warrant card and introduced herself.
‘Oh, you’re here about what happened on Friday night, are you? They said you might be back. My father was really shook up about it.’ She sniffed disapprovingly, as though Geraldine was somehow responsible for the accident. ‘What a terrible business that was, terrible. And no fit thing for a man his age to be dealing with when he should have been at home in bed.’
She was more concerned about her father than the fact that a woman had died in the crash.
‘W e’d like to have a word with Mr Hallam. Is he in?’
‘Yes. He’s taken a few days off, thank the lord. Well, come on in, if you must. He’s here. Although why you need to come bothering him at home on a weekend is beyond me.’
‘We won’t keep him long.’
She took them into a neat little living room where a white-haired man sat hunched in an armchair, watching football. His daughter muted the television and he frowned.
‘What are you doing, Rose, I was –’
‘There’s a police inspector here, dad. She wants to talk to you.’
H e looked up and gave a tired smile. Geraldine sat down and declined tea.
‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ Bernie’s daughter said.
She stooped down and gave the top of his head a quick kiss before she went out, closing the door behind her.
Bernie kept his eyes on the television.
‘It was a dreadful business,’ he said by way of introduction. ‘A dreadful business.’
‘It must have been a shock to come across the accident like that,’ Geraldine agreed.
‘Well, I’m afraid there’s not much I can tell you. A white Porsche had gone slap bang into a black van round the one way system. Crashed into it head on. It was the van driver’s fault, going the wrong way. They must have been going at a hell of a speed. But of course you know that already. It was a hell of a crash, but that’s all I know. I can’t tell you anything about the victim. All I saw was the shape of a woman’s head. I knew she was dead. I called the police straight away.’
G eraldine sat forward, her attention caught by a couple of his remarks.
‘How did you know the driver was dead?’
‘Well, I didn’t know exactly, but the body wasn’t moving and there was a hell of a lot of blood in the front of the car. In any case, stands to reason, no one could have survived that, could they? There was nothing I could have done about it, anyway,’ he added defensively. ‘I couldn’t get at the body. And even if I had been able to, I wouldn’t have known what to do. For all I knew the whole thing might have been about to blow. I did the only thing I could. I called the emergency services and kept away.’
G eraldine gave what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
‘Mr Hallam, we’re not here to question you about your actions. I’m sure you did what you thought was best at the time and, as you say, there wasn’t much else you could have done.’
‘Nothing, short of climbing in there myself, and I’m not a young man.’
Like Anna’s boyfriend, Geraldine thought inconsequentially.
‘You couldn’t have done anything for her.’
‘It was a woman in there, then, was it? I thought so.’
Geraldine nodded. Briefly she told him a few details about the victim.
‘I want you to think very carefully before you answer my next question.’
He nodded solemnly.
‘Did you see anyone in the van, or in the street, walking away from the accident? Anyone at all? Think carefully, please.’
He didn’t pause to consider before answering.
‘There was no one else there, only me.’
‘I thought you had a passenger?’
‘Well, yes, and him of course, but he was in the cab and hardly went near the crash.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I didn’t see or hear anyone.’
‘O ne other question. You said you arrived on the scene after the accident took place?’
He nodded. ‘That’s right.’
‘What made you say the vehicles drove into each other, head on?’
He looked round from the television with a