Percy changes his story. He has made a mistake, he now admits. The previous night he went to the Frankston drive-in alone and then slept in his car, not at HMAS Cerberus, as he had earlier said. When he woke up, he drove down to Cowes, stopping only to buy some biscuits from a roadside café. And on the return journey to Flinders, he detoured through Warneet.
Delaney and Knight look at the clock. He has made no admissions since he has been in police custody and his frigid demeanour has not changed. Knight keeps trying. 'The little girl was abducted from the beach at 12.30 p.m.,' he says. 'If you drove to Warneet, you must have driven past the beach from which she was taken; what do you say to that?'
Percy doesn't look up. 'I can't remember.'
'If you were on the road to Warneet at lunchtime and did not return to Cerberus till 4.30 p.m., how do you account for the time in between?'
'I can't. I can't remember.'
Knight tells Percy that two witnesses have identified his car. He waits for a reaction. Nothing. 'What do you say to that?'
'I can't remember. I can't say if I can't remember.'
I can't say if I can't remember. Even forty years later, as I read his typed responses flatly recorded on the page in the police record of interview, this strikes me as a clever ploy, a Pontius Pilate response, washing his hands of his own actions. If he honestly doesn't remember, how can he be held responsible? And if he does remember, how can they force him to admit it?
Even before admissions are made, Percy, a suspected paedophile and child abductor, is already despised. Some of these police officers have children of their own. It could be their daughter who has been abducted. On the page, in the neatly typed interview, emotions and reactions seem detached, controlled. But Yvonne Tuohy is missing, perhaps lying hurt somewhere. And this thin-faced bastard with the blank eyes is wasting their time.
Robertson walks into the interview room, quietly putting down the red-handled, blood-stained knife found in Percy's car and the drawings and magazines found in his locker. He leaves the room and shortly after, Delaney and Knight follow him, leaving the door open. The evidence is mounting. Percy is alone for several minutes before Knight returns.
Knight tries a soft approach, appealing to Percy's decency. 'All those things I have told you, your inability to account for your movements this afternoon, your car being identified by two witnesses, what appears to be a blood-stained knife, taken from your car, and these drawings lead us to believe that you may know something about the little girl and again I will ask you to help us find her. If she is alive she may need help.'
At their home, Yvonne's parents restlessly prowl their modest lounge room and answer incessant police questions as they wait for news of their daughter. Her two sisters, Maxine and Denise, with whom she shares a bedroom, have never heard of the word 'abducted' and think she is lost in the bush. But they instinctively know better than to ask their parents anything more. Tonight there is an edge in the household, an atmosphere they don't understand. Something nasty is going on.
Percy is still staring at a spot on the floor, belligerently silent. Knight's plea for him to help find Yvonne appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Suddenly he breaks. 'I don't know what to do.'
Knight steals a sharp look at Delaney. 'Why do you say that?' he asks Percy.
And finally Percy tells them, in sentences broken by lengthy pauses. 'I can remember being at the beach and I can see the two children . . . I was sitting in the car and then I got out and chased the girl.' He tells them, too, how Shane pulled out his tomahawk and waved it around his head at him. Affronted, almost at the boy's audacity. 'Not a toy one, sir. A real one.'
It is two o'clock in the morning. There is still no sign of Yvonne and still no admissions from Percy about where she is. 'Where did you take the girl?' Knight asks, exasperated. Hard experience tells him that Percy can't hold out much longer. They take a break and Percy gulps down a glass of water. 'I've been trying to remember,' he finally says. 'I've been trying to think what to do.' And it comes out, slowly: 'I know she is dead.'
What went on in that moment, in the seconds following his admission? I wonder. In 1969 suspects had a right to legal advice but records of interview were not recorded on video or audio.
The typed words, recorded at 2 a.m. – almost 10 hours after they took Percy into custody – show the official response: 'I know she is dead.'
'Why do you say that?'
'I killed her.'