The smell hit Glenn Branson immediately, the way it always did, almost making him retch. The sickly sweet reek of Trigene disinfectant could mask, but could never get rid of, the smell of death that permeated the whole place. The smell you always took away with you on your clothes.
They went through into a small office and were introduced to Philip Keay, the Coroner’s Officer. A tall, lean man, wearing a sombre dark suit, he had swarthy good looks beneath dark, buzzcut hair and thick eyebrows, and his manner was courteous and efficient.
The Assistant Anatomical Pathology Technician then led the way along the tiled corridor, past the glass window of the isolation room. He hurried them past the open door of the post-mortem room, where three naked corpses were laid out, and into a small conference room. It had an octagonal table with eight black chairs around it and two blank whiteboards on the wall. A round clock in a stainless-steel frame was fixed to the wall. It read: 7.28.
‘Can I offer you any tea or coffee?’ Darren Wallace asked, indicating for them to sit down.
Both Americans shook their heads and remained standing.
‘I didn’t know this was a goddamn Starbucks,’ Fernanda Revere said. ‘I’ve flown here to see my son, not to drink fucking coffee.’
‘Hon,’ her husband said, raising a warning hand.
‘Stop saying Hon, will you?’ she retorted. ‘You’re like a fucking parrot.’
Darren Wallace exchanged a glance with the police officers, then the Coroner’s Officer addressed the Americans, speaking quietly but firmly.
‘Thank you for making the journey here. I appreciate it can’t be easy for you.’
‘Oh really?’ Fernanda Revere snapped. ‘You do, do you?’
Philip Keay was diplomatically silent for some moments, sitting erect. Then, ignoring the question, he addressed the Reveres again, switching between them as he spoke.
‘I’m afraid your son suffered very bad abrasions in the accident. He has been laid on his best side, which might be the way you would like to remember him. I would recommend that you look through the glass of the viewing window.’
‘I haven’t flown all this way to look at my son through a window,’ Fernanda Revere said icily. ‘I want to see him, OK? I want to hold him, hug him. He’s all cold in there. He needs his mom.’
There was another awkward exchange of glances, then Darren Wallace said, ‘Yes, of course. If you’d like to follow me. But please be prepared.’
They all walked through a spartan waiting room, with off-white seats around the walls and a hot-drinks dispenser. The three police officers remained in there, as Darren Wallace led the Reveres and Philip Keay through the far door and into the narrow area that served as a non-denominational chapel and viewing room.
The walls were wood-panelled to shoulder height and painted cream above. There were fake window recesses, in one of which was a display of artificial flowers in a vase, and in place of an altar was an abstract design of gold stars against a black background, set between heavy clouds. Blue boxes of tissues for the convenience of grieving visitors had been placed on shelving on both sides of the room.
In the centre, and dominating the viewing room, was a table on which lay the shape of a human body beneath a cream, silky cover.
Fernanda Revere began making deep, gulping sobs. Her husband put an arm around her.
Darren Wallace delicately pulled back the cover, exposing the young man’s head, which was turned to one side. His bereavement training had taught him how to deal with almost any situation at this sensitive moment, but even so he could never predict how anyone was going to react at the sight of a dead loved one. He’d been present many times before when mothers had screamed, but never in his career had he heard anything quite like the howl this woman suddenly let rip.
It was as if she had torn open the very bowels of hell itself.
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.’