‘Don’t worry, I’m not having an affair.’ Kerry pulled a face of self-mockery. ‘With this body?’ she gestured at her waistline. Pausing for a moment, her tone became confidential: ‘It’s a surprise.’
Kerry walked over to the sink and as she rinsed the cups, she muttered, ‘Why is this bastard doing this to me?’
Amanda pretended she had not heard it. Her relationship with Kerry was warm, closer than just boss and employee. They were like sisters, yet Amanda did not want to pry. Now, as she lay on her bed in the dark, Amanda wished she had. She remembered thinking at the time how out of character it was for Kerry to be angry or upset. In the hour he had been at Willow Park, this man, this Bruce Burrell, had clearly distressed Kerry.
Three days after the visit, on a Saturday morning, Amanda was standing in the kitchen with Kerry, in almost identical positions to the ones they had been in when they had the conversation about Bruce. It pricked Amanda’s memory and she was about to ask Kerry, ‘Hey, who was that Bruce guy?’ But one of the children scurried by, and the moment passed. If only she had. If only . . . Damn it. Now it was the police’s best lead.
Amanda was not only troubled, but a bit scared, and had earlier confided in an officer, ‘What if this guy finds out I’ve dobbed him in? What if something happens to me?’
The officer’s reply was hardly reassuring: ‘If something happens to you, we’ll know it’s definitely him.’
Amanda felt better about her revelations when James chipped in with some more information. ‘Sure,’ he told police when they asked whether he remembered the man, Bruce, visiting his mum. In particular he remembered his car. ‘It was a Jaguar sedan XJ6,’ the eleven-year-old rattled off to the detective. James was positive about the vehicle’s make. He was a car buff, with a vast knowledge of vehicles, both vintage and modern. But he was not so positive about the colour. ‘It was either a dark green or blue colour with white and black numberplates. It had white creamy seats,’ he said.
The detective probed him further. ‘Did Bruce say anything to you?’
‘He said he just went to the pistol club at Lithgow. Amanda let him in.’
‘How do you know the man Bruce had been to a pistol club?’ the detective asked.
‘’Cause he said that,’ James answered.
‘You told me earlier that when Bruce came to the house your mum was very happy to see him,’ the detective said. ‘Why do you say your mum was happy?’
‘I ran out to the door to see who it was but I didn’t recognise the car. Mum saw him, she was like really happy. She hadn’t seen him for a long time.’
Kerry had said to James: ‘Don’t you remember Bruce? He’s an old friend of Daddy’s.’ James didn’t.
James said he was watching television, and did not hear what his mum and the man talked about in the courtyard. But he had followed them out to the car, standing with his mum as Bruce drove off . He liked his car. ‘When he left , Mum didn’t have a good look on her face. She was not happy and not in a good mood.’
Was there anything else?
James looked sheepish. ‘Yep.’ He squirmed in his seat. ‘Mum said to me: “Don’t tell Daddy he was here” . ’ James had done as he was told.
Bernie was confused and angry. Police wanted to know about Burrell. What was the history of their relationship? And how close was he to Kerry? That last question jarred Bernie. Why hadn’t Kerry mentioned the visit? Why had she insisted that Amanda and her own son keep it a secret? What did his wife of seventeen years have to hide? Their relationship, as far as Bernie was concerned, had always been an honest and trusting one. For the moment, Bernie could not stew on it. His priority was to help the police, so they could return Kerry to him.
Dennis Bray had directed six detectives to work on building a profile of Burrell, dating back to his childhood. He wanted details of his family, his work history, his relationships and, importantly, his financial situation.
Bernie told detectives that Burrell owned a farm called Hillydale at Bungonia, just outside Goulburn, in the state’s central-west. Bray sent two officers, Detective Sergeant Peter Walsh and Detective Constable Darren Deamer, to conduct some discreet enquiries around the town. Bray also directed a surveillance team to head south.
Bernie was able to fill in some gaps for Bray, explaining that he had met Burrell, an advertising manager, in 1985 when Crown employed an agency, Advertising Works, to manage its account. Bruce Burrell was in charge of the Crown account and had liaised with Bernie regularly, on the phone and at meetings and business lunches, including one at Parramatta’s Parkroyal Hotel. Their business relationship extended to social gatherings. Bernie and Bruce both shared an interest in farming and recreational shooting. Burrell had joined a group of them on pig-shooting weekends, including travelling to the Whelans’ Guyra property. The wives and children came too. Bernie showed police a photograph of that weekend, Burrell between him and Kerry, all smiles. In other pictures, Burrell posed with the Whelans and their children, even nursing an infant Sarah. Kerry and Bernie had attended Burrell’s wedding, when he married his second wife, Dallas.
After Bernie retrenched Burrell from Crown in 1990, the couples still socialised together. On one shooting expedition, in 1992, Bernie mentioned that the drought was making cattle-grazing difficult, in fact almost impossible. Burrell offered to agist the cattle on his own property, Hillydale, at Bungonia where there was plenty of feed. Bernie subsequently arranged for the pedigree cows, calves and a bull to be transported there, but a few weeks later Burrell phoned him and told him that the cattle, together with some of his own, had wandered off into the Morton National Park which adjoins his property. ‘I recall that Bruce told me he’d reported the loss to the National Parks and Wildlife ranger at Bungonia, who had also conducted a search.’ Bernie’s voice was tight: ‘I’ve not seen nor heard of those cattle since,’ he told police.
The cattle loss was followed by another suspicious incident a year later. Burrell phoned Bernie, telling him his neighbour was having problems with feral pigs and needed a suitable weapon. Would Bernie be interested in selling his Ruger .223 semiautomatic rifle? Bernie told Burrell he would let him have a look at it. Burrell picked it up from Bernie’s office on a Friday, on the way to his farm, but a fortnight later, he called Bernie to report that the gun had been stolen from the boot of his car at Redfern: ‘Sorry, mate,’ Burrell told him. ‘I was making a sales call in Redfern. You know what that area is like.’ Bernie had insisted Burrell report it to Redfern police, which he did.
‘After that, I didn’t want much to do with Bruce,’ Bernie explained to Bray. And when Burrell’s old job came up at Crown Equipment later that year, Bernie gave it to Burrell’s junior, a woman. Bernie told police that Kerry knew he no longer had much time for Burrell. ‘Kerry knew I didn’t really trust him anymore.’
As Bernie talked, something else came to him. ‘Excuse me . . . um, sorry, Detective, I’ve just remembered something. I got a bizarre phone call from Bruce. Gosh, it must have been a month ago, completely out of the blue.’ He grabbed his diary, and there it was: Monday 7 April, a month before Kerry’s abduction. On that morning, Bernie had attended a small reception in the boardroom for the birthday of a company director, Brian Hoare. When Bernie returned to his office he found a yellow post-it sticker on his phone. ‘Ring Bruce Burrell at Hillydale, at his farm’, his secretary had scribbled, above a phone number. Four years had passed since Bernie had last spoken to Bruce Burrell. Bernie imagined Burrell wanted something. A job? A loan?
Bernie was reluctant to phone him, but as he drove home he called Burrell. They spoke briefly before the line dropped out. After dinner, around 7.40 p.m., Bernie tried again, using the phone in the kitchen while Kerry packed the dishwasher. It was a perplexing conversation, Bernie now told police. Bruce had wandered from subject to subject: his separation from his wife Dallas—‘That’s a shame, Bruce,’ Bernie said. About Dallas’s ailing health. ‘Give her our love.’ Questions about Crown. ‘It’s been
very hectic. Budget time,’ Bernie told him.
‘Are you still travelling as much, mate?’ Burrell enquired.
‘Yeah, a lot. Apart from the trips to Asia we’ve opened a new site in Adelaide so I’m there every second Wednesday for meetings.’
The call continued for just over nine minutes. Mostly Burrell asked questions and Bernie answered. Bernie kept waiting for Burrell to ask for something, but it never came. ‘My recollection was that Mr Burrell was doing most of the talking and quite frankly, I was waiting for him to give me a reason for the call,’ Bernie told police. ‘I was waiting for the punchline.’
Just before signing off , Burrell asked after Kerry and the kids. ‘They’re good, fighting fit,’ Bernie told him. Then he hung up. ‘Well that was a weird conversation,’ he later remarked to Kerry. ‘I thought he’d be asking for a favour, but . . .’ Bernie let it go, distracted by Matthew, who needed help with his maths homework. Now Bray was, once more, making Bernie go over the call he had received from Burrell. It was beginning to appear that the phone conversation had much purpose after all.
Taskforce Bellaire was preparing for the most risky stage of its operation: the ransom exchange. According to the letter, the kidnappers would make contact in seven days. Three days had already passed since Kerry had been snatched, and with the deadline for contact fast approaching, Howe and Bray knew there was still much to be done. But Detective Dennis Bray was grateful for one thing. They did not have to worry about where they would get the money for the ransom.
Crown Equipment had issued its executives with a directive in case of extortion, blackmail or kidnap. Bray was impressed by Crown’s forethought and planning, the details of which were set out in a letter that Bernie took from his bedroom safe and handed to Bray. The letter had yellowed during the years it had lain there—unused—but its typed instructions were clear and precise. Bernie gripped the telephone as he punched in the numbers to his company’s headquarters in Ohio. It was the middle of the night in the United States and the detective knew Bernie was dragging someone out of bed.
For half a minute, Bernie had some trouble making his purpose clear. ‘Remember the note that we were given twelve or fifteen years ago . . .’ Bernie said, ‘whenever it was. In case of extortion? Well, it’s happened. I need urgent assistance.’
Within twenty-four hours, the money was ready.
6 HORSE FEED
Bernie Whelan had never seen so much money. Huge wads of hundred-dollar notes tied with rubber bands, and packed into cream calico bank bags. It was the million-dollar ransom for the life of his beloved Kerry who had been absent now four days.
An armoured van, escorted by police, had collected the cash from the Commonwealth Bank and delivered it to the Whelan house where it was placed in a green garbage bag, and secured in Bernie’s bedroom safe. Bernie had fixed his eyes on the bulging bag and prayed that he would soon be rid of it. After seventeen years with Kerry, he could not fathom that she was gone and he was stuck in this awful reality. Bernie and the children were now on an active file lodged with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington. He shook his head and tears flew from his eyes.
Outside, before the distant rolling foothills of the once tranquil neighbourhood, heavily armed men were crawling through his horse paddocks. They were members of the State Protection Group, or SPG, an elite group of police officers trained to deal with hostage negotiation, rescue and bomb disposal, and high-risk searches. The sixteen-member team, led by Detective Inspector Dan Ruming, had undergone rigorous physical, psychiatric and medical assessments to qualify for a program that was merciless in its final selection stage.
The officers wore charcoal-blue coveralls, bullet-resistant vests and Kevlar helmets. Each of them carried two firearms: a Heckler & Koch MP5, the 700-millimetre German submachine gun that was standard issue for counter-terrorist forces, and a Glock 22 .40 calibre pistol. They had clips of spare rounds for each weapon as well as stun grenades (known as ‘flash bangs’), and canisters of tear gas and capsicum spray. Their body armour added around 30 kilograms to each officer’s weight.
Ruming’s officers were positioned inside and outside the house according to the classic tactical squad grouping: a six-person assault entry or emergency action team, a six-man deliberate action team and a four-person perimeter team of marksmen whose sights were trained permanently on the ‘stronghold’—in this case, Willow Park, in the rooms of which semiautomatic weapons were neatly stacked. Bernie was wearing a bulletproof vest, which an SPG officer kindly explained was really only bullet ‘resistant’. A projectile might still penetrate the vest; at the very least he would probably fall over from the impact if a round whistled into his ribs.
Adrenaline-charged, Bernie swaggered around his house exchanging talk with some of the officers about calibres and ammunition types. His father-in-law Leo Ryan was not impressed. ‘This isn’t a bloody movie, Bernard,’ Leo Ryan told him. ‘We’re not going to Luna Park. I just want my daughter back.’
Bernie realised he was overwrought. His sleeplessness and growing exhaustion only added to the singularity of the situation.
The atmosphere in the Whelan house was electric as everyone waited for the kidnappers to call. Police believed there was a chance the kidnappers would make contact before the seven-day deadline for Bernie to place the advertisement in The Daily Telegraph. Bernie sat in the lounge room with six negotiators, his eyes focused on the telephone, praying for it to ring. When friends called wanting to speak to Kerry, his voice was calm and discreet: ‘Kerry is away at the moment,’ Bernie repeated; he wasn’t lying.
Civilians are not normally allowed to be involved in covert major operations, but Bernie was needed. He had to be there to talk to the kidnappers and deliver the money. A recording device had been placed on the Whelans’ home telephone and Bernie’s mobile, and the negotiators gave Bernie clear instructions on what to do when contact was made: ‘You must remain calm, Bernie,’ chief negotiator Graham Abel told him. ‘Most importantly, you’ve got to ask for “proof of life”. You want to speak to your wife and you must insist on hearing Kerry’s voice.’
Bernie’s Mercedes had been wired up with tracking devices and radio equipment, in preparation for the delivery of the ransom money. Bernie and his Maltese terrier, Little Bob, were surrounded by the most highly skilled police officers in Australia and perhaps the best equipped team gathered, until that date, at a crisis point in Australia. To Bernie’s eye, everywhere he turned there were men ready to pounce. And they sometimes did.
On the afternoon of 11 May, Bernie, desperately tired, tried to get some rest, but he barely had his head on the pillow when he heard a tap-tap-tap on the window. His heart started racing. There it was again—tap-tap-tap-tap . . . Bernie ran from his room and called out to officers, who raced towards him, barking into their two-way radios as they pushed Bernie to the ground. The house was suddenly alive and crackling with static and muffled shouts. Officers crawled to the side of the house outside, soon discovering the tapping was caused by a sprinkler which had come alive on a timer and was hitting the downpipe.
Another afternoon, a man approached the Whelans’ mailbox to deliver a leaflet, and was thrown to the ground by an armed figure in charcoal uniform. The specialist teams were clearly on edge, and becoming increasingly agitated and restless.
Bray and Howe ordered that a series of dummy, or practice, runs be conducted in the middle of the night to ensure the operation was successfully constructed. Everyone, except Bernie, was involved. The dummy runs not only helped to hone their skills but provided an outlet for some of the tension. They were played out as if they were the real thing, from the second the call came from the ‘kidnappers’ to the moment the money was delivered. More than fifty officers, including a stand-in for Bernie Whelan, would tail ‘Bernie’ in his Mercedes, which had been wired up with tracking devices, as he drove to a meeting point with the green garbage bag of cash. Helicopters hovered at a distance; the car’s electronics wink
ed on a screen at Richmond air base and the snipers were poised, ready to shoot. Each operation took around three hours and, back at Richmond, Howe and Bray were determined to do it until they got it right. ‘We only get one go at this,’ Howe told his officers.
On the first practice, they discovered the sound over their two-way radios was poor. Another time, the negotiators could be seen during the money drop-off which, had this been the real thing, would have destroyed their cover. Bernie would hear the ransom team return well into the early morning. All the activity made him hopeful, despite the knot of fear in his stomach.
Marjorie Minton-Taylor was watching Bernie with mounting concern. He was not eating and hardly sleeping. She called a doctor who prescribed sleeping pills. Marjorie and her daughter, Amanda, had stayed on the property to help look after Bernie and tend to the horses, which still had to be fed twice a day. The police, Marge quickly realised, were eating rather more often.
To check on the horses, Amanda and Marge would set out from the house accompanied by one of the armed policemen and go to the stables and the six lush paddocks where the horses grazed. And once a day, the women would drive out of Willow Park in Marge’s work van, which bore the logo ‘Wagner’s Saddlery’, with two or three SPG men lying down in the back. With the officers’ change of shifts Marge would drop them back at the RAAF base to sleep and drive on with Amanda to the shops, alternating supermarkets so as not to spark suspicion. One day it was Bi-Lo at North Richmond, the next the local Coles, the trips always resulting in a full trolley to feed the hungry horde.
As dusk fell and officers with night scopes stretched out in trenches around the perimeter of Willow Park, Marge roasted, baked and boiled up a virtual conveyor belt of quiches, joints, casseroles and desserts, leaving a bench full of tasty meals for the night team before she crawled off to bed. Her aim was to keep the cops fed and focused, but the cooking was also her way of coping in an unreal situation.
Ladykiller Page 5