The Scene of the Crime

of these matters — that he’d grieved too much, grieved too little, grieved inappropriately — tied him to the crime. But all of these matters played to the suspicions that he was dreadfully, profoundly insincere. The lie was that he loved his wife; the truth was that he wanted shot of her, he had big dreams, he fancied himself as the prosperous owner of a vineyard, and Christine was holding him back. Hence, according to this folklore, the over-acting. It was as though he never knew how to be normal. It was as though he was intensely self-conscious. There was something about him which consistently played a false note. I was struck by these doubts, too, when I met him that summer. I wanted to warm to him — God almighty, what if he was an innocent man, who had experienced the trauma of losing his wife and daughter in violent, shocking circumstances and then was blamed for it, and banged up in jail? — but his manner didn’t make it easy. One afternoon we were standing around Levick’s bare and rather depressing kitchen, and the subject of wine came up. Lundy had been a wine buff, and belonged to a wine club in Palmerston North. I said I was more like his brother-in-law, Glenn Weggery, who used to tag along with Lundy to the wine club but brought his own beer. Lundy then launched into a long story about meeting a stranger at a scouting convention. There was a great variety of wine, and the bottles had been opened. The man said he fancied himself as an expert taster, and challenged Lundy to a blind-tasting duel. Lundy mimed going around the table, taking sips, and not only naming the label, but also its year and the exact vineyard. The challenger was left open-mouthed. He had met his match. He was in the presence of a master. It was a long and fairly boring speech, the monologue of a braggart; and when it finally ended, we stood in awkward silence until Levick changed the subject. All of which proved . . . what, exactly? So he was good at wine tasting. So he chose to tell a self-serving story. So why was it that it made me feel uncomfortable, that it had something to do with his guilt or innocence?

4

In between monologues and gelato ice creams, Lundy would disappear into his small room with the single bed at the end of the hallway to study another million words about his case and prepare notes and questions for his defence team. There was a lot of fresh scientific evidence and police disclosure coming through that summer, and the prosecution had prepared its list of 144 witnesses — which was fascinating as much for its absences as its inclusions. A number of crucial witnesses from the first trial would play no part in the retrial. I felt disappointed. In particular, I really wanted to see the amazing Margaret Dance on the stand. Reading the transcript of her evidence in the first trial was like reading the report of a séance. In that hot little room off Levick’s garage, with my salami sandwiches peeling in the sunlight and ants marching towards my chocolate biscuits, I marvelled at her lyrical imaginings; here, at last, in this den of blood-spatter findings and autopsy reports (‘The jaws were removed, cleaned and inspected’), there was something playful, something childish.

Dance told the court that she saw someone matching Lundy’s description wearing a woman’s wig and running from the scene of the crime on the night of the murders. ‘My first impression was, “I wonder what she is running away from?” Then I saw it was a he, and [he] had a let-me-get-out-of-here-quickly sort of expression . . . I have a very photographic memory. I recall an impression of intensity on the person’s face, like he was wanting to get somewhere.’

Later, after she heard news of the murders, and wanting to help police find the killer, she gave the matter a lot of thought, or, as she put it, ‘musing’. She was asked in cross-examination: ‘Can you explain this musing process?’

‘It’s just allowing things to run through my mind.’

‘Do you have any particular ability in this area?’

‘Occasionally, yes.’

‘Can you explain what that is?’

‘It’s usually called ESP . . . Whether it is accurate or not I have no idea.’

‘Are you saying this psychic ability may not be accurate?’

‘It’s been very accurate on occasion,’ she said.

By ‘musing’, and ‘allowing things to run through my mind’, she wrote down the words HANDS DARK. This was helpful, because it narrowed down the police hunt for the killer to a man wearing a woman’s wig and with dark hands. She also wrote the words SKIP BIN TAWA. She explained, ‘I wondered where the bloodstained clothes had been put, and those were the words that I got.’

Ludicrous. Dance belonged to a wider farce — the police theory that Christine and Amber were killed not long after 7pm. It required so many blatant fictions. Margaret Dance’s vision of Lundy fleeing from the murder scene at around that time was merely the most playful. The foundation myth for the time of death was courtesy of Dr James Pang, who conducted the autopsies. He claimed the absence of the smell of gastric juices in the stomach was proof that the digestion process hadn’t begun — meaning they were killed about an hour after they ordered their last supper, a McDonald’s meal, at 5.43pm. Pang’s time-of-death estimate created immense challenges. Police had to put Lundy at his home in Palmerston North at about 7pm.

They rose to the challenge with flair and wit. Calls made to Lundy’s Motorola cellphone put him in Petone at 5.30pm, and again at 8.29pm; he didn’t have an alibi for the two hours and 59 minutes between the calls; ergo, or reductio ad absurdum, it gave him the time to make the return trip to Palmerston North, where he slaughtered his family