Lundy was in constant debt to sink wholesaler Robert McLachlan. ‘It never seemed to go below $100,000,’ said McLachlan. He rather reluctantly conceded that Lundy’s sales figures were excellent. He didn’t speak with anger about Lundy. It sounded more like disappointment. It sounded unforgiving and final. ‘He came to stay in our Hamilton home for meals and good times,’ he said, with disbelief. The last time was a fortnight before the killings. McLachlan had held a seminar for all his sales reps; he’d brought in a clinical psychologist to conduct role-play with the cream of the North Island’s sellers of sinks crop. A shame the sink shrink wasn’t called to give evidence about his assessment of Lundy. It was the closest anyone with actual training ever got to inspecting his character. ‘You snapped, and . . . became mentally ill,’ said Justice Ellis, at his first trial. It was a baseless observation.
McLachlan, who was effectively Lundy’s boss, said that he was concerned about the debt level of his man in Palmerston North. But his testimony also included revelations of vice and greed that were at once evil, loathsome and completely irrelevant to Lundy’s murder charges. It concerned a man who wanted a good deal on a sink. McLachlan — a decent, frail man who mentioned that he had suffered four strokes — sometimes forgot small details. But his memory was vivid about a call he received when he drove to Palmerston North shortly after Christine and Amber were killed.
One of Lundy’s customers was phoning. He asked — in all seriousness — if the price of a sink would still stand in light of the deaths, or if he could now get a better deal.
McLachlan searched for words. He said, ‘That’s the level of . . . how do I put it . . . ? That was human nature at its worst.’
God almighty. The want of a sink is the root of all evil. Who was that guy? Are you out there, you sonofabitch?
6
Lundy was in sinks. His failed scheme to buy and develop a Hawke’s Bay vineyard suggested he should have stayed in sinks. Morgan sketched a portrait of Lundy as someone who had got in way over his head. He was facing insolvency and the threat of bankruptcy. To a murderer, life insurance is an income stream.
Phillip Sunderland, who acted as Lundy’s solicitor, said he remembered meeting his former client to first discuss his plans to buy land in Hawke’s Bay to grow grapes.
Morgan: ‘Did Mr Lundy have any money to make the purchase?’
Sunderland: ‘No.’
He said Lundy’s plan was to raise the money through shares offered to investors. Lundy, he said, impressed him with his close knowledge of public subscriptions. That meeting went well, but Sunderland expressed some dismay when Lundy subsequently told him he’d made an unconditional offer to buy land valued at $2 million.
Morgan: ‘Did you explain the consequences?’
Sunderland: ‘Yes . . . What I said to him would have been relatively robust, given that he was an adult in full control of his faculties.’
However, Lundy kept missing the settlement dates, and owed about $140,000 in penalty interest.
David Gaynor, Lundy’s business advisor, described his level of encouragement when he heard about the vineyard scheme. It wasn’t a very high level. ‘I told him it was high-risk, and if it didn’t work out it would have serious consequences.’ He said he spoke with Christine Lundy about six weeks before she was murdered. ‘I encouraged her to relay my very serious concerns to Mark . . . She said she was very worried about the project, and would talk to Mark.’
Ross Burns took to his feet and said, ‘What you haven’t done is include the other side of the ledger.’ Gaynor conceded that Lundy’s sink business was growing, and he wasn’t particularly worried about its debt levels. Burns also ferreted out similar admissions from Reginald Murphy, a police forensic accountant. Murphy had a dry cough, and presented his evidence in a kind of croak. To Morgan, he said Lundy was more or less insolvent at the time of the murders. But to Burns, Murphy croaked that Lundy’s business was ‘viable, and looking to the future’.
Levick gave me the impression during my visits to Kumeu that the question of Lundy’s finances was the least of his concerns. He said the debts were normal for a small business, and that Lundy’s income was steady. The court heard evidence that Lundy’s sink business was ticking over, and a new laminate product was expected to boost sales. As for the wine enterprise, Levick admitted that was a total disaster. ‘He [Lundy] really thought that pig would fly,’ he said. The threat of bankruptcy, though, was fanciful. The owners of the vineyard simply had a better offer. Lundy signed up for $24,000 per acre; an American buyer offered $36,000 (and ultimately bought it). They were keen for Lundy to walk away from the deal so they could sell it for a lot more than Lundy was offering, and wouldn’t bother chasing up Lundy for penalties.
What about the curious incident of Lundy’s mystery investor? Her evidence was that Lundy got it into his head that she was good for half a million pounds. Why would he think that? Did he simply pull the £500,000 figure out of thin air? Was he really such a fantasist? Or was it based on some kind of information? Did someone say something to him? The woman was a family friend of one of Lundy’s business acquaintances — a man who sent the woman Lundy’s prospectus. A man who stood to make personal gain in the deal — he was in the root stock business — and who was a
