Crimwife (14 page)

While the pressures of being a good crimwife are universally constant, not all the damsels are in the same distress. Officer Maxine was right, of course. Many women end up with a criminal record and even jail time, which they had never encountered before their relationship with a crook. This can devastate a crimwife. But there are also plenty of relationships where each spouse brings their own toolbox of tricks to the table, and two criminals who work well as a pair always do better than one. It’s always good to have someone looking out while the job’s being done.

Like any married couple who work together, the business can be an outstanding success or a dismal failure. How well they know each other and can stand each other’s company is important, as well as how much trust each has for the other’s financial decisions.

The criminal relationship is no different, then, from any couple running their business from home. Each person has a role that suits their individual skills, and the two can make bigger decisions together. No need for the individual criminal to waste time and money in hiding their activities if their partner is aware and supportive of their work. They will both know how to handle police, nosy neighbours and all the responsibilities and entitlements they have.

When a couple in love decides to do crime together, it’s a powerful combination. Gender roles can be critical to the operation’s result. While he’s searching a flat for cash, she can watch for people coming and make chit-chat with any unexpected passers-by. He might go out and bring back a big bag of drugs, while she might be better at the fiddly parts of divvying it up to be sold and keeping track of the debts. He has usually been disqualified from driving till 2045 due to whatever he did behind the wheel in his teenage years. A woman’s licence is a very attractive asset, making her useful for transport to, from and during crime. Al Capone did not catch the bus.

The higher you go up the ladder of criminal power, the less practical responsibility lies with the wife. If he gets richer, he can pay someone to drive, or do anything that is needed for their business. Still, while she may not be helping him lift plasmas into the back seat in the middle of the night, she remains extremely important. She is the closest one to him and his business. She knows his secrets. She can use this to create an illusion of stability and wholesomeness for the outside world, sending his mother birthday cards, and having tea with the neighbours to keep everyone onside. The knowing wife of a white-collar criminal may never technically break the law, but it’s her full-time job to ensure that her husband can destroy it in a freshly dry-cleaned suit.

The crimwife, high-class or not, with her intimate knowledge, is extremely powerful as well as vulnerable. Her partner will deliberately keep information from her so that should she be questioned, she will be unable to answer. This protects both of them if there is conflict with the authorities or other criminals. There are few criminal relationships in which there is 100 per cent honesty flowing. Sometimes they will just plain rip each other off in which case it’s by how much that causes fights. Generally, though, in the more committed relationship, there’s an unspoken understanding that in the course of their duties, they don’t have to always pool their tips.

For the serious gangster, it’s imperative that his girl is never seen by anyone as more powerful than he is. He is the magician, and she his beautiful assistant. He is her boss and that spills right through their home life. After all, she wouldn’t have that car, that washing machine and the rest of it if he hadn’t gone out and earned it. And make no mistake, he counts it as earned. It was a project he achieved, he finished, and he deserves the kudos. Getting caught or coming home empty-handed is real failure.

The benefits of voluntary crimwifery can be enormous. Depending on how successful he is, she and her children can enjoy a comfortable or even luxurious lifestyle. When times are good, there may be a whole lot of cash and it may need to be spent quickly. The couple can buy the best for their kids and home. They can travel, stay in plush hotels and drive good cars.

Before the Crimes Commission began recouping proceeds of crime from those convicted, there was much more security for the crimwife. Women were able to keep the houses and cars bought before their husbands went to jail. These days, the reverse happens. The police confiscate anything that could be related to the charges being pressed. They return it a long time later only if it’s proven it wasn’t for illegal use, and if it’s still able to be found in the storehouse. Every crim couple working from home has an emergency plan detailing where everything must be hidden in the very likely event that the police burst through the front door with a search warrant. They may have only two minutes until the cops nab them but critical evidence can be flushed, thrown, stashed or covered in those vital seconds.

However equally they enjoy the fruits of his labour, when the going gets bad, it gets a lot worse for him than it does for her. This generally suits the couple perfectly.

If he has a long enough record, it makes sense for him to put his hand up for all of the charges that he can, and for her to deny all knowledge. He will maintain that she had no idea about what he was up to when they were pulled over or raided. They will both insist she knew nothing about the contents of the glovebox or the shed. Unless physical evidence is found on her, she may well be released after questioning, while he stays in the police cells.

This gives her the chance to hide or dispose of any incriminating items and to inform bosses, associates and customers of the current situation. Later, the detectives may produce an address book in her handwriting or a tapped phone call that demonstrates her collusion with his crime. It can still be much harder to prove in a courtroom, and the couple will usually have explanations and alibis ready to keep her out of jail at least.

If it is impossible to prove that she knew what the numbers in the address book were for, or that she had any access to his shed, the charges of being an accessory to major crimes can’t stick. This won’t be the case if she has a long record herself, of course, but the idea is to keep her record as clean as possible. Having a missus who seems straight can also aid the court’s view of the defendant as having some hope of a law-abiding future.

If he is a repeat offender up against a long list of charges, he will often be able to serve some of his sentences concurrently. He may be sentenced to six months for possession of drugs, three for having drug paraphernalia, and eighteen months for drug supply. Served concurrently, with parole, he could be out of jail within a year. It would be counterproductive for her to be charged with any of the lesser crimes, even if he didn’t do them. He would still be in for the eighteen-month part of his sentence anyway, and who would look after things outside?

The criminal courts are usually more lenient towards mothers than fathers. Unless it’s a serious criminal charge, like murder or trafficking of hard drugs, the courts are wary of putting mothers behind bars too quickly. To put both parents in jail for stealing a car would put more pressure on the system than it’s worth. The couple can factor all of this into their original business plan.

So with him inside, catching up with old colleagues, she can get back to their business. It may have to go on hold, she might have to employ one of his mates, or she may be able to do it all herself. Perhaps without his income, she will have to rely on her own wits to maintain the lifestyle to which they are accustomed. Some women become sex workers or deal drugs. Some have a mental treasure map of where he has hidden money for just such an occasion.

The intensity of these pairings is extreme. They share the thrill of the crime, the indulgence of its rewards and the agony of its punishments. When things are good, they are fantastic, and the couple are thicker than thieves. When it comes undone, their roles shift again. The letters and phone calls begin. She will visit and organise drug drop-offs. He will make triple the profit on them than he would on the street and have money sent to her. Or he will make money to support her through gambling, selling, protection, blackmail or violence, and she will look after his legal help, family, kids, business, house and make sure there’s money in his jail account.

After years of working, living, loving and hating together, they are indispensable to each other. They simply can’t operate as effectively without the other, and each holds the power to get their partner in big trouble if he or she should leave. He knows she would make it hard for him to see his children. She knows she can’t support her brood as well as he can. They are bound together deeply, irrevocably.

Jeremy and Ella grew up on the opposite sides of the country. They would never have met if Ella had pulled into another service station that afternoon, or if Jeremy hadn’t stopped to get a Coke in the summer heat and sat down on a milk crate outside to drink it. All Ella remembers is that when she came back from paying for petrol, Jeremy was talking to her two friends in the car. When he saw her, for Jeremy it was love at first sight. It wasn’t so instant for Ella, but it wouldn’t take long. Maybe he could see the iron-willed determination in her eyes, her face, her walk and her laugh that day. Maybe he knew, consciously or not, what he needed and that she was one of the rare women on Earth who could give it to him. Maybe the strength of her resilience, which she wore like a charm bracelet, was what attracted him.

They had so much in common already, she all of twenty and he twenty-one, but they couldn’t have known that. Their separate hells had been created long before they met; in truth, before they had been born.

Jeremy grew up in an extended family of criminals. He and his two sisters were not spared any details of the business, if the kids in the family were noticed at all. There was no censorship. Out of the uncles and cousins who had already been to jail, Jeremy’s dad was the smartest. He sold speed in bulk to truck drivers and shift workers, and he would be gone here and there for hours or even days at a time. His dad’s main way of earning a crust was the turnover of stolen cars. He had men working for him full-time, sourcing the cars, surveying businesses, measuring showrooms, and those just bringing cars in and taking them back out again, rebuilt or in crates of pieces. Having done it since he was in his teens, he knew the industry inside out. He’d been to jail a couple of times before Jeremy was born, but never after.

There was, however, a side more sinister than larceny to the work his dad did. Debt collection was a necessary and frequent part of the job. The loans Jeremy’s dad made were big, and everyone involved knew the risks of failing to repay. When Jeremy grew older and stayed up later, he realised the jobs his dad was attending to involved savage violence.

Jeremy’s dad was not discreet. He didn’t care what his kids saw. When he drank he was a brutal man, cruel and sadistic. For years Jeremy watched his mother manage his father’s vicious episodes, struggling to keep a brave face for the children while he berated her, as they all braced themselves. Most of his terrorising wasn’t physical, although none of them escaped without beatings. But he kept them in a constant state of fear.

When Jeremy was eleven years old, his mother finally convinced his father to let her leave. He had always said he would hunt her down and bring her back if she left, but he also seemed to be getting bored with her. Jeremy had seen his father’s eye rove more when they went out. He had seen the end coming.

While Jeremy’s father told everyone he was relieved to be getting rid of all the women in his life, he was not prepared to part with his boy. So when Jeremy’s mother fled with his sisters, she had no choice but to leave him behind. Without his mother’s watchful eye, his father was free to do anything he wanted, and Jeremy’s not-yet-teenaged life became an apprenticeship in torture, violence and crime. For Jeremy and his cohorts, prison was a rite of passage and proof of manhood.

After he got out of jail in his home state, at the age of twenty-one, he wanted to see his mother and sisters. His father relented and Jeremy travelled to the other side of the country, about three suburbs away from the bottle shop where he met Ella.

Just a year younger than Jeremy, Ella had been fighting for survival since the day she was born. Her parents were both heroin addicts, but her father had resolved they should quit needles when the pregnancy was announced. He was successful, but Ella’s mother wasn’t. By the time Ella was three, her dad had moved out, keeping in touch with her on the days he didn’t see her. Soon after, he remarried.

Ella’s mother, jealous of his relationship, moved away and changed their numbers to deprive him of Ella. It took her father a few months each time, but he always found them. Ella’s mother moved them five times to separate father and daughter.

The years before Ella’s mother died were a mess for Ella. She went to school never knowing how she would find her mother when she got home. Would she be home at all? Would she be passed out drunk or desperate for drugs, which was even worse? She had learned by seven years old to hide the syringes before she dialed triple 0.