Ladykiller (3 page)
‘You’re in Parramatta.’
‘Yeah, I can go to the Parramatta police station.’
‘All right, take it from there. They will be able to assist you, whereas I can’t directly, not knowing your bona fides.’
‘Okay, righto, okay. All right, I’ll do that.’ Bernie’s voice was trembling.
‘Thank you, sir, bye now.’
‘Thank you.’
The call had taken three minutes and twenty-six seconds. It was now 5.26 p.m. Bernie’s mouth was dry and his hand felt sweaty on the receiver. He phoned Amanda Minton-Taylor, hoping she would have collected the kids from school by now. He heard her speak to James: ‘Go inside. I’ve got to speak to your father.’ And then, ‘What’s the latest, Bernard?’
‘I’ve just found her car in the Parkroyal. There’s no sign of her. I’m going to the police. You better get your mum up to help. We need to sit down and tell the kids what’s going on.’
Bernie was fifty-nine years old and fit, but even so when he ran to Parramatta police station in just ten minutes, he surprised himself with his speed. Constable Narelle Jamieson was working the station’s front desk. She was finishing a report and getting ready to take her meal break when Bernie burst in.
‘Please help me. This is urgent,’ he shouted over the counter to Jamieson.
The constable stopped writing and turned towards him. Bernie continued before she could speak: ‘I want to report my wife Kerry missing. Her car is in the Parkroyal car park and the keys are in the ignition and the car was parking another car in.’
‘Hang on, now, slow down,’ Constable Jamieson insisted.
Bernie took in a breath and ran through the details, his fingers drumming on the counter.
The young officer began the routine questions to try to rule out some of the possible reasons for her disappearance. ‘Firstly, did she want to go on the business trip?’ the constable enquired.
Bernie looked impatient. ‘She was really happy and looking forward to our trip. She had an appointment at a beautician’s in Parramatta. For a facial, I think.’ Bernie could not tell her the name of the salon. What husband would know that?
‘Well, how did you know your wife’s car was parked at the Parkroyal Hotel?’ The officer seemed suddenly suspicious.
‘We always park there when we come to Parramatta.’
The probing continued.
‘No,’ Bernie assured the officer, his wife did not have any mental health problems. No, she had never tried to commit suicide. There were no marital problems. ‘We’re very happy in our marriage,’ Bernie said, sounding frustrated. ‘We have children and Kerry would never leave the children.’ He said there had been no threats against his company, however Bernie was concerned she might have been mugged. ‘She was wearing very expensive jewellery. It’d be worth about $50 000.’
Constable Jamieson looked up at this. She turned away from the desk to seek advice from the sergeant.
Bernie paced up and down the foyer. He called Mary Brady and Amanda. Their response was always the same: ‘No word.’
Constable Jamieson returned to the counter. ‘Mr Whelan, we’ll list your wife as missing and I’ll send some police to look at her car and around the Parkroyal. If you hear anything or locate your wife, could you contact the police?’ The young officer reminded him that an estimated 30 000 people were reported missing in Australia each year. ‘Ninety-nine per cent are located within hours, Mr Whelan,’ she said and raised her eyebrows in a half-smile.
Bernie glared back. ‘That’s not good enough,’ he snapped. ‘Something terrible has happened to my wife, I know it.’
The young officer’s tone was gentle: ‘Sir, why don’t you go home and see if you can find anything, any clues to where she might be. Check her luggage, ring her friends.’
The sergeant directed two officers to Mrs Whelan’s vehicle.
Bernie made a quick search as he walked up Phillip Street but it was too dark to see much so he headed home. On the way, he phoned Crown Equipment’s security company, Intellisec. Steve Benton, the director of the security and risk assessment company, was just sitting down to dinner with his family when his pager went off . He called back. Crown had been a valuable client for the last decade, and would frequently call on him to investigate corporate crime and assist with security issues.
The desperation in Bernie’s voice was evident. Benton left his dinner on the table and drove to Parramatta. He and another investigator searched the car park and the streets of Parramatta for the next three hours. They spoke with anyone who would listen. They walked up and down the Parramatta River, from Church Street to the wharf. They checked unit blocks, alleyways and garbage bins. They peered into beauty and hair salons. It was dark and all the shops were locked up. At the Parkroyal Hotel, the duty manager seemed distracted as he wrote down the details. He was busy but would leave a note for his boss.
With no sign of Kerry, the pair went to Parramatta police station. They made a futile attempt to get police to move on the case. It was 11.40 p.m. The detectives, they were told, had all knocked off . The sergeant assured Benton that Mrs Whelan’s details were entered on the computer system. Benton understood, but he was not happy.
Bernie had called on his best mate, Tony Garnett, to telephone detectives he had come to know through his car sales business. ‘I’m worried the police aren’t taking this seriously enough, mate,’ Bernie told Garnett. ‘I’m sure they think we’ve had a domestic, or she’s shacked up in a motel with a lover or something. You know she’s not the sort of person who would just disappear. Is there anybody you can ring to get some action?’
After Tony had digested the news, he started making calls.
Back at the house, the children were finishing off their dinner. Marge was fussing around them as Bernie walked in.
‘Daddy, why aren’t you on the plane with Mummy?’ Matthew asked.
Bernie frowned, ‘Kids, there’s something I need to talk to you about.’
He composed himself. Bernie had to be strong for the children even though he felt like crying. He quietly explained that their mother had not turned up to catch the plane. ‘We’re not sure where Mum is but the police are helping us. Now, I don’t want you worrying.’
James started to cry and Marge cuddled him. Matthew quietly slipped away to his room. Sarah sat open-mouthed for a moment, and then tried to brush it off. ‘Mum probably found some really cool shops and her mobile’s gone flat. She’ll be home later,’ the fifteen-year-old said.
While Marge put the children to bed, Bernie hit the phones. He called eighteen people: friends, neighbours, relatives, even Kerry’s doctor. His enquiries to them were discreet. He didn’t want to alarm anyone unnecessarily or set off any gossip.
Marge phoned an old friend, Karl Bonnette, a retired ‘crim’ who had connections to Sydney’s underworld. ‘I’ll look into it, Marge,’ Bonnette said.
Bernie searched for clues. Kerry’s luggage in the boot of his car revealed nothing, but her diary did. Kerry kept two, a large one for the house to record events for the whole family, and a personal one which she carried in her handbag. Bernie grabbed the large diary from the kitchen bench and turned to 6 May. Kerry had written ‘9.30’ and nothing else. No mention of a beautician’s appointment. Just blank. This was unusual. On every other day she had written an entry beside a time. For 9 May Kerry had scrawled ‘11 am Arndell College opening’. For 17 May, ‘Steven Warren’s 40th lunch’.
Bernie did not even try to sleep that night. His mind teemed with thoughts. He read and reread documents, checked pill bottles and searched through Kerry’s bedside table; he desperately wanted a clue. When the phone rang at 6.40 a.m. he was still in his white business shirt and grey trousers, his tie loosened.
Detective Sergeant Allan Duncan was on the end of the phone line, having just started his shift at Parramatta police station. The detective always came into the office an hour before everyone else, to get settled, make himself a cup of tea and read about any overnight incidents in the situation reports, or ‘Sitreps’, as they were known.
Drama had often followed the bearded 42-year-old Duncan. Three weeks into his job as a fresh recruit in the 1980s, he was almost killed in a bomb explosion at Sydney’s Town Hall. Criminals Gregory Norman McHardie and Larry Danielson carried out a threat to detonate bombs in Woolworths stores if $1 million in cash, diamonds and gold was not paid to them. The blast was tremendous. A wall collapsed on Duncan and left him permanently deaf in his left ear. While two of his colleagues were discharged from the police force on medical grounds, Duncan accepted the princely sum of $1500 in compensation and got on with the job.
On the Sitreps this morning, the case of a missing woman jumped out at him. While missing person files were common, arising at least once a week in his command, this one seemed different. Duncan mulled over the facts: the wife of a chief executive officer from a multinational company, missing with $50 000 worth of jewellery, a mother of three. Duncan dialled the Whelans’ number. ‘It’s Detective Allan Duncan here. Mr Whelan? Have you heard from your wife?’
‘No,’ Bernie answered. ‘I’ve had my security officers out and there’s nothing. What have the police done?’ Bernie sounded scared and angry.
‘Sir,’ Duncan said, ‘I’ve just arrived in and seen the report on your wife. When the other detectives come in, in an hour or so, we’ll have a close look at it.’
Duncan’s superior, Detective Sergeant Brett Henderson, was the next to arrive at Parramatta. He agreed that Mrs Whelan’s vehicle needed to be scientifically examined for fingerprints. He despatched officers to canvass the area, and he ordered them to phone all hairdressing businesses and beauticians in the vicinity of Phillip Street.
By the afternoon, with no sign of Mrs Whelan, Duncan called Detective Sergeant Dennis Bray of the homicide unit at the Major Crime Squad, north-west region. ‘We’ve got this missing person, a wealthy woman whose husband is CEO of a large company,’ Duncan told him.
Bray was immediately concerned and annoyed, as he felt that the local police should have contacted him earlier. Every police officer knew how crucial the first twenty-four hours of a case were. Bray strode down to the station and spoke to Duncan and another Parramatta detective, Glen Vincoe: ‘Mate, this isn’t right,’ Bray told Vincoe, ‘you have a woman who disappeared with more than $50 000 worth of jewellery, married to a senior executive of a multinational company. What are we doing about it? You need to get things happening.’
Duncan said he would call in at the Whelans’ home to get a statement when he finished his shift. ‘It’s on the way to my place,’ he assured Bray.
That would not be until 7 p.m. Bray’s anxiety about the case grew. As part of police protocol, the Major Crime Squad could not get involved in a matter until invited by the local area command. Bray recounted the case to his boss, Mick Howe, back at Parramatta headquarters. He told Howe he thought that not enough was being done. Howe, who was the commander of the Major Crime Squad for the north-west region, instructed Bray to stay in touch with Parramatta and keep him updated.
‘I think there’s more to this, boss,’ Bray said. It was a gut instinct on Bray’s part. ‘Something smells,’ he said. ‘I’m worried it could escalate.’
The mail sat untouched in the Whelans’ letterbox all afternoon. Kerry or Amanda would usually collect it as they drove through the security gate of Willow Park and up the 700-metre-long driveway to the house. But today, Wednesday 7 May, bills and junk mail were the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Bernie had kept the children home from school. While Matthew and James played outside, Sarah sat in her bedroom sketching a self-portrait. It was a distraction she used when she was upset or stressed but today it was not working, her mind clouded by thoughts of what had happened to her mum. Bernie’s children from his first marriage—Marita, thirty, and adopted son Shane, thirty-two—arrived. Kerry’s brother, Brett Ryan, was trying to calm his father, Leo, who had become increasingly frail in the last year, since his wife’s death. The tension in the house was palpable. When a telephone rang everyone jumped. When the security gate swung open, Bernie prayed it was his wife returning.
Around 5 p.m. Amanda’s boyfriend, Damon Spackman, tried to amuse James and Matthew, who were bored and getting in the way: ‘Come on, boys, let’s ride down and get the mail. Grab your bikes.’ James was the first there and pulled four letters from the green wooden box. They raced each other back. Damon chucked the mail on the kitchen bench, and then took the pair outside for a kick of the football.
It was not until just before seven o’clock that Marita handed the envelopes to her father. Something, anything, to distract Bernie from the fears that were consuming him. He stood chatting to Marita as he routinely slit open each envelope. There was a horse vet bill, addressed to Kerry, a belated birthday card for James, an electricity account and then a long yellow business envelope marked ‘B Whelan, 23 Cedar Ridge Road, Kurrajong’. Bernie would later remark to police that the way it was addressed was unusual. Most of the Whelans’ mail was addressed ‘Willow Park, Cedar Ridge Road, Kurrajong’.
Bernie was in mid-conversation when he pulled out the two-page white letter from its envelope. He unfolded it and glanced down. The pages were covered in typed capital letters.
He read the first few lines:
THERE WILL BE NO SECOND CHANCES. FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS OR YOUR WIFE WILL DIE. BY THE TIME YOU RECIEVE [
SIC
] THIS LETTER SHE WILL BE SAFELY IN OUR KEEPING.
Bernie let out a cry: ‘Oh, God! Oh my God, they’ve got her!’ For a minute he forgot to breathe. He went ghostly white and his legs buckled under him.
Marita caught hold of her father who still had the ransom letter clasped in both hands. Recovering, he regained his feet and threw the letter across the table as if it was a bomb about to explode. Everyone crowded around, wanting a look at the object.
‘Don’t touch it. No one touch it!’ Bernie yelled.
The children burst into tears.
Bernie picked up the pages again and, with a shaking hand, silently read the rest.