Vanderkolk stood for the prosecution. He knew Grantham well — they were respected establishment figures together in Palmerston North, and had worked closely together on the trial in 2002. He asked Grantham, ‘Do you remember a meeting with Mark Lundy on December 4, 2000?’
Grantham said, ‘Can I refer to my notes?’
He was told that he could. He searched his pockets, and wailed, ‘In my hurry to get here I left behind my glasses!’
It was interesting to note his anxiety, his small wave of panic. A police officer was sent to search for the glasses in an office outside the courtroom. He didn’t return. The judge gave Grantham permission to track down the spectacles. The three pips and the merit award were lost in a blur of blue as he legged it out of the court. He was away a few minutes. He returned, triumphant. He took his seat, put on his spectacles, peered inside a folder, and said to Vanderkolk: ‘Yes.’
They discussed the December 4 meeting. Lundy had called it, to check on the police investigation into the murders. Grantham asked him whether police could search his car and some belongings, and Lundy said sure, no problem. ‘The accused said he wanted to help us any way he could.’
Vanderkolk then asked Grantham a series of questions about the slides containing samples taken from Lundy’s polo shirt. Grantham said he kept the slides in a safe in his office. He packed them — and the polo shirt — for the visit to Dallas, Texas, where Dr Miller snipped out the stained areas on the fabric, embedded them in paraffin wax, removed small slices, and exposed them to his immunostaining technique. Grantham took the paraffin blocks back to New Zealand, and put them in his safe.
‘Thank you,’ said Vanderkolk. ‘That will be all.’
Grantham was on the stand for all of 15 minutes. Justice France called for a break; the defence would go at Grantham after lunch.
But the defence did not go at Grantham after lunch. Ross Burns treated him with great courtesy, and asked him not especially detailed questions in a pleasant and respectful manner for 45 minutes. It was all over so fast the prosecution were unable to call their next witness. ‘I’ve been caught short,’ Morgan told the judge. He had plainly expected that Grantham would remain on the stand for all that Thursday afternoon and probably into the following week.
The five journals, the two-wheeler trolley supporting millions of words about Mark Lundy — none of it was needed. Grantham floated out of the courtroom.
What just happened? What was Burns playing at? He hadn’t done much more than engage Grantham in small talk. There were a few questions about potentially suspicious activity reported in Lundy’s neighbourhood on the night of the murders — a woman screaming, dogs going berserk, the sound of breaking glass. That didn’t go very far.
Things looked more promising when Burns raised the controversial subject of Grantham’s meeting with pathologist Dr Heng Teoh. Grantham arranged the meeting in January 2001 to ask Teoh whether he could identify tissue on the slides taken from Lundy’s shirt. He wrote at the time, ‘He [Teoh] would only commit to saying the cells are tissue cells. He opined that the time lapse between the murders and the preparation of the slide (59 days) was too long. The cells had degenerated badly. What concerned me about Dr Teoh was that he was quite clear that he did not want to be involved in a police investigation and did not want to have to give evidence in any court proceedings. When he looked at the slide he commented that he did not think Mark Lundy should be convicted on the strength of the cells in the slide. He then pointed out that just because Christine Lundy’s DNA was on his shirt didn’t mean a lot, as she was his wife. He later commented that this case may have to remain an unsolved mystery.’
Grantham’s failure to disclose his report to the defence at the first trial was only made known three days before the Privy Council hearing in 2013. ‘Out of the woodwork it came,’ as Hislop put it, during our interview in the Wellington High Court. ‘It was absolutely incredible that it had not seen the light of day.’ Surely, then, Burns would demand Grantham explain the omission. But he didn’t. Well, what about the curious business of Grantham keeping extremely sensitive evidence — the glass slides — in the safe in his office? What sort of practice was that? And did it have anything to do with the mystifying fact that the tissue on Sutherland’s glass slides was very poorly degraded after 59 days, but the tissue that Miller took from Lundy’s shirt after 159 days, in Grantham’s presence, was in a much better condition?
Leaving aside the science, what about the focus of the investigation? How soon did Grantham decide it was Lundy? Was he obsessive in his determination to bust Lundy, and was this at the expense of failing to investigate other options? Minor example: did police ever follow up the presence of small rubber fragments found in Christine’s bedroom, as recorded in the notebooks of two police officers? A tomahawk with a rubber handle was stolen from a neighbouring property that night. Did police look into the possibility of a match? Was the information somewhere among the suitcases and folders and volumes that Grantham wore like an armour into Courtroom 1?
There were other, much better questions that could have been put to Grantham. But there was no rough-housing, no inquisition. It was more like a genteel conversation which eventually petered out. After Morgan admitted that he didn’t have any witnesses on standby, France announced with great pleasure that court was adjourned for a long weekend.
I bailed up Burns outside the courtroom, and demanded of him, ‘WTF?’
He smiled most charmingly, puckishly even, and said, ‘Oh, come now. He’s a
