Page 173 of Murder in the Family

BILL SERAFINI

(ignoring him)

That’s why the family are paying me, and that’s why I got in touch with Nick when I heard about the show.

HUGO FRASER

And did you tell him what you just told us?

BILL SERAFINI

Some of it. I told him that I’d established – to my own satisfaction at least – that ‘Eric Fulton’ had stolen the identity of Luke Ryder in Beirut.

When I first got the case, on the job back in ’97, Fulton was long gone and no one knew where. And for a long time, that’s how it stayed.

But after I retired the Shulmans asked me to take another look at the case, and that’s when I made the link to Lebanon. And when I saw that old CNN footage of the blast there was one face that suddenly looked very familiar …

The reel of Beirut news FOOTAGE is played again: the carnage on the street, the injured in hospital. FREEZE FRAME on a man in a bed with a bandage across one eye. It’s ‘Eric Fulton’.

MITCHELL CLARKE

Shit – he’s been right under our noses the whole bloody time.

BILL SERAFINI

Right. So the next thing I did was go to Beirut myself to try to find out which name he’d given when they took him to the hospital.

JJ NORTON

Don’t tell me: Luke Ryder.

BILL SERAFINI

Right. So I started looking for a man with that name. And I found him. First in Assos, and after that – finally – in London. The rest you know.

ALAN CANNING

That’s not the whole story, though, is it? Not by a long way.

You didn’t just fail to tellusany of this, you didn’t tell the Met team either.

You kept everything you knew about ‘Luke’ to yourself, even though the fact that he was an imposter would have been significant new evidence in the murder investigation—

BILL SERAFINI

(interrupting)

I was on the verge of doing that when I heard about the series. And I figured a few weeks’ delay wouldn’t make that much difference – not after twenty years.

JJ NORTON

You wanted a chance to work it out yourself before you handed it over to them.Youwanted to be the hero who solved the case—

BILL SERAFINI

(shaking his head)

It wasn’t like that, honestly—

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