Page 117 of Murder in the Family

MITCHELL CLARKE

It was erring on the thankless side by then, I’ll admit, which may be why my helpful police contact decided to take pity on me. He wouldn’t give me any actual details, but he did drop a fairly heavy hint that the victim was a student, and maybe that could be a useful angle to pursue.

To be honest, when he said that my first thought was ‘bloody hell, how many students are there in Sydney?’, but then I thought, with an accident that serious, maybe there’d be something about it in a student newspaper. My journo contact thought I was wasting my time but I’ve always been a belligerent sod—

BILL SERAFINI

Well, it clearly paid dividends this time.

MITCHELL CLARKE

(smiling)

Certainly did. Though it still took bloody ages because there was nothing online back then. But I did eventually dig up something on the Sydney Technology College website – their alumni section has PDFs of the student rag going back to the 1980s.

He taps his keyboard. An image appears on the screen.

And this is what I found.

HUGO FRASER

(under his breath)

Jesus Christ, death by Comic Sans.

MITCHELL CLARKE

(going over to the screen and pointing to the ‘Tribute’ article)

As you can see the date’s about right, and the details of the accident tally as far as they go.

And if you remember, when I first spoke to the Sydney police they made it pretty clear that the victim’s family had moved heaven and earth to keep his name out of the press, which made us think that the person in question was either somewhereor with someonethey shouldn’t have been.

BILL SERAFINI

Right.

MITCHELL CLARKE

And given this lad Mohammed Khan had been out with his friends before this happened, it’s a fair bet they’d been drinking. I can easily see why a devout Muslim family would want to keep that out of the press.

BILL SERAFINI

Were you able to find out anything about the family?

MITCHELL CLARKE

(shaking his head)

’Fraid not. Nothing, really, beyond what you can deduce from this article – the key point for us being that they were from the UK. But Khan is such a common name in the Muslim community that even if we knew which city they were from it wouldn’t be a lot of help.

ALAN CANNING

And we can’t be one hundred per cent sure this is the right guy, either – I mean, I assume your police officer contact wasn’t prepared to go as far as to confirm it?

MITCHELL CLARKE

No, he wasn’t, so you’re right, we can’t be absolutely sure. This is just an informed guess.

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