by Chris Smith
‘He stooped even lower though, Libby. He went through my garbage bin, again and again. He broke into our flat and stole stuff … God knows what. But what spooked me most was the night I finished work at the pub. I walked to the car park and he’d spread more photos from my album over my car, the album he stole in Tamworth years before … and again, covered them in blood spots. They were glued to my car bonnet. It was so sick, just so upsetting. I didn’t know where he was at that moment, whether he was behind another car in the dark, or even inside my own. I cried for days.’
Neither woman spoke for a long time. They couldn’t, until Simone said what Libby was waiting so desperately to hear.
‘But it did end, Libby. It just took time.’
‘What do you mean? Do you mean you’ve got to be prepared to go the full eight years with him?’
‘Yes and no,’ said Simone, who sounded suddenly buoyant. ‘Yes, eight years must have got to him too. It must have bored him. Plus, I was surrounded by people in the end. I had to be. He freaked me out so much. My flatmates psyched him out a little bit I reckon. They dogged him and somehow hurled as much back as he gave. He continually embarrassed himself. I kept his mother updated on his behaviour too. That was the killer. That really nailed him.’
‘You spoke to Kathryn Hopkins about his stalking?’
‘Sure did. She didn’t believe me at first. She wouldn’t talk to me. But I used some of his techniques—I harangued her. I forced her to take my calls and listen. And although she never accepted what he was doing, I think she helped end it. I’m sure she did.’
‘But Phillip treats his mother like his father does. How could she change his ways?’
‘I don’t know. But I told her about the bashings and the doctor’s reports I had. I had a few recordings of his telephone conversations too. This didn’t ever scare him, but his parents couldn’t contemplate their son being outed publicly. Their status in the community, his father’s status in the corporate world, could never be compromised. That’s all they have. They don’t have much of a family.’
By now Simone was positively on fire, sounding almost victorious. It all made sense, thought Libby: the threats to his family, the reverse stalking by Simone’s flatmates and her determination never to be alone. The predator’s fun had been taken away from him. How could she possibly replicate that though? The recent court appearances were done and dusted. Virtually nothing was made public, the Hopkins family made sure of it. She had nothing really to hold over them.
Libby knew she was in no position to start shacking up with a bunch of local uni students, whose lives and hours were so different to that of her own. The same plan was untenable for her, but the answer to Libby’s predicament was here somewhere, it had to be. Both women were exhausted.
‘You know where, how and almost always when he stalks, right?’ Simone asked finally.
‘Well, yeah.’
‘I thought about this many years later, but wasn’t smart enough to do it at the time. Forget the coppers, why not stalk him yourself?’
‘What me, I can’t—’
‘No, why can’t you employ someone to stalk him? Why can’t you get people to follow him, to take pictures of him?’
‘I don’t know, I guess I can.’
‘Find a real private investigator who can prove to the courts that he’s breaching his AVO and his bond. You’ve waited for the police to move, but you’ve never had any real proof that paints the whole picture, the frequency. Set a trap. Set him up. Stalk him yourself! But you’ll have to count me out,’ Simone added. ‘I’ve been recovering from eight years of this shit. Never again. Those all-night vigils almost killed me. I want to help, Libby, but it’s up to you now. If he comes back into my life somehow, I won’t be able to cope. I’ll top myself.’
Libby couldn’t argue with any of that. Simone’s techniques and advice had given her enormous strength, but there was clearly a limit to what one person, one victim could bear. Enough was enough. They ended the call warmly, wishing each other the best. Libby knew she probably wouldn’t hear from Simone again. The call had been a small window back to the past; Simone had no intention of jumping through. But now Libby’s mind was brimming with ways of doing what Simone had suggested, of stalking the stalker.
That night, Libby paced the house, ideas buzzing around in her head. It was nearing 8pm and close to sunset. Her parents had left for the week on a trip out of town they’d been planning and looking forward to for sometime. Being on her own was a real test of her resolve. Nights out with her friends were easier to get through, even allowing for the chance Hopkins might turn up, but being home alone was never a time to cherish. Motivated, however, by Simone’s call, Libby had gone down to Manly straight after work to do a bit of shopping and was planning to cook up a tasty meal.
Before her parents had left, her father had spoken about employing a lighting contractor to attach a few additional sensor lights to the rear of the house. While Libby didn’t think for a second that the lights would ward off her deranged stalker, the sole sensor they had didn’t do much good. Perhaps a few more might put him off his routine. What would be the point of stalking at night when night turned to day as he entered the yard? But the installation was yet to be booked, so for now it would remain dark out there, whether he showed up or not.
As night fell Libby stood up from the couch and locked the sliding doors. She returned to the kitchen to wash up and as she ran the hot water, she looked up at the hall clock. It was ten-thirty and a strong wind had blown up. She wanted to clear up and then get as much sleep as possible. Libby could never tell whether it was going to be one of those nights. And on blustery nights like this one, every sound, all the thuds, creaks and clangs, were construed as one thing: Hopkins in the dark yard outside.
As she turned the hot water tap off, she was startled by an almighty crash outside the the bathroom. She realised she’d left the single bathroom window open and ran out of the kitchen down the corridor. She held her breath, listening. It had to be him. Had he fallen, trying to get inside? As she slowed down at the end of the hallway to turn the corner into the open space in front of the bathroom, she could hear a scratching noise directly outside. She grabbed an umbrella from the stand and approached slowly.
‘Time to scare me again, is it Phillip? You are so gutless.’
There was no reply. She walked into the bathroom and slammed the open window shut, before bolting it closed. Libby leaned against the sink and wondered for one frightening second whether she was really alone in the house. Had Hopkins actually got in? Was the noise she heard not a fall on the outside, but him falling into the house?
‘I’m calling the police!’ Libby said loudly.
As soon as she said it, she heard a noise under the house. She froze, listening for the sound. She shuffled slowly down the hallway, past all the darkened bedrooms, on her way to the telephone. Her footsteps seemed loud, as intimidating as whatever was under the house. She made it into the lounge room, eyes darting from left to right. She picked up the receiver and the dial tone pierced the pulsating silence. She quickly rang triple-0, but then as the operator’s voice asked her for details, she just stood there, frozen by the redundancy of what she was about to do. She listened to the voice on the other end requesting a reply and simply hung up, resigned to another night of tension. Libby realised that the noises may not have been Phillip Hopkins, but that was the power of his torment. His potential appearance was enough.
At three-thirty she was still awake, curled up on her couch, monitoring every sound, every branch brushing against the wall in the wind. She kept a knife close by. She didn’t care whether she’d have to use it or not. His life was of no significance to her now. As the late, late movie flickered too brightly for her heavy, sore and red eyes, she realised she’d been gutted by her own paranoia. The pre-dawn silence was broken by the sound of a small dog barking from the adjoining property. She wondered whether the dog knew when Hopkins entered the area and wondered wh
ether she herself needed a dog.
She sniggered quietly. Like that would make a difference. Libby stood up, proceeded to walk into her bedroom, still giggling in a self-mocking fashion. She passed by one of the hallway mirrors and stopped. She saw a haggard young girl with stress wrinkles under her bloodshot eyes and a face that went from laughing to crying almost instantly.
Then a flash of light reflected in the mirror. She turned and looked through the locked sliding doors. The light appeared again. It was him, under the frangipani, next to the back shed. Moments later, the light and the intruder were gone. She tried to follow the trail with her eyes, standing on tiptoes to see over the back fence, but it was no good. The trail of torchlight snaked its way back through the bushes on the property at the rear and a body hurled itself over the adjoining fence. He’d left it late, but now he was done for the night. The simple fact that she had seen him fulfilled his twisted mission.
10
INTERFERENCE
Rob Hearn was a self-employed private investigator based in Neutral Bay. He worked for himself and by himself on most cases. He was young—27—and keen to impress. His fees were modest, as he was still building a client base. Libby was prepared to pay whatever it took. They met at a time when Libby thought Hopkins would not be watching, early one weekday morning.
Rob looked more like a tradesman than a private investigator and Libby liked him straightaway. He was serious about his work. He was not in it to work on women. And he was instantly enthusiastic about the job at hand. He discussed with her the fact that Hopkins would have what he called a ‘launching point’.
‘He comes from over the back fence,’ she told him, ‘and from what I’ve seen, heads west afterwards for quite a few backyards, but I don’t know where he launches from. Why is that important?’
‘He’ll be launching under streetlights, where others can see him; where I might be able to see him and photograph him. If I don’t know where it all starts from, it makes it difficult to track him. But we’ll try.’
Libby went over the events again. Rob had to know what he was dealing with—how smart her ex was. By the sound of his modus operandi, Rob thought that Hopkins might be working from a textbook, a standard private investigation text like the ones Rob had used for his own training.
She twigged immediately and remembered once seeing a manual with a magnifying glass on the cover in Hopkins’ flat.
For an entire month, Rob attempted to follow Hopkins from three locations: from work, his home and Libby’s parents’ backyard, on the seven occasions that she knew he was there. It was a full-time job and one that stretched Rob’s patience and skill. Hopkins was quite adept at losing anyone he suspected of tailing his vehicle. Rob concluded that Hopkins had an array of different cars and spent nights at his office. At his home Hopkins was extra vigilant about who might be in the vicinity.
Early on Rob felt he’d been ‘made’ by Hopkins, which led to a different, more conservative stalking pattern. Only a stalker had the mental tools to beat another stalker. Each time Rob ventured into an adjoining yard to head Hopkins off during one of his nighttime adventures, Hopkins kept his distance, or Rob himself was outed by the family pets or other neighbours. On the two nights that Hopkins was actually heard to enter Libby’s backyard, Rob had not been on duty. He had other clients to attend to and the wily stalker was able to detect that the coast was clear. It was like rubbing salt into a fresh wound and, for a while, he’d made Rob even angrier than Libby.
On one of the nights that Rob was not scheduled to keep guard on Libby, when her parents were out late at a function, Hopkins circled the house madly, hitting the walls at random, creeping about beneath the house and, to Libby’s horror, bashing against the floorboards. It was the most frustrating time for Libby and an embarrassing period for the young PI, who’d promised so much and delivered so little. Hopkins was smarter than his pursuer had predicted, and even seemed to be enjoying the counter-stalking game. Rob felt his target was revelling in it.
Soon after evading Libby’s newly appointed protector though, Hopkins made a crucial error in judgement. On a night that Libby had sensed Hopkins’ presence, she tried calling Rob Hearn’s mobile. She couldn’t achieve a dial tone on her first go. That’s odd, she thought, and tried again. On the second attempt she got through, and Rob said he was just knocking off at a job nearby and would be there in five minutes.
He pulled up some 100 metres from Libby’s parents’ house and quietly made his way down the darkened street and into the front yard. Seconds after knocking gently at the door, so as not to disturb whatever was happening out the back, he heard a car roar down the street towards him and turned. At that moment, Libby opened the door.
‘Forget it; he went the moment I called you.’
Rob kept his eyes focused on the approaching car. It was Hopkins in his red Laser, slowing to a crawl outside the home. He wound down the passenger’s side window facing the startled pair; he had no balaclava on.
‘Everything okay then?’ Hopkins yelled, before driving off at speed in the opposite direction.
When Libby looked at Rob, she saw that he had a smile stretching from ear to ear. Hopkins had forgotten the crucial ruling from the court that had handed down his bond. He was to keep 100 metres from Libby’s house or he’d face the court again. ‘We’ve got him. He’s made a mistake. He can’t be here, yet we have two people who can say he was.’
‘Yes, that’s right!’
Suddenly, after a period of exasperation and no apparent end to the stalking, Libby felt meek no more. Her hunch, to risk bringing in a stranger, had worked. Things moved swiftly. The police were brought in, statements made and a court case quickly arranged. Hopkins was charged again under new stalking legislation. Libby discovered that the new laws were created as a result of another case of persistent stalking that led to the murder of a young woman at the hands of her former partner. It was sobering news.
The elderly magistrate on duty at North Sydney Court was clearly not thrilled about having to deal with what he viewed as a domestic dispute. He appeared cynical of the new legislation, drawn up by politicians in haste and as a result of media pressure after a serious crime. He brushed aside the arguments of both the inexperienced police prosecutor and Hopkins’ solicitor right from the start. He wanted to know who saw what and what was said. The allegation that Hopkins had said ‘Everything okay then?’ seemed to stick in his mind. He was curious about it, as if it was the key to any breach of Hopkins’ orders.
‘Why did your client say that?’ the now fully engaged magistrate asked Hopkins’ lawyer.
‘Well, Your Honour, that brings us to the reason why this case against my client should be dispensed with immediately. I can prove to the court that Ms Masters was in an obvious state of distress on the night in question and on nights either side of the evening in question. Whether there was some dispute between her and Mr Hearn, who, you may have read, Your Honour, had been spending quite a deal of time harassing my client … But whether there was a dispute there or not, Mr Hopkins didn’t know. What he did know, however, was that given Ms Masters’ history of phoning police, alleging all kinds of dastardly things, he was quite concerned for his former partner and was merely ensuring that she was okay.’
‘Objection, Your Honour,’ piped up the police prosecutor. ‘Ms Masters was in no distress caused by investigator Rob Hearn. Where’s the defence’s evidence for this? It’s pure speculation.’
‘Objection overruled. Sit down, Sergeant,’ demanded the magistrate.
‘Well thank you, Your Honour,’ the solicitor continued, snapping at his lapels and looking down at Libby’s table. ‘My client, sitting here beside me, had every reason to be concerned for Ms Masters. We know that they had a strong and faithful relationship despite their troubles documented in this very court a month ago. And we know Ms Masters has a predilection for emotional and tearful outbursts under stress. We present previous police reports to verify that. But it was what Ms Mas
ters was doing that night which led my client to check on her. Can I please produce these phone records to the court, which belong to my client? All pages are part of the attached warrant. They clearly underline Ms Masters’ confused and distressed state. These are phone records, traces on my client’s line, Your Honour, which prove her infatuation with Phillip Hopkins.’
Libby couldn’t keep quiet at this. ‘Infatuated! You’re kidding. He’s infatuated with me. He’s got the sick mind. When will anyone understand this?’
The magistrate’s concentration was broken. ‘One more outburst, Ms Masters, and you can get out of my courtroom and into a cell downstairs,’ he said firmly. ‘You are also asking the court to outlaw the defendant from attending places he has previously been known to attend, just because you turn up there too. I have some sizeable decisions to make and you’re not helping.’
‘You see, Your Honour, this is what she’s capable of,’ interjected Hopkins’ solicitor.
‘Hold on, let me have a look at these phone records.’
The magistrate read them twice. He blinked and dropped the papers on the oak bench in front of him, then removed his glasses.
‘Sergeant, please step forward and sight these records. I’ll then hear your submission and make my judgement on this alleged breach,’ said the magistrate, before leaning back into his high arched seat.
Upon viewing the documents, the prosecutor returned to the table ashen-faced. He leaned over to Libby and whispered in her ear. ‘What the hell were you doing calling his home 21 times that week?’
She didn’t move a muscle. She was gobsmacked. What happened? she thought. Did I make those calls? No, I didn’t. But why are they saying that?