On a sunny morning in spring in 2010, on a busy intersection in central Auckland, Hallwright got into an argument with another driver, Sung Jin Kim. It ended when Hallwright ran him over in his Saab. Kim suffered terrible physical pain. Hallwright was accused of road rage. Worse, he was accused of never saying sorry, of not showing remorse or contrition or the faintest bit of sympathy. In the media, he was held up as a wealthy and arrogant asshole. In court, a jury found him guilty of reckless driving. In his professional life, Forsyth Barr viewed him with extreme distaste, and got rid of him, wordlessly handing him a letter of termination as he sat at his desk.
He took Forsyth Barr to the Employment Relations Authority. It ruled that his dismissal was fair. He appealed to the Employment Court. It ruled that his dismissal was fair.
At first blush, it felt as though Hallwright didn’t have a prayer with his appeal, that he was once again dragging it out — always crashing in the same car. His dispute was an exercise in gall, delusion, greed. His conditions were that he wanted his job, a modest $10,000 for emotional hurt, and his not-very-modest $100,000 bonus. As well, he wanted immediate reimbursement of his salary, $275,000; he tried to make it sound generous, and forgiving, when he said he’d settle for half. Crazy, but he had reasonable grounds to challenge Forsyth Barr’s claim that he’d brought them into disrepute.
Much of the court hearing turned on the head of a pin, or not even that; it turned on an abstraction. It was all about perception, the fear of what people might think. Absurdly, Forsyth Barr called on PR trout Bill Ralston to back them up. It reinforced the notion that Hallwright’s whole saga was some sort of media game that he had no idea how to play.
Every new scandal in New Zealand public life is treated as a public relations exercise. The right spin can lead to redemption, but a poorly executed strategy will make things worse. Everything Hallwright did made things worse. He blundered this way and that, struck entirely the wrong attitude. He transgressed the social contract by never saying sorry, never entirely accepting fault. As well, he couldn’t catch a break the whole way through. He got hung out to dry, pursued by everyone from right-wing blog Whaleoil to the Auckland Council for Civil Liberties. A judge came out in his defence and he really shouldn’t have; the comments were provocative, and made things even worser.
Hallwright raved in the Employment Court about that ‘quarter of a second’, how everything would have been different if only he hadn’t had a moment of panic on Mt Eden Road that Wednesday, 8 September 2010. ‘A second. Not even that. Half a second. Quarter of a second . . .’ He leaned forward, hunched and neurotic, gabbling, as though he were reaching out to try to reclaim the moment that changed the entire course of his life.
2
Hallwright grew up in Karori, Wellington, a doctor’s son. His father was a cardiologist. He left his family when Guy was about six, and remarried. One of the last times I spoke with Hallwright was when he’d arrived in Wellington to visit his stepmother in a rest home. He took the bus; he had been suspended from driving for 18 months.
He said his father was something of an eccentric, collecting 1970s New Zealand pottery, and idly penning persistent, complaining letters to the editor. Sample: ‘It amuses me to hear Maori constantly complaining that Pakeha keep using the “race card”. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.’ And: ‘Am I alone in being fed up to the back teeth with TV advertisements saying, “97 per cent fat-free”? If they mean, “It has only 3 per cent fat”, why don’t they say just that? Quite simply, it is pseudo-science. It is a con, claptrap.’
Hallwright has a gentler, rather less strident nature. Friends describe him as shy, sensitive, cultured. After boarding at Palmerston North Boys’ High School, he studied literature and sociology at Victoria University. Tutor and poet Bill Manhire took him for Old Norse. He said, ‘I basically remember Guy as an intelligent and genuinely nice human being. Hard-working, too — you had to be to get by in Old Norse! I was surprised when he turned up in the media a few years later as a business guru, or whatever the term is.’
The term is ‘investment analyst’. Hallwright came to finance late in life, at 35. He married radio journalist Juliet Robieson in 1982, and they moved to England. Hallwright studied for an MBA, and later worked for investment firms First NZ Capital in Wellington and Credit Suisse in Sydney. The years in Australia, when he and Juliet raised their son and two daughters in elegant Mosman, were his highest paying, and also the highest pressure.
He took a pay cut to come back to New Zealand and join Forsyth Barr. A former colleague said that the firm headhunted Hallwright. ‘There were a number of key appointments made at that time, and he was one of those. It was a fledgling broking business. It’s an important player now and it’s because of people like Guy, who had a high reputation and standing. He was definitely an important part of the company’s growth and consolidation.’
Hallwright dealt with clients from big firms, such as AMP and Guinness Peat Group, and became one of those rent-a-quote experts in the media, relaying his opinion on financial markets to business journalists at Morning Report, The National Business Review, and elsewhere. He was an expert in telecommunications, and the retail sector. On top of his salary, he also took home a bonus of about $101,000 every six months.
He bought a big house in Parnell. It was two doors down from the Prime Minister’s mansion. It hogged an entire corner, and had a pool, nikau palms, polished wooden floors. The Hallwrights were Friends of the Auckland Art Gallery. Juliet stayed home and wrote fiction. Their younger daughter, Issie, wrote songs, and became close friends with John Key’s daughter, Stephie. Hallwright had got to know finance minister Bill English, and attended a music recital given by English’s daughter. It was held at a private house; there were about 20 people, and nice sandwiches.
And then the life he knew was taken away. It disappeared, the last seconds of it spent sitting at the lights at the intersection of Symonds Street and Khyber Pass Road, when Sung Jin Kim drove up behind him.
3
Their versions of what happened are very similar. That is, both agree it was about 10am. Otherwise, they’re wildly different narratives, and they don’t even share the same cast; Hallwright says his teenage daughter, Issie, was in the passenger seat, but Kim believes it was an older woman, that there was something suspicious going on.
It was a Wednesday. Hallwright said he was taking Issie to a studio to record a song she’d written. ‘I was going to play a bit of guitar on it.’
The driver behind him honked his horn at him, thinking that he’d waited at a green light. Hallwright claims the driver misunderstood, that the green light was for the bus in the bus lane next to him.
‘When I did get the green light, I drove away. This guy followed me around the corner into Mt Eden Road, and kept honking his horn at me. So I pulled into that carpark, the Galbraith’s carpark, and he goes past and — and this is the unwise thing that I did, and it’s probably a bit of a lesson, I suppose — I gave him the finger. He screeches to a halt in the middle of the road. I thought, “Oh shit, this is going to be a confrontation of some sort.” I didn’t want him coming over and trying to attack me, so I went over to his car. I opened his door, and said, “What’s your problem?”’
I said, ‘That’s got to be a mistake.’
He said, ‘Well, I don’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t gone over. I just walked over and approached him. I wouldn’t describe it as yelling at him, but I certainly had a raised voice.’
‘Why on earth did you open the door?’
‘Because he was just sitting in the car with the window up. Otherwise I would have no doubt talked to him through the window.’
This was somehow missing the point. I said, ‘That was unwise, wasn’t it?’
He said, ‘It was unwise, yeah.’
‘How were you feeling at this stage?’
‘I don’t know. The adrenalin was going. I was thinking, “Shit, am I going to have to do something?” He look
ed like a big guy, as far as I could tell. He just looked at me and his look was very, very chilling. He looked angry, and . . . dangerous. And he reached across towards his glovebox, and I suddenly thought, “I’ve actually walked into something on the dark side. This is really serious, and I need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”’
I asked, ‘What did you think he was reaching for?’
‘A weapon. I don’t think he was reaching for his driving licence! A knife, gun, whatever — I actually did think “gun”. So I just slammed the door and went back to my car. I don’t think I ran, but I certainly went very fast.’
I said, ‘Okay, at this point, how do you think you’re faring in the story?’
He said, ‘The best thing to do would have been to just try to defuse the whole thing. Not done anything at all. Just pulled into the parking space, or actually just driven through and right away. I was rattled.’
I said, ‘Are you describing road rage?’
‘No. I think road rage is probably what he was feeling. I was feeling under attack. That’s what I felt.’
‘Under attack?’
‘He’d screeched to a halt in the middle of the road, and I thought he was going to attack me. And if that happened, I’d rather it was over there, because of Issie.’
‘And then?’
‘I saw him advancing rapidly on the car. He gets right in front of it and starts banging his hands on the bonnet and shouting. Very, very angry man.’
‘In English?’
‘Nothing that I can comprehend. So I sort of . . . I nudged the car forward, to indicate that I’m getting out of here. He starts coming around towards the driver’s door. And as he was doing that, I pulled forward. And it appears— I don’t actually— All I remember is that he wasn’t in front of the car when I drove forward. I don’t actually quite know still how he got hit. But he got hit. And when he got hit, there was a bump. It sort of felt, when I thought about it afterwards, that we’d run over his foot. Well, we probably did run over his foot, and he got serious injuries, as you know.
‘But he didn’t get run over in the sense that I ran him over while he was standing in front of the car. The doctor who we got to look at the injuries, the best conclusion he could come to is that his toe — the wheel had got his toe, and he couldn’t move out of the way. I was amazed and appalled at the injuries that this guy got, cos it felt just like a little bump.
‘So I’m driving down Mt Eden Road, past Galbraith’s, and I looked in the rear-vision mirror and I could see he was on the road and people were converging. I turned the corner and stopped. I dialled 111.’
‘How were you feeling now?’
‘Completely panicked. Well, I was feeling completely panicked when he started coming around to the side of the car. This whole thing was done in shock and panic. Not really thinking. Just reacting. Sometimes I have very fast reactions, especially when my kids are in danger. There was a time in Kings Canyon in Aussie . . .’
He told a story about a family holiday at the Northern Territory canyon when he saw Issie step back towards the edge: ‘Somehow I got to her instantly and grabbed her and got her back from the brink. Juliet said to me afterwards, “I don’t know how you covered the distance.” This,’ he said, ‘was like that. Instant reaction.’
I said, ‘You mean the driving away?’
‘Yep. Yep. This is my chance to get away, he’s coming around to the side of the car, things are going to get worse, because I don’t know what he’s going to do — open the door, drag me out of the car . . .’
‘What should you have done, when you look back?’
‘What the prosecution said, which is push the lock-all-the-doors thing. But I didn’t even know where in the Saab the thing where you did that was.’
I said, ‘But you drove off, and called 111.’
‘It took me a minute or two. My hands were shaking. It was a work phone, and you had to put a four-digit code in to open it. I probably spent two minutes trying to unlock it. Then I drove around the block, dropped Issie off at the studio, because there was nothing I could do at the scene, 111 are sending an ambulance, there are plenty of people there, and I didn’t want to ruin Issie’s big opportunity.’
The police called him, and asked him to return to the scene. Hallwright walked there.
I asked, ‘Where was Mr Kim?’
‘He was still lying in the road.’
‘In agony?’
‘Yeah, he was yelling. He was sort of bellowing, actually. He wasn’t screaming, but he was yelling.’
‘Did you think, “Oh, God, what have I done?”’
‘Well, I couldn’t tell how serious his injuries were at that stage. Obviously he couldn’t get up. I thought he’d broken a leg.’
‘What was going through your nervous system?’
‘I don’t know. I mean . . . I guess I thought . . . I mean, I knew I would have to go through a few things with the police, and that it was . . . um . . . you know . . . a sort of major deal.’
‘What were you thinking about Mr Kim?’
‘Well, at that stage, not that much. He was just this guy who’d been trying to attack me and he’d now had his leg broken, which was unfortunate, and I was sorry about that, but people were there to look after him, the ambulance was there, and it was going to be what it was going to be. I had no idea then that the injuries were going to be anything like as severe as they proved to be.’
‘Are you taking any responsibility for what happened?’
He said, ‘I totally accept that I didn’t act as well in those few seconds as I could have. Absolutely. But at the same time, people do need to be reminded I was being attacked by this guy. I felt under extreme threat.’
‘You fucked up, didn’t you?’
‘I think I did, yeah. Absolutely.’
‘What is your genuine level of remorse?’
‘Oh, high,’ he said. ‘It’s terrible what’s happened to Mr Kim. Absolutely terrible. Who would wish that on anyone?’
Even now, after everything, his account lacked genuine remorse. Kim, an ‘angry man’, was ‘bellowing’, his injuries were ‘unfortunate’, and let it be known poor Hallwright was ‘under attack’. I asked if he went to the studio afterwards, and played on Issie’s song. ‘Yes. I was a bit shaky, though.’ The song, a sad, pretty ballad, is titled ‘Pendulum’.
4
Panic on the streets of Auckland. Scooting out of his Saab (‘a gay convertible’, in Whaleoil’s parlance) to take on a complete stranger, opening the driver’s door and giving him a piece of his mind, then scooting back to his car because the idea has formed in his mind that the man had a gun — if that’s what happened, then Hallwright fucked up and freaked out, spooked by an angry Asian driver, deciding on the option of fight and then switching it to flight, blundering this way and that on Mt Eden Road, finally oblivious to the fact he’d just run someone over as he left the scene of the crime.
He was plainly incandescent, but was it with rage, or fear? What was he playing at, going over to Kim and opening the driver’s door? What was that bullshit with thinking Kim was reaching for a gun? Was it cowardice that drove him out of his wits?
But what about Kim’s actions? According to Hallwright, Kim was furious as he leaned on the horn at the lights, wouldn’t let it go and kept honking after the lights changed; screeching to a halt in the middle of the road was bound to give Hallwright the creeps, or at least make him apprehensive; and what was on Kim’s mind when he approached Hallwright’s car, banging on the bonnet, then coming around to the driver’s side?
Who’s the bad guy, Hallwright or Kim?
‘He try murder me!’ shouted Kim. He did a fair bit of shouting when I interviewed him at a warehouse in East Tamaki. It was his workplace and his home. He slept in a room on the upstairs mezzanine; four pairs of socks were hung out to dry on the staircase, a bowl and a pair of chopsticks were in the downstairs sink. The warehouse was stocked with crates of Coke, Dr Pepper, Chupa Chups.<
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Kim, 60, had a large face and a wide, compact body. He was in bad shape. He could barely walk. He rolled up his pants; there were metal rods in one lower leg, and ugly, livid skin grafts on the other lower leg.
He started complaining about an incompetent surgeon, and then complained about a Fijian nurse with a needle. His English was hard to follow. He giggled, flew into rages, shouted, spoke sadly about his parents — they died when he was very young, and he left school at 10. He became a civil engineer, and worked in Saudi Arabia and Papua New Guinea. His wife left him when he was surveying in Indonesia. He came to Auckland 15 years ago, and was renting in Mt Eden with a new partner at the time of the accident.
‘She gone,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t like me any more. She say, “You got a stupid leg.” I say okay. I just left. I never took anything, no moneys, nothing. Because I’m a Christian. My God always protects me. He always helps me. He gives me all the things.’
He mentioned he was a Christian several more times. I asked him which church he attended. ‘I don’t know name,’ he said.
He told his story about what happened on Wednesday, 8 September 2010. Hallwright was at the lights, he pulled up behind him. ‘The light changed to green but he never move. He sit there with lady. The lady looks like 30, 35. She’s very sexy. Looks very sexy. Other cars, they shout at him and they make horn. WAAH! WAAH! At the time my horn is broken. It not work. It not me. In car behind me, there’s a Kiwi young guy. Oh, he’s very, very crazy, very angry, honking the horn. WAAH! WAAH! Hallwright turn and look at me and he give me the finger! I say, “No me! I never make that honk! Please, just go!”’
He said Hallwright finally drove through the lights, and then braked to a halt on Mt Eden Road. ‘He came out from his car. He came to me. He open my door, and smash it shut. BAM!’
The Scene of the Crime Page 10
