Call Me Cruel (26 page)

Kylie's family had listened for over forty minutes without showing emotion. As the judge stood up and left the room, they began to weep.

Rebekkah Craig still works at Gosford and is busily raising the two children born during the investigation.

Glenn Smith returned to the Homicide Squad and received a Commander's Unit Citation for bringing Kylie's killer to justice. In order to become a sergeant he had to leave Homicide and now works in uniform at a suburban police station. He's proud of Paul Wilkinson's conviction but says, ‘There are no winners in a murder investigation.'

Four days after Wilkinson was sentenced, Geoff Lowe applied to be classified ‘hurt on duty' and given a pension for life, due to the psychological effects of Wilkinson's allegations. This was granted in 2010.

Julie Thurecht is engaged to Vince Cotton and living happily with him and Bradley.

John Edwards taught English in a high school in Thailand for several years and now helps provide first-aid courses in Afghanistan. He still finds it immensely hard to talk about his younger daughter.

Leanne Edwards is a single parent, bringing up her daughters on the Central Coast. She believes Kylie was finally starting to mature just before her death, and if she'd lived her life would have improved dramatically. She thinks often about the way her own family's life would have been enriched had Kylie and her children been part of it, and of how Kylie and she might have grown close for the first time. ‘I was waiting for her to catch up with me,' she says, ‘and she just had when we lost her.'

Carol Edwards (nee Windeyer) believes Kylie is still close to her: ‘I know that she's with me. I speak to her every day, out loud, when I'm walking to the station at three, three-thirty in the morning [to go to work at a call centre in Sydney]. There's a star just directly out there, it's the brightest star in the whole sky. I named this star Kylie. And this star follows me, all the way to the station, and I talk to this star. When I'm feeling down, I just speak out loud to her, it's as though she was here. I'm sure she's had a hand in some things that have happened to me since she died. I'm sure she's like a guardian angel watching over me.'

i.m. Kylie Labouchardiere (née Edwards)
(1980–2004)

A copy of the manuscript of this book was sent to Paul Wilkinson's parents in case he or they wished to read it and comment. I was told the family does not wish to add anything to what is on the public record.

My heartfelt thanks to John and Carol Edwards, for their help and for various documents and photographs. I would not have written the book without their agreement, and hope the result warrants the anguish caused by recalling Kylie's life.

I owe a lot to many other people, and two in particular. The first is Anna Cooper, media officer for the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions. Most people in her position say no to anything unusual, but she said yes to the idea for this book and so did her boss at the time, Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery.

My other great debt is to Glenn Smith, the leader of the investigation that brought Paul Wilkinson to justice. Again, most people in his job are suspicious of journalists, but he was prepared over time to tell me a great deal about the investigation. My thanks to him, and to his bosses, who in the end let him talk on the record.

Thanks also to Julie and Jenene Thurecht, Geoff Lowe, Rebekkah Craig, Sean Labouchardiere, Leanne and Michael Edwards, John Kiely, Helen Rallis, Sue Lowe, Maxine Cahill, and others who spoke with me on condition of anonymity. My then editor, Peter Fray, enabled me to cover the case for the
Sydney Morning Herald
, and Justice Peter Johnson permitted access to documents presented to the court hearings.

Some of the above people read all or part of the manuscript of this book and provided helpful comments and corrections.

My final thanks are to book editor Catherine Milne, and to my wife, Alex Snellgrove, for many valuable suggestions, and to Jane Palfreyman, Elizabeth Cowell and Margaret Connolly.

Michael Duffy

THE TOWER

Young detective Nicholas Troy is basically a good man, for whom working in homicide is the highest form of police work. But when a woman falls from the construction site of the world's tallest skyscraper, the tortured course of the murder investigation that follows threatens his vocation.

Hampered by politicised managers and incompetent colleagues, Troy fights his way through worlds of wealth and poverty, people smuggling and prostitution. He has always seen Sydney as a city of sharks, a place where predators lurk beneath the glittering surface. Now he uncovers networks of crime and corruption that pollute the city, reaching into the police force itself.

Finally, the shadowy predator Troy has been chasing turns and comes for him, putting his family at risk. Forced to defend himself with actions he would never have considered before, Troy confronts a moral abyss. He realises it's a long way down . . .

‘A gripping, fast-paced debut that introduces Michael Duffy's simple, true and confident voice to an army of crime lovers. Sure to be a hit with fans of
Underbelly
and Michael Connelly,
The Tower
unites classic noir suspense with seat of the pants action set against the glimmer and grime of the harbour city, where the sharks are beginning to circle.'

SydneyUnleashed.com

ISBN 978 1 74237 261 7

Michael Duffy

THE SIMPLE DEATH

A man has come off the Manly Ferry and Detective Nicholas Troy investigates but he is distracted. His mentor Father Luke Corelli has been accused of abusing a young boy years before. To Troy's dismay he's not denying the charge and nor is the Catholic Church trying to defend his name. Troy's ambitious and attractive colleague Susan Conti is newly single and his eccentric boss, Jon McIver, would rather be singing the blues than following leads.

In another part of Sydney, successful bureaucrat Leila Scott's mother has bone cancer. She asks for help to die and Leila seeks the advice of a voluntary euthanasia group. She finds herself caught up in a police investigation when Troy comes across members of the group and begins to suspect voluntary euthanasia is being used as an excuse for something much darker.

As Troy digs deeper into both cases, feeling instinctively that they are somehow connected, he realises that morality and the law might not always follow the same path. And that there is no such thing as a simple death.

‘Duffy is indisputably a writer to watch. He will soon be ranked alongside the likes of international behemoths Michael Connelly, George Pelecanos and Don Winslow. There is no higher praise.'

Winsor Dobbin,
Sun-Herald

ISBN 978 1 74237 552 6