4 February 2020: seven months out
Tuesday. Magistrate Ross Hudson doesn’t seem impressed by the police force. Inside the tiny, confined courtroom, its walls lined in pale wood like a cheap coffin, he dismisses their attempt to have the trial held in secret.
My mate Bill, who went through the police academy with me, nods to himself in the public gallery, as if saying, Right decision. Sue, my childhood friend, sits in the front row near my family and gives me a smile.
The prosecution agree to play the recording of the ERISP interview I did with Paul at Port Macquarie Police Station, which was not played at the inquest into William Tyrrell’s disappearance.
After court, I work late, reviewing the hours of recorded material, working out which sections we should play in public. As night falls, Jake and his partner head off to dinner at my mum’s place with Gemma and her family. When Jake gets back, I’m still sitting at my dining table, working, its surface swallowed up by stacks of court documents and white ring binders of evidence.
I get to sleep just before midnight and wake up at 3.30 to keep working.
* * *
Jane Fiore is at the Downing Centre courthouse when I arrive on Wednesday morning. She says she wants to see the interview with Paul. She wants to hear what he told me.
I nod. When I was charged, I told her that, if my case went to trial, it would be an opportunity to tell people what’s happened: what Strike Force Rosann achieved; the evidence we gathered that hasn’t been made public at the inquest; the mistakes made by police after William’s disappearance as well as how the resources given to the investigation waxed and waned depending on the media and political interest.
I take my seat inside the court. Behind me there two rows of seats, both full, with other people sitting on the floor or standing against the walls. Jane sits in the back corner of the courtroom, hands folded in her lap, watching as my recorded interview with Paul plays on two television screens.
She leans forward when when Paul says he went out looking for William alone, then came back and had some tea inside without talking to anyone.
‘So you thought you’d just sit there and have a cup of tea?’ I ask Paul in the interview.
‘Well, whether, why I done it or even if I done it, I don’t remember havin’ it, but, uh, that’s not the point,’ his voice carries through the courtroom speakers. The only other sound is the reporters tapping on their laptops. Like Jane, they, too, have not heard any of this evidence before.
On the screen, I question Paul about whether he followed the postwoman in Kendall, whether he told her, ‘We don’t get enough time together.’ He says that’s crap, and that the postwoman told him that she loved him.
He looks old and thin and grey, on camera, sitting on his own in a police interview room.
‘Do you think this could be slightly delusional?’ In the back of the courtroom, Jane is still watching closely.
Paul says he left his house with his wife, Heather, at 10.38am on the day William went missing and nobody was then outside looking for the three-year-old. Jane stares, wide-eyed. She was out there. So were others.
‘That’s a lie,’ I tell Paul on the television screen.
‘That’s not a lie,’ he responds.
Watching it, I feel uncomfortable, as if I’m looking at someone other than myself on screen, and wondering, Who is this guy beating up on this poor old man?
But then I think, That’s what I was paid to do. If I’m an attack dog on the ERISP recording, it is because the police trained me to become one. Then they put me in the Homicide Squad. They put me in charge of Strike Force Rosann because of what I was, a hunting detective.
What shits me about the cops now is how they don’t want to take responsibility for what they unleashed.
* * *
Laura steps into the witness box. She seems nervous and frowns as she sits down. Her eyes, which are ringed with shadows, like mine are, as if she hasn’t slept either, skitter across the faces in the courtroom. The prosecutor asks if I told her I was going to use my phone to record my conversation with Paul when I went to his house on 2 May 2018?
‘Not that I can recall,’ she murmurs, looking down.
Did I tell her I was going to use my phone to record when I went back a day later?
‘Not that I can recall.’ The same words, but in a whisper this time.
I realise these recordings will now be played in court – sooner than I expected. I lean forward and whisper urgently: ‘Margaret, you’ve got to get me two minutes.’
Margaret asks the magistrate for a two-minute break, and I stand up and search the public gallery until I see Mark and Faye Leveson. I signal for them to join me outside the courtroom, then tell them that they are about to hear a recording in which I talk about their son, Matt. I tell them that I spoke to Paul about him, explaining how we’d been able to find out what happened to Matt and recover his body.
They’re going to hear me talk about their son bluntly, calling him ‘the gay guy’, and saying that he died of a drug overdose, despite Faye’s refusal to accept this happened. I tell them I’m sorry they are going to hear this. ‘You of all people will understand I’m just trying to bring William back to his mum and dad.’
As they walk back into the courtroom, Mark says to Faye, ‘Don’t cry.’
The tape of my first conversation with Paul in his home is played. The courtroom listens as I tell Paul how Matt’s boyfriend kept his secret for 10 years, but when he finally admitted what happened, you could see the weight of the world lifting from his shoulders. I tell him how Matt’s parents made the decision to give him immunity from prosecution, despite believing their son had been murdered.
‘He has been!’ Faye whispers at the back of the tiny courtroom.
When I tell Paul that I believed her son had died of a drug overdose and Atkins panicked, Faye whispers: ‘That’s what you think, Gary.’ A moment later she stands up and walks out of the door.
It’s wounding to think I have inflicted more pain on her through my actions. I only hope she can accept I was just trying to give Paul a way out, like Atkins, should he choose to take it.
On the recording, you can hear me saying, ‘He hasn’t gone to jail; that was the deal I did with him. We just needed to get to the bottom of it for Matt’s parents, and we got Matt’s remains back.’
I’m asking him, If you know where it is, just help us find William’s body.
A short time later, Faye walks back into the courtroom, and my mum reaches back from her seat in the front row to take her hand. Soon afterwards, the court adjourns. Outside it, I walk up to the Levesons again, holding my breath.
Faye reaches up to embrace me.
I let out a deep sigh of relief.