene, calling my sister Karen or my parents to ask if they can take the children.

  Sometimes during these journeys, if we are on the freeway with no other cars around, I’ll put the siren on to distract them. Once, before Debbie and I split, I was looking after Jake and had to go into the police station one night to deal with a crook. Jake sat alone at a desk in the darkened office while I was in the interview room, until I needed to leave it to use a computer. Light spilled out from the open door, giving Jake a view of the crook sitting inside, at the table. I had to walk about 20 metres away to get what I needed, so I told Jake, ‘If that person moves, you yell as loud as you can.’

  He sat there in silence and only told me later he was terrified.

  * * *

  I meet Pam at the airport and we take custody of an angry Frenchman. He fights me the whole way to France.

  At Charles de Gaulle Airport, after a 30-hour sleepless flight spent trying to restrain him, the other passengers get off the plane and he and I wrestle in the aisles, ripping his shirt, before we hand him over to the gendarmes. I’m so tired that when we get to our motel, I drink glasses and glasses of water from a tap without noticing the sign saying ‘Eau non potable’. ‘Water not for drinking’.

  Pam takes me out to enjoy the city. When I wake up on Sunday morning, not only am I feeling the effects of a night out drinking, but I’m also sick from the bad water. That evening, I call Jason from a payphone in the street outside to ask how everything is going. It’s Monday morning in Australia and he tells me the listening devices warrant has been authorised and the technical and surveillance cops are on standby.

  Christ. I have to go back. The job’s ready to start. I can’t leave the other cops waiting.

  It’s like having an addiction, doing this work. I simply need to be there.

  I tell Pam: ‘I’m going back a day early.’

  ‘Jubelin, we’ve got two more nights’ accommodation here in Paris paid for and you’re telling me we’ve got to go home?’

  ‘I’ve got to. I’ve got to do Linda Wilson.’

  She’s furious, but we fly home together a day early, on Monday. Pam says she doesn’t want to stay on in Paris alone. I spend the flight to Sydney preparing for the interview, while Pam ignores me. I tell myself that if this was her case, she would do the same.

  We get to Sydney on Wednesday morning and there’s fog, so we’re diverted to Melbourne and sit there on the tarmac before flying back to Sydney. From the airport, Pam and I go into work.

  I’ve barely slept. I’m fucked. Jason takes one look at me and says, ‘Go home and sleep. You’re no good to anyone.’

  I drive back to the Central Coast and sleep, then fight my way back through the early-morning traffic on the Thursday to do the interview with Wilson.

  Innocent Littl
e Boy

  7 June 2001: 16 years in

  ‘How would you describe Jayden to me as a child?’

  Linda Wilson looks at me with calculating, piggy eyes. ‘Very happy,’ she says. ‘Content, lovable. Great eater.’

  That’s good, I think. You’re talking. Right now, I just want her to feel comfortable. I want her to underestimate what she’s got herself into by sitting down to talk.

  We’re inside one of the small, windowless interview rooms in Sutherland Police Station, just before 8pm on a Thursday night, because Wilson agreed to be here. As it stands, I don’t have enough evidence to arrest her, which means she can walk out of here whenever she wants. I don’t want to let that happen, and the best way for me to prevent it is to make her feel confident. To make her think that I cannot hurt her.

  We’re like two boxers, circling each other. In this fight, I want to let her get confident, make her commit. Let her think that I’m just a bumbling detective and the best thing she can do is give me her version of what happened.

  Then I can contradict it.

  I smile and ask another fluffy question, ‘In saying that, a great eater, what was his favourite food?’

  Wilson reels off a list: ‘Spaghetti bolognese, um, chicken, ah, loved vegies, fruit, yoghurt.’ Her mouth is set in something like a smirk. ‘He was always looking for more food.’ I nod encouragement.

  ‘Yes.’ Keep talking.

  ‘Give him dessert, like yoghurt or custard or something, and he would wander off to the fridge and maybe point as if he wanted more food.’

  Wilson had been uncertain when I called her this evening, asking if she could come and answer a few questions. ‘I don’t know,’ she told me. ‘Maybe later.’ She and her husband, Tony, had just ordered a pizza.

  ‘Finish it,’ I told her. ‘Take your time.’ It was important I did nothing to alert her.

  I don’t want her to suspect that I have any real interest in the case, let alone that I had been there during the one-year-old’s autopsy, or spent the days following it hassling a paediatric surgeon to shift his focus from the lives that he might save just long enough to concentrate on this life already lost, to help me understand the bare, clinical descriptions of Jayden March’s injuries given in the autopsy report.