The Beat: A True Account of the Bondi Gay Murders (33 page)

‘It’d be Friday.’

Another photograph. John Russell. Could she tell them anything about his death as the result of a fall at Marks Park? On 23 November 1989?

She put her hand to her head for a moment, wiped a finger across her brow. ‘No. See, when I was 17 George wouldn’t let me go anywhere. I wasn’t allowed to do anything. So I don’t really have much … And as far as newspapers and stuff go – like, I barely even watch TV.’ She paused for the briefest moment. ‘Like this, that mark?’ Showing the policemen an old scar. ‘That’s
’
cause tea was 10 minutes late on the table and he hit me with a crowbar. Like, this guy didn’t let me go anywhere. Like, so most of this is just nothing to me.’

The whole rigmarole repeated with photographs and explanations of David McMahon. McGrath knew nothing.

‘As far as gay bashings and anything like that,’ she said. ‘Like, I have nothing to do with them. I have seen one gay bashing and that was – you know the wall? Where all the poofters go? And that was I seen this boy getting his arse whopped and me and these two guys I was with went over and pulled these blokes off him and told them, too. And that’s the only thing I’ve ever had to do, that I can recall, with any gay people. Like, I don’t, nothing. So none of this means anything to me, really.’

‘Okay,’ Steve Page said. ‘When you attended Bondi in 1989, were you ever involved in any offences of violence?’

‘Not that I can recall, no.’

‘Have you ever been involved in bashings where members of the gay community were targeted?’

‘Not that I can recall.’

‘Have you ever been involved in robberies targeting members of the gay community?’

‘No.’ Then thinking, ‘I had a fight with a girl but she wasn’t gay. But, like I said, anything I’ve ever done that’s bad, I’ve been caught for. So, everything I’ve got, all this, like when, like, even when you rang my sister, my sister freaked. She goes, ‘What the heck is going on?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ And, like, all this is just too much.’

It was all too much. Of course it was all too much. But it had all been too much for Ross Warren, too. And it had all been too much for John Russell, for David McMahon. If Merlyn McGrath hadn’t been involved in any of the incidents the detectives were investigating, then she had their sincere sympathy but the victims had been involved and for two of them at least there could never be anything other than sympathy.

‘We’ve been informed by several witnesses,’ Steve Page said calmly, ‘that you’ve told them that you were involved in the bashing and subsequent disappearance of Ross Warren.’

McGrath swallowed, did she look about to cry? ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘There’s only one person that would say that and that’s my brother’s ex.’

‘And that is?’

‘Vicki Morgan.’ No hesitation, no qualms about giving up a girl she’d disliked. ‘It’s the only person that would say anything like that. She hates my guts
’
cause I told my brother she was cheating on him.’

Vicki Morgan, whereabouts unknown, a girl from the bush, from the same town as McGrath. They’d both moved to Nowra from the middle of nowhere. She hadn’t seen Vicki Morgan for … for 10 years.

‘Have you ever informed people that you were involved in an attack on Ross Warren?’

‘Not that I can recall.’ Which sounded lame because you’d remember something like that, you’d remember telling people you’d killed somebody. Obviously, the detectives picked up on just how lame it sounded.

‘When you say, not that you can recall,’ Page quietly demanded, ‘is it the case that you might have said it, but you can’t recall it, or you never would have said it?’

‘I might have said it to Vicki to piss her off,’ McGrath answered, almost certainly unaware that this could be the pivotal question. ‘But I wouldn’t have said it to anyone else. Like, this was a woman I watched,’ she continued. ‘Like, practically, you know, doing it in a nightclub and she’s going out with my brother. So I went and told him. And me sister was, me sister was telling me actually. She said to me, she said, “Vicki used to have a big crush on him”.’ Meaning Ross Warren.

So, apart from Vicki Morgan – and that just to piss her off – there was no-one else she’d told that she was involved in Warren’s death? And there was no-one else who she might have told that she’d been involved in an attack on him? No. No.

‘Look,’ she said, maybe a little desperate, but not quite frantic. ‘This is a long time ago and I don’t know what I may or may not have said, but I know one thing – I got nothing to do with this, nothing at all. So, like I said, I would have said some harsh things to Vick
’
cause she was a real, not a, not a very nice sheila. But other than that, no.’

‘Right,’ Page said. ‘Well, the information we have is that from, currently from three separate individuals, is that you’ve told them at various stages that you were involved in the bashing of Ross Warren.’

If he expected her to collapse, to crumble under the allegations, he was disappointed. McGrath looked at him wide-eyed with denial. ‘No, that’s crap,’ she spat. ‘I’m, look, like I said, if I did this I’d know I did it and I don’t care what I may or may not have said, I didn’t have anything to do with any of these poor people getting hurt. Why would I want to target gay people when I’m bisexual myself? That’s just ridiculous. You know, like, when I started going out with my last girlfriend, we were together for 12 months and the crap that we copped in Nowra was unbelievable. And I didn’t give a shit.
’
Cause I’d copped it all before from, from like, being inside and all the rest of it. So why would I want to target people that are exactly the same as me? That cop the same crap? Like, I don’t know.’

No, Steve Page didn’t know either. But he didn’t know why anyone would make up stories about Merlyn McGrath admitting to them that she’d killed someone. Somebody – maybe everybody – was lying. Looking at the woman in front of him he came to a quick decision. There was no point in going at her hard, no point in intimidating her: she was under enough stress already. If he left it there, they could wait for more intelligence from the phone taps because he knew, knew with absolute certainty, that Merlyn McGrath’s phone was going to ring red hot for some time to come after this interview. He leaned forward in his chair, his arms resting on the table, and ran through his direct questions routine: did you kill … were you present … do you know who…

No. No. No. No. No.

Finally, the detective sergeant leaned away from the table. It was over. ‘I’ve got no further questions,’ he said. ‘Is there anything further you wish to tell me about this matter?’

She looked barely able to keep the tears from spilling down her face. ‘I just want to know what’s going on,’ she said. ‘This is starting to scare me. I’ve never hurt anyone. I’ve not done any, I got nothing to do with any of this and you’re making me scared. I swear I don’t know. I don’t know any of those people. I don’t know what I might have said to Vicki, but I didn’t hurt him. I don’t know who did or anything. And you want me to go back to a time where I was getting beat up, I was on drugs and I can hardly remember. But if I, if I hurt anyone like that, I’d know. And I can’t remember. I’ve only ever hurt anyone bad once and I paid for that. I paid very hard. This is scary shit. I got three little boys. I don’t know about any of this.’

iii

What would she do when she reached home, the police wondered? Would she run to the phone as soon as she’d closed the front door? Would she feel she had to call somebody, had to share her terror, to bring it out into the open, to expose it to daylight so that its power would diminish? They thought she wouldn’t want to speak to her sister, not yet, wouldn’t want to talk to her brother or … She would probably need to talk to someone who wasn’t involved, they guessed, someone she could trust but who was on the outside …

And it seemed they were right in their guess. She rang her friend, Monica. Rang and, as soon as Monica picked up, she babbled for a minute, two, barely coherently. Until she sounded calmer.

‘Oh, fuckin’ look, mate,’ she said. ‘They’re fuckin’ scaring the fuck outta me. They asked me about the disappearance of this Ross Warren guy and they said “we’ve had, got three witnesses that say you know his whereabouts and you fuckin’’ … I bashed him or something.’ She waited, maybe for a response that didn’t come, maybe for reassurance from her friend. When the silence stretched too long she continued. ‘And then they asked me about the death of another guy … And they’re all gay. And then he asked me about an attempted murder on another guy. I said, “look, mate, you’re fuckin’ freaking me out”. I said, “this is sick shit.” I said, “this is serious.” And fuck, I got upset, mate. I started crying. I said, “you know,” I said, “I’ve got three boys and a man at home.” I said, “I’ve got my whole life ahead of me.” I said, “Fuck, you think I’m gonna waste my life on this shit? Because I … if I knew something, I’d tell ya.” But it frightened the fuck outta me, mate. He told me to get a solicitor.’

She was crying again, now, crying into the phone as the words spilled from her mouth and she listened to them like they were coming from someone else. ‘But, fuck. I’m scared, Mon. And the worst thing is, there’s fuckin’, I’ve got nothing to do with it. Like, that’s what’s pissing me off.’ A deep breath, steadying and controlling. ‘Like, when they first called, I thought, three people saying that I said fuckin’ I gave him a hiding and knew where he was or some shit? He reckons … I said to him, I said, “Look, the only person that would have ever said that,” I said, “would have been fuckin’ my brother’s ex-girlfriend,” I said, “and what I may or may not have said to fuckin’ her,” I said, “is despite the fuckin’ fact. I … I’ve got nothing to do with this.” ’

Having finished with Monica, McGrath called her sister and retold her story, going over the same details she’d earlier given to her friend. Her protesting her innocence became stronger, more pronounced, as she built up a defence against all the implications that she’d been there, seen it all go down, had had a hand in it going down. But she needn’t have worried. When she’d gone over it for the second, the third time, her sister cut her short. She had evidence, she said.

‘You were with Bill in ’89,’ she said, as if that was proof in itself. ‘I found photos. And ’89 I hung around Brad – poofter Brad – and, and remember when they, youse all came down and stayed? With a stolen car? I’m sure that was ’89.’

Slowly it dawned on her, what her sister was saying. Slowly the possibility began to seep into her like a new consciousness, fresh and bright and vibrant. ‘I was living in Mount Druitt,’ she said almost reverently, pausing for a second or two. ‘Fuck, we didn’t used to go to Bondi at all then.’

So, she was in the clear. Not that she hadn’t always known it, anyway, but. If she’d never gone to Bondi in ’89 then she couldn’t have bashed this bloke, this Warren, she couldn’t have seen anybody else bash him and she was in the bloody clear. She should tell that fuckin’ cop right now, should ring him up and say, fuck you. It wasn’t me, I wasn’t there. I was in fuckin’ Mount Druitt, mate. That’s what she would do, ring him right now … She stood there, holding the phone, listening to her sister without hearing her, listening to the sound of her sister’s words tinkling like wind chimes in her ear while she thought about how the nightmare was over because she now knew…

Steve Page could imagine the relief she’d feel as she listened to her sister at the other end of the line. The relief and then the doubt. How could she prove that the photos were from ’89? How could she …? The cops would just say, shit, that’s, that could be any time, could be last fuckin’ week, mate … Well, not last week, but … He could imagine her as the reality sank in: she had to think this through carefully, had to make sure there could be no mistake about…

‘I’m gonna try and put it out of me head for now,’ she said, cutting into whatever her sister was saying, ‘’cause it’s driving me nuts. I keep thinking Bill and Lee, they were into graffiti.’

‘Yeah, but they didn’t do much but tag things, though, did they?’ her sister asked.
Come on,
she was saying,
you’re free.

‘Yeah. Not really. Just bombing trains and shit. We didn’t go to Bondi. We used to hang around the town. Like, out Mount Druitt and shit. But Bondi wasn’t our area.’

‘Then that confirms you were with Bill in ’89,’ her sister said, meaning the photos she’d found, ignoring what McGrath was saying. Except for the Mount Druitt stuff. ‘And if you were with Bill that gives you a fair idea of what you might have been up to.’

‘Which was nothin’
’
cause we were in Mount Druitt.’

As the day wore on, Page knew that Merlyn McGrath would be oscillating between a muted euphoria that she’d been vindicated and a nagging feeling that it wasn’t over yet. Afternoon stretched into evening, the heat relentless in its strength-sapping power. Her kids were probably playing up, fighting among themselves. A kind of headache might have started as she tried to sort things out in her mind. Questions, there were too many, the detective knew. Questions like: what if her sister was wrong? Wrong about the photos? Wrong about her being with Bill? What if the cops didn’t believe her? What if they didn’t believe her sister? What if they just didn’t give a fuck? Just ignored everything she said and charged her anyway? He knew she’d think about how they’d told her to get a solicitor. They were obviously after her, she’d think, obviously had no intention of letting her off the hook … What if they just arrested her, put her in jail whether she’d done it or not? There’d been stuff on the TV like that, innocent people locked up for years. She’d worry about who’d look after the kids? It was Christmas next week … He knew she was scared.