More than two months after her friend Matt Leveson disappeared without a trace, Sally White arrived at the doorstep of his boyfriend's unit with takeaway Thai, a bottle of wine and wearing a listening device.
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In a meandering dinner conversation, which circled around the quotidian – their jobs, the weather, their pets – Ms White repeatedly returned to her friend's disappearance on September 23, 2007.
"If you have anything that you want to talk to me about you know you can tell me anything and I'm never going to tell anybody," Ms White, who was given a pseudonym by the court, can be heard asking Michael Atkins on December 5, 2007.
"And if you've done something, and I'm not saying you have, you just better hope the police don't find anything," she added.
The conversation is part of a box of evidence presumed missing after Mr Atkins' murder trial in 2009, in which he was acquitted of both the murder and manslaughter of Mr Leveson.
In February this year, a coronial inquest into Mr Leveson's disappearance was told the missing box of evidence had been found in the home of Nicole Power, formerly the officer in charge of assisting with the coronial investigation.
Among the 80 discs of electronic evidence was CCTV footage from Sydney's ARQ nightclub, where Mr Leveson was last seen in the early hours of September 23, 2007, leaving with Mr Atkins, his boyfriend.
This footage, along with Ms White's secretly recorded conversation, was played before Deputy State Coroner Elaine Truscott as the inquest resumed on Monday.
Though Ms White can be heard repeatedly redirecting the conversation towards the missing 20-year-old, Mr Atkins remained largely taciturn in response.
At one point, Ms White revealed police had shown her CCTV footage of him buying a mattock and duct tape from a Bunnings store on the day Mr Leveson disappeared.
When she questioned why Mr Atkins had previously told her had been asleep at that time, he responded: "I don't remember what I said to police. I was sleeping part of that day."
Later in the conversation, Mr Atkins told his friend he "never hurt Matthew" and missed him.
"I go to bed and I want him to be next to me."
The court was also shown footage of plainclothes detectives discovering drugs and wads of cash as they searched Mr Atkins' and Mr Leveson's shared apartment in Cronulla, four days after he disappeared.
The footage, which was not seen by the jury during the 2009 murder trial, showed Mr Atkins telling police the stash of ecstasy, GHB and $3755 in cash belonged to Mr Leveson who he said had been selling drugs "for a while".
The video also showed detectives finding a shoe box and receipt for a new pair of shoes purchased by Mr Atkins the day after his boyfriend disappeared.
The inquest will continue at the State Coroner's Court in Glebe on Tuesday.
