The Tall Man by Chloe Hooper Read Free Book Online Page A

“If I got up and seen where the punches were hitting he would have hit me, he would have threw me in the bloomin’ cell.”
    N EARLY TWO YEARS later, on October 6, 2006, when Roy Bramwell was in prison for his assault on Gladys Nugent and her sisters, he called in a Legal Aid representative. His nephew Patrick Nugent had just been arrested again and he was frightened for him. Roy made a sworn statement:
    On the 20th November 2004 … I was visited by 4 demons [police officers] who obtained a statement from me regarding what I had seen … One of the four detectives present was Darren Robinson and after my statement was signed he threatened me with if anything happens to his friend Chris Hurley, he would come looking for me. I did not tell anyone of this threat until now as I am now scared for my safety and also for my family.
    In 1987, after the media had aired claims of high-level corruption within the Queensland Police Force, a judicial inquiry was set up, headed by Tony Fitzgerald QC. Fitzgerald exposed a police service linked to illegal prostitution, gambling and kickbacks, an organization “debilitated by misconduct, inefficiency, incompetence and deficient leadership”. Endemic corruption led all the way to the state’s long-serving, ultra-right-wing premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, and to his anointed police commissioner, Sir Terence Lewis. In September 1987 Sir Terence was forced to resign and later went to jail for ten years on corruption charges. Chris Hurley was sworn in as a police officer the following month. The month after that, in November 1987, after nineteen years at the helm, Sir Joh spent his last moments in office shredding incriminating documents.
    The Fitzgerald inquiry identified within the force a pervasive unwritten “code,” which required that police “not enforce the law against other police, nor co-operate in any attempt to do so, and perhaps even obstruct any such attempt”. Police justified this code to themselves by claiming they “need to trust each other”. Fitzgerald found that it “effectively places police officers beyond the law”.
    O N THAT SAME Saturday morning when Robinson and Kitching interviewed Roy Bramwell, Inspector Mark Williams arrived on Palm Island. Williams was from Ethical Standards, the police division required to sign off on deaths in custody. At 10:52 A.M. he and Inspector Webber conducted a video interview with Bramwell, wherein he repeated his claim of having seen Hurley’s elbow going up and down three times.
    A few feet away, Hurley sat in his office with the door closed.
    When the interview was finished, Webber, Williams and Hurley went to Dee Street to look at the scene of the arrest. The two investigators’ conversations with Hurley immediately following their interview with Bramwell were not taped. At the inquest, Webber denied telling Hurley of Bramwell’s allegation: “I certainly did not, and certainly in my presence no officer did.” But Webber could not say where, in or around the police station, Hurley had been after 8:15 A.M. , when Roy first made his claim, or which officers he had spoken to.
    Back at the station once more, Hurley had his own video interview with Webber and Williams, recorded at 11:53 A.M. Hurley is shown standing loose-limbed and slouching. He is tense. He can’t keep his hands still; he clenches his fists and flutters his fingers, flexing them. His long arms look like they have a lot of leverage. He knows how to box and demonstrates four different punches in the space of a few seconds, to show how Cameron hit him. This relaxes him. Hurley is articulate when he’s being physical. He starts describing their “figh—” before correcting himself and calling it a “tussle”. “I knew there’s going to be a tussle on if he’s going to hit a copper,” he tells the inspectors in a voice that seems to expect agreement.
    Inspector Webber plays the part of Cameron while Hurley reenacts his story: he’d been hit, he