Page 119 of Murder in the Family

BILL SERAFINI

Well, that’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Laila?

(looking round)

Do we need next-of-kin permission or something like that? I’m not up to speed on all your British procedures.

ALAN CANNING

The police can apply for further testing, they don’t need agreement from the family. Let’s just hope the Met play ball.

JJ NORTON

They might – given what else I found. As we know from the file, three hairs were found caught in the zip of Ryder’s jacket during the original investigation, but they weren’t tested in 2003 because none of them had roots.

But as some of you may be aware, we can now extract DNA from hair samples like that. It’s fiddly and pricey, but it can be done.

LAILA FURNESS

Remind me, what colour were the hairs?

JJ NORTON

Mid brown, and undyed. Which ruled out Luke himself, as he was blond, and also Caroline, because her hair was bleached. But that’s as far as they could get at the time.

BILL SERAFINI

All the same it presumably reinforced the Met’s working hypothesis that Caroline was not the perp. But from what you say, JJ, I think we should definitely put pressure on the police to go for testing now.

ALAN CANNING

I can pick up on that. Though we need to remember that even if they do get something they’re not going to give us full access. The most we could hope for would be a steer.

LAILA FURNESS

Well, a ‘steer’ is a lot more than nothing at all, which is all we have right now.

BILL SERAFINI

Thanks, Alan. Appreciate it.

And in the meantime, this sounds like my cue.

He gets to his feet, goes up to the board, and starts pinning up photos: abandoned industrial sites behind wire fencing, derelict one-storey homes, wide roads, telegraph poles.

This, my friends, is North Birmingham, Alabama. Population 1,273, a high proportion of whom are African American. Once a thriving industrial district it’s now a rust-belt town – drugs, streetcrime, and prostitution are rife, and household incomes are well below the national average.

So it’s hardly at the top of a tourist’s bucket list. Though there is one thing that’s on our side: even if it’s a suburb of a big city, in other respects it’s just like a small town, meaning that everyone knows everyone else’s business, and people like to talk.

JJ NORTON

Which definitely makes your job easier.

BILL SERAFINI

Right. Though this one took some diplomatic handling, I can tell you. Remember, as far as everyone in North Birmingham was concerned, ‘Eric Fulton’ died in a bus bomb in Beirut more than two decades ago.

And here I come, parachuting in out of nowhere, telling them that not only did henotdie then, he actually stole the identity of a guy who did.

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