An Eye For An Eye. Arthur Klepfisz
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Their love, passion, or whatever it was that held them together in those early years, was long gone. What remained were the two children, Penny aged fifteen and Craig, nineteen. The children were witnesses to a marriage anaemic of love; any desire they might have had for marriage forming part of their own lives had surely been curbed.
Brett guessed Jenny had meant something to him early in their relationship, but doubted that he would have married her if she hadn't become pregnant. At that age you thought with your prick and not your head, he often told himself, as he gazed at her sagging breasts and the droplets of saliva dribbling out of the corner of her mouth whilst she lay on her back snoring.
He struggled to get to sleep, with the events of that night running through his mind, jostling for position. He got up several times to get a drink of water and checked the children, as if this would magically bring on sleep.
He regularly lamented to himself that the children were slipping away from him as he and they got older. In earlier days, whatever remnants of time that he had free, he largely devoted to both children. To be truthful, the time was not evenly divided as he spent far more of it with his son. It was mainly physical stuff, wrestling, footy and having a beer together, much to Jenny’s disapproval. He had always found male companionship easier than relating to women. Now he shared nothing with either child and they both seemed to side with their mother. They hated cops and barely grunted a greeting whenever they crossed paths with him.
Strange how the kids liked him when they were young and grew to hate him as they got older, he reflected. He suspected they might be into drugs with their friends – probably marijuana. He attributed a lot of their surliness and poor school performance to smoking grass. Penny was repeating Year 9 and Craig lasted only eight months in his plumbing apprenticeship. According to Brett, Craig was a “bum”, sponging off his parents and the government.
Brett continued to pace around the house wondering if – what the fuck was her name – had been found yet. He had never cared enough to ask her real name when she was alive, but had a vague memory that the Richmond brothel where she worked had given her the identity of Candy. If he wanted her, he would flick through the book lying on the front counter and point to her picture. None of the girls working there went by their birth names. She wasn't the only one he screwed there – but he had favoured sleeping with her lately, enjoying the rough sex and the dilating look of fear that transfigured her face when he arrived. As wide-eyed as a chink can get, he would chuckle to himself.
They didn't pay him much for being a cop, he felt. But if one added to that shitty wage the perks of the job such as free sex, protection money from brothel owners, and the take he got from turning a blind eye to illegal brothels and drugs – well, it made the job tolerable.
He had moved from the Victorian Vice Squad to the Homicide Squad three years ago, but maintained his contacts. There was also a small drug trade that he was building up. He even had what one would call a “silent partner” in Vladimir – very silent if the partner was ever stupid enough to talk, the thought bringing a smirk to his face. Vladimir was part owner of a number of brothels, including the Richmond one where Candy worked – or used to work. Fear and power were the tools of Brett’s trade, feeling even better than sex, and he was confident that Vladimir wouldn't talk.
Before leaving the brothel, Brett had told Vladimir to clothe Candy’s body with a nightie and after waiting a couple of hours to contact the ambulance and police, informing them that he had checked on Candy and found her unconscious in bed and couldn’t feel a pulse. There would be no record to show that Brett had been with Candy that night, except what he had left in her body. As it was a licensed brothel, no further difficulties would arise by contacting the authorities.
Brett had arrived at a stage in his life where he prided himself on not giving a damn about anyone else. He’d chortle privately that he lived by the law of the jungle, where “kill or be killed” became his mantra. He was determined to survive in the world he occupied, whatever the cost. Winning without conflict had bypassed him entirely and he was reluctant to reveal to anyone that he cared for another human being. An exception was Jesse, who was the son of his younger sister Eileen.
Eileen had lived in London since 1968 where she worked as a housemaid in a large hotel. When she had been in London for 15 months, she met her partner, Phil, a builder’s labourer, and they moved in together. He was a hard drinker and a habitual gambler, so their existence was precarious and the arrival of their son Jesse in mid-1972 was an unwelcome surprise.
Around Christmas 1976, while drunk, Phil was critically injured one night in a car accident. His death two weeks later did not touch Eileen deeply – in fact, she realised that it gave her the freedom she had yearned for but had lacked the courage to seek. She had stopped dreaming of a better life many years before; she had no friends and did not look for a new relationship, remaining in the same flat with her young son, playing Bingo once a week and watching TV on the other nights.
Jesse survived as best he could in this emotional vacuum, struggled at school and began to develop behavioural problems associated with intermittent episodes of rage. At first his anger was expressed verbally, but as he got older and his frustration increased, his anger grew increasingly physical in nature.
At age eleven he was placed in a Government-run home but appeared to deteriorate further in that environment. Eileen wrote to Brett out of desperation, as they had not communicated for quite some years. She asked for his assistance in having Jesse transferred to an appropriate institution in Australia, preferably Melbourne, in the hope he would receive better management there. Brett was as surprised as Eileen when he agreed to her request. As youngsters living at home, they had been friends, with Brett often shielding her from the household trauma, and some remnants of this bond had remained.
Brett didn’t seek Jenny’s permission nor did he discuss the issue with her in any depth, a passing comment as he sat with his beer watching TV was the first she learned about Jesse coming. From past experience she did not question Brett any further and left it to him to discuss it if and when he felt inclined. Brett knew however that supporting Jesse was something she would have agreed to if asked, as she was a kindly soul by nature and any sign of caring by Brett, even if directed to someone else, gave her faint hope that things could improve their marriage.
Jesse was already 13 when he arrived in Melbourne and entered a Government institution about a 30-minute drive from Brett’s home. Brett organised to have him fully assessed by a specialist paediatric doctor who diagnosed Jesse as being intellectually impaired. The birth notes were retrieved from the London hospital and revealed a complicated birth where the umbilical cord had caught around his neck at birth. The Melbourne paediatrician wrote out a program for Jesse but was unable to predict if he would ever be capable of independent living.
Over the following years, Brett saw Jesse regularly and took him for outings each week; kicking a football in the park, buying an ice cream, and sometimes going to football matches to watch Essendon play. Brett also took Jesse home to mix with his own children, who enjoyed the outings as Jenny plied them with treats and they related to him as one of the family.
By the age of seventeen Jesse was living in a supervised group home and coping well with casual work as a builder’s labourer. It appeared that he might continue to need some degree of support and supervision in the years to come. Brett continued to pay for most of the ongoing costs, and Jenny lived with the faint hope that this seed of caring might germinate and spread further into her own relationship with Brett.
CHAPTER TWO
Thursday, 27 June 1990
4.59 a.m.
On the other side of the Yarra River, in a Melbourne suburb described in journalistic terms as “the leafy suburb of Hawthorn”, Dr Andrew Wright rolled over in bed, absorbing the warmth of his wife Karen. Andrew worked as a consultant psychiatrist in private practice, outwardly appeared to have a stable family life, and had nearly been monogamous in the past.
It is difficult to imagine how a river such as the Yarra, long described by locals in negative terms such as “floating upside down” could have become an indicator of social standing in the city of Melbourne.
As