Page 118 of Murder in the Family

LAILA FURNESS

And as we’ve said before, Luke may have had nothing to do with any of it. It could all just be a coincidence.

MITCHELL CLARKE

Right. All we have is the proximity of the accident to where Luke was working, and the fact that he upped and left the country less than a week later.

ALAN CANNING

Police officers don’t like coincidences. If it was my case, I’d still want to investigate.

BILL SERAFINI

Likewise.

MITCHELL CLARKE

Well, I’m not sure how much more we’ll be able to find, but Tarek is on the case now. Let’s see what he and the team can find.

JJ NORTON

(looks round the table)

I think I’m up next?

(clears his throat and opens his file)

As we agreed last time, I took another look at the forensic evidence, to see if there was any chance further testing might yield any results, specifically on the clothing. And guess what. They never actually tested it.

LAILA FURNESS

They never tested the clothes at all?Seriously?

JJ NORTON

I know it sounds like someone dropped the ball, but you need to remember this was 2003. DNA testing was much more rudimentary back then and it was also way more expensive and took weeks to do. And let’s not forget the body had been in a downpour, so all things considered, Iguess the SIO didn’t think it was worth his budget on the off-chance something survived the rain.

BILL SERAFINI

SIO?

JJ NORTON

Sorry – Senior Investigating Officer.

But on the positive side, what itdoesmean is that we can now get the clothing tested ourselves, and who knows what we might find.

LAILA FURNESS

So how do we go about doing that?

ALAN CANNING

I’ll call the officer who’s handling the file. It’ll be someone in the cold case unit.

LAILA FURNESS

Not so much cold as permafrost, if you ask me. At least as far as active enquiries are concerned.