Yes, Hislop said later, it was a deliberate tactic. ‘We didn’t need to attack him; and it’s hard to know how juries are going to react when you confront a copper.’
I said, ‘Behrens did that in 2002 when he accused Grantham of planting brain tissue on Lundy’s shirt.’
‘Yeah. Catastrophic. It blew up in their faces. It’s pretty desperate unless you have evidential basis. Keeping it in the safe was a bit odd, but apart from that . . . We weren’t going to attack the man just because some of our supporters didn’t like him. Geoff and others blamed him for Mark’s incarceration. I’m sure Grantham thought he was in for a royal roasting, but we didn’t need to go there.’
Grantham’s release brought an end to week four of the trial. Mary from Epsom reluctantly went to Singapore; it was an annual holiday, and she’d booked it well in advance, but it pained her to miss even a day of the trial. She’d made a friend, Anne, from up the Hutt railway line in Woburn. Anne said: ‘He’s guilty, isn’t he?’ Mary regarded it as a mystery and a tragedy. I regarded it in much the same way. I went home for a week. I loved the strange half-life I was leading in Wellington, a detached observer in Courtroom 1, quietly roaming the waterfront and the town belt at day’s end, honeypuffs for breakfast and garlic prawns for dinner, but I longed for my family, too. I was caught between love and an interest that went beyond professional curiosity. Important events took place outside of the Wellington High Court. Local and possibly international news led with the story that Natalia Kills had said mean things to some drip on X Factor New Zealand. I remained preoccupied with the the trial. They have a rhythm, Justice France had said. They have a momentum. The weeks had gone by like carriages on a railway track, creaking and thumping along, twisting and turning, always moving forward. You never knew what would happen next, or who the cat would drag out from under a rock.
12
There he was, at last, in person, his presence advertised on the very first day of the trial when the prosecution stated in its opening address that it would call on the services of one of the most fabled and despised characters in criminal history — a jailhouse snitch. Witness X, as he must be known, was asked to swear on oath. ‘Aw yeah,’ said X.
This was how the Crown prepared to come to the end of its massive effort to prosecute Lundy for a second time: not yet with a bang, in the meantime with a snitcher. The court was cleared, the door locked, the TV cameras switched off. Outside, a fresh autumn day in the capital; inside, a murky little sub-plot to the trial. The police did their best to conceal signs of shame. Detective Andy Partridge, who was always the coolest man in the room with his long black hair and pretty shirts, tried to assume a poker face. It was hard not to laugh. X was a comical and gnome-like character, tattooed, smirky, who wore his shirt buttoned tight up to his neck. He had a wide chest and looked as though he might be handy with his fists, but his record of violence was restricted to acts of despicable cowardice — domestic assault, beating partners and children. He listed his CV — his criminal vitae — by way of admitting to stretches in numerous prisons. He met Lundy at Rimutaka in March 2002.
Lundy showed no sign of recognition as X was led into the court. Perhaps he didn’t remember him. It was a long time since they had met, and the two men hadn’t actually spent a lot of quality time together. But X remembered Lundy.
In fact, he remembered him in some detail. He said Lundy wore shorts, a jersey, and white trainers. They were in a prison yard. They sat opposite each other on benches. X sat astride the bench.
There were two other inmates and the four of them were going to play cards, but the other two just sort of jumped up and wandered off. It was getting on to lunch. X and Lundy talked about what was on the menu. Probably sandwiches, X remembered. Peanut butter sandwiches.
They’d never met before and they never talked again other than to say hi, how’s it going, during the two weeks they were in the same segregation unit of the prison. ‘He looked familiar,’ said X, ‘but I didn’t know who he was. I knew his first name was Mark.’ The whole country knew that, too. Lundy was a household name, and one of the most recognisable people in New Zealand. He was enormous, a big fatty with Coke-bottle glasses and a bland, round face. They started talking. Morgan asked X, ‘What did the two of you chat about?’
X said, ‘He asked me what I was in for. I told him it was a bank robbery and I wouldn’t be in there if it wasn’t for my mum telling the police. He said he wouldn’t be in there if his daughter hadn’t come in and seen what he was doing to his wife. He told me he’d been planning it for a while and she had it coming to her.’
And there it was. Startlingly, frankly, absolutely: the confession. Lundy had denied it to police, to family, to friends, to everyone, but blurted it out to a small-time crook he had only just met in a prison yard.
X didn’t find it particularly interesting. He said, ‘I just thought he was in there for beating his wife up or something like that.’ He added that Lundy mentioned he was waiting for his appeal to go through.
The years passed. Curiously, they didn’t keep in
