reading

Contents

Preface

Prologue: The Meeting

Part One: Little Boy Lost

Chapter One: Daniel

Chapter Two: Missing

Chapter Three: Looking for Daniel

Chapter Four: The Blue Herring

Chapter Five: Operation Vista

Chapter Six: The Cowans

Chapter Seven: Blue Jeans and Dirty Hands

Chapter Eight: The Black Sheep

Chapter Nine: Finding God

Part Two: Persons of Interest

Chapter Ten: Suspects

Chapter Eleven: Douglas ‘Rat’ Jackway

Chapter Twelve: The Scruffy Man

Chapter Thirteen: The Alibi

Chapter Fourteen: Stacey

Chapter Fifteen: Inconsolable

Chapter Sixteen: Rat in a Cage

Chapter Seventeen: Liar, Liar

Chapter Eighteen: More Lies

Chapter Nineteen: Role-Playing

Chapter Twenty: What Next?

Part Three: The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

Chapter Twenty-one: Mr Big

Chapter Twenty-two: The Perfect Target

Chapter Twenty-three: Joe

Chapter Twenty-four: Fitzy

Chapter Twenty-five: Trust, Honesty, Loyalty

Chapter Twenty-six: Exit Joe

Chapter Twenty-seven: The Brotherhood

Chapter Twenty-eight: Arnold

Chapter Twenty-nine: Big Jobs, Ecstasy and Jetskis

Chapter Thirty: The Trap

Chapter Thirty-one: I’m Sorry, Daniel

Chapter Thirty-two: Shock Value

Part Four: I Didn’t Do It

Chapter Thirty-three: Murderer

Chapter Thirty-four: Don’t Say a Word

Chapter Thirty-five: The Search

Chapter Thirty-six: Proof Undeniable

Chapter Thirty-seven: Our Son, the Pedophile

Chapter Thirty-eight: Fronting Court

Chapter Thirty-nine: The Trial

Chapter Forty: Life for a Life

Epilogue: Daniel’s Legacy

List of Covert Operatives

Acknowledgements

Image Section

About the Author

Prologue

THE MEETING

Seven hours of long-baked bitumen stretches out between Perth and Kalgoorlie. The sleep-inducing drive from Australia’s fourth-largest city to a middle-of-nowhere mining town is one of long open roads where kangaroos dodge road trains with mixed success and fields of wheat eventually make way for desert.

It was Tuesday, 9 August 2011. Paul ‘Fitzy’ Fitzsimmons and Brett Peter Cowan were an hour down when the shrill of a mobile phone cut across the car’s radio.

‘It’s the boss,’ Fitzy told his mate. ‘Jeff, how ya going? What’s up?’

Brett sat quietly as Fitzy nodded along to instructions.

‘Forget about it?’ he repeated, his voice rising in surprise. ‘Fuck.’ He listened some more. ‘Oh, rightio. So not even worry about it?’ Fitzy pulled the car off the Great Eastern and turned them back to Perth. The job was off. The big boss was in town.

‘All right, I’m on my way,’ he told Jeff and rang off. He turned to Brett.

‘Fucken hell. Arnold wants to have a chat to ya. I didn’t even know he was over here,’ he said.

Brett seemed unconcerned. Excited even. He’d been working hard these last months. He’d been doing well. They’d all told him so. He’d never done well at anything. And now the big boss wanted to see him.

‘Yeah, don’t stress about it, fuck,’ Fitzy told him. ‘Just go tell him, mate, fucken, about all the good shit you’ve been doing and all that. No one gets the OK to do big, you know, all the decent jobs, without Arnold going yep. I mean, that might be what it’s about, man…that’s fucking excellent.’

An hour later they were standing in the foyer of Perth’s five-star Hyatt Hotel. Plush sofas and bar tables arranged themselves around a stone fountain of elephants, their trunks in a good-luck salute. Smartly attired staff checked in well-dressed professionals. Guests slept in rooms overlooking the Swan River. Manicured gardens and deckchairs surrounded the hotel’s sparkling pool.

Fitzy, a short man with a blond ponytail and a surfer’s drawl, and Brett, tall and lanky with a drug-user’s sunken-eyed sallowness, made their way to the meeting room the big boss had booked for the day.

Arnold dismissed his company — an attractive blonde — as the boys entered the room. He was a big man, dressed in a businessman’s suit. Brett took a seat on a long couch, drawing his legs to his chest as he waited for the boss to finish a phone call.

There was a problem, Arnold told him. Brett was a good worker and they wanted him on board. They had a big job coming up. It would be a big earner for everyone. Brett, who’d never had a dime to his name, was looking at big dollars. But the police were sniffing around. Brett was the prime suspect in the disappearance and suspected murder of Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe. The boy who’d graced television screens, newspapers and milk cartons these past eight years. Heat on Brett meant heat on them. Police scratching about was bad for business for a highly organised criminal gang.

‘You’re too hot,’ Arnold told Brett. ‘I’m told that it’s deadset that you’re the one who’s done it.’

Not true, Brett replied. He’d had nothing to do with it.

‘I was living in the area in ’03 when Daniel Morcombe went missing so I’ve been interviewed and I was hounded for ages about that and I can guarantee I had nothing to do with Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance,’ he insisted.

Arnold pushed on. The gang was about trust and loyalty. It’s how they’d survived all this time. They all had pasts. They all had a history. Nothing surprised them. Nothing shocked them. They weren’t there to judge. They were there to make money, nothing more. He needed Brett to be honest.

‘I can sort this for you,’ Arnold said. ‘You know I can sort things out. I can buy you alibis. I can get rid of stuff, all the kinds of things that can be done, I can do. But I need to know what I need to do, you know what I mean?’

The conversation went back and forth. Brett denied. Arnold pressed. Confess, he said, or they’d drop him. There’d be no big job for Brett. No $100 000 pay day. He’d lose his new mates. His brothers. This new life he’d found. This is what dreams are made of, he’d told them.

Confess, Arnold said. Confess, or walk away.

Brett looked down. His reply was casual. His voice steady. But the words he spoke would change everything.

CHAPTER ONE

DANIEL

Twins Bradley and Daniel Morcombe were born on 19 December 1989 at Melbourne’s Monash Medical Centre. Both were small enough to fit in the palms of their parents’ hands. Bruce and Denise Morcombe would have to wait more than a week to bring their babies home to their two-year-old brother Dean. Weighing just over 1.5 kilograms each, the twins needed careful monitoring in intensive care until doctors were satisfied they were ready to leave.

When Bradley and Daniel were two, Bruce took a redundancy from the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works where he’d been employed for 15 years. He used the small payout to buy a Jim’s Mowing franchise in Boronia, in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. It was a busy life and the Morcombes worked hard at building their business and raising three young boys.

In 1993, they were offered an opportunity to swap to another franchise territory — on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. Taking up around 60 kilometres of coastline and hinterland, the picturesque Sunshine Coast is 100 kilometres from Brisbane and the third most populous area of Queensland. That number swells in summer months as families descend on beach destinations like Maroochydore and the famed Noosa.

Denise was reluctant to leave Melbourne but it was too good an opportunity to turn down. So the Morcombes moved their young family to Queensland, renting a house in the beachside suburb of Maroochydore for the first few months. The franchise had a small number of mowing clients when Bruce took over, but it was a large district and he got to work building his customer base.

Bruce did well and over the following years broke up his territory to bring in his own franchisees. Denise kept busy booking jobs and running after the three boys. They bought a hobby farm at Palmwoods and made a home there for the family.

Bradley and Daniel developed their own personalities. They were non-identical twins and looked different enough that nobody confused them. Daniel looked more like his mother, inheriting Denise’s large, expressive eyes.

Bradley was the more outgoing twin. Daniel was the shy one. More often than not, Bradley would speak for his brother. Daniel was quietly tough. He’d come off his bike, land in a sprawling heap and pick himself up without a word.

He was an animal lover. Bruce and Denise bought ponies for the twins and the boys rode them every second day around the farm. Daniel brought the cats into his room each night and the family’s German shepherd, Chief, was his best friend. He’d throw a ball to Chief in the paddocks for hours. They’d sit quietly together, Daniel stroking his fur. Daniel told his mum and dad he wanted to be a vet, and they could see from his quiet, calm manner with the animals he’d make an excellent one.

He was shy around strangers and scared of the dark. Often, at night, he’d come into his parents’ room and settle in on the floor.

When the twins were 11 and Dean 13, Keith Paxton, the Morcombes’ next-door neighbour, offered them a job. A keen passionfruit farmer, Keith was a commercial grower with vines stretching across his property. He gave the boys work picking ripe fruit off the ground. They would become his best pickers, filling the buckets at the ends of each row with growing speed.

The boys didn’t waste the money they earned. They saved and saved, pooling the cash to buy a small motorbike. They’d developed a passion for bikes and would often spend Friday nights at a nearby property owned by a man named Kelvin Kruger, who ran a sandblasting business. Kelvin’s property had a natural motocross track in its dips and undulations. On Fridays he had an open-door policy. Workers would drop by and have a beer while bikes skidded around the track.

On 7 December 2003, a Sunday, the Morcombe household was up early. The boys were due at the Paxton farm at 6 a.m. to work on the vines, while Bruce and Denise needed to get ready for the Christmas party they were throwing for their franchisees. They were holding it at Broadwater Picnic Ground in Brisbane’s southern suburbs — a large park with play equipment for children and rolling lawn surrounded by trees. It was a busy park, so they planned on leaving home at 8.30 a.m. to make sure they secured a good picnic spot.

The clouds were grey and heavy with water when the Morcombes woke. The phone shrilled through the house just before 6 a.m. Keith Paxton was on the other end. It looked like rain. He told Bruce to send the boys over at 7 a.m. Hopefully the rain would have passed by then. The later start would delay Bruce and Denise, so it was decided the boys would not go with their parents to Brisbane.

The twins were back home just before 10 a.m., hands clutching hard-earned cash. They watched television for a while. Made some food. Wrestled on their parents’ bed. It was the beginning of the school holidays and the boys were relaxed and looking forward to weeks on end with nothing to do.

Daniel decided he would go to the Sunshine Plaza — a short bus trip to Maroochydore — to do some Christmas shopping and get a haircut. He asked his twin to go with him, but Bradley wasn’t keen to leave the house. He pestered Dean, but he wasn’t keen to go either. Dean jumped in the shower and never saw his brother again.

At 1 p.m. a little boy in a red Billabong t-shirt and navy blue shorts walked the one kilometre from the driveway of his Palmwoods home to an unofficial bus stop under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass. He followed the concrete path adjacent to the Woombye–Palmwoods Road up to the Nambour Connection Road. There’s nothing to mark the bus stop but locals knew the Sunbus stopped at the verge under the overpass, just down from the Christian Outreach Centre.

Daniel arrived in plenty of time. The Sunbus wouldn’t come past until 1.35 p.m. His pockets held his wallet with around $100, a phone card with $10 credit and an old-fashioned fob watch he loved to carry around. The watch had been an early birthday present from Bradley. His twin had put money aside to buy it and had had it engraved with the word ‘Dan’. Bored, Daniel picked up a stick and used it to draw lines in the dirt. Time passed, 1.35 p.m. came and went. The Sunbus was nowhere to be seen.

After a while, a man came to join him. He was tall and thin and wore his long brown hair in a ponytail. The man lounged against the overpass wall, one leg bent like a stork so his foot rested on the wall. He looked at Daniel. Daniel scratched the ground with his stick.

Bus driver Ross Edmonds clocked on at 5.55 a.m. on 7 December 2003 — just before passionfruit grower Keith Paxton, watching the rain clouds gather, picked up his phone to dial the Morcombes.

Ross was nearing the end of his shift when, at 1 p.m., he pulled his Sunbus out of Nambour to head to Maroochydore’s Sunshine Plaza. He was driving along the Nambour Connection Road, approaching Woombye’s Blackall Street intersection, when he felt the bus give a shudder. The accelerator cable had snapped. He pulled over and grabbed the two-way. They’d need another bus.

The passengers got out and milled around the verge, impatient to get to the shops or catch a movie. It took 25 minutes for a new bus to arrive. It was Sunbus policy to bring a replacement bus to a breakdown, plus a second bus to pick up any waiting passengers.

‘You just go direct to Maroochydore,’ Jeff Norman, another driver, told Ross. ‘We’ll do the pick-ups on the other bus.’

They were now 30 minutes behind schedule. Ross boarded the new bus with his impatient passengers, the second bus tailing a couple of minutes behind. Soon, he was driving under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass.

A boy, dressed in a red shirt and dark shorts, stepped forward and waved at him with a stick. A man stood behind him, about three metres back from the road. Ross had to keep going. He pointed behind him, hoping the boy would understand.

‘There’s another one coming,’ he said aloud, knowing his words could not be heard.

Passengers on the bus watched as the boy’s shoulders slumped. He kicked at the dirt. Daniel had been waiting a long time and now the bus had left him behind.

Ross picked up the two-way and called the other bus. There was a ‘young chap’ in a red shirt and a man that needed collecting, he told Jeff. He put the radio down and drove on.

Two minutes later, Jeff Norman slowed his bus as he approached the Kiel Mountain Road overpass. He searched the verge for the passengers. A boy and a man. There was nobody there. He shrugged his shoulders and continued on.

CHAPTER TWO

MISSING

Bruce and Denise arrived home before 4 p.m. to a mostly quiet house. Only Brad was home. He looked up from the computer as they entered.

‘Where is everybody?’ Bruce asked. Brad told his dad that Dean had gone to a friend’s place. Daniel had caught the bus to the Plaza to get a haircut and do some shopping.

They unpacked the car and Bruce settled himself in front of the television. Denise grabbed a clothes basket and made her way out to the clothesline. She stood out in the open with the washing, glancing at the road. Something didn’t feel right. Grabbing a load of rubbish, she walked to the end of the driveway. She looked down the street in the direction her son would be walking from the bus stop if he’d caught the early bus home. The road was empty.

Denise went back inside and grabbed the car keys. She told Bruce she was heading to the overpass in case Daniel had caught the earlier bus. She’d save him the walk. The boys were allowed to catch the bus on their own but they had to make sure they made it on to the last bus of the day — the 5 p.m. Buses left every hour from the Plaza and took about 25 minutes to get back to the Woombye–Palmwoods Road. Denise was back within 10 minutes. Daniel had not been on the 4 p.m. bus. He must be catching the 5 p.m., they reasoned.

At 5.30 p.m., Bruce jumped back in the car. He pulled in under the overpass. He sat at the wheel for a few minutes, watching time tick by. There was no sign of Daniel. This time he was worried. Daniel was a reliable kid. It wasn’t like him.

Back at the house, he asked Brad about the Sunbus timetable. Was he sure the 5 p.m. bus was the last one? Bruce and Brad got on the computer and looked up an online timetable. It was confusing. They weren’t sure.

Denise mentioned she’d seen a broken-down bus when she’d driven to the overpass an hour earlier. She’d taken the long way home and noticed the vehicle abandoned on the side of the road. If they’d lost a bus, maybe the timetable was out. Maybe Daniel had lost his money and hadn’t been able to buy a ticket. Maybe he’d run late and hadn’t made it on to the 5 p.m. Sunbus. Was he stranded at the Plaza with no way to get home?

They jumped back into the car, Bruce behind the wheel, and drove to the Sunshine Plaza. They pulled in to the bus depot and drove a slow loop. No Daniel. Nobody at all, in fact. It was after 6 p.m. and the centre was deserted. Denise jumped on board another bus and asked the driver about the bus timetable. She came back to Bruce, her face a mask of worry. The 5 p.m. bus had been the last. Where was he?

Now scenarios of snakebites and twisted ankles were going through their minds. Had Daniel taken a short cut and fallen down an embankment? They drove home the same route, looking for any sign of their boy.

‘Is Daniel back?’ Bruce and Denise asked when they arrived home at 6.30 p.m.

The boys answered no. They hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t called home either. He knew to call if he was going to be late. He’d done it once before, after missing the 4 p.m. bus.

‘Sorry,’ he’d told them. ‘I’ll be another hour.’

Denise picked up the phone and dialled the Sunbus depot. The ring tone shrilled in her ear. She waited impatiently for someone to pick up. Where was he? Where was Daniel?

It rang out. She rang a 13 number, a transport information line. This time someone answered. No, the person said, they’d heard nothing from Sunbus about any problems. They advised Denise to track down a bus and get the driver to contact the depot on their behalf. They got back in the car and headed to the Nambour bus terminus. It was closer than the Plaza. They spotted a bus and Bruce stayed in the car while Denise climbed on board.

The driver shook his head. The depot was closed, he told her. There’d be nobody there to answer his call.

They sat in the car. What should they do next? They decided to drive back to the Plaza. Daylight was waning when they pulled in and they searched through the gloom for any sign of their son. The busy retail hub, by day filled with a cacophony of shoppers, was eerily quiet. They looked at each other. Two people sharing the same concern.

‘Let’s contact the police at the Police Beat,’ Bruce said, referring to the tiny shopfront police station at Sunshine Plaza. They weren’t sure what they were going to say. The possibility that Daniel had been taken or lured away hadn’t crossed their minds. Daniel was lost. He’d twisted his ankle. Missed the bus. Got sidetracked. They approached the door. It was closed.

They did a quick loop around the centre. Past the cinemas. Was Daniel there, talking to friends? Had he lost track of time? They needed help. They decided to drive to Maroochydore police station.

Bruce and Denise approached the counter together. Were they really reporting their son missing? Sergeant Robbie Munn was behind the counter.

‘How can I help you?’ he asked.

Bruce told him they were looking for their son. He hadn’t come back from a shopping trip. It was unlike him. They were very worried. It had been two hours.

Sergeant Munn started jotting down notes. ‘What was your son wearing?’ he asked.

They were stumped at the first question. They’d been at the Christmas party when Daniel had dressed for his shopping trip. They didn’t know what he’d put on.

Sergeant Munn asked them for a general description. How tall was Daniel? What colour hair? What build was he?

Bruce and Denise gave as much detail as they could. The questions continued. What was Daniel’s state of mind? Was he upset? Suicidal? Did he suffer from depression? Was it unusual for him to turn up late? They were standard questions but completely irrelevant to Daniel. Bruce tried to make the officer see his son through his eyes. Daniel was a quiet, happy, likeable kid. He wasn’t selfishly off with friends. His entire reason for leaving home that day had been to buy presents for his family. The Morcombes explained to the sergeant that Daniel had called home in the past after missing the 4 p.m. bus. He hadn’t wanted anyone to worry. He’d told them to expect him on the 5 p.m. That was Daniel. He was responsible.

Sergeant Munn took down more notes — a general description and the Morcombes’ contact details. He told them he wouldn’t log Daniel as a missing person just yet. But he would put out an alert to officers to be on the lookout for a teenage boy. He’d call them around 10 p.m., as his shift was ending, to check in. A patrol car would be sent to their house.

‘Look,’ he told them. ‘I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding. He’s running late with his friends, whatever the situation. I’m sure he will turn up.’

It was dark when Bruce and Denise arrived back at the house. Daniel was scared of the dark. Denise headed back to the phone and started making calls. Daniel had been to the movies the night before with some friends from school. She called them now. Had they heard from him? One school friend, Scott Balkin, told Denise he hadn’t heard from Daniel all day. Nothing had seemed wrong at the cinema. Daniel had been his normal, happy self.

The thought of sitting tight, of waiting for Daniel to come home as the police suggested, seemed ludicrous. Outside it was dark. And Daniel didn’t like the dark. Maybe he was at a friend’s house, they tried to reason. But they didn’t believe that. Armed with flashlights, Bruce and Denise went to check the sheds on their hobby farm. They checked the stables, the dam and around the fruit trees. They called his name. Back in the house, they talked some more. Then they searched again.

At 9.45 p.m., 15 minutes before Sergeant Munn was supposed to call, they took the flashlights and headed once again for the car. They’d diverted the home phone to their mobiles in case somebody called, and headed back to the Kiel Mountain Road overpass. Feeling silly, they searched the verge for signs…of what? Discarded clothing? Scuff marks in the dirt? They had no idea what they were doing, but they had to do something. They searched both sides of the road but found nothing.

At 10.10 p.m., the phone rang. It was Sergeant Munn. Had Daniel turned up?

Bruce and Denise were frantic with worry. They told him the places they’d looked, the searches by torchlight.

‘I’ll get the wheels turning,’ he said.

Another call came through just before 11 p.m. This time it was an officer from Palmwoods police station. The conversation was brief. Could Bruce and Denise come in to the station at 8 a.m. to make a report? The promised patrol car never arrived.

It was a sleepless night. The worst of their lives. The family sat on the couch in silence.

‘I think we should go to bed,’ Bruce said at one point.

Fear pressed down on them. Denise wandered about the house. Checked Daniel’s room. Looked out the windows at the driveway. Sat on the couch. Looked down the driveway. Checked Daniel’s room. Driveway. Daniel’s room.

They were up with the sun at 4.30 a.m. Denise jumped in the shower. Bruce jumped in after her. Denise took the car back to the overpass while she waited. No Daniel. An entire night without Daniel. She drove on to Maroochydore Plaza, not expecting to see him. They were desperate. Was anybody doing anything?

Bruce checked the property again. The sheds. The dam. The fruit trees. The stables. No Daniel. It wasn’t far past 5 a.m. when Bruce and Denise met up again. There were still three excruciating hours to wait until the police station opened its doors.

‘What the hell are we going to do now?’ one of them asked. Maybe he’d been bitten by a snake. Maybe he’d been the victim of a hit-and-run and was lying injured somewhere. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

They walked the length of the driveway together — about 300 metres. When they got to the end they decided they’d walk to the bus stop, checking the sides of the road in case he was lying there. The Woombye–Palmwoods Road had steep embankments and areas of thick scrub. Was Daniel lying in the bushes, unable to yell for help? Their chests tightened by fear, they searched the sides of the road for their son. Nothing. They went home.

Dean had just started a new job and they talked about whether he should go in. In the end, Bruce and Denise decided to drive him the five minutes into Palmwoods for his shift. It was better that he had something to occupy his mind.

It was a few minutes before 8 a.m. when Bruce and Denise arrived at the front doors of the Palmwoods police station. It was dark inside and the doors were locked. They sat in the car and waited for someone to arrive.

Sergeant Laurie Davison pulled in spot-on 8 a.m. They cornered him as he walked in the door. To the experienced officer, they looked like nice, normal parents. They spoke to him from under the weight of their worry. He let them inside and asked them to wait in the foyer while he turned on lights and checked overnight reports.

Then he took them to a desk and invited them to sit down. Sergeant Davison was meticulous and thorough. He took them through the previous day in detail. When did Daniel leave? Why was he going to the Plaza? Where would he normally get his hair cut? The sergeant took notes and then picked up his phone and began making calls. The Morcombes sat patiently as he made call after call, not always knowing who he was speaking with.

Finally, he put down the phone. They needed to go home, he told them, and search through Daniel’s clothes. Did he have a red t-shirt? Dark-coloured baggy shorts? Sergeant Davison had called Sunbus. A driver recalled seeing a boy matching Daniel’s description standing under the overpass wearing a red shirt and dark shorts.

They were home by 9 a.m. The worry and fear were still there, but for the first time, the Morcombes felt they were being taken seriously. Sergeant Davison had not told them not to worry, that Daniel would be home soon. That it was probably just a ‘simple misunderstanding’. It was no longer just Bruce and Denise, searching in the dark with flashlights, looking for scuff marks in the dirt.

CHAPTER THREE

LOOKING FOR DANIEL

It was about 9a.m. on day two that a missing persons report was filed for 13-year-old Sunshine Coast schoolboy Daniel Morcombe. Two hours later, a Significant Event Message was logged. The Juvenile Aid Bureau was informed and a ‘Be on the Lookout For’ alert was broadcast to all officers. By 2.20 p.m., Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Schmidt, in charge of the Sunshine Coast Criminal Investigation Branch, was brought in. Police had already been back to the Morcombes’ Palmwoods home to pick up a recent photograph of Daniel. Denise had handed it over with shaking hands.

That evening, as radio and television news bulletins broadcast stories of a missing boy, Bruce, Denise, Dean and Bradley drove to the Maroochydore police station so they could be interviewed separately by police. Each sat waiting their turn, looking exhausted and distraught. It was getting dark again and Daniel was gone. It was unbelievable. Inconceivable.

Over the next 72 hours, the search would gain momentum; a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger with each turn. Orange-clad State Emergency Services volunteers took time away from work and home and settled in for days of scouring the district for a little lost boy. Police around Australia were notified to be on the lookout for Daniel. Queensland police divers were tasked to check local dams and waterways. Media releases were prepared and sent out to newspapers, radio and television stations.

Forensic crews were sent to the overpass where Daniel had stood, to check for anything of evidentiary value. They found nothing in the way of fingerprints but took plaster casts of footprints left in the dirt. One was confirmed as being a child’s Globe shoe. The Morcombes told police Daniel had a pair of Globe shoes. They still had the shoe box. The Globes themselves were missing from Daniel’s room. The box was handed over to police. Broken glass was collected from the ground under the overpass and inquiries revealed a bus had had a window smashed by vandals prior to 7 December. The Sunbus driver had pulled over and cleared the glass away from the frame to stop it falling into the vehicle.

Investigators called the Department of Family Services and checked the Child Protection Register. Had Daniel been abused? Was it his family that had put him in danger? Was he a runaway? The checks showed them what they already suspected: Daniel came from a loving family. His disappearance was very much out of the ordinary.

Forensic crews also scoured the Sunbus vehicles that ran between Palmwoods and the Plaza. Drivers were interviewed. The driver who’d seen a boy in a red t-shirt standing under the overpass had also spotted a ‘shadowy’ man a few metres behind. He was described as ‘scruffy’, with messy brown hair. He had facial hair, maybe a goatee. Sunken cheeks. Tanned, weather-beaten appearance.

The Missing Persons Unit was contacted. Task Force Argos — Queensland’s world-renowned child sex offender investigation team — was asked to review intelligence on any convicted pedophiles known to frequent the area.

Police officers meticulously door-knocked homes and businesses in the area. Had anyone seen a young boy early Sunday afternoon walking to the bus stop? Or perhaps waiting on the side of the road, under the overpass? Detectives took possession of CCTV footage from the Sunshine Plaza and spent hours scouring the crowds for any sign of Daniel. They checked his bank account for any activity. Nothing. Nil. Zip.

Any computers at the Morcombe home were taken away for examination. If Daniel had been talking to anyone in internet chatrooms, police needed to know about it.

They took camera footage from every service station in a five-mile radius, and from the Nambour railway station. They secured satellite imagery to help with the painstaking ground search. Checked Sunbus ticketing machines and took note of exactly where each bus was at each moment. Spoke to local youth centres about runaways. Called taxi companies to ask about pick-ups and drop-offs in the area.

Daniel’s parents looked through his room. It was exactly as he’d left it — tidy, the bed made. A search of his clothes confirmed police suspicions. Daniel had been wearing a red t-shirt — Quicksilver — and a pair of navy blue shorts. It was the same outfit he’d worn to the movies the night before.

Plain-clothes officers sat on Sunbuses, watching for suspicious characters and identifying any potential witnesses. Soon, calls from the public began to filter through from people who had seen cars parked by the overpass on Sunday afternoon.

Police got hold of a vehicle catalogue. It contained pictures of every single car available in Australia. It would help witnesses identify cars they’d glimpsed parked by the bridge as they drove by on the Nambour Connection Road.

Officers went out to the Sunshine Coast Motor Lodge, not far from the overpass, where drug offenders were known to have been staying. Forensic crews scoured the rooms. There was nothing to connect them to Daniel. They visited 71 pawnshops looking for Daniel’s distinctive fob watch or anything else belonging to the teenager.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE BLUE HERRING

On Tuesday morning, when Daniel’s bed had been empty for two nights, police set up a Major Incident Room. A Major Incident Room is the headquarters of a major investigation. Its walls are lined with photographs, evidentiary material, lists, information on suspects. It’s where detectives gather. Where briefings are held.

On Tuesday morning, the more than 50 officers already investigating Daniel’s disappearance were joined by four detectives from the Homicide Squad. Police, who two days earlier had described Daniel’s disappearance as a ‘misunderstanding’, were now looking into the possibility he’d been abducted and murdered. Investigators tracked down witnesses and followed up on information filtering through from members of the public.

Blake Rogers had been to the beach at Maroochydore on Sunday 7 December and was on his way home for a shower before work when he turned off the Nambour Connection Road. The Morcombes were his neighbours. It was around 1.30 p.m. when he spotted Daniel walking along the Woombye–Palmwoods Road. He told police Daniel was walking along the left-hand side of the road, holding something small in one hand. Something like a phone or a wallet. He’d been wearing a red t-shirt and dark blue or black shorts and a baseball cap.

Blake was home a minute later, washing away the sand and salt in the shower. His shift at the local Red Rooster started at 2 p.m., so he was back in the car 20 minutes later. This time he spotted Daniel standing under the overpass, waiting for the bus. At 1.50 p.m., Blake told police, Daniel had been standing there alone.

Craig Beattie’s three-month-old daughter, like so many other babies, liked to fall asleep to the hum of a car engine. When she wouldn’t settle that Sunday, 7 December, he strapped her in to the capsule and took her for a drive. It was 12.30 p.m. when he left his home at Eudlo, south of Palmwoods on the Sunshine Coast. He’d been on the road for 45 minutes, or maybe an hour, when he found himself on Pine Grove Road — adjacent to the Nambour Connection Road and within shouting distance of the overpass. The boy’s red shirt caught his eye.

‘He was just walking along, looking up at the trees,’ he told police.

Peter and Jenny Harth ran the service station on Woombye–Palmwoods Road at Woombye. They knew Daniel — although not by name. He came in to the shop every now and then to buy last-minute items for his parents. Sometimes he’d buy fuel for the motorbike.

On Sunday, 7 December they closed the service station at 1.15 p.m. Soon after, they spotted Daniel walking towards the Nambour Connection Road. He wore a red t-shirt, shoes and socks. Peter remembered something else from that day. After closing up, he drove down Pine Grove Road towards the Woombye turnoff at Blackall Street. He spotted a bus parked on the side of the road. It was drizzling, and people with umbrellas were standing next to the stalled vehicle.

Alan Park drove charter buses for a living. On 7 December he was booked to drive a coach from the depot at Tewantin to Dreamworld on the Gold Coast for a private function. He arrived at the depot at 1.45 p.m. and filled out his logbook. Alan marked ‘2 p.m.’ as the time he’d left with the bus and rumbled his way out the gates.

It wasn’t long after that that he spotted the boy in the red shirt standing under the bridge. Alan narrowed his eyes. The boy had his back to him as the bus approached the overpass. They’d had trouble with kids throwing rocks at the buses and Alan thought the worst. The boy in the red t-shirt turned around as the coach approached. He looked at the vehicle with indifference and looked away again.

‘He’s just looking for his bus,’ Alan thought, and relaxed.

Denise Dance also saw a young boy in a red t-shirt. She drove under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass somewhere between 1.30 p.m. and 1.40 p.m. He was standing close to the gutter. Denise seemed to recall other people standing there too, but couldn’t remember anything about them.

It was about 2 p.m. when Maureen Martin got into her car to head to the Sunshine Plaza. She took the Nambour Connection Road and was nearing Blackall Street when she spotted a bus pulled over on the side of the road. She continued on, driving under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass. It was here she spotted the boy in the red shirt. He seemed bored, kicking at the dirt.

It was about 2 p.m. or just before when Judy Lade left her Palmwoods home to drive her husband to work at a nearby nursery. Her route took her along the Nambour Connection Road and she’d been in the car for only minutes when she drove under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass.

It was the man she’d noticed first. He was tall and skinny and stood right under the bridge, one leg bent up against the wall. There was a boy there too. She saw him as she steered the car around the roundabout.

Wendy Burnett had spent the morning at church before treating herself to lunch at a local hotel. But by 1.30 p.m., she was on her way home. She wanted to make it back before her husband left for work. It was around 2 p.m. when she took the Palmwoods exit off the Nambour Connection Road, right near the Kiel Mountain Road overpass. The road was wet and the sky was grey with clouds threatening to dump more of their load.

She noticed people standing near the overpass. They caught her eye because she’d not seen people standing in that spot before, right on the edge of a major road. They were sheltering from the rain, tucked under the bridge.

The man was tall and unkempt. He was gaunt and his hair hung limp on his face.

Not the boy, though. He was wearing something bright and seemed far neater and better dressed than the man. The boy was on the edge of the road, looking down towards the Big Pineapple — a local tourist attraction — while the man stood diagonally behind.

Chloe Fooks was in another car that drove past at about the same time. She was sitting in the passenger seat when she noticed the young boy in the red t-shirt and dark shorts. He was standing right by the edge of the road.

They pulled in to the service station nearby and she got out to buy something inside. Many of the times given to police were just estimates. But Chloe’s receipt put her at the Forest Glen BP, about four kilometres away, at 2.14 p.m.

Jessiah Cocks sat in the passenger seat of his mother’s car, nursing his McDonald’s. It was a little after 1.35 p.m. when they drove by the overpass, on their way home to nearby Mapleton. He noticed the red t-shirt, standing out against the brown of the clay wall under the overpass. The boy was squatting on his haunches. It was just a glimpse but, like all the others, something made him remember that boy.

He remembered something else, too. On the other side of the overpass was a white 4WD. It was all hard angles. A 1990s model, maybe. He thought it might have had a black snorkel.

Then there were the people on the bus. The driver wasn’t the only person to see a boy in red trying to wave them down. The passengers who’d waited so long after their first bus broke down saw him as well. Sixteen-year-old Terry Theuerkauf, his sister Fiona and their friends Abby North and Peter Murchie were sitting in the back row. They were on their way to the Plaza to catch a movie.

The boy had a stick in his hand and waved at them as they approached. His shoulders slumped and he kicked at the dirt when the bus didn’t stop. It was a long wait for the next bus on a Sunday. They only ran once an hour. There was someone else waiting for the bus too. A man stood a few metres behind the boy in the red top. They all saw him — even though, when it came to describing him to police, they’d seen different things. He was gaunt, with prominent eyebrows. Abby saw a goatee, long hair and a thin face. She saw eyes that were lined and weathered. Two earrings in the one ear. Fiona saw a beanie and sunglasses. A tattoo on his arm and a bag on the ground.

It’s called the Rashomon effect. A term often used by psychologists, it’s a phenomenon whereby people witnessing the same event recall it quite differently. They aren’t lying — they’ve just been influenced by individual bias, leading questions, time or various other factors.

Fiona would recall something else, too. She felt uneasy about that man. Something about that situation — the boy alone on the side of the road — made her worry for him. After all, when your bus approaches, you usually step forward. But that man didn’t move at all.

The car was ‘squarish’, like an old Datsun. Blue in colour. Four doors. She saw it parked on the left-hand side of the Nambour Connection Road, just before the overpass.

Karen Brady also saw people. A young boy was standing in front of the car and a man was behind it. He was tallish, with collar-length hair and wearing jeans and a t-shirt. He was weathered, with tanned skin — like someone who worked out in the sun. She remembered seeing the man staring at the boy. She wasn’t sure what time — Karen could only narrow it down as some time between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

Keith Lipke saw a blue car, too. But his account was far more strange. It was a little after 1.50 p.m. when Keith spotted it pulled over somewhere between the overpass and the Big Pineapple, further along the Nambour Connection Road. It was a blue four-door sedan. Squarish. About 20 years old with no hub caps. He hadn’t seen anybody standing under the overpass but he had seen a man in the driver’s seat and possibly a second man seated next to him.

In the back seat, as he drove by, he spotted a tarp. The tarp was moving. He thought perhaps there were kids under the tarp. He told police he spotted a flash of red — but bizarrely thought nothing of it.

Joan Anderson and her husband had eaten lunch later than usual that day. So it was about 1.30 p.m. when they were on their way home via the Nambour Connection Road. They were driving under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass when she spotted the blue car. It was older, with faded blue paint. A boy was standing a couple of metres back from the rear of the car. There was a man beside the rear passenger door. She only got a glimpse, but it appeared as though he was getting out of the car. His hair was unkempt and mousy brown. Her husband noticed he was wearing a checked shirt. She didn’t get the registration. But she thought the car had New South Wales plates.

Barry Kelsey had been helping his daughter renovate her Nambour house on 7 December 2003. He was driving under the overpass when he saw a boy standing by the side of the road. The boy looked as though he was waiting for a bus. When Barry pulled level, he noticed a man standing further back. Lean build, dark hair, thin-faced. Wearing a checked flannelette shirt. He’d thought the boy was singing, or talking to himself. But when he saw the man, it occurred to Barry the boy might have been speaking to him. An older-style car was parked on the other side of the overpass. It was a faded dark blue colour.

Gary Mitchell and his wife had spent the weekend with the in-laws at Woombye. But by 2 p.m. Sunday they were headed back home. In 2003 the merge onto the Nambour Connection Road from the Kiel Mountain Road overpass was tricky. There was no bleeder lane. Just a give-way sign. Gary pulled up at the give-way sign and turned to look for traffic.

‘I can’t see,’ he told his wife. A car was parked under the overpass, blocking his view. With the angle of the sun, he could only see it in silhouette. But it was boxy. An older square-shaped sedan. There was a person leaning on the car and another standing up on the footpath. They were in shadow. He got the impression one was a man and the other a child. But he couldn’t be sure.

It was some time in the afternoon when Troy Meiers was on his way to a friend’s house via the Nambour Connection Road. The blue car with the rough paint job was parked near the overpass. A thin-faced man with a goatee stood at the back, leaning against the tail-light. On the opposite side of the road was a boy in a red t-shirt. A second man stood nearby, his back to the boy. Troy pulled up at his mate’s house and banged on the door. There was nobody home. He got back in his car to head home and drove back under the overpass. Fifteen minutes had passed. He noticed the boy in the red shirt again. The man was standing behind him.

There were many inconsistencies in witness accounts. But police felt they could rely on two things: a man had been standing with Daniel as he waited for the bus. And they were looking for a blue car.

Bruce and Denise were living a nightmare. They were in an endless state of shock. How could this happen? They waited for answers that didn’t come. They jumped at the ring of a phone, at knocks on the door.

Glenis Green was one of the first journalists to staff the Courier-Mail’s Sunshine Coast bureau office. She covered an enormous area — all the way up to Bundaberg, if that’s where the news of the day took her.

On Tuesday, 9 December 2003, she arrived at work to sift through the events of the night before. A kid had gone missing on his way to the Plaza. Police were looking for anyone who had information that might help track him down. There was a general feeling he’d run off, gone to a mate’s place or had a fight with his parents. But the Sunshine Coast had been Glenis’s patch for four or five years by then. She’d had missing children come across her desk before. There was something about this one. Something didn’t feel right. She picked up the phone and soon had an address for the family.

She would never forget that long driveway. The cottage garden. The beautiful family home. The friendly dogs and the well cared for pony. But most of all, she would never forget the look in Denise’s eyes. She was distraught. She looked haunted. Something has gone horribly, horribly wrong here, Glenis thought.

Bruce agreed to talk. They would give up their privacy, give up the anonymity of a normal life, to find their son.

‘We’re just at a dead end,’ he said. Daniel, he explained, was a shy kid who knew about ‘stranger danger’. He wouldn’t have been lured away by a strange man. Talked into a car. ‘He was cautious in that regard and this is totally out of character. It’s heartbreaking. It’s the not knowing that’s the dreadful thing.’

Bruce hoped these words would encourage people to come forward with information that could help the police case. But they were just words. They didn’t convey that tight feeling in his chest. The fear that gripped them. The blind panic just under the surface. What had happened to their boy?