Dead Man's Grip

25

It was over an hour before Fernanda Revere came back out of the viewing room, barely able to walk, supported by her drained-looking husband.

Darren Wallace guided each of them to a chair at the table in the waiting room. Fernanda sat down, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her handbag and lit one.

Politely Darren Wallace said, ‘I’m very sorry, but smoking is not permitted in here. You can go outside.’

She took a deep drag, stared at him, as if he had not said a word, and blew the smoke out, then took another drag.

Branson diplomatically passed his empty coffee cup to her. ‘You can use that as an ashtray,’ he said, giving a tacit nod to Wallace and then to his colleagues.

Her husband spoke quietly but assertively, with a slight Brooklyn accent, as if suddenly taking command of the situation, looking at each of the police officers in turn.

‘My wife and I would like to know exactly what happened. How our son died. Know what I’m saying? We’ve only heard secondhand. What are you able to tell us?’

Branson and Bella Moy turned to Dan Pattenden.

‘I’m afraid we don’t have a full picture yet, Mr and Mrs Revere,’ the Road Policing Officer said. ‘Three vehicles were involved in the accident. From witness reports so far, your son appears to have come out of a side road on to a main road, Portland Road, on the wrong side, directly into the path of an Audi car. The female driver appears to have taken avoiding action, colliding with the wall of a café. She subsequently failed a breathalyser test and was arrested on suspicion of drink driving.’

‘Fucking terrific,’ Fernanda Revere said, taking another deep drag.

‘At this stage we’re unclear as to the extent of her involvement in the actual collision,’ Pattenden said. He peered down at his notepad on the table. ‘A white Ford Transit van behind her appears to have travelled through a red stop light and struck your son, the impact sending him and his bicycle across the road, into the path of an articulated lorry coming in the opposite direction. It was the collision with this vehicle that probably caused the fatal injuries.’

There was a long silence.

‘Articulated lorry?’ asked Lou Revere. ‘What kind of a vehicle is that?’

‘I guess it’s what you would call a truck in America,’ Glenn Branson said helpfully. ‘Or maybe a tractor-trailer.’

‘Kind of like a Mack truck?’ the husband asked.

‘A big truck, exactly.’

Dan Pattenden added, ‘We have established that the lorry driver was out of hours.’

‘Meaning?’ Lou Revere asked.

‘We have strict laws in the UK governing the number of hours a lorry driver is permitted to drive before he has to take a rest. All journeys are governed by a tachometer fitted to the vehicle. From our examination of the one in the lorry involved in your son’s fatal accident, it appears the driver was over his permitted limit.’

Fernanda Revere dropped her cigarette butt into the coffee cup, then pulled another cigarette from her handbag and said, ‘This is great. Like, this is so fucking great.’ She lit the cigarette contemptuously, before lowering her face, a solitary tear trickling down her cheek.

‘So, this white van?’ her husband queried. ‘What’s this guy’s story? The driver?’

Pattenden flipped through a few pages of his pad. ‘He drove on without stopping and we don’t have a description of him at this moment. There is a full alert for the vehicle. But we have no description of the driver to go on. We are hoping that CCTV footage may provide us with something.’

‘Let me get this straight,’ Fernanda Revere said. ‘You have a drunk driver, a truck driver who was over his permitted hours and a van driver who drove away from the scene, like a hit-and-run. I have that right?’

Pattenden looked at her warily. ‘Yes. Hopefully more information will emerge as we progress our enquiries.’

‘You hope that, do you?’ she pressed. Her voice was pure vitriol. She pointed through the closed door. ‘That’s my son in there.’ She looked at her husband. ‘ Our son. How do you think we feel?’

Pattenden looked at her. ‘I can’t begin to imagine how you feel, Mrs Revere. All that I, my Road Policing Unit and the Collision Investigation Unit can do is try to establish the facts of the incident as best we can. I’m deeply sorry for you both and for all of your relatives. I’m here to answer any questions you may have and to give you assurances that we will do all we can to establish the facts pertinent to your son’s death.’ He passed her his card. ‘These are my contact details. Please feel free to call me, any time, twenty-four-seven, and I’ll give you whatever information I can.’

She left the card lying on the table. ‘Tell me something. Have you ever lost a child?’

He stared back at her for some moments. ‘No. But I’m a parent, too. I can’t imagine what it would be like. I can’t imagine what you are going through and it would be presumptuous to even try.’

‘Yeah,’ she said icily. ‘You’re right. Don’t even try to go there.’