Kate McClymont - Dead Man Walking: The murky world of Michael McGurk and Ron Medich

Employing her insider status and trademark wit, pace and intelligence, Kate McClymont unravels the complex business relationships between Michael McGurk and Ron Medich.

Rumour has it that Sydney is full of corruption and crime, but no one expected to read about a Sydney businessman being shot, in the back of his head, in his driveway, in Cremorne. Nor that, ultimately, a Point Piper millionaire would be convicted for ordering the hit. But this is not just a Sydney story. Its strands traverse Moscow, Brunei, Indonesia and Hawaii and involve property deals, fraud, conspiracy, false identities, kidnapping and a miniature Koran. There are bumbling criminals, turncoats, snitches, wealthy people brought down, and devastated families.

Just prior to his murder, Michael McGurk who had a history of violence, threats, arson charges, intimidation and failed businesses had informed Kate McClymont, Australias best-known investigative journalist, that he believed there was a hit out on him. They agreed they would meet, and then he was shot.

This is an extraordinary story of ten years of events that you simply could not make up.

This book is based on dozens of interviews, including with associates of the main characters, some of whom, fearing retribution, have asked to remain anonymous.

Hundreds of pages of court transcripts, police statements of fact and police interviews, which were tendered across almost a decade of court cases, have been used. When I have attributed quotes to the main players in dialogue they are based on actual testimony, recollections offered or police interviews.

There had to be a word for this feeling of apprehension tinged with grief. Glassy-eyed, the tall, solid middle-aged man, his hair greying at the temples, gazed at the house across the road, ringed by a well-tended hedge. It was early evening and the intermittent rain had left the spring air redolent with the scent of wattle and jasmine from the neighbouring manicured gardens, looked after, no doubt, by a retinue of hired help.

On any other day, Haissam Safetli could have passed for one of Cremornes many well-heeled inhabitants, a stockbroker, banker or lawyer. Only four months earlier he had been the general manager of Chan & Naylor, an accounting firm in the staid north shore suburb of Pymble, but hed been fired for decking one of the partners. Since then hed been doing some debt-collecting with his brother, Bassam, and now here he was sitting in a battered, unregistered Toyota Hilux with stolen numberplates on the precipice of becoming a paid assassin, and he was sure as hell there werent many of them north of the harbour.

Safetli looked at his watch. It had just gone six and he was waiting anxiously for the return of the kid. Over the previous hour 43-year-old Safetli had said little as he and young Christopher Estephan sat in the front seat of Safetlis old ute waiting for Michael McGurk to come home. Other evenings spent in wait for McGurk had come to nought and Safetli half-hoped this one would too.

His 19-year-old companion had prattled on about his girlfriend troubles; that he was behind in his rent. They talked about everything but what they would do if McGurk appeared. The .22 Norinco rifle, which they had spent the previous days grinding down in Safetlis shed, lay in a Stanley bag between them. Neither of them mentioned it.

Finally Safetli could bear it no longer. He got his wallet out of his jacket pocket and, fishing around for two $20 notes, sent Estephan off to a nearby bottle shop for bourbon. The dope theyd smoked a few hours before was wearing off and Safetli badly needed a hit of something to take the edge off his rising panic. How the fuck had it come to this, he asked himself as he watched Estephan head off down the street. Only months earlier he had a respectable job; now he was lying in wait to kill a man he personally had no truck with. Last night hed actually wet the bed. He remembered sculling bourbon and slicing his arms. He wanted to feel everything. He wanted to feel nothing.

Yesterday he had filled out his kids passport applications. He had been practising forging his ex-wifes signature for the permission hed need to take the children out of the country should he have to flee after this was done, but then he noticed that the form required his exs passport details.

The passenger door of his ute opened. Chris Estephan was back. Shit, mate, Im sorry but they wouldnt fucking serve me, said the kid, closing the passenger door. They wouldnt believe I was over eighteen. Sorry, Hais.

The older man thumped the steering wheel. He had to have a shot to steady his nerves. All the money hed lost trying to find someone else to do this fucking job, all the pressure, had driven him to drink literally. He smiled wanly to himself at his own joke as he got out of the ute to find his second bottle of bourbon for the day.

He looked across the road again to McGurks house. The street was as crooked as a dogs hind leg and the house sat on an awkward corner. The old wooden garage was down at the bottom of the street, and up the hill and around the bend, adjacent to the McGurks tennis court, was the path to their home. Safetli had been looking at that fucking house, a cream-coloured pin-up for the surburban dream, for so long it nauseated him. Hed passed the hours watching tradesmen in the street come and go, and hed followed a little brown and white dog as it jauntily paraded along the fence line of the house next to the McGurks. For months Safetli had half-heartedly been surveilling McGurk. Shit, hed even had sex in his car with his girlfriend, Krystal Weir, to pass the endless hours waiting for that arsehole to come home to his wife and four kids.

Safetli had been hired to do the surveillance by Lucky Gattellari, a former boxer who was now living the high life having become wealth adjacent to uber-rich property developer Ron Medich. As Medichs right-hand man, Lucky was calling the shots. McGurk and Medich had had some sort of falling-out, was all Safetli knew. Gattellari kept hassling him, complaining that McGurk was costing Medich, the big boss, thousands of dollars a month and that Medich wanted him gone. Safetli was trapped in their deadly plan.

He set off down Cranbrook Avenue and round the corner to a little group of shops to buy the bourbon. At 6.10 pm he bought a half-bottle of Jim Beam. The price shocked him. The rich sure paid through the nose for the privilege of drinking in their fine suburb, he thought. As Safetli handed over his cash, the attendant went to put the bottle in a paper bag. Safetli stopped him there would be no need for that. As soon as he was out of sight of the small group of shops, he opened the bottle and began swigging from it as he walked along. He decided to take the longer way back to the car. Before he came round the corner into Cranbrook Avenue, he glanced up and down the road to see if the coast was clear before relieving himself against a tree.

Safetli wiped droplets of rain from his glasses as he glanced up at the unlit lights bordering the tennis court at McGurks house. They stood like sentinels, heads bowed in silent reproof at the horror lying in wait. As he took another swig he wondered if McGurk had arrived home while he was gone. Maybe the kid had done it. He realised Estephan wouldnt have been able to get in touch with him as theyd both left their phones behind when theyd set out some hours earlier from Safetlis home near Camden, 75 kilometres away.