‘I’m calling because I know your family.’

‘How can I help you?’ I ask.

She says her name is Sharon (not her real name). ‘I’ve got this information. I wasn’t sure whether to pass it on, but I feel I have to.’

A relative has told her I’m a cop. That I am someone she can trust.

‘What information?’ I ask.

‘I need you to promise me that you’ll handle it delicately.’

‘I need to know more about it before making any promises.’

‘It’s about my brother.’

‘OK –’

‘I think he’s done an armed robbery.’

That gets my attention. Eight years into the job, over the past few months I’ve been getting flogged: break-and-enters, frauds, assaults, as if every job that came into the Hornsby detectives’ office I seemed to end up doing.

Most of these are straightforward, volume crimes, the constant whip of work that keeps me running without feeling I am moving forward.

But I want to get off the treadmill.

‘You’re doing the right thing, passing this information on,’ I tell her.

‘Let me know the details.’

She says her brother’s name is Isaac (not his real name). She’s seen his photo in a wanted ad or something in the papers.

He’s a good man, she says, but he’s been through some bad times and got into drugs.

Both she and I are now committed.

There is enough in what she’s told me to make me want to meet her.

Heading out of the office, I ask a young, plain clothes constable if he’d like to come along.

He nods, saying ‘Great.’

He’s smart and keen, fresh out of uniform. Just like I was a few years ago.

We meet Sharon at her home and sit together in her living room, where she and I make small talk about our families at first before I ask her to talk about her brother.

She gives me details of the robbery, in a building society on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Isaac walked in during the day, when the place was full of people. He hid his face – most armed robbers used a bandana or a stocking – and got away with the money.

Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Sharon doesn’t know if Isaac has a gun. He might have.

‘You won’t harm him?’ she asks.

It isn’t a dumb question.

The New South Wales Police Force are not famous for being caring, sharing types.

‘Please treat him with respect,’ she asks. ‘He’s my brother, I love him.’

I ask her where he’s living.

She tells me and repeats her request, ‘Don’t hurt him.’

I look her in the eyes, and tell her, ‘Don’t worry, you can trust me. We won’t hurt him.’

Before we leave, I try to reassure her, ‘You’ve done the right thing.’

***

I CATCH KILLERS PODCAST - The Cop and the Snitch: In this explosive bonus episode a criminal informant who risked his life to help homicide Detective Gary Jubelin catch killers for 22 years speaks for the first time. The informant speaks in the second half of the episode.

We ask a magistrate to sign the warrant authorising us to do a search of Isaac’s unit, and to use force to get inside it if we have to.

‘Make sure no one gets killed,’ he says, handing over the thin sheaf of papers.

I laugh. I’ve been in the cops long enough to know how to execute a search warrant.

‘What could possibly go wrong?’ I joke, but he’s already turned away to deal with something else.

***

MORE GARY JUBELIN

TYRRELL CONTROVERSY: ‘Jubes, I need you to sort out this mess’

BETRAYAL: The mentor who failed Jubelin

We form up beside a nearby cricket oval to go over my plan for the operation.

Standing beside the oval, I recognise the familiar mix of fear, adrenaline and excitement I always feel before a big job.

The other cops are waiting for instructions, among them Jon, the plain clothes constable who came with me to meet Sharon, and a couple of detectives from the Armed Hold-Up Squad, which is known in the force as the Stick-Ups.

One of these guys I know, a tough unit who played reserve grade footy but still has a boyish face, earning him the nickname Strongboy.

The others I haven’t worked with, although I know the sergeant leading the surveillance team; he served in Vietnam before joining the cops and has the nickname Agent Orange.

Despite the twisting in my stomach, I’m not going to show weakness.

The plan is simple, I say, ‘We’ll go straight from here. It’s a minute-, twominute drive. It’s a housing commission place, so we won’t hang around because we’ll stand out like dogs’ balls. I’ll go in with Jon and you blokes from the Stick-Ups. We’ll knock on the door while the surveillance team covers the back in case he throws something out or tries to bolt.’

They nod. They understand their roles. We roll out and drive to the brown-brick, 1970s apartment building, three or four storeys tall where Isaac has his apartment.

Pulling up, we quickly move across the ground and into the shade inside the building. Climbing to the first floor, I put my ear to the door of his unit and, hearing somebody moving about inside, signal to Strongboy for us to take up our positions on either side of the doorway

with our backs to the brickwork, in case whoever is in there starts shooting.

Jon and the second cop from the Stick-Ups shelter in the stairwell, ready to follow us when Isaac opens the door.

***

‘Get f**ked!’ he shouts again from inside the unit.

‘Drop the knife!’ Another voice.

What’s going on?

The quick sound of a gunshot.

Silence.

A woman screams.

We start kicking the door – only it doesn’t buckle.

With Strongboy, I shoulder-charge the door, one at a time at first, then both of us together, until it breaks off its hinges and falls down flat, sending the two of us crashing into the apartment.

Inside, the woman is still screaming. We’re in the living room. The woman’s on my left, bent over, hands clawing at her face. A knife is lying on the carpet, beside an outstretched hand.

Facing me, is Agent Orange, with his gun still pointing at the body.

F**k, I think.

It can’t have been more than a minute or two since I knocked on the apartment door. No more than 10 since I was standing on the footpath beside the oval.

A stream of unlikely thoughts flows through my mind: How do we make this go away? Remove the body. There’s a rug, wrap it up in the rug. Cover it up. This hasn’t happened.

I come back to my senses, and Strongboy and I drop to our knees on the carpet, examining the man lying on the floor.

MORE GARY JUBELIN

EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT: How Tyrrell case brought down Gary Jubelin

JUBELIN SHOCK: I’d rather go to jail than pay a fine

There is no pulse. The bullet has gone into Isaac’s chest – right through his nipple, I think. That looks strange – but when we roll him over there’s no exit wound, so there isn’t

much blood.

How can he be dead when there is so little blood?

I hear the other cops we’d left outside in the stairwell come crowding through the doorway. ‘Jon, get out of here and use the radio,’ I shout. ‘Let them know someone’s been shot during a police operation.’

Looking up at Agent Orange, I ask him, ‘What happened?’

He says that while we were at the door, he heard the shouting, climbed up to the balcony and got inside the unit. He says Isaac came at him with a knife.

The knife is lying on the floor, reflecting the sunlight coming through the window. A long blade. A kitchen knife, perhaps. I can see specks of dust sparkle in the air above it. My mind’s in chaos. I didn’t plan this.

The woman, Isaac’s girlfriend, is led into another room, still screaming. An ambulance arrives, as do the uniformed police, who string blue and white tape across the stairwell, trapping us inside the crime scene.

Soon, my sergeant, John, arrives as does Doodles, the sergeant at the Stick-Ups.

They speak in low, serious voices, ‘What’s gone on?’ ‘Are we good on this?’

A police shooting means the commissioner is notified. There’ll be an investigation. The press will be all over it.

I was talking to Isaac when we shot him, I think.

***

We’re driven to the headquarters of the Major Crime Squad in Parramatta, as the shooting took place in that part of Sydney covered by the police force’s Northwest Region, not my own North Region, which means everything there is alien to me.

When we walk into their offices, it isn’t what people say but what they don’t say that I notice.

‘What happened?’ someone asks.

‘We shot a bad guy,’ I tell him.

‘No worries. How you going?’

‘Good.’ It is a stupid, macho, self-protective answer.

He looks at me and nods.

Each of us who was on the raid is kept separate from the others, in different corners of the office.

I call my wife, Debbie, at home and can hardly get the words out,

‘This job I’ve done, you’ve probably seen it on the news. Just wanted to let you know that I’m OK. The crook I was going after, he’s been shot. He’s dead.’

‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ asks Debbie.

‘Yeah. Fine.’ I want to keep the conversation short from fear that, if I speak to her for longer, I might break down, so I hang up, saying, ‘I don’t know what time I’ll be home.’

It’s hard to know how quickly the time passes. I am numb. As I’m being questioned by the blank faces of the detectives leading the internal investigation, someone interrupts us: ‘The psychologist is here. You need to go into the briefing room.’

Inside, there is a ring of chairs. Each of us who was on the raid takes a seat facing the shrink, who looks at us in silence before speaking.

‘This is probably traumatic, what’s happened,’ he says. ‘You’ve been processing a lot. Has anyone got any problems?’

Like I am going to put my hand up in front of the group and tell him what I’m feeling. Yeah, I’ve got a problem, because the target’s sister told me not to hurt him, and I was talking to him when we shot him, and right now I don’t feel good about it.

Instead, I say, ‘No problems.’

‘Your instinct is going to be to get on the drink,’ the shrink continues.

‘But right now that’s the worst thing you could do. The best thing you could do is something physical. Go to the gym.’

We nod. No one makes eye contact.

Then we go out drinking.

A police car drops me home around midnight and Debbie meets me at the front door, sleepy-eyed.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks again.

‘Yeah, it’s all good. It happened.’

It isn’t true. I’m sick. The alcohol was medicine. I want to sleep, but not with Debbie and the baby. Not now. I feel dirty. When I get sick, I’m like a dog. I want to crawl under the house.

‘I’ll sleep on the lounge,’ I tell her.

She goes back to the bedroom, where our daughter, who is just a few months old, is sleeping.

When I lie down, I cannot sleep. My thoughts chase each other through the early hours of the morning: I was talking to him when we shot him.

I picture Isaac lying on the ground, with just a little blood flowing from where the bullet entered. I promised not to hurt him.

I tell myself that I will leave the cops.

Jo in Gary and Claire Harvey for an exclusive live event online at 6:30pm AEST on Wednesday, August 19 at True Crime Australia on Facebook.

He’ll be answering selected questions from YOU so email now at ask.gary@news.com.au

I Catch Killers: The Life and Many Deaths of a Homicide Detective, is published by HarperCollins Australia on Thursday, August 20 in paperback, e-book and audio. Pre-order your signed copy at Booktopia.