Page 116 of Murder in the Family

Domestic abuse victims, you mean?

ALAN CANNING

Primarily, yes. Butnoneof those crimes came out of a blue sky. They were the last act in a long drama.

LAILA FURNESS

I agree. For a woman to attack someone she’d never met, and do it that savagely, just for money, without any personal grievance at all, you’d be looking at someone on the psychopathy spectrum.

Which, of course, is not impossible, but the odds are very much against.

JJ NORTON

That still leaves Ian. How old was he then – 28? He’d have been more than capable—

LAILA FURNESS

Andhe’s someone Luke might have opened the door to, even if they’d never met: ‘Luke’ would have known about the Wilsons from Florence, so he wouldn’t see them as a threat. Ian could havespun a line about her being unwell, then as soon as he gets inside—

ALAN CANNING

(nodding)

We definitely need to try and find him. And investigate that alibi of his too.

BILL SERAFINI

Agreed.

(turning to Hugo)

Why don’t I have a word with Peter Lascelles, off the record. Cop to cop. See if he might be prepared to give me more of a steer.

HUGO FRASER

(rather acidly)

Be my guest.

BILL SERAFINI

So, next up is the hit-and-run the real Luke Ryder may have been involved in before he left Australia. Any news on that, Mitch?

MITCHELL CLARKE

(looks up)

Actually, yes, something that could be quite significant, I think.

As we discussed last time, the press coverage said the victim was in a coma immediately after the accident, so we had no way of knowing when – or evenwhether– he actually died.

So I started by doing a trawl of death records for the Sydney area for the two months after the date of the accident, to see if anything stood out. That gave me five fatalities where the cause of death was listed as multiple blunt-force trauma injuries resulting from a road traffic accident, but obviously no details of where and when those accidents happened.

So I then cross-referenced those names with the listings for the coroner’s court of New South Wales. But again, I’m afraid, no luck. Nothing at all referencing an incident for that day, in that area. Which suggests to me that either the victim didn’t actually die from his injuries, or if hedidit was somewhere else, or some considerable time later.

JJ NORTON

Well, well done for persevering – I’m getting a headache just listening to it.

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