As they work to track a killer, Wallace and Burkely find they are fighting not just against a monstrous criminal, but the obstacles of police bureaucracy. In one early scene, Wallace, trying to find information on similar unsolved cases, calls the police, only to discover there is no national database of such crimes, and that to find the information she wants will require calling more than 500 police stations.

This was one of the most important elements of the real-life cases that the show could bring to light, Leech says, emphasising just how difficult it was to co-ordinate a major investigation at the time.

“One thing that is true, and that is in the show, is that a lot of people didn’t share information,” he says.

“They didn’t share what was going on with even the police stations maybe 10, 20 miles down the road. You had to go literally piece-by-piece and try to put it together yourself, there was no sense of trying to bring together all the information.

“That’s why the frustrations that are in the show were very real at the time.”

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There was also the fact that, although the ’90s doesn’t seem all that long ago, technology was light years behind what it is now. “We’re talking about a time when DNA had just come in and wasn’t even used in these cases at the time because it was such a new thing. And no mobile phones, no ability to track anyone.”

All this makes Burkely’s job – which includes getting his superiors to even take the case seriously, let alone solve it – that much harder. And the fact that the dedicated cop and father is also struggling with big questions about his own identity only adds to the stress he’s under.

Indeed, it was the great battles that Burkely must fight, professionally and personally, that drew Leech to the character.

“He’s battling his own demons and trying to come to terms with who he is as well. So whilst he’s trying to help in the investigation and trying to find these missing women …he’s very conflicted, and he also finds himself battling against the system.”

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Burkely is a noble if tortured character, beset by troubles but always determined to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know what that is. He’s also immersed in a dark and disturbing world, dealing with the very worst of humanity. Leech admits that such a grim milieu is not always easy to shake off at the end of a working day.

“Oh yeah, it does sit with you, definitely. Especially [because] we were trying to do justice to the fact that while our story is fictional, these events did happen to real people. So you do feel the frustrations and the sadness and the darkness very much, even when you leave set … it sat with me for a long time.”

The Vanishing Triangle is on SBS, Thursday, 9.20pm.

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