3 February 2020: seven months out
I’ve told people I am looking forward to my day in court, but I don’t really mean it.
Axeman, our prison witness at the inquest into Evelyn Greenup’s murder in Bowraville, calls. He and I have stayed in contact since then and now he warns me about what to expect at trial.
‘You can’t win. Good guys come last, Gary,’ he says.
Right now, I feel closer to him than I do to the police force. Walking to the Downing Centre courthouse on the morning of Monday 3 February 2020, the first day of my trial, I think how we were taught at the police academy that someone is to be considered innocent until they’re proven guilty. It feels like a lie now. I’ve been treated like a guilty person since this started.
I’m also exhausted by the waiting. It’s been eight months since I was charged, and more than a year since I was first put under investigation. Yet, I’m so certain the police will try to delay the trial longer, if only to frustrate me, that I woke up this morning at 3am, preparing a list of arguments Margaret can use if that happens.
I’m learning that the State has all the power in court, and the accused man has nothing. Jake’s come to stay with me during the trial, and when he got up, he found me sitting at the kitchen table, working. After leaving the regular army, Jake joined the reserves and has just got back from a month in uniform, clearing up after the summer’s bushfires. He, too, knows what it’s like to face a tireless enemy. One night, he told me, they were pulled back and slept on a cricket oval as the fire advanced again, burning the already blackened ground.
In the end, though, Jake found satisfaction in the work. As we dress for court, Nick Kaldas, my Homicide commander in the early 2000s, sends me a text message: ‘Go get them.’ Michelle Jarrett, Evelyn’s aunt, texts: ‘You are our Gumbaynggirr warrior.’ The parents of Courtney Topic, whose death in a police shooting I investigated in 2015, have also sent a good luck message. Terry Falconer’s widow has done the same.
Jake’s girlfriend, Vic, arrives and we leave the apartment together. The two of them have been together for months now and I like her. ‘Have you got a spare set of keys in case I get locked up?’ I joke.
We walk out, opening black umbrellas against the gentle rain. Both Jake and I are in dark suits. It feels like we’re going to a funeral.
‘Will Pam be there?’ Jake asks. I nod.
‘She’s dad’s ex-, ex-, ex-, ex-, ex-,’ Jake explains to Vic, who smiles as if unsure what to make of our family.
‘Thanks, Jake,’ I say, smiling. The humour helps.
From Museum Station, we walk out the Liverpool Street exit, and look up to see the grand, old court building.
All at once it hits me: I am today’s defendant. Everything I’ve been for more than 30 years has been upended. After a career built on bringing crooks to courts like this one, it’s only now that I am the accused man that I can really understand what power we wield as cops when we charge someone. Walking with Jake, I’m powerless to know how hard the road ahead will be to demonstrate my innocence, or how long the journey to recover my reputation.
I wish I had my dad walking beside me now. I’d feel a foot taller if he was still alive.
The pack of TV cameras pick me up as I cross Elizabeth Street, just as I’ve seen them pick up dozens of defendants in cases where I was a prosecution witness. They catch me on the broad courthouse steps and circle round me. I walk up and they part.
Waiting inside are Leonie Duroux, from Bowraville, and her son, Marbuck, a nephew of Clinton Speedy-Duroux, the third child to be murdered. So are Mark and Faye Leveson. Ian Lynch and Angelo Memmolo, both former Homicide cops, are there as well. So are my mum, my sisters and my daughter, Gemma.
But there are no witnesses waiting outside our allotted courtroom. That means, as I suspected, the prosecution have no intention of going ahead with the proceedings today. Despite this, we are ushered in and take our seats. I sit at the front of the court, just behind Margaret and Lauren MacDougall, a fiercely intelligent solicitor, who is working on my defence and whose firm is better known for defending bikies than detectives.
The same ritual I’ve seen so many times before plays out; a knock on the court door, we stand, the magistrate walks in. We bow. We sit.
Today, the magistrate is Ross Hudson, who walks into the court in a black gown, with short, grey hair, designer glasses and an animal energy. He sits down, looks at us sitting facing him, and starts the trial by saying, ‘Counsels, yes?’
It will be he who decides my guilt. Whatever you’re accused of, in the local court your case is heard by a magistrate, sitting alone and without a jury. But the police are not ready. Their barrister says they need to get a signature to release some documents we’ve asked for. There are also many suppression orders in place, prohibiting the discussion of evidence that featured in the William Tyrrell inquest, which itself is currently in one of the months-long gaps between its public hearings.
The nature of these orders means even the magistrate cannot be told what’s been suppressed, the police force’s barrister is saying. To change that, the coroner will need to vary her orders, and unfortunately that can’t happen until 4pm, although he does not explain why she is not now available, or why this has not happened before today.
The magistrate is angry; the delay is ‘despicable’, but he cannot prevent it. The police barrister also wants him to suppress the same evidence as the coroner, meaning my trial would be heard behind closed doors.
These are my worst fears made real: that I would come here to fight and they wouldn’t let me; and that, even if the trial went ahead, it would be held behind closed doors, so nobody could see it. Innocent or guilty, that would mean the police never have to justify their actions against me. Margaret tries to argue but the magistrate says a decision will also have to wait until tomorrow.
Until then, I’m still silenced.
* * *
Walking out with Margaret and Lauren, a woman I don’t recognise asks if she can talk to me. She says that she’s come here to support me. Her brother was murdered 34 years ago tomorrow, and the case is still unsolved.
‘He was a boxer,’ she says.
I like to box, I tell her. ‘Keep on fighting for him.’
I wish I could do more to help her.
* * *
When I get home, Gemma brings her son, Zion, who is now 19 months, round to play at my apartment. We teach him to balance on a sofa cushion, arms outstretched as if he’s surfing. His little face is serious, while everyone around him is laughing. Looking at Gemma, I can see her mother, Debbie, in her.
My family don’t judge me, I think as I watch them. They know only too well how much I’ve given to the cops.