Page 187 of Murder in the Family

BILL SERAFINI

But if he wanted you to call him he must have left a number, right?

VASILIS MOURELATOS

Yes, there was a piece of paper. Someone pinned it up on the board. I don’t know what happened to it.

CUT TO: Studio. Bill looks round at the team.

BILL SERAFINI

But I think we do, don’t we? It ended up in that crate of stuff George boxed up for his paps, just like all the rest of the junk.

LAILA FURNESS

(clearly impressed)

You actuallyfoundit?

BILL SERAFINI

Well, I can’t be one hundred per cent sure because there was a hell of a lot of bits of paper with nothing but a name and a number, and no way of telling how long most of them had been there.

But I reckon these four are the most likely – mainly because they’re all UK numbers, and the one thing old Mr Nicolaides remembered about that woman in the photo with Luke was that she was a Brit.

Taps his laptop and the screen shows an image of four crumpled bits of paper.

HUGO FRASER

I’m assuming you tried all these numbers?

BILL SERAFINI

Sure did.

LAILA FURNESS

‘Luke’ looks like the most promising – assuming that’s a reference to the person this man was looking for, rather than his own name.

BILL SERAFINI

That was my assumption, too. The bad news is that the Luke number is out of service. As is the Tony one. Steve is just ringing out, and as for Mick, he turned out to be a guy who was trying tostart a boat-rental business in Assos that summer. Seemed legit.

MITCHELL CLARKE

So are you going to try to run down who owned the other three numbers back in 1998?

BILL SERAFINI

Safe to say I’m on it.

ALAN CANNING

(shaking his head)

The phone companies willnevergive out that sort of information. And the Luke number is clearly a mobile. What if it was a burner phone? There wouldn’t even be a record.

BILL SERAFINI