He gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I’m afraid that everyone involved in the incident has something important to do today, but it’s not up to me.’ He pointed to the door and gently, holding her right arm, escorted her towards it. Then he stopped and answered his radio phone as it crackled into life.
‘Dan Pattenden,’ he said. There was a brief silence. ‘I see. Thank you, guv. I’m up at Custody now with my prisoner.’
‘Yes, sir, thank you.’ He clipped the phone back in its holder on his chest and turned to her. His expression was blank, unreadable. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m now going to repeat the caution I gave you earlier at the collision scene. Mrs Chase, I’m rearresting you now on suspicion of causing death by driving while under the influence of alcohol. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’
She felt her throat constricting, as if a ligature was being tightened. Her mouth was suddenly parched.
‘The cyclist has died?’ Her words came out almost as a whisper.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hit him. I crashed because I was – because I avoided him. I swerved to avoid him because he was on the wrong side of the road. I would have hit him if I hadn’t.’
‘You’d best save all that for your interview.’
As he propelled her across the custody reception floor, past the large, round central station, she turned to him in sudden panic and said, ‘My car – I need to get the RAC to collect it – I need to get it repaired – I-’
‘We’ll take care of it. I’m afraid it’s going to have to be impounded.’
They began walking down a narrow corridor. They stopped at a green door with a small glass panel. He opened it and, to her horror, ushered her into a cell.
‘You’re not putting me in here?’
His phone crackled into life again and he answered it. As he did so, she stared at the cell in bewilderment. A small, narrow room with an open toilet and a hand basin set into the wall. At the far end was a hard bench, with a blue cushion behind it propped up against the wall. There was a sanitized reek of disinfectant.
PC Pattenden ended the call and turned back to her. ‘This is where you will have to wait until your solicitor gets here.’
‘But – but what about my car? When will it go to be repaired?’
‘That will depend on what the Senior Investigating Officer decides, but it could be months before your car gets released.’
‘Months?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry. It will be the same for all the vehicles today.’
‘What – what about my stuff in it?’
‘You’ll be able to collect personal belongings from the car pound it’s taken to. You’ll be notified where that is. I have to get back now, so I’m leaving you. OK?’
It was not OK. It was so totally not OK. But she was too shocked to argue. Instead she just nodded lamely.
Then he shut the door.
Carly stared up at a CCTV camera staring down at her. Then she turned towards the bench and looked at the frosted, panelled window set high above it. She sat down, not bothering with the cushion, trying to think straight.
But all she could focus on was the accident, replaying over and over in her mind. The white van behind her. The image of the cyclist underneath the lorry.
Dead.
There was a knock on the door and it opened. She saw a short, plump woman in a white shirt with black lapels and the word
‘Something from the library?’ she asked.
Carly shook her head. Her thoughts suddenly flashed to Tyler. He was staying late after school, having a cornet lesson.
Moments later the door shut again.
She suddenly felt badly in need of a pee, but there was no way she was going to squat here with a camera watching her. Then she felt a sudden surge of rage.
Sodding Preston Dave! If he hadn’t been such a tosser she wouldn’t have drunk so much. She hardly ever got smashed. Sure, she liked a glass of wine or two in the evening. But she never normally drank the way she had last night.
If only she had said no to him.
If only she had dropped Tyler at school just a few minutes earlier.
So many damned
The cyclist was dead.
One instant he had been riding straight at her. He’d come out of nowhere. Now he was dead.
But she had not hit him, she was sure of that.
He was on the wrong fucking side of the road, for God’s sake! And now she was being blamed.
Suddenly her door opened. She saw a tall, thin man in a white shirt with black epaulettes. Standing next to him was the suave figure of one of the senior partners at her firm, Ken Acott.
Several of her colleagues said that the criminal lawyer reminded them of a younger Dustin Hoffman and at this moment he certainly looked like a movie star hero. With his short dark hair, sharp grey pinstripe suit and small black attache case, he exuded an air of authority and confidence as he strode forward into the cell, the buckles of his Gucci loafers sparkling.
Acott had a well-deserved reputation as one of the best in the business. If anyone could sort out this mess she was in, he could.
Then the look of reassurance on his face cracked her up and, losing all her composure, she stumbled forward, towards him, her eyes welling with tears.
20
Shortly before 5 p.m., Roy Grace sat in his first-floor office in the Major Crime Branch of Sussex CID, sipping his mug of tea. It was almost stone cold, because he had been concentrating on searching on the Internet for anything he could find about Cleo’s condition.
He didn’t mind the tea, he was used to cold food and tepid drinks. Ever since he had joined the police force in his late teens, over twenty years ago, he had learned that getting anything to eat or drink at all was a luxury. If you were the kind of person who insisted on freshly ground coffee beans and healthy home cooking, you were in the wrong profession.
His mountain of paperwork seemed to grow of its own accord, as if it was some fast-breeding organism, and it seemed today that emails were pouring in faster than he could read them. But he was finding it hard to focus on anything other than Cleo. Since leaving the hospital this morning, he had made repeated calls to check. The ward sister was probably starting to think he was some kind of obsessive compulsive, but he didn’t care.
He looked down at a thick file that was open on his desk. In his current role as Head of Major Crime, in addition to being an active Senior Investigating Officer, Grace was familiar with all the current cases in the entire Major Crime Branch. For some police officers, the work ended with the arrest of the suspect, but for him, that was merely the first stage. Securing convictions was in many ways far harder and more time-consuming than catching the villains in the first place.
The world he inhabited was filled with an endless succession of nasty people, but few came nastier than the overweight creep whose custody face-on and side profile photographs currently lay in front of him. Carl Venner, a former US Army officer, now residing in the remand wing at Sussex’s Category-B prison, Lewes, had made himself a
