Page 23 of Murder in the Family

LAILA FURNESS

And Luke is a far more complex personality, too. Having lost his mother so young and his father soon after, I suspect he was struggling with a lot of unresolved issues around grief and abandonment. But on the surface he appears to have been remarkably care-free and easy-going.

BILL SERAFINI

As well as remarkably good at falling on his feet. Sounds to me like he had a talent for reading people. Working out who to gravitate to.

HUGO FRASER

Who to use, you mean. What you’re describing is a self-centred manipulator, and a pretty blatant one at that. And he was all the more effective at it for the baby face and looking like he didn’t care.

ALAN CANNING

He certainly seems to have ‘managed’ Rupert into footing most of his bills.

JJ NORTON

So maybe there were other people he’d come across who weren’t so accommodating. People who thought they’d been, in Hugo’s word, ‘used’?

ALAN CANNING

Never underestimate the power of money as a motive for murder. If thirty years’ experience of policing have taught me anything, it’s that.

And of course, if he was killed by someone he knew – someone he’d pissed off – it would explain how they got access to Dorney Place that night.

HUGO FRASER

What more do we know about Ryder’s associates? Presumably we’d only be looking at people he encountered in London. That can’t be a very big cohort.

LAILA FURNESS

(sifting through her copy of the case file)

There’s very little here that I can see. Three or four people came forward in response to the police appeal, all of whom were cleared. The police don’t seem to have unearthed anyone else of any significance.

HUGO FRASER

Well, if you’d been swindled by a murder victim you’d hardly come forward to the boys in blue, now, would you? You’d be offering yourself up as a suspect.

BILL SERAFINI

But it’s something we need to look into, for sure. A young guy his age must have had more acquaintances than just this list – drinking buddies if nothing else.

We need to find those people.

JJ NORTON

I don’t disagree, but in my opinion, our first priority should be the forensic evidence. Talking my own book, I know, but we need to know more about the injuries, what that tells us about the weapon, and what we might be able to deduce from that about the assailant.

Did he know his killer, as seems likely given where the murder took place? And if he did, was it a premeditated attack or a moment of impulsive violence? And either way, what lay behind it – anger, passion, jealousy, revenge, what?

General nods and murmurs of agreement round the table.

BILL SERAFINI

OK, I suggest we start by expanding on the timeline for that day – who was at Dorney Place and when, just to get that all straight in our minds. And then get you to take us through the forensics, JJ – does that work for you?

JJ NORTON

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