But it was the gory mission Mark and Faye Leveson had to do. If the police couldn’t find him, then the Levesons would themselves.

DIGGING FOR MATT APRIL 2008

CLUMPS of soil were thrown up into the air. Dried leaf litter flew high. Worms and bugs crawled for their lives.

But there was no sparing them as the mattock pulverised the earth.

Mark Leveson grunted with each taxing swing. It was tough work digging in the heat of the day.

The chore was made all the more difficult by the distressing thought ramming its way into his mind: I’m digging for my son.

It was a task no parent should ever have to perform: searching acres of bushland for the body of their child.

But it was the gory mission Mark and Faye Leveson now lived and breathed.

HOW WE REPORTED THE CASE

HOW MICHAEL ATKINS GOT CAUGHT LYING

CORONER UNABLE TO DETERMINE HOW MATT DIED

BONES FOUND AT SEARCH SITE FOR MATTHEW

Their determination was unwavering. Every weekend since Matt’s car had been discovered at Waratah Oval in September 2007, the couple had ventured into countless patches of scrubland, hoping to find a freshly dug bush grave.

As they ploughed, Mark and Faye dared not imagine the horror they’d encounter if they did in fact find their son’s grave.

How it would feel to actually see Matt’s body. To plunge into the soft soil and unearth their own flesh and blood, discarded like a piece of rubbish.

It was too much for Faye to bear at times, but her love for her lost son gave her the strength and stomach to push on.

Matt had needed her in life, and now he needed her in death.

If the police couldn’t find him, then the Levesons would themselves.

Behind Mark and Faye’s dogged determination to find Matt’s body was their certainty that Michael Atkins was involved with their son’s disappearance.

Their suspicions were all but con- firmed in January 2008 when police recruited the parents to play a critical role in gathering key evidence against Atkins.

Mark and Faye agreed to visit Atkins at his Cronulla apartment in a bid to befriend him and, with Mark fitted with a covert listening device, they hoped to trip Atkins up.

That summer night, with a body wire taped to his chest, Mark’s pulse throbbed in his neck as he banged on the door of Atkins’ unit.

Faye stood by his side, swallowing hard against the bile rising in her throat.

They’d have been nervous anyway, but to make matters worse, only moments before they’d embarked on the unnerving visit police had informed them for the very first time that Michael Atkins had bought a mattock and duct tape from Bunnings on the day their son disappeared. He’d lied to police and claimed he was never there, but the CCTV footage showed otherwise. Atkins’ fingerprints had also been discovered on the receipt found in the boot of Matt’s Toyota Seca, linking him directly to the dumped vehicle.

These shocking disclosures left the couple paralysed with dread.

Despite their tears and Faye’s trembling bottom lip, police had urged Mark and Faye to proceed with their planned visit.

They reluctantly agreed. Do it for Matt, they told themselves.

After Atkins swung the door open, Mark shook his hand and Faye kissed him on the cheek. They entered the unit behind him, and the first thing Faye noted was how spotless it was. Even though the room was cluttered with mismatched furniture, everything had a place.

It was not as Faye had pictured.

Atkins made cups of coffee in the kitchen and tried to talk casually about his cat as the couple cast their eyes around the unfamiliar home.

It was simply gut-wrenching for them to be in Atkins’ presence, in his home.

But as they each took their seats on one of the faded blue couches, it was Faye’s chance to

implore Atkins to tell the truth. Through tears she pleaded, ‘I’m sorry but I just, I need to know, I mean, I carried him …’

‘Yeah,’ Atkins said flatly.

‘ … for nine months.’

The desperation in Faye’s voice was palpable. ‘And we’ve lost him.’

As Faye wiped tears from her cheeks Mark took over, relaying the story of how they almost lost Matt as a baby seven months into the pregnancy.

‘Really,’ Atkins said, taking a sip of his coffee. ‘I just — I’ve got to have him back,’ Faye said.

‘I know … Like, I want him back too.’

Atkins stared into his mug and scratched his neck. He wiped beads of sweat from his frozen brow with the back of his hand.

It was time to amp things up.

Mark went straight for the jugular.

‘The police — we don’t get much out of them,’ he said.

His mind jolted into overdrive as he tried to keep his voice level.

‘The one thing they have told us so far is that they said on the Sunday … That’s the day after he went missing, or he went missing that night …’

Atkins eyes were glued to the floor. ‘Yeah?’

‘They said they have got some’ — Mark struggled to get the words out, not being a trained cop, and with no clue how to do this properly for the sake of the tape — ‘they claim, very, very good video footage of you at the Bunnings buying a mattock and some tape.’

‘Mmm.’ Atkins’ expression was fixed.

‘And that’s why they’re sort of looking at you and pointing fingers.’

Mark clasped his hands together and steadied his voice.

‘Were you gardening, or what were you doing with that?’

Atkins had his answer ready to go.

‘Matt, on the previous weeks, and it’s on the balcony still, all of these punnets of a zucchini and packets in there …’ He gestured outside.

‘It’s on the balcony.’ Atkins shrugged. ‘And there’s just an old vegetable plot down the other side of the house … And that’s just why … and you can have a look.’

Mark still kicks himself for never having gone outside to check while the opportunity was there. But in that moment, with a body wire stuck to his chest, he couldn’t physically rip himself away from Atkins.

He still had more questions; most importantly, why had Atkins lied to the police about going to Bunnings to buy the mattock?

‘The police said you said you didn’t buy it,’ Mark pressed.

‘I know … It was … I hadn’t slept.’

Now it was Atkins’ turn to stumble over his words.

‘And I didn’t … The police were just … They’ve said I’ve said stuff which I never said. And I’ve had like five police at me just screaming at me literally, literally in the car.’

Atkins studied his fingernails, refusing to look them in the eyes.

‘Never believe the police like … ’cause they just lie.’

‘If Matt wanted to do the garden … You bought those after he was missing on the Sunday?’ Mark asked.

Atkins cut in. ‘No, he was still here.’

‘He was still here? So did he go with you to Bunnings?’ ‘No.’

‘He just — he just stayed behind?’ ‘Yeah.’

Mark’s head pounded. Atkins had given so many versions of that fateful Sunday that it was hard to keep track of all his lies.

‘I thought that you said when you woke up he was gone?’

‘That was in the morning ’cause I fell asleep,’ Atkins replied.

Faye squeezed her eyes shut. They needed to change tack.

This was all going nowhere fast.

‘You don’t think he OD’d?’ she asked, probing as to whether there was any chance Matt had overdosed on recreational drugs.

‘No.’

‘He didn’t OD?’

Mark cut in, ‘Was he careful with doses, was he?’ ‘Yeah.’

Faye said, ‘All these things go through your mind. I thought maybe he’s OD’d somewhere, and the person that’s found him has panicked and thought I’ll get rid of him and … just try to conceal it all in a blind panic.’

Atkins mumbled his response. ‘If it’s just, like, ecstasy you don’t OD really. It’s not like … heroin and that sort of stuff.’

‘So there’s no way he would have OD’d?’ Faye asked. ‘No.’ Atkins was firm.

‘So he was here when you went to Bunnings?’ ‘Mmm.’

‘Was he asleep or … drug-induced sleep?’

‘No, he wasn’t drugged,’ Atkins said. ‘I mean, Matt was usually very good. Like, he was always pretty careful really … He’d, you know, tell his friends what to take and how much.’

Faye made one more attempt. ‘So you can honestly say that you don’t know what happened to him?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘No?’ Mark pushed, softly.

‘I’d tell you,’ Atkins said, staring at the floor. ‘I want him back. He did mean the world to me — everything.’

A tear fell down Faye’s cheek. ‘He’s probably dead somewhere,’ she said hollowly.

Atkins looked up in surprise. ‘Don’t say that …’

‘Not probably,’ Mark said more firmly. ‘He is. He’s dead somewhere.’

‘And it’s just so hard, every night I go home and I can’t sleep,’ Faye said through her sobs.

‘I know, neither can I.’

‘I see his face every single night.’ ‘I know, so do I.’

The conversation continued for a few more awkward minutes before Mark thanked Atkins for the coffee and they said their goodnights.

Outside, in the car, Mark — with the body wire still attached — spoke with Faye about their impressions of Atkins as they drove to Miranda Police Station to meet with detectives.

Mark, forever the optimist, said, ‘Perhaps something out of all that was useful?’

Faye stared out the window. She wasn’t feeling well.

‘He’s got no conscience. I could see it in his eyes,’ she said. ‘Crocodile tears.’

As they entered the police station, Faye clutched her stomach and ran to the bathroom.

She burst into a cubicle, doubled over the toilet and vomited.

Her stomach heaved at the thought of playing happy families with the man she believed, with all her being, was responsible for her son’s murder.

But she and Mark had played their part exceptionally well.

Their traumatic experience proved beyond useful for police.

The brave parents had successfully elicited Michael Atkins’ first and only admission that he had bought the mattock from Bunnings.

Atkins’ confession not only provided a gotcha moment for police, but also fuelled Mark and Faye’s search for their son’s body.

Whereas at first they’d needed to find Matt to provide him with a proper burial, they were now pursuing justice as well. Matt’s body was vital evidence of the crime.

So they found themselves spending every spare moment digging up bushland around Sydney.

In the early days their search efforts were sporadic, as sites were chosen at random.

But by early 2008, they became more methodical and forced themselves to think like killers.

‘If you’re going to dispose of a body,’ Mark explains matter-of-factly, all these years later, ‘then you want a place where you can park the car off the road and won’t be seen. You also need access to the bush from the car.’

But the sheer size of the area where Matt might be buried meant the task was impossible to conquer.

Anywhere up to 300 kilometres of Cronulla, and perhaps even further, was within the realm of possibility.

The Levesons were never going to find their son without homing in on sites of real probability.

They needed a logical plan, a system based on something more solid than a hunch.

Mark, the accountant turned detective, studied the reading on Matt’s car odometer.

He was armed with the knowledge that Matt pedantically reset his vehicle’s odometer every time he refuelled.

By obtaining Matt’s bank details, he found that his son had filled up his car with petrol on the Tuesday prior to his disappearance.

There was no time associated with the bank records, but Mark figured the refuelling took place when Matt was either on his way to work or on his way home.

Mark then made an inventory of the movements of his son’s car after that point: the number of trips to and from work, the Saturday-night journey with Atkins to ARQ and the return home to Cronulla.

Then there was Atkins’ shopping spree at Bunnings on the Sunday and the one-way excursion to Waratah Oval, where Matt’s car was located.

Mark calculated the number of ‘missing kilometres’ between the car’s use and the reading on the odometer.

‘From that, I produced a body disposal timeline,’ Mark recalls.

Analysing his suspect’s known movements, he came to the conclusion that Atkins had buried Matt either late on the night of Sunday 23 September or in the early hours of the following morning.

With his bookkeeping brain kicked into overdrive, Mark used the data from the timeline and unaccounted-for kilometres to highlight a search radius.

It was a lot closer to home than they’d originally thought. Matt was almost certainly buried in the Sutherland Shire.

Mark and Faye’s gut instinct pointed them towards the Royal National Park.

Even then, there were 15,000 hectares of thick forest to search.

Mark once again found a logical way to deal with the impossible task: the Levesons downloaded the weather charts from the Bureau of Meteorology, which told them that the night Atkins disposed of Matt had a seven-eighths moon, low cloud cover and no rainfall, with a temperature in the low 20s. It was a good night to be in the bush.

Armed with these details, their obsession intensified.

On nights of similar weather conditions, the husband and wife began trawling the bush at 2am to replicate Atkins’ movements, searching for places that seemed the most fitting to dispose of a body.

Each eerie reconnaissance was followed by an expedition with a mattock. Often, as Mark sledged into the earth, Faye would cry.

Night or day, the bush felt menacing.

The national park held secrets it would never give up.

They felt alone and hopeless in their quest. But giving up wasn’t an option for Mark and Faye.

They were the Levesons. A force to be reckoned with.

This is an extract from Deal With The Devil by Grace Tobin (Penguin, Random House, RRP $34.95), published Monday, July 30.