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In the meantime he had become an apparently prosperous local businessman, starting an agricultural produce business in 2000, which soon reached an annual turnover of $3 million. As well as the big store in Hill Street, there was an offsite bulk feed storage facility and a breeding herd of a hundred Limousin and Charolais cattle at a West Hoxton feed lot. In October 2001, Andrew's business partner in the cattle project, his sister Colleen, told
The Land
newspaper their company, Pacific Pastoral, hoped to create a boutique beef market in the wealthy eastern suburbs.

•

The detectives asked Daley to wear a wire to the meetings with Andrew Perish to seek confirmation of his claim that he'd been asked to assist in the disposal of Terry Falconer's body. They were also interested in other information, most urgently the location of Anthony Perish. The plan was that Daley would go into the store and have a conversation in which he would try to elicit such information from Andrew.

Police have refused to give details of the methodology used in the meetings, or about their use of electronic surveillance more generally. They don't want criminals reading this book to learn how it's done. But from publicly available information on the subject, it can be noted that recording these days does not require the elaborate arrangements still sometimes seen on television, with wires taped to the body. The technology is now much more compact.

Also unlike what we see on most television shows, a great deal of preparation and care goes into operations. A plan is prepared, indicating things such as the nature of the target, the likely level of danger, the names and phone numbers of all officers involved, the roles of the various teams, and the location of the nearest hospital. The aim is for the operation commander to have as good an idea as possible of just what is going on at all times. To assist in this, a surveillance team can be used to ensure the target is on the premises beforehand, observe the conversation from a distance (where this is possible) and make sure the person with the wire gets away from the premises safely afterwards without being followed. A briefing is held beforehand to ensure everyone—and there can be ten or more officers involved in one operation—understands the plan.

The first meeting was on 30 September 2002. At a remote location, Daley was equipped with miniature recording equipment. Once it was turned on, Jubelin briefly explained the nature of the operation and said to him, ‘I have been authorised to offer you the following inducement for the purposes of this operation only. Nothing you say and no information you give in this operation will be used in any criminal proceedings against you in any court in New South Wales. Do you understand?'

‘Yes.'

Daley went into the store and found Andrew Perish, who said, ‘Is there a summons?' Perish had two things at the forefront of his mind: the imminent inquest into his grandparents' death and the Falconer investigation, involving both Tuno and the Crime Commission. When Daley said he'd received a summons to give evidence at the inquest, Perish said, ‘Bullshit, isn't it . . . Did you get it today?'

‘Yeah, about eleven o'clock today at my girl's—'

‘Fuckin' can't, mate,' Perish said, ‘you go there and fuckin'—'

‘Yeah, they're going to ask me that shit and what do I say, man? What do you want me to say?'

‘Fuck, just something like—'

‘Want me to say that fuckin' Terry told, told me that he'd done it or what?'

‘No, no don't fuckin'—'

‘Well I dunno, that's why I'm asking, that's why I'm here to fuckin' see ya, Andrew.'

But Andrew did not ask Daley to lie, and it is a feature of this and all the taped conversations that followed that Andrew Perish did not admit to or propose any illegal activity. Either he was a man innocent of all wrong, or a man with a constant wariness that the conversations he had with Daley might be taped.

He said, ‘Some cunt's fuckin', some cunt's fuckin', some cunt in our circle has fuckin' dogged ya, mate, just to put you in the picture.'

The news that he'd been accused of informing did not make Daley happy. ‘Don't need this shit, man,' he said, ‘that's
why I pulled out of the fuckin' job [meaning the disposal of Falconer's body] in the first place.'

‘It's just fuckin' shit, mate . . .'

‘Speak to the Rooster, mate. Speak to the Rooster, find out what the fuck I've got to do, all right? If he wants to see me I don't care, whatever, mate.'

Daley was using the situation to try to make contact with Anthony Perish, as the detectives had asked.

‘No worries,' Andrew said, ‘I'll get it sorted out, fuckin' oath.'

‘And sort the fuckin' money out too, all right?'

This seems to be a reference to whether Daley had to repay any of the $8,300 he'd been given to repair his boat and make his reconaissance trip.

‘Yeah, no worries.'

‘Just tell him, mate, I've had a hell of a lot of fuckin' heat on my arse here and there, you know. I'm just staying away from every cunt. I've heard the bullshit rumours and all this fuckin' crap.'

‘Yeah . . . I know they're not going to want you to say nothin' about knocking the other thing. They're not gonna learn nothin'.'

‘Nothing.'

Given that ‘to knock' means ‘to kill', ‘knocking the other thing' was presumably a reference to the Falconer murder—but it was as close as Perish would ever come to a direct mention in any of these conversations. The police had hoped for more explicit admissions, and they were disappointed. However, one feature of Andrew's conversation was interesting, and that was the way he accepted without question references Daley made to some of the circumstances of the Falconer murder.
It's unlikely he would have done this had he not known about them. For example, at one point Daley said, ‘I just fuckin', you know this is a flamin' surprise to me. I don't want any more fuckin' surprises like you comin' out to my place . . . that's why I pulled out of the fuckin' thing in the first place, Andrew. I don't want to go back to jail for no cunt.'

To which Andrew's reply was, ‘Yeah, I know. No worries, no worries.'

‘I'm not a weak cunt, mate, it's just that things weren't right, I was fresh out of jail.'

‘No worries. I fuckin' understand that, mate.'

It was pretty obvious—to a listener aware of the background—that Perish knew exactly what Daley was talking about.

Another example of this familiarity occurred when Daley referred to the police running sheet Anthony had once shown him at his house. He said, ‘I need to know if that fuckin' piece of paper you showed me about Terry Falconer is gone, because it's got my fuckin' prints on it.'

Andrew didn't say, ‘What piece of paper?', he said, ‘It's gone, mate. Don't worry.'

The conversation also included a lot of general chat about the bikie life, matters such as killing, rivalries and constant paranoia. The details are not clear most of the time, but the violence of their culture is. For example, Daley said about some unnamed people, ‘He was gonna ask me and we all got asked last week before to fuckin' shoot the cunt . . . I'm fuckin' spinning, mate, I'm getting loaded for it . . . I'm not havin' any arguments over that cunt.'

‘Yeah, you don't want any cunt setting you up for that, ay?'

There was more chat about mutual acquaintances, interspersed with Daley's attempts to get Andrew to talk about Terry Falconer. We can only wonder what Andrew Perish must have thought during these conversations. Daley was playing a dangerous game, by suggesting he was scared about his contacts with police over the inquest into the grandparents' deaths. There was always the possibility the Perishes would decide he was about to roll over, and that he had to be dealt with.

On the other hand, it was possible Andrew just considered Daley a harmless pain in the arse who needed to be kept happy with as little effort as possible. After fifteen minutes of rambling, expletive-ridden conversation, he said, ‘I gotta let you go, mate, all right?'

‘All right,' said Daley.

‘Have a good afternoon.'

Daley went back to South Western Produce wearing a wire in early October, and got taped confirmation that the Perishes had given him money in connection with his boat. He gave Andrew Perish $1,000, which the police had provided, and said, ‘Give that to him [Anthony] too. I promise to round off what I owe him.'

‘Oh, right,' said Andrew.

‘Do I have to pay the eight and a half or just fuckin' . . . cause I don't really wanna fuckin' put a new motor on the boat.'

Andrew said he'd talk to Anthony about it. Daley said he'd pay it back bit by bit, and Andrew said, ‘Yeah, no worries.'

Daley met a bikie mate in the store, and their casual chat about Falconer (whose death was still of interest in the underworld) makes chilling reading, even if not every detail
of it is clear. Daley seemed to be saying that Falconer had ratted on some bikies: ‘He got busted with the drums of chemicals [and gave up] a heap of Jokers and fuckin' other hairy cunts over it when he got busted . . . with drums and drums, millions of dollars worth of chemicals . . . what I've always been understood to believe, Uhlans and Jokers, and that was all when the Uhlans and Jokers come unstuck and they reckon they found that, remember that little fuckin' cunt from the Uhlans that I used to know real well, they—'

‘Jack.'

‘They found him burned in his ute.'

On the next visit, in the middle of October, Daley said he had to give evidence at the inquest the next week and Andrew said, ‘Yeah, you don't know nothing, right.' Daley again raised his concerns about his fingerprints being on the police running sheet, and Andrew said, ‘Hey, hey, hey. But you know nothing about that boat.'

During this conversation, Daley thought he heard Andrew say, in regard to the Falconer murder, ‘Nobody knows we done it.' When he left South Western Produce, he was exultant about this and sent a text to the detectives, ‘U love me don't you? . . . Don't you!! . . . I do believe I have admis. [Smiley face.] C U in 40 I hope. Traffic is fucked.'

Regrettably, although Daley did not know this, the main recording device had stopped working some time between when it was fitted and the start of the conversation. Daley had been equipped with a second device, but on account of its location on him it did not record very well, and parts of the conversation, including the place where Daley claimed Andrew had made the admission, were inaudible. A noisy
machine, sounding like a compressor, had been running in the room. The recording was later sent to experts at Scotland Yard to see if they could improve the sound quality, but without success.

Daley returned to the store at the end of the month and actually got to talk with Anthony Perish. He'd been told he might be in Sydney, so he said to Andrew, ‘Mate didn't come down?'

‘What's that?'

‘Mate didn't come down?'

‘Yeah, he's down now, Mate.'

‘Is he?'

‘We might catch up with him tonight.'

‘Yeah, that'd be all right.'

‘Or fuckin' tomorrow night or something, you know . . . I'll give him a call.'

‘When?'

Andrew dialled a number, and said, ‘Hey, Mate, how you goin'? . . . Uh yeah, I got someone here okay . . . Have a little talk, you know. Are you there? Yeah, he's here now, yeah.'

Daley, handed the phone, spoke to Anthony: ‘Hey, buddy, how ya goin'? What's happening? Ah, fuckin', fuck all, mate . . . Well, there's lots of shit really, ha, ha . . . So we fuckin' need to have dinner, mate . . . Fuck, just give Andrew a ring and organise it with him and he can let me know, yeah, pick us up or whatever. Yeah, no worries. All right, Mate, take it easy, eh? See ya, bud.'

Daley hoped Andrew would ring him back some time soon and arrange the meet with Anthony at short notice, so for the next few weeks the detectives took their guns and Kevlar vests
home each night, waiting for a call from Daley that would draw them across the city in a rush to seize Anthony. But there was no meeting. Presumably the Perishes were highly suspicious of Daley by now.

Daley was under a lot of pressure and told the police some strange things. Glen Browne wrote this report of a phone call about the helicopter in December 2002: ‘Daley immediately seemed to be excited and irrational. Daley stated a helicopter had been circling his house and he requested to be told why. Daley went on to say that he believed that the helicopter was a police helicopter and they were checking out his house prior to raiding it. He stated that the helicopter was flying at very low level, approximately two hundred feet. In confirmation of these facts a helicopter could be heard in the background over the telephone.'

Daley had a bike accident, and the police who attended the scene searched his panniers and discovered $20,000 and tapes of meetings between him and Jubelin and Browne. Apparently he was paranoid about the police and, after secretly recording these conversations, had been carrying the tapes as insurance.

Finally, in late 2003, Daley said he'd had enough and wanted to go away and start his new life. The police sent him back to the produce store for one last attempt, in November. They told him to try harder than before to get Andrew to say something incriminating—raising his suspicions now would not matter. Jubelin sought legal advice and explained to Daley just how far he could go in trying to get Andrew to talk without making ‘untrue representations' that might make an answer inadmissible in court.

At the store, Daley told Andrew police had come to his girlfriend's house and asked questions about the boat. ‘Who the fuck is talking?' he said.

‘I don't fuckin' know, mate, I don't know.'

‘You know I had concerns about this shit from the fuckin' start.'