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a walk that will become all too familiar in the following months. Shifting from foot to foot and looking ill at ease, they take down further details. Sarah Spiers's disappearance, albeit treated as a missing persons case until then, had essentially been a local inquiry. But by lunchtime, because both girls have gone missing from the same area, police privately link the disappearance of Sarah and Jane to a serial predator. It is knowledge they do not share with the public. What they do declare publicly is the formation of a special taskforce: Taskforce Macro.
    As the officer in charge of Major Crime, Paul Ferguson's face and personality are well known to the public. He will continue to front the press as head of Macro, a huge task given his other responsibilities. Dave Caporn will remain as case officer, driving the investigation. He allocates teams and people on the ground. It is frantic. In the early days, they juggle 140 people with all the other tasks that have to be dealt with on a daily basis.
    There are not enough trained detectives to make up the teams Macro needs. With the intense pressure for a resolution to the case, they start internal training of uniform staff – used to responding to task questions and low-level crises – to teach them basic investigative skills. 'Prior to Macro,' Ferguson says, 'the force was divided into different squads, such as homicide, drug and vice. This was a whole new concept. It was a rocky road to change, because it was unfamiliar. We had to rape and pillage other districts to get what we needed. And we didn't have the luxury of time to do it.' The teams will be rotated into other areas within Macro every six months to keep them fresh. For the pressed officers, it is akin to Pharaoh's orders – to 'make as many bricks without straw as you've been making with straw'.
    The secrecy rules are also set early. All officers sign confidentiality agreements and under no circumstances is any information to be released to the public. Officers are not to discuss the case, apart from with their Macro colleagues. Even if they leave the force, they are not to discuss the case. They are not to talk about it whenever an outsider is within earshot. Cause of death, weapon used, time or place of death, the condition in which the clothing was found: their mouths are zipped up tight as a body bag. Don't invite copycat killings by leaking any details. Shut up. It is the police version of the military saying, 'Loose lips sink ships.'
    The enforced secrecy stuns officers working in other units – and other states. 'In all my years in the job – and I was there a long time – I had never heard of this before,' a former officer said. 'They actually "used" it to expel two detectives who got pissed and started talking about some facet of the investigation in a pub. They made the fatal mistake of talking within earshot of another copper, who reported them.' The secretive nature of the investigation is also not welcomed by all its officers. Grumbles are frequent: this particular job is hard enough, without the added stress of command heads who keep a stranglehold on information leaks and a tight control-ling hand over all aspects of the case.
    The former hostage negotiator believes Caporn squandered precious opportunities to make the most out of bad situations with the team. 'It was a proud team, and people were happy to be on it,' he says. 'It was an important case and, on another level, it also offered opportunity for a truckload of overtime, which is always appreciated.'
    Despite WA Police assurances that confidentiality agreements are the norm, outside the state police are also amazed at the agreement Macro officers had to sign. A retired Assistant-Commissioner from the eastern states expressed incredulity when he heard of it. 'I was in the job 40 years, in the Major Crime area,' he said, 'but that was never done. Never. It's unusual, to say the least.'
    Paul Ferguson muses that it is vital not to stamp out