Page 165 of Murder in the Family

JJ NORTON

Not all adopted kids want to. Some never do. And 18 is just the earliest you can do it – lots of people leave it a lot later than that. Just saying.

MITCHELL CLARKE

But if they did track Caroline down it might have been a pretty difficult encounter. What if the kid had quite a disadvantaged upbringing – it has to be possible if it was inner-city Birmingham, right?

Then all those years later they suddenly find out their real mother and her other kids have been sitting pretty on a pile like Dorney Place, while they were unceremoniously dumped and left out in the cold—

JJ NORTON

Quite.

LAILA FURNESS

I think that’s a little unfair – for all we know Caroline may have wanted to keep the baby, but her parents put a stop to it. And remember, she was incredibly young – still a child herself—

MITCHELL CLARKE

I’m just saying the kid may well not have seen it that way. What if they turned up that night, looking for Caroline? No Google Earth back then – they’d have just had an address. They probably had absolutely no idea quite what a fuck-off house it was. They get angry, demand to be let in, ‘Luke’ tries to calm them down but things take a nasty turn – and if the kid was aboy—

HUGO FRASER

Actually, that’s not such a ludicrous scenario, Mitch.

LAILA FURNESS

And of course the police never track him down because they don’t even know he exists.

HUGO FRASER

(to Tarek)

We know that for certain, do we?

TAREK OSMAN

Well, there’s nothing anywhere in the case files to suggest they knew.

LAILA FURNESS

But if the adoption records are sealed there’s nothing we can do, apart from yet more speculation.

NICK VINCENT (Producer)

Nothingwecan do, no, but we’ve passed everything we’ve found to the Met. It’s up to them now.

MITCHELL CLARKE

But where does that leave us? What have we got left?

(telling them off on his fingers)

Rupert’s out, Caroline’s out, we can’t pursue the adopted child, Ian Wilson has an alibi. We’ve basically run out of road.

JJ is about to say something but Alan cuts across him.

ALAN CANNING

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