For three months information filtered back to me via people I knew through the company. Apparently the police were getting ready to bring me in. ‘They hate you, Kerry,’ I was reliably informed. ‘They’ve got you in their sights and you’re going down.’ There was nothing I could do but wait. The silence and solitude made it feel as if it was happening to someone else. I sat in front of daytime TV for hours with one eye on the clock, anxious for the next scene to start when the lady with the little girls in the nice house in the pretty town was finally handcuffed and dragged away.
I had no idea the police had me under surveillance. While they were busy getting warrants to search my house, I was busy getting fit. If I was going to prison, I figured I’d need to be as healthy and strong as possible. In between staring at the TV, I hit the gym three times a day for a month. Once again I felt removed from the process, like I was watching a series about a woman training to get fit so she could face the horrors and rigours of prison. I started off walking on the treadmill and in the end I was running pretty fast and swimming up to thirty laps a day. I was hell-bent on making sure that if prison was my destiny I wasn’t going to die in there for lack of preparation.
It was 6am on 8 February 2003 when they finally came for me – at the gym of course. There were five or six officers in all, led by a man with the stock-issue name of Detective Sergeant John Smith. He and his officers bustled into the gymnasium like it was an episode of Law & Order and surrounded me while I was sweating it out on the exercise bike. Detective Smith radiated hostility as soon as he walked through the door.
‘Kerry Tucker?’ he said.
‘Yep,’ I replied apprehensively.
Without saying a word he moved one hand to his hip and, in the process, brushed his suit jacket aside just enough to reveal the holstered gun on his belt. I was shocked. ‘Oh what, really? Are you going to shoot me?’ I blurted out incredulously. It sounded like derision and it clearly embarrassed him in front of his junior colleagues, though for once I hadn’t intended to be a smart-arse. It was simply that I was Kerry the suburban mum, not Ivan Milat. I wasn’t about to go on a killing spree; I was trying to complete a spin class!
From that moment on, Detective Smith cut me absolutely no slack. Although I was hardly a threat to the community, I would come to understand that I was the biggest story in a small town since the bushfires of 1920-something and everybody wanted a piece of the drama. Out in the car park Detective Smith placed me in handcuffs for everyone to see.
An hour later we pulled up at my house where two police trucks and eight squad cars were parked out the front. I was told the officers belonged to the Purana Taskforce – the same outfit that investigated organised crime and gangland killings in Melbourne during the 2000s. The police virtually emptied my house and took everything away, right down to the girls’ clothes and toys. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was removed, photographed and catalogued. In a welcome relief from Detective Smith, however, the Purana personnel were very nice to me. I was released from the handcuffs and taken inside my home. With ‘guests’ swarming all over the place I reverted to type. ‘Would anyone like a cuppa?’ I offered and was greeted with a few enthusiastic nods. I made some coffees and stood in my kitchen while the strangers peered back at me in silence over the rims of their cups.
‘Well, this is awkward, isn’t it?’ I half-joked.
‘Not for us. It’s our job,’ one of the officers said.
‘OK, it’s a bit awkward for me then,’ I replied with a sheepish smile. I fiddled with the cups and spoons at the sink and announced, ‘I’m just going to pop off to the toilet. I’ll be back in a sec.’
‘Not without me you’re not!’ one of the policewomen said surprisingly forcefully.
‘Excuse me?’ I responded, rattled.
‘You can’t go anywhere. You cannot take one step without me.’
At that moment I twigged that my life was about to change in the most profound way. At the gym it had all been a bit surreal but here I was in my own home being told by a person who was sworn to protect the community that I was no longer free – not even to have a wee.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
When I was led into my bedroom the police had already been through my cupboards and drawers and laid out an array of jewellery on the bed. I was a bit shocked by how much of it I had, to be honest. They started asking me which pieces were real and which pieces were costume jewellery. I was totally truthful and forthright with them; I thought the seasoned officers would be human lie-detectors who’d know straight away if I wasn’t being straight with them. I was concentrating on deciphering the value of some fetching earrings when suddenly the bustling room fell silent, apart from one distinct sound.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Five or six Purana detectives were standing at the end of the bed taking notes and photographing the ill-gotten jewels when they clearly heard it. A few puzzled looks were exchanged. ‘What’s that noise?’ someone asked, semi-rhetorically. I knew exactly what it was but I wasn’t going to say in a million years. I’d heard it as soon as I’d walked in the room. The officer in charge of the search knew, too. When he’d looked through my top drawer he’d obviously stumbled upon my vibrator and accidentally turned it on before hurriedly putting it back. He knew that I knew that he knew – and he could hardly bear to look at me. Well, this certainly was awkward – for both of us. Although it was a muffled noise, to my mortified ears it was as loud as a jet taking off.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!
‘Seriously, what the fuck is that noise?!’ the Purana detective persisted.
It went on for five minutes. In the end the officer who’d turned it on in the first place could take it no more and fled the room. Then the taskforce detectives put down their cameras and did a snap investigation, scouring the room from top to bottom. I started hyperventilating. I wanted to die. ‘Oh, hey look, I’ve really, really gotta go to the toilet if that’s OK,’ I pleaded. If I didn’t get out of the room I was going to have a heart attack. Blessedly my female shadow nodded and I was granted a temporary reprieve from death by humiliation. I sat on the toilet thinking, ‘Oh God – just take me to prison now! Please make it stop!’ Thankfully, when I re-emerged the vibrator had stopped vibrating. My prayers had been answered. I just hope it was the lady officer who found it.