The defence, said David Hislop QC at 11.19am, rests. "It's been a long journey."
After the jury left, Justice Simon France made the customary but sincere gesture of thanks to the prosecution and defence teams. After the judge left, the two sides shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. A sporting moment.
Minutes earlier, in open court, Hislop had described the prosecution case as "desperate". He reserved a special contempt for Witness X, the former prisoner who claimed Lundy had confessed the murders to him one day in prison. X, he said, marked the spot of utter desperation. "It was scraping the bottom of the barrel ... There was no such conversation ... He was a thoroughly nasty and dishonest man with no moral fibre."
Oh, he wasn't that bad, said prosecutor Philip Morgan QC, in his closing address. The best he could say about X was: "This is not just some lying inmate."
More than 150 witnesses were called to give evidence. Many will fade from memory, and some already have; X, though, will be remembered.
Another witness was present in court to hear the closing addresses. Glenn Weggery is Christine Lundy's younger brother. He told the court that he found the bodies.
Morgan: "What did you see?"
Weggery: "Brains."
When he finished answering Morgan's questions, Weggery then found himself frankly and sensationally accused of the murders. Hislop's cross-examination provided the trial's most incredible spectacle.
It began fairly quietly, with Hislop reminding Weggery that the police had interviewed him for three hours, and asked him why he showed up at the house that morning instead of phoning first, which was his usual habit.
Hislop: "The implication was that you were trying to lay an innocent trail."
Weggery: "That might be what you get from it."
Hislop gathered pace, asked stronger questions, started shouting. "You didn't call out Christine's name because you knew she was dead, because you killed her, am I right?"
Weggery: "No I did not. And I'm not going to sit here and be accused of it!"
He sat there and continued to be accused of it, and was also accused of something else.
Hislop: "Were you ever alone with Amber?"
Weggery: "No."
Hislop: "Was there a particular reason why you were not allowed to babysit Amber?"
Weggery: "None that I know about."
Hislop returned to Weggery in his closing address. "It's not my job to prosecute Mr Weggery. It's not what I've set out to do. But ... "
Hislop went at him again, and also went at, you know, monsters. The deaths weren't rational, he said.
Perhaps Amber was killed not because she saw who was killing her mother but because she was simply standing between the murderer and his exit.
"There are violent and deranged people in the world ... Deranged psychotic attacks - it happens. Sadly, it happens."
Not that night, Morgan had said, in his closing address.
"This is not a killing by a random burglar. 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 blows. He even misses two or three times because of the frenzy of the attack.
"All the blows are focused on her face. He was trying to obliterate her face, wasn't he?"
Morgan's style in closing was direct and compelling. He made a very good case. He told powerful stories. He spoke loudly, unhesitatingly, seriously. It's true he has a weakness for the word "silly".
He told two witnesses that what they were suggesting was "too silly for words". He was at it again, throughout his closing address, rather casting himself as a harsh, scornful inspector of "silly" theories that deviated from Lundy's guilt.
He repeated another term, very effectively, during his closing address: "The killing trip." Lundy, he said, drove under cover of darkness from his motel to Petone to his home in Palmerston North to commit the foul deeds.
He said Lundy would have driven carefully, because the last thing he would have wanted was to attract attention. This was a drive that demanded stealth.
It had to begin in secrecy, too, said Morgan, which is why Lundy had parked his car on the street and not in front of his room.
Lundy claimed he had parked his car across the street earlier that night to read a book. Morgan, heavy on the scorn: "Why would you do such a thing? It's winter! 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 go outside. And why would you read your book outside in winter? Wouldn't you park up, and read?"
Both had competing theories for petrol use.
Morgan calculated that it proved Lundy had made the return trip. Hislop calculated that it proved Lundy simply didn't have enough gas to make the trip. "He can't have done it. It can't have been done. It dispels the myth of the secret journey.
"It was impossible for Mark Lundy to be in Palmerston North when the Crown says he was. And if it was impossible for Mark Lundy to be in Palmerston North," he said, "then whatever had got on the shirt, whatever it is, got there in a way consistent with his innocence."
The shirt, the shirt. Lundy's XXL polo shirt - pinned like some vast moth in a case - could take its place alongside David Bain's jersey and Ewen McDonald's dive boots in an exhibition of New Zealand murder exhibits.
The Crown established that the two stains on the shirt were central nervous system tissue, from the brain or spinal cord. Morgan, direct and effective: "No husband should have his wife's brain on her shirt, not after she's been murdered."
But, said Hislop, it might not have been Christine's brain. It might not even have been human brain. Morgan, back to his scorn and his war on "silly": "To say it's not from Christine is as silly as saying it might be golden hamster brain."
Hislop assumed an air of nonchalance. He wasn't fussed about what it was, he said, because it was simply impossible for Lundy to have been at the scene of the crime.
The petrol ruled him out, and so did the Christine and Amber's stomach contents.
Their last known meal was from McDonald's, at about 6pm. They could not have been killed after midnight because the post-mortem showed their stomachs were still full. But the earliest Lundy could have got to his home was about 2.15am - he had 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."
Hislop's style in closing was gentle and self-effacing. He made a very good case.
He fluttered over swathes of complex evidence about DNA, and alighted on the fact that there was no blood or tissue found on Lundy's shoes, his glasses, his rings, or in his car.
That didn't make sense, he said.
He promised the jury he wouldn't go down the road of sarcasm, and mostly kept to his word, despite the severe temptations - the police case in the first trial was that the killings were at about 7pm, and one of their witnesses was a woman who claimed she saw Lundy near his home near that time, running down the road and wearing a curly wig.
Hislop: "Need I say more?" He said more.
"What does that say about the integrity, the credibility, and the reliability of the police case?"
In truth, neither closing address was a masterpiece of the genre. Both sides of the debate had strengths and weaknesses. They were a kind of contest of ideas. But a murder trial is not an academic exercise, nor a good keen joust. It's a sad and wretched business.
"The killer is the accused," said Morgan.
"The only safe verdict is not guilty," said Hislop.
Everything is at stake for Mark Lundy as the trial reaches its point of no return.
