Chapter 9

Pointed Fingers

At the police station on the morning of 26 June, still unaware that her daughter had died, Gwen Hanns sat trying to pee without making a noise. Just outside the cubicle, a uniformed police officer was standing guard. Every so often she could hear the impatient shuffling of his feet, which only served to heighten her embarrassment and slow her task. Suddenly, the officer banged loudly on the door. He demanded: ‘What are you doing in there? Why are you so quiet?’

Gwen felt like a schoolgirl caught smoking in the toilets. Perhaps he thought she was doing drugs or something. ‘Nearly finished,’ she choked, totally deflated.

For over five hours, several police officers had vigorously questioned Gwen. There were no other suspects on their list at that stage, and the assumption was that either she or Peter had hurt Nicole. First one and then another police officer had come into the room, assuming ‘good cop, bad cop’ positions, pressing her for a confession. One officer would spend time with her accusing her of stabbing her daughter and suggesting she come clean and save her husband and son from being put through all this. Then, half an hour later, another would come into the room and shift the blame onto her husband, Peter, or onto Anthony because ‘he was a big boy for his age’.

Gwen couldn’t understand why the police were treating her in this way. Was this the way all parents were treated? Surely if the police thought she had done something wrong, they would have advised her to call a solicitor or they would have charged her with a crime. She looked out of the window and down at the door to the other building, where she had seen them take Peter. She wondered whether he was still there and how he was doing.

The first break from questioning came at seven o’clock that morning when Gwen was taken home by a female police officer. She was ordered to collect clothes for Peter and to change herself, so that the clothes they were wearing and Nicole’s bedding could be submitted for forensic tests.

Gwen was surprised at the level of activity in her street. There were a number of police cars, journalists wandering around trying to get information, plain clothes police collecting evidence, curious neighbours and people she didn’t even recognise swarming about outside her home. She was escorted through the crowds. Once inside her house, she was made to change in front of the female officer. They wanted all her clothing – even her underwear. Gwen felt humiliated. She’d never let anyone other than her family see her naked before. She was then returned to the police station and fingerprinted.

Taking fingerprints from Gwen was not an easy task. The police officer had to take impressions of all her fingers, including the one that was permanently bent and her stump. Gwen had been seven years old when she lost one of the fingers of her right hand in a collapsed deck chair. She had been 24 at the time when she hurt her left hand, leaving the ring finger crooked. Both accidents had occurred on a Christmas Day, the later mishap in a car collision.

Gwen and Peter had only been married three months when the collision occurred. It had been their first Christmas together as a married couple. The two had met when the air force stationed Peter in Wagga Wagga.

It had been a hot day, and Gwen had eaten a huge bowl of homemade ice cream before they headed off in their FJ Holden for her mother’s home. Inside the ute the temperature had been sweltering and she had felt her clothes sticking to her skin. Peter, eager to arrive and escape the heat, had hurried through an intersection. At the same time a drunk driver had cut the corner and hit the back end of their ute, which slid far enough to take out two guideposts before flipping forwards onto its roof, and then righting itself sideways. Gwen had instinctively grabbed the storm water drain, which lined the top of the window, for support. As the ute rolled, her fingers were imprinted into the metal.

At the hospital, Gwen had to wait for four hours before they could operate safely. Her wedding ring was so deeply embedded in her finger that it had to be cut it into eight pieces to remove it. Her engagement ring had gone, and Peter had gone back to the accident scene with friends to try to find it. They had found a piece of gold, a diamond and a sapphire, all of which Gwen now wears in a ring on her right hand. Despite months of physiotherapy, her left hand still looks arthritic.

Methodically, the police officer took prints from all of Gwen’s fingers: thumb, index, middle, ring and little finger. When he got to Gwen’s crooked finger, he had to tilt her hand awkwardly and put pressure on the fingertip to get it covered in ink and to stamp the paper. Following the fingerprinting, Gwen was escorted to an interview room where she was told that Nicole was dead. She sat chilled and violently shaking, unable to cry.

‘You’re not crying,’ announced a police officer. ‘You must have done it.’

In another room at the station, Peter was going through his own private hell as police continued to question him. Shivering, he stood barefoot on a tile floor. He had no top as he had run from the house wearing only his blood-soaked pyjama bottoms. Forbidden to go to the toilet and unable to find out how Nicole was, Peter wondered if the night could get any worse.

‘I know you did it! Your fingerprints were absolutely every-where, there were hand marks all over the walls,’ the police officer accused him.

‘But I live there!’ replied Peter. He focused his mind on his little girl. Only a month earlier, she had bought him a green knit shirt she had chosen herself. He and Gwen had laughed because she had told her mother that ‘the shirt cost either a dollar or a cent’, and she only wanted that one. It had cost $4.99.

‘You got angry and started hitting. You just didn’t stop,’ barked the police officer.

‘No,’ said Peter. ‘Never.’

As the questioning continued, Peter started to ask himself why he was under suspicion. Twelve months before he had left his job at Qantas, leaving behind the irregular hours of shift work for a daytime position as a senior storeman with an energy company. He and Gwen had always put their family first, but not everybody liked them or their values. It was possible the old woman next door had told the police he killed Nicole. ‘She used to throw boiling hot water over our cat,’ says Peter. ‘She was the one who complained I put sugar in her son’s petrol tank.’

And there was the woman who lived two doors down. She didn’t like Peter much because he turned everything she said into a rude joke. Only a week before Peter had caught her yelling at Nicole to go home.

‘You have no right to be here!’ she had shouted. Nicole had been walking back from a friend’s place. Sticking his head under the rails Peter had shouted, ‘Mind your own bloody business!’ Perhaps one of them had put him under suspicion.

‘And the blood?’ asked the police officer. ‘How did that get on you?’

‘When I found her in the room,’ answered Peter, suddenly tired. ‘I put her in the recovery position, started CPR.’

‘You say your wife, Gwen Hanns, she was there before you, perhaps she ...’

It was lunchtime before the questioning finally stopped and he and Gwen were escorted into the office. Someone kindly gave them a radiator and a cup of tea. Apparently, the police had found the person who killed their daughter.