Page 81 of Murder in the Family

MITCHELL CLARKE

Though as it turned out, we were in luck. Don did find a couple of old snaps, but as you can see—

(gesturing at the board)

—they don’t exactly tell us much.

CAMERA ZOOMS in on PHOTOS. One shows a crowded bar – at least fifteen people in shot, mostly young men. They’re all holding up beer bottles and smiling; they look quite drunk. There’s a circle drawn in red marker pen around a figure in the back row, but he’s more than half obscured by the person in front. In the second picture a bunch of young guys are running towards the waves carrying surfboards. The sun is only just coming up and slants low across the sand. Luke is again marked in red, but he’s only visible from behind.

HUGO FRASER

Oh well, it was a good try—

MITCHELL CLARKE

Actually, I haven’t quite finished. Don still had his tax records from the bar, so he was able totell me exactly when it was that Luke left – it was the twenty-ninth of November 1995. So I did a web search for anything that happened in Sydney round then that might explain why he suddenly upped and left.

JJ NORTON

You don’t buy that it was just about the girl?

MITCHELL CLARKE

I don’t know, maybe it was, but I thought it was worth checking out other possibilities as well. Especially given that Don hadn’t seen any evidence of a problem with the girlfriend.

JJ NORTON

And?

MITCHELL CLARKE

AndI found something.

He turns to the board and pins up a printout of two cuttings from the Sydney press.

The team exchange glances; the level of energy in the room has definitely gone up. Mitch puts up a map of central Sydney, picks up the marker pen and starts annotating the map.

The Board Room bar washere, the address Don has on file for Luke at the time washere,and the accident took placehere.

JJ NORTON

(nodding)

So the accident was in a direct line between where he lived and where he worked.

MITCHELL CLARKE

Right. And five days after it happened, just as the police are turning up the heat, Luke resigns.

BILL SERAFINI

(letting out a long breath)

Jeez.

MITCHELL CLARKE

And that sort of time in the morning is precisely when Luke would have been on his way home from work. And it’s a fair bet he could have been drinking.

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