‘This is not a killing by a random burglar. All of the evidence indicates it’s an inside job. This is a person who went there with a purpose. This purpose was to kill Christine Lundy. He set about killing her with a vengeance. He chops at her face. Multiple times. He even misses two or three times and strikes the headboard because of the frenzy of the attack. All the blows are focused on her face. He was trying to obliterate her face. This was committed by someone who wanted to wipe Christine Lundy off the face of the Earth. He strikes her so hard that he drives the weapon 5 centimetres into her skull.’
Not a comma in sight, none of the effete scaffolding of colons and such. Physically, too, Morgan was a model of containment. He kept his hands to himself, didn’t indulge in any miming of the dreadful attack. He stood straight and maintained steady eye contact. ‘And what threat was Amber to anyone? Was she really going to recognise a random burglar in the dark? She was seven for heaven’s sake.’
Yes, said Hislop, Morgan was right. The killings weren’t rational. ‘There are violent and deranged people in the world. Deranged psychotic attacks — it happens. Sadly, it happens.’ A monster did it. ‘He bashes out Christine’s brain. He turns, and there’s Amber. She’s standing between the killer and his exit. She was in the way. Bang, she’s dead.’
Hislop’s address was half as long as Morgan’s. He kept it simple, and numerical. He called it ‘the three impossible things’. He said it was impossible for Lundy to be the killer because he simply didn’t have enough petrol in his car, and because he couldn’t have been in Palmerston North at the most likely time of death. Impossibility one: Lundy simply didn’t have enough petrol. Police Sergeant Danny Johanson — the giant who looked like a couple of Dan Carters — made the return trip from Petone to Palmerston North six times during the first police investigation. His test drives showed that to be able to make the extra trip, Lundy would have needed 85 litres of petrol when he last filled up his Ford Fairmont. But the tank’s capacity was only 68 litres. Hislop: ‘It dispels the myth of the secret journey.’ Impossibility two: Christine and Amber’s last supper was from McDonald’s, at about 6pm. It takes about six hours for the stomach to empty. They couldn’t have been killed much after midnight because the postmortem showed that their stomachs were full. But the earliest Lundy could have got to his home was about 2.30am — he’d been tied up until just before 1am, boring a prostitute in his motel room with talk of his kitchen sink business. Hislop: ‘It makes it impossible he was in Palmerston North killing his family.’ Impossibility three was that a neighbour testified that he’d seen the sliding door wide open at around 11pm on the night of the murders. The murderer was inside the house, waiting in darkness, to strike. Hislop: ‘We know Mr Lundy was in Petone then, don’t we? You remember the escort.’
Well, Morgan said, the neighbour’s testimony was sketchy at best, and Christine and Amber must have eaten later than 6pm — there was a banana peel in the kitchen, and maybe they reheated the remains of the Happy Meal later that night. As for the car, police evidence suggested that about 300 kilometres were ‘missing’ on the speedo during Lundy’s recent travels — and could only be accounted for because Lundy had made his 297-kilometre ‘killing journey’.
The drive was made in stealth and began in secrecy. Lundy parked on the street to make a quiet getaway. Morgan scorned Lundy’s claim that he’d parked there after driving across the street earlier that night to read his Robert Ludlum thiller (‘The silhouetted figure in the doorway rushed into the dark, windowless room’, etc.) under a streetlight. Morgan: ‘Why would you do such a thing? It’s winter! It’s twilight at 6.20pm! And why drive across the street? Why not just walk? Does it have the ring of truth?’
Yes, certainly, said Hislop. ‘Any of us who stay in motels regularly know that after a while you’ve just got to get out of the room. But why would you sit outside and read your book in winter? Wouldn’t you get in your car, park up, and read?’
The public gallery was full, due in part to a delegation from Vanderkolk’s law offices in Palmerston North. He’d given them the day off to attend the trial, and to watch their boss, a splendid and regal figure in his pinstriped flannels, idle away the hours while inspecting his fingernails. In fact, he wasn’t the best-dressed man in court any more. That distinction now belonged to the most unlikely candidate — the juror who had spent the first few weeks in jandals, shorts, and the T-shirt that stated IF IT AIN’T BEAM, IT AIN’T BOURBON. Suddenly, the face-pulling munter showed up in polished shoes, and a suit and tie. The radical makeover became the central mystery in court. Had someone said something? Was he trying to score? He scrubbed up well. He looked like the most powerful man in the room, like he owned it. Justice France and everyone else were his tenants.
Morgan and Hislop gave competing arguments about the bracelet found in the car, Lundy’s finances, the police investigation — and, of course, the shirt. The shirt, the shirt. Lundy’s short-sleeved XXL polo tent — pinned like some vast moth in its exhibit case — should take its place alongside David Bain’s jersey and Ewen McDonald’s dive boots in a kind of fashion
