by Gary Jubelin
‘Yeah.’
‘When you provided police with a statement on 12 June, five days after her death, you were so confident that she took her own life that you didn’t even want an inquest. How were you so confident?’ I ask him.
‘I can’t imagine,’ he says. He also seems calm. ‘I can’t think of a single person or good reason as to why it would be anything else.’ He frowns, as if turning his thoughts inwards to make sure he is certain before continuing: ‘There’s certainly nobody I know who’d ever want to harm her.’
He leans forward: ‘Who would kill her and why?’
I don’t respond.
It feels like an age has passed since I was in the park this morning, practising qigong. Back then, continuing the form, I moved on to a smaller, equally controlled movement, raising my hands, palms upwards and bending my arms at the elbows until they were flat in front of me, then turning my hands over and moving them down, repeating the movement. I felt controlled. I could feel my chi energy move through me.
The slow cycle of the ERISP machine’s cassette tapes brings me back into the present. Continuing the interview, I ask about Caroline’s scheduled meeting with the psychiatrist. ‘I believe you said she had an appointment on the day of her death?’
‘If my memory serves me, it was on, was it four o’clock on Wednesday, her appointment?’ asks Gordon.
Inside, I cringe because I don’t have the answer. I tell Gordon, ‘I, I’m not sure.’ Jason flips through the papers in front of him.
‘OK. I think it was something like that,’ says Gordon.
I try again, saying Caroline’s family told us she was uncertain about marrying him. That they thought he was the one pushing the idea.
‘Her family were very accepting of me,’ he says. Caroline’s father was going to lend them money for an apartment. ‘At the time, I remember him as saying, you know, I’m paraphrasing but it was like, Well, she’s yours now.’
‘Yes.’ I’m on the back foot, out of balance.
‘Not that Caroline was a chattel.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But, you know what I mean, it’s like “She’s in your care” and so on. Acceptance of her being under my stewardship.’
‘Right.’ I don’t know where this is going.
Gordon says he never told his friends that they planned to get married. ‘We were very homey, couple-y sort of people. I don’t know, Gary, if I did tell some of my very, very good friends. I may have.’
Breathe out, I think, let the tension flow out with each exhalation.
I ask about his previous descriptions of the week leading up to the discovery of Caroline’s body, starting with the Monday, two days before she disappeared.
‘The thing I remember is that she told me she had been to the doctor. She was explaining why she was depressed,’ says Gordon.
‘Yes.’
‘She said, “I don’t think I’ve come to terms with my mother’s death.”’
I ask about the Wednesday, the day before Caroline’s body was discovered, when Gordon’s boss, Rene Rivkin, had been having lunch with Graham Richardson at a restaurant in Darlinghurst, in Sydney’s inner east.
Gordon told the inquest Rivkin asked him to pick up Richo after the meal and drive him back to work in the city centre.
Only, I tell him, we’ve spoken to Richardson, whose diary shows he was having lunch that afternoon with someone else.
‘You’re a smart man,’ I tell Gordon. ‘I’ll be clear with you, what we’re trying to establish here is your movements on the day Caroline died.’
‘I understand that.’
We’ve also spoken to another witness, who claims he saw someone who looked like Gordon at The Gap that afternoon, arguing with someone who looked like Caroline. ‘So it’s very important that we lock in what your movements were for that particular day.’
Gordon repeats his previous account. ‘I appreciate that it’s fucking awkward for me.’
He says that just because Richo’s diary says he had an appointment elsewhere, doesn’t mean he wasn’t actually with Rivkin.
I tell Gordon we also have a Diners Club statement from that day in the name of rugby league executive Peter ‘Bullfrog’ Moore, the person Richo’s diary says that he was having lunch with.
‘Yeah.’ He pauses. ‘So Peter Moore could have eaten with anybody, right?’
He’s right. I’m just asking for his explanation.
Gordon continues, ‘The question is, who did Peter Moore have lunch with? Richo can’t tell you he was definitely with Peter Moore, ’cause he could’ve done something different to his diary.’
‘You say that with a degree of certainty,’ I tell him.
‘No, I don’t say that with a degree of certainty, I say that with a degree of defensiveness, because at the moment, you know, you’re questioning what I did.’
‘Yes,’ I say. It’s not a personal attack. I’m just presenting the facts. The only movement in the room is the ERISP cassettes recording our conversation.
‘You understand why I take it personally?’ he asks. ‘I lost my fiancée and six years later I’m still embroiled in this, which is not pleasant for me.’
‘You’re still maintaining that your recollection of the day is that you picked up Graham Richardson,’ I say. ‘Is that correct?’
‘Yeah. I mean it is correct.’ Gordon continues: ‘I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you know, maybe I got my days wrong.’
I tell him, ‘I’ll explain it simply.’ A witness says he saw two people matching the descriptions of Gordon and Caroline arguing at The Gap on the day before her body was recovered. ‘And now we can’t establish any form of alibi for your whereabouts that afternoon.’
He understands: ‘People are wondering how I found myself at The Gap.’
Right now, nothing exists outside these four bare, peeling walls.
‘Why did I know to go to The Gap?’ Gordon says he simply ended up there, after driving round his and Caroline’s favourite places. ‘But it’s also a good place to go to if somebody is in a depressed way, to look for them, isn’t it?’
‘Well –’ I start to answer, but he interrupts me. ‘Excuse me, Mr Wood –’ I try but we are talking over each other.
‘I didn’t drive to The Gap. That’s the point I’m trying to emphasise, Gary. Everybody’s assuming I just poodled off to The Gap. I know I didn’t do that. I didn’t poodle off to The Gap.’ His voice is rising.
I let him talk.
‘So, yeah, I’m getting agitated,’ Gordon says. ‘I’m getting agitated because six years later, my life is sort of in a mess and I’m meant to sit here. I’m just trying to help you guys, I’m trying to help myself.’
Moments later, Jason hands me an aerial photograph of The Gap and I ask Gordon to show me where he found Caroline’s car, and to mark the spot with a blue pen.
‘No, I won’t mark it,’ although he points. ‘That’s in the vicinity.’
‘And you won’t be any more specific than that?’
‘No, sorry mate, but I feel a bit under attack here.’
‘I –’
He interrupts: ‘You know, I’m getting scared now.’
‘I want you to be accurate, Mr Wood.’
‘I’m scared to talk to you, ’cause you’re having a go at me.’
‘No, I think what –’
He interrupts again: ‘Can you just hit pause?’ He means on the ERISP machine. ‘Because I want to talk to you about how I’m feeling.’
‘I would rather continue talking on tape,’ I say. I do not stop the recording. He looks at me. I’m feeling more balanced now. Gordon says it has been so long since Caroline’s death.
‘Can you understand why . . . it’s difficult for me, emotionally? It’s difficult for me to trust you. I met you out the front of my apartment and my instinct and my belief in truth and honour and justice and all those noble values,’ he continues. ‘I am trying to help you because I’m hoping that you�
��re going to help me.’
‘I understand.’
He tells me that, not only is he innocent of any involvement in Caroline’s death, but he’s actually a victim as well. ‘It’s doubly worse.’ And yet, he says, he still came here to talk to us.
We go over the facts again: Gordon’s fiancée disappeared; he found her car; he thought he could see something from the clifftop using only a handheld torch while Caroline’s brother, who was with him at the time, saw nothing. Gordon was right. That was where Caroline’s body was recovered.
‘Are you saying that I’m present when she goes over the cliff?’ he asks me.
‘I’m saying that they are the facts, the way that they present themselves,’ I answer him.
He denies any involvement.
‘You’re certain on that?’ I ask him. ‘Don’t take offence.’
‘It’s massively offensive.’
* * *
After almost five hours, the conversation returns to whether Gordon was driving Richo back from lunch with Rivkin on the day before Caroline went missing.
‘I have often wondered, or sometimes wondered since then whether I got confused,’ he says. ‘I’m dropping off, picking up people all the time.’
I do not commit myself, saying only ‘Mmmm,’ and ‘Right,’ while he keeps talking.
‘I’m trying to be honest,’ says Gordon. Maybe he got his days wrong, and it wasn’t Richo in the car with him. Maybe it was Rivkin. Or maybe someone else. ‘I’m not helping myself here,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry it isn’t very clear, but I am human.’
In fairness, nothing he has said is evidence that Gordon was involved in Caroline’s death. He says that there are lots of other things that he might want to clear up with us, only he hasn’t had much time between first seeing us outside his home and now. I tell him that he has our number. If there is anything else while we’re in town, to contact us and we will try to clarify them.
‘That will be it,’ I say. ‘The time now is 7.05pm. I’ll suspend the interview.’ I switch off the ERISP machine.
The three of us sit back and I breathe out, exhausted.
This morning, after finishing my qigong, I sat, cross-legged, on the grass to meditate, facing the sun. I felt centred, more able to notice the details of what was going on around me than before; the light playing on the water, the sound of children’s laughter, my own breathing. Even though it was a hot day for London, the sunlight seemed weaker than at home, I noticed. The colours around me were less bright than I was used to. The edges of the shadows less certain.
* * *
You don’t normally get to pick and choose your jobs in Homicide. Mostly it’s luck. If you’re on call, which you are one week in six, you work whatever murder happens.
But, in November 2001, when I first hear about the disappearance of Terry Falconer, a prisoner working on day release, I’m interested. Then Jaco is sent up to the Mid North Coast, where a body’s been discovered, and I want to know more. Jaco is already handling a lot of cases at the moment. We speak by phone and he tells me he’s overloaded. Someone else will have to take on this one.
If it is what I think it is, then straightaway I want to lead it.
Despite a decade working murders, and even doing time in the Organised Crime Squad, I’ve never had the chance to take on a real gangland killing. This has all the hallmarks; sawn-up pieces of the victim’s body found inside blue plastic bags floating in the Hastings River near Port Macquarie, a few hours north of Sydney. Whoever could do that to another human being is no ordinary criminal.
I’ll need to talk to the squad commander, but first, I ask Jason and our other team member, Nigel Warren, if they’re up for working on the case. The three of us have worked together since the first murder case I led, the shooting of Barbara Saunders, and I trust them. If I’m being honest, it goes deeper than that; I need them.
We joke about it between ourselves. When we get called to the scene of a new murder, I’ll introduce us to the local police commander, saying we balance each other out: ‘I’m the serious one, Jason’s the joker. I charge ahead, while Nigel is more cautious. He’s analytical while I am physical. And you can tell by his name that he’s the nerd, he’ll take charge of the computers.’
Jason will usually chip in with a smartarse comment: ‘Don’t listen to Gary, he’s got no personality, and he looks like Monty Burns when he’s naked.’ But the truth is, we do each balance the others out. Each of us has strengths where the others have weaknesses.
All three of us also have lives outside of work, and this looks like the murder could take us away from home for weeks. Christmas is coming up, though personally, I’d welcome the chance to avoid it. Last year’s was my first since leaving Debbie and I chose to go into the office and work rather than stay at home and face up to how our family is splintered.
But not everybody has my problems.
Nigel and Jason may not share my motivations but they still say yes.
I knock on the door of the Homicide Squad commander, Nick Kaldas. He’s only recently taken over the squad but I already rate him, he’s worked the streets, spent time on undercover operations and has a politician’s charisma. I can see how the commander’s job will be a step he climbs on the ladder to higher things.
Nick looks up. ‘Come in, Jubes.’
‘You know that job up at Port Macquarie, the body in the bags?’ I ask.
Nick nods. ‘Yeah, he’s been identified as that prisoner, Terry Falconer. Jaco’s up there working the on-call response.’
‘I know, I’ve spoken to Jaco and he can’t keep the job because he has some other matters he’s working on. I’d like the job.’
Nick frowns. ‘Are you sure you want it?’
‘Yeah.’ I tell him Nigel and Jason are also available, that the Caroline Byrne investigation is moving slowly and that Grayson, the suspect in the Barbara Saunders murder from a year ago, just pleaded guilty, meaning we don’t have to prepare for a trial, so have the time to spare.
‘That’s great,’ says Nick. The case is ours. ‘Thanks for putting your hand up. I don’t think it’s going to be easy.’
Nick turns back to the paperwork waiting on his desk. I walk back into the squad office to pass on the news to Jason and Nigel, wondering what I’ve just got us into.
* * *
A week later, early on Sunday 2 December, Paul Jacob picks me up for the drive to Port Macquarie. We’re both working overtime and Jaco’s on his way back to the crime scene after picking up a change of clothes from home. When we get there, he’ll conduct a one-day handover to my team before returning to Sydney and, while he’s looking tired from all the work and travel, he still has that same old, reassuring smile.
This should just be two mates on a long drive together, a chance to spend some time with the guy I consider a mentor – but I’m wound too tight to enjoy it. Right now, the Australian boxer Anthony ‘The Man’ Mundine is fighting for the super middleweight world title against the German hard man Sven Ottke. I promised myself I’d watch it; for me, boxing means memories of childhood, practising punches with my grandfather or sitting on the lounge with Dad to watch Mundine’s own father box on Friday Night Fights while I was growing up.
As an adult, I love the way the boxing ring is a test of character. You get in there and face your fears. Mundine has passed that test repeatedly. I’ve followed his career ever since he switched over from rugby league.
The drive means I can’t watch the fight, so I’m hanging on every update I can get from the news bulletins on the car radio. In the early rounds, Mundine’s looked good. He’s tough and fast, giving the champion problems.
‘Listen, buddy,’ Jaco says, bringing my attention back to the murder. He tells me how the body was discovered, when, on the night of 25 November, a fisherman found a plastic bag floating in the river and cut it open, seeing something that looked like skin, tattooed with a pair of lips, some sharks and a woman lying with her hands behind her head and a towel ro
und her midriff.
The fisherman called the police, who went out in a boat in the early hours of the next morning and found five more bags, each bound up with silver duct tape like the first, wrapped in chicken wire and weighed down with a round river stone.
Jaco says the gases produced by decomposition caused the bags to float and, without that, we might never have found them. Inside, the body had been cut up with a handsaw. It was the tattoos, still visible on the victim’s skin, that allowed police to find a match to descriptions kept in custody records, allowing Terry Falconer to be identified.
The people you are looking for are brutal, Jaco says, but I’m distracted. I ask him to pull into a club just off the highway and head inside.
‘Are you showing the Mundine fight?’ I ask the barman. He shakes his head.
Back in the car, the radio is saying things are heating up in the fifth round. ‘He’s gaining confidence,’ I say to Jaco, who looks at me and smiles, then shakes his head and turns back to the highway.
I’ve got this, I think. I’m no longer just Jaco’s apprentice. I’ve led the Barbara Saunders murder case. I’ve led the investigation into the death of Jayden March.
We talk through what Jaco’s team have done in Port Macquarie. Normally, with any new murder case, you start with the crime scene. You get photographs, forensics, expand the area cordoned off with police tape rather than contract it, make sure you gather every single piece of evidence.
Only, we don’t have a crime scene. We don’t know where Terry was butchered. And the stretch of river where the bags were found isn’t going to tell us much.
After learning everything you can from the crime scene, you move on to the victim. Who was Terry? What did he do? Who did he know?
These questions we can answer, thanks to his criminal record, which shows how Terry’s life has been played out before the courts.
As a young man, he worked as a miner and panel beater. After that, he was in tow trucks at a time when the industry was both corrupt and violent.