Pang was next on the stand. He was small, even rather petite, with very black hair for a man in his sixties, and a puffy face. Most witnesses leaned forward. Pang leaned back in his chair. The microphone had to be bent towards him. He was like a little sultan.
Vanderkolk, making a rare speaking appearance in court, questioned him for an hour. Most of the time Pang talked about the appalling injuries that Amber and Christine suffered. Vanderkolk led Pang into intimate detail. ‘Seven large gaping cut wounds . . . 80 millimetres in length and 5 centimetres in depth . . . The wounds had sharp, clean-cut edges . . . They shattered the bones of the face . . . The major portion of the front half of the brain was missing,’ etc.
The issue of stomach contents was raised twice, briefly; and both times Pang’s voice came out in a terrible croak, and he guzzled down water to soothe his troubled throat.
He drank quite a lot during the afternoon when he was cross-examined. It began so tenderly. ‘Sir,’ said Hislop, ‘if I can take you through your postmortem of Amber Grace Lundy? Thank you.’
Pang was quick to state that his theory of a 7pm time of death was, in fact, only a ‘rough estimate’. He said: ‘At present, the only thing I can say with any certainty is that Christine and Amber died sometime in the 14 hours between when they were last known to be alive, and when their bodies were discovered.’
Hislop: ‘Your position now is markedly different.’
‘Not entirely.’
‘Are you saying that your 14-hour window, which you tell us today, is consistent with your position in 2000, that they died one hour after the meal?’
‘That’s right. Yes.’
‘When was it you changed your mind? When did you change your mind? Do you accept you changed your mind?’
‘No. The one-hour estimate is within the 14-hour certainty.’
He smiled, and appeared to wag his head from side to side.
Hislop said, ‘Are you familiar with the code of expert witnesses? It says you’re not here to bat for one side. You have a duty to be impartial.’
‘That’s correct, yes,’ Pang croaked.
Justice France stepped in, and asked Pang if he still accepted that Christine and Amber were killed an hour after their meal. Pang answered, ‘Now I would not give that as an estimate.’
Hislop thanked the judge, and said to Pang, ‘You have accepted to His Honour that you changed your position. When was it you changed your mind? Do you understand the question?’
Pang licked his lips, and croaked, ‘I think so.’
‘Well, could you answer it?’
‘I gave an estimate, but the only certainty is in the 14-hour bracket.’
‘Let’s just try again. When was it you changed your mind?’
And then Pang said, ‘I would think it was after reading the Privy Council judgment.’
It was 4pm. He had taken two hours to answer the question. But Hislop hadn’t quite finished. He said, ‘Who made you change your mind? Was it put to you that you should say what you’re telling us, that the only certainty of time of death is in the 14-hour bracket?’
‘I have not been talked into changing my mind by anyone.’
‘Tell me this,’ said Hislop. ‘You say it was after the Privy Council judgment in 2013. Did you ring the police, and say, “Hey, I got it wrong”? Did you say, “I’m dreadfully sorry, but having reflected on the Privy Council judgment, I got it wrong”?’
‘No.’
‘On January 26 this year, the prosecution advised us they had changed the time of death. Is that when you changed your mind, too? And would that be a coincidence?’
He croaked, almost noiselessly. It sounded like a ‘no’. Hislop had conducted the cross-examination through rather clenched teeth. It might have had something to do with the fact that the first he’d been informed that Pang had a Damascene experience and changed his view on the time of death was the previous night. Things finally came to an end, and Pang was excused. When he left, the ambient IQ of the courtroom seemed to lift.
11
His name had become like a rumour. He was talked about, a lot, but never seen. Witness after witness mentioned him, sometimes in passing, sometimes under questioning. It was always in the past tense. Perhaps he was dead. They were talking about something that happened a long time ago. Perhaps he was only a ghost, his name haunting the courtroom.
But then he was summoned, and there stood Police Inspector Ross Grantham, a tall man with silver hair and a superb posture in his blue police uniform with three pips on each shoulder and a merit award pinned to his chest. It’s likely the award was presented to him in recognition of his massive role as officer in charge of the investigation into the murders of Christine and Amber Lundy.
Grantham, who busted Lundy; Grantham, who led the inquiry into one of the worst prosecutions in modern New Zealand criminal history, when stomach contents, computer manipulations, and hallucinating psychics were used to bolster his fanatical belief that Christine and Amber were killed at about 7pm. How could he have got it so wrong? What was he thinking? What did it say about the rest of the investigation? There was a very keen sense of anticipation among the media when Grantham approached the stand. The expectation was that the defence would attempt to tear him a new one.
He came prepared. He brought five journals with him to the stand. They formed an impressive stack, but that was nothing compared to his back-up — another police officer entered the court dragging a two-wheeler trolley loaded with
