"That I cannot say," replied the doctor. He pulled himself up to his full height and delivered the killer blow to Mr. Hoogland's argument. "In the state that Mr. Ward must have been in that night from drink, there is no saying that if he had been able to drive on from that point, he wouldn't have killed himself, and possibly others, in another road traffic accident somewhere else."
The coroner, using his notes, summed up the evidence and then recorded a verdict of accidental death, with Mr. Ward's excessive alcohol consumption as a contributory factor.
No one objected, no one cried foul, no one believed that a whitewash had occurred. No one other than me, that was. And maybe I was just being paranoid.
I stood up and followed the man in the navy blue sweater and jeans out of the courtroom.
"Are you family?" I asked his back.
He turned towards me, and I thought again that I recognized him.
"No," he said. "Are you?"
"No," I said.
He smiled and turned away. In profile, I was struck once more by his familiarity. I was about to say something more to him when I realized who he must be.
It was true that I'd never met the man before, but I was certain I'd spoken to his father only the previous Friday. They had exactly the same shape of head.
The other man in the public gallery had been Fred Sutton, the detective sergeant son of Old Man Sutton, he of the broken window and the false teeth.
I hung back as Fred Sutton made his way out of the court building. I didn't really want to talk to him, but I did want to speak to the unfortunate Mr. Hoogland.
I caught up with him in the lobby. Close up he was even taller than he had appeared in court. I was almost six foot, but he towered over me.
"Excuse me, Mr. Hoogland," I said, touching him on the arm. "I was in the court just now, and I wondered who you were acting for."
He turned and looked down at me. "And who are you?" he demanded.
"Just a friend of Roderick Ward's," I said. "I wondered if you were acting for his family. None of them seem to be here."
He looked at me for a second or two, as if deciding whether to tell me or not. "I am acting for a life insurance company," he said.
"Really," I said. "So was Roderick's life insured?"
"I couldn't say," said the lawyer, but it was pretty obvious it had been; otherwise, why was he here asking questions and trying to imply negligence by the county council? Insurance companies would try anything to save themselves from having to pay out.
And who, I wondered, was the potential beneficiary of the insurance?
"So were you satisfied with the verdict?" I asked.
"It's what we expected," Mr. Hoogland said dismissively, looking past my right shoulder.
Time to dive in, I thought. "Are you absolutely sure that the dead man in the car was Roderick Ward?"
"What?" he said, suddenly giving me his full attention.
"Are you sure that it was Roderick Ward in that car?" I asked again.
"Yes, of course. The body was identified by his sister."
"Yes, but where is the sister today?" I said. "And is she the beneficiary of your client's insurance policy?"
He stared at me. "What are you implying?"
"Nothing," I lied. "I'm just curious. If my brother had died, and I'd been the one to identify him, then I'd be at the inquest." Mr. Hoogland wasn't to know that the coroner's letter to Stella Beecher was in my pocket.
"Why didn't you say this in court?" he asked.
"I'm not what they call an 'officially interested party,'"I said. "So why would I be allowed to speak? And it's not compulsory for members of the deceased's family to be present at an inquest. Anyway, I don't have access to the full pathologist's report. For all I know, he might have already done a DNA test and double-checked it against the national DNA database."
"Why would Roderick Ward's DNA be in the database?" he asked.
"Because he was arrested two years ago for breaking windows," I replied. "It should be there."
Mr. Hoogland opened a notebook and made some notes.
"And what is your name?" he asked.
"Is that important?" I said.
"You can't go round making accusations anonymously."
"I'm not accusing anyone," I said. "I just asked you if you were sure it was Roderick Ward in that car."
"That in itself is an accusation of fraud."
"Or murder," I said.
He stared at me again. "Are you serious?"
"Very," I said.
"But why?"
"It just seems too easy," I said. "Late at night on a country road with little or no traffic, low-speed collision, contusion on the side of the head, alcohol, car tips into convenient deep stretch of river, no attempt to get out of the car, life insurance. Need I go on?"
"So what are you going to do about your theory?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's not me that has the client who's about to pay out a large sum in life insurance."
I could see in his face that he was having doubts. He must be asking himself if I was a complete nutter.
"You've nothing to lose," I said. "At least find out for sure if the deceased really was Roderick Ward by getting a DNA test done. Maybe the pathologist already has. Look in his report."
He said nothing but stared at a point somewhere over the top of my head.
"And ask the pathologist if he tested to determine if the water in the lungs actually came from the river."
"You do have a suspicious mind," he said, again looking down at my face.
"Did Little Bo Peep actually lose her sheep, or were they stolen?"
He laughed. "Did Humpty Dumpty fall, or was he pushed?"
"Exactly," I said. "Do you have a card?"
He fished one out of his jacket pocket and gave it to me.
"I'll call you," I said, turning away.
"Right," he shouted to my departing back. "You do that."
11
I woke in agony. And in the dark, pitch-black dark.
Where was I?
My arms hurt badly, and my head was spinning, and there was some sort of cloth on my face, rough cloth, like a sack.
What had happened?
It felt as if I was hanging by my arms and my shoulders didn't like it, not one bit. My whole back ached, and my head pounded as if there were jackhammers trying to break out of my skull behind my eyes. I felt sick, very sick, and I could smell the rancid odor of vomit on the cloth over my face.
How had I got here?
I tried to remember, but the pain in my arms clouded every thought. Being blown up by an IED had nothing on this. My upper body screamed in agony, and I could hear myself screaming with it. Whoever thought too much pain brought on unconsciousness was an idiot. My brain, now awake, clearly had no intention of switching off again. How much pain does it take to kill, I wondered. Surely it was time for me to die?
Was this just another bad dream?
No, I decided, this was no dream. This agony, sadly, was reality.
I wondered if my arms were actually being pulled from their sockets. I couldn't feel my hands, and I was suddenly very afraid.
Had I been captured by the Taliban? The very thought struck terror into my heart. I could feel myself coming close to panic, so I put such thoughts back in their box and tried to concentrate solely on the locations of my pain and its causes.
Apart from the ongoing fire in my back and arms, my left leg also hurt-in particular, my heel. "Concentrate," I shouted out loud at myself. "Concentrate." Why does my heel hurt? Because it's pressing on the floor. Now I realized for the first time that I wasn't hanging straight down. My left foot was stretched out in front of me. I bent my knee, pulled my foot back, and stood up. The searing agony in my shoulders instantly abated. The change was dramatic. I no longer wanted to die. Instead, I became determined to live.
Where was I? What happened? Why was I here? And how did I get here?
The same questions kept rotating over and over in my head.
I knew that I couldn't have been captured by the Taliban. I remembered that I was in England, not in Afghanistan. At least, I assumed I was still in England. But could I assume anything? The world had suddenly gone mad.