A Tale of Two Cities by John Silvester

involved in arms smuggling as well as drugs. Perhaps he was thinking ahead, making contingency plans, because when the warning signals started filtering through more than a year later, he seemed ready to step into a new world.
    Secret telephone taps that New South Wales Criminal Intelligence Unit detectives illegally put on Trimbole’s telephone in April 1981 show that four prominent people – a Sydney lawyer and a doctor and two senior New South Wales police officers – each warned Trimbole that the Stewart inquiry was going to open and that he would be called before it. The doctor had links with illegal SP bookmakers in Melbourne and organised crime figures. Police telephone taps also picked up Trimbole talking to leading trainers and jockeys. During one taped conversation, much quoted later, a jockey famously told Trimbole that another rider ‘doesn’t care if he gets six months. He’ll almost strangle a horse to pull it up.’
    Transcripts of telephone tapes later leaked to the legendary investigative reporter Bob Bottom showed that Trimbole telephoned a former Labor Party power broker on 4 April 1981 and asked him if he had yet spoken to a State judge ‘so we can see where we’re up to’.
    The Labor man:
I’ve talked to a lot of people.
    Trimbole:
yeah, but have you spoken to him or …
    Labor man:
No, I couldn’t. They couldn’t get to the judge
(then adds)
I spoke to someone very close to him.
    Trimbole:
I see, fair enough, all right mate. Well, I just wanted to know because if not I’ve got a bloke who knows him pretty well, too.
    Labor man:
It never hurts to have more (than) one talking to
…
    Trimbole:
I just didn’t want to double up.
    Labor man:
yeah, you don’t want to overplay.
    Although each is too wily to mention specific names on a telephone, the meaning is clear. Later in the conversation the Labor man says: ‘I spoke to somebody a bit down the line that’s probably got more influence and I think they’re all worried about the situation.’ He then says that he will be having lunch with the judge the following week (‘I’ve been a mate of his for thirty years’) and warns Trimbole not to overplay his hand through other approaches because ‘sometimes judges get a bit touchy.’
    Less than four weeks later, on 1 May, Trimbole spoke to a senior Sydney policeman who asked to meet him to avoid talking on the telephone. There was a clear inference he had ‘hot’ information to give Trimbole. Next day, a Sydney doctor told Trimbole on the telephone, ‘the heat’s on’.
    Asked who was putting the heat on, the doctor says: ‘You might be washed up, do you get me? Re down south; they’re pretty wet, you know.’
    Another senior policeman warned Trimbole on 2 May there was definitely a ‘set-up’ and referred obliquely to a new investigation. Trimbole lapsed into racing slang. ‘… it looks as though I better get me … on and keep fit. We’ll just see what happens. One thing, if I break down I’ve got plenty of assistants.’
    A Sydney lawyer arranged to meet Trimbole on 6 May in offices in the city. During a telephone conversation the previous day, he told Trimbole: ‘Well, I would be thinking I would be having a holiday if I was you.’
    The letters patent for the Stewart Royal Commission were issued by the Governor-General in the last week of June 1981. But the reluctant star witness, forewarned from so many quarters, had already flown.
    On 7 May, under an overcast sky, Trimbole walked through Customs at Sydney Airport with the confidence of a man who knew something others didn’t. He was flying to Europe via the United States on his own passport but he had filled in his flight departure card with a false birth date, a detail he knew would be enough to throw off the Customs computer programmed to detect his exit.
    As usual, Aussie Bob the race