Dick Francis & Felix Francis

by Crossfire

  I hadn’t really expected the address to provide any great revelation into the identity of the blackmailer, and I’d been right.

  Forty-six Cheap Street in Newbury turned out to be a shop with rentable mailboxes, a whole wall of them, and suite 116 was not a suite of offices as one might have thought, but a single, six-by-four-inch gray mailbox at shoulder level. The shop had been closed on Sunday, but I had no great expectation that, had the staff been there, they would have told me who had rented box number 116. In due course, when I was ready, the police might be able to find out.

  I had returned to Kauri House from Newbury via the Wheelwright Arms in the village for a leisurely lunch of roast beef with all the trimmings. I’d been in no particular hurry to get back to the depressing atmosphere at home. I decided it was time to start looking for more agreeable accommodation—past time, in fact.

  Early the next morning, I drove to Oxford and parked in the multistory parking lot near the Westgate shopping center. The city center was quiet, even for a Monday in February. The persistent cold snap had deepened with a bitter wind from the north that cut through my overcoat as effortlessly as a well-honed bayonet through a Taliban’s kurta. Most sensible people had obviously decided to stay at home, in the warm.

  Oxford Coroner’s Court was housed next door to the Oxfordshire County Council building in New Road, near the old prison. According to the court proceedings notice, the case in which I was interested was the second on the coroner’s list for the day, the case of Roderick Ward, deceased.

  It was too cold to hang around outside, so I sat in the public gallery for the first case of the day, the suicide of a troubled young man in his early twenties who had hanged himself in a house he’d shared with other students. His two female housemates cried almost continuously throughout the short proceedings. They had discovered the swinging body when they had returned from a nightclub at two o’clock in the morning, having literally stumbled into it in the dark.

  A pathologist described the mechanics of death by strangulation due to hanging, and a policeman reported the existence of a suicide note found in the house.

  Then the young man’s father spoke briefly about his son and his expectations for the future that would now not be fulfilled. It was a moving eulogy, delivered with great dignity but with huge sadness.

  The coroner, having listened to the evidence, thanked the witnesses for attending, then officially recorded that the young man had taken his own life.

  We all stood up, the coroner bowed to us, we bowed back, and he departed through a door behind his chair. In all, the formal proceedings had taken just twenty minutes. It seemed to me to be a very swift finale to a life that had lasted some twenty-two years.

  Next up was the inquest into the death of Roderick Ward.

  There was an exchange of personnel in the courtroom. The young suicide’s father and his weeping ex-housemates trooped out, along with the policeman and the pathologist who had given evidence. In came different men in suits, plus one in a navy blue sweater and jeans who joined me in the public gallery.

  I glanced at him, and just for a moment, I thought he looked familiar, but when he turned full-face towards me, I didn’t know him, and he showed no sign of having recognized me.

  There was no young woman in the court who might have been Stella Beecher. But there again, she had never received the letter sent to her at 26 Banbury Drive by the Coroner’s Office, to inform her that the inquest was going to reconvene today. I was absolutely sure of that, because the said letter was currently in my pocket.

  The inquest began with the coroner giving the details of the deceased, Mr. Roderick Ward. His address was given as 26 Banbury Drive, Oxford, but even I knew that was false. So why didn’t the court? I wanted to stand up and tell them they were wrong, but how could I do it without explaining how I knew? Once I started there would be no stopping, and the whole sorry saga of the tax evasion would be laid bare for all to see, and especially for the Revenue to see. My mother would be up on a charge quicker than a guardsman found sleeping on sentry duty.

  The coroner went on to say that the body of the deceased had been identified by his sister, Mrs. Stella Beecher, of the same address. Another lie. Had the whole identification been a lie? Was the body found in the car actually that of Roderick Ward, or of someone else? And where was Stella Beecher now? Why wasn’t she here? The whole business seemed fishy to me, but only because I knew that Roderick Ward himself had been busily working outside the law. To everyone else it was a simple but tragic road accident.

  The first witness was a policeman from the Thames Valley Road Traffic Accident Investigation Team, who described the circumstances, as he had determined them, surrounding the death of Roderick Ward on the night of Sunday, July 12.

  “Mr. Ward’s dark blue Renault Mégane had been proceeding along the A415 in a southerly direction,” he said formally. “The tire marks on the grass verge indicate that the driver failed to negotiate the bend, veered over to the wrong side of the road and struck the concrete parapet of the bridge where the A415 crosses over the River Windrush. The vehicle appeared to have then gone into the river, where it was found by a fisherman at eight a.m. on the morning of Monday, July thirteenth. The vehicle was lying on its side with just six inches or so of it visible above the water level.”

  The coroner stopped him there as he made some handwritten notes. “Go on,” he said eventually, looking up at the policeman.

  “The vehicle was removed from the river by crane later that morning, at approximately ten-thirty. The deceased’s body was discovered inside the vehicle when it was lifted. He was still strapped into the driver’s seat by his seat belt. The Coroner’s Office was immediately informed, and a pathologist attended the scene, arriving at”—he consulted his notebook—“eleven twenty-eight, by which time I had also arrived at the scene to begin my investigation.”

  The policeman paused again as the coroner wrote furiously in his own notebook. When the writing paused, the policeman went on.

  “I examined the vehicle both at the scene and also at our vehicle-testing facility in Kidlington. It had been slightly damaged by the collision with the bridge but, other than that, was found to be in full working order with no deficiencies observed in either the braking or the steering. The seat belts were also noted to be in perfect condition, locking and unlocking with ease. At the scene I examined the concrete parapet of the bridge and the tire skid marks on the grass verge. There were no marks visible on the road surface. It appeared to me from my examinations that while the vehicle had struck the bridge wall, this collision in itself was unlikely to have been of sufficient force to prove fatal. While it was noted that the airbag in the vehicle had deployed, the damage to both vehicle and bridge indicated that the collision was minor and had occurred at a relatively low speed.”

  He paused and drank some water from a glass.

  “From the position and directions of the marks on the grass and the lack of skid marks on the road, I conclude that the driver might have fallen asleep at the wheel, been awakened when the vehicle rose up onto the grass verge, had then braked hard, slowing the vehicle to between ten and fifteen miles per hour, before it struck the bridge parapet. The force of the collision, although fairly minor, had been sufficient to bounce the vehicle sideways into the river, the damage to the car and the bridge being consistent with that conclusion.”

  The policeman stopped and waited while the coroner continued to make notes.

  “Has anyone any questions for this officer,” said the coroner, raising his head from his notebook.

  “Yes, sir,” said a tall gentleman in a pin-striped suit, standing up.

  The coroner nodded at him, clearly in recognition.

  “Officer,” the tall man said, turning to the policeman in the witness box. “In your opinion, would this life have been saved if a crash barrier had been fitted at the point where the car went off the road into the water?”

  “Most probably, yes,” said the po
liceman.

  “And would you agree with me,” the pin-striped suit went on, “in your capacity as a senior police accident investigator, that the failure of the Oxfordshire County Council to erect a crash barrier at that known accident black spot was tantamount to negligence on their behalf, negligence that resulted in the death of Roderick Ward?”

  “Objection,” said another suit, also standing up. “Counsel is leading the witness.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Sims,” said the coroner. “I know the procedures of this court.” He turned towards the first suit.“Now, Mr. Hoogland, I agreed that you could ask questions of the witnesses in this case, but you know as well as I do that the purpose of this court is to determine the circumstances of death and not to apportion blame.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Mr. Hoogland, “but it can be within the remit of this court to determine if there has been some failure in the system. It is my client’s position that a systematic failure by the county council to address the safety of the public at this point on the highway network has contributed to the death of Mr. Ward.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Hoogland. I am also well aware of the remits and responsibilities of this court.” The coroner was clearly not amused at being lectured in his own courtroom. “However, your question of the officer was whether, in his opinion, there had been negligence in the matter of this death. This question is not answerable by this court, and would be better asked in any civil case that may be brought in a county court.” He turned to the witness. “I uphold Mr. Sims’s objection. Officer, you need not answer Mr. Hoogland’s question.”

  The policeman looked relieved.

  “Are there any further questions of this witness?”

  There was no fresh movement from Mr. Hoogland other than to sit down. He had made his point.

  However, I now wanted to stand up and ask the officer if, in his opinion as a senior police accident investigator, the circumstances of this death could have been staged such that it only appeared that the deceased had fallen asleep, hit the bridge and ended up in the river, when, in fact, he had been murdered?

  But of course I didn’t. Instead, I sat quietly in the public gallery in frustration, wondering why I was suddenly becoming obsessed with the idea that Roderick Ward had been murdered. What evidence did I have? None. And indeed, was the deceased actually Roderick Ward in the first place?

  “Thank you, officer,” said the coroner. “You may step down, but please remain within the vicinity of the court in case you are needed again.”

  The policeman left the witness box and was replaced by a balding, white-haired man with half-moon spectacles and wearing a tweed suit. He stated his name as Dr. Geoffrey Vegas, resident pathologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

  “Now, Dr. Vegas,” said the coroner, “can you please tell the court what knowledge you have concerning the deceased, Mr. Roderick Ward?”

  “Certainly,” replied the doctor, removing some papers from the inside pocket of his jacket. “On the morning of July thirteenth I was asked to attend the scene of an RTA—a road traffic accident—near Newbridge, where a body had been discovered in a submerged vehicle. When I arrived at the scene the body was still in the car, but the car had been lifted from the river and was on the road. I examined the body in situ and confirmed that it was of a male adult and that life was extinct. I gave instructions that the body be removed to my laboratory at the John Radcliffe.”

  “Did you notice any external injuries?” asked the coroner.

  “Not at that time,” replied the doctor. “The surface of the skin had suffered from immersion in the water, and the extremities and the face were somewhat bloated. The cramped conditions in the car did not lend themselves to more than a limited examination.”

  And I bet they weren’t very pleasant conditions, either. I’d once had to deal with some dead Taliban whose bodies had been submerged in water, and it was not a task I chose to dwell on.

  “And did you perform a postmortem examination at the hospital?”

  “Yes,” replied Dr. Vegas. “I completed a standard autopsy examination of the deceased that afternoon in my laboratory. My full report has been laid before the court. I concluded that death was due to asphyxia, that’s suffocation, resulting in cerebral hypoxia and then cardiac arrest. The asphyxia appeared to be due to prolonged immersion in water. Put simply, he drowned.”

  “Are you certain of that?” the coroner asked.

  “As certain as any pathologist could be. There was water present in the lungs, and in the stomach, both of which indicate that the deceased was alive when he entered the water.”

  “Are there any other findings that you would like to bring specifically to the court’s attention?” asked the coroner, who, I thought, must have surely read the pathologist’s full report prior to the hearing.

  “A blood test indicated that the deceased had been more than three times over the legal alcohol limit for driving a vehicle on the public highway.” He said it in a manner that clearly indicated that the accident, and the death, had been the deceased’s own fault, and nothing else mattered.

  “Thank you, doctor,” said the coroner. “Does anyone else have any questions for this witness?”

  I wanted to jump up and ask him if he had carried out a DNA test to be certain that the body was actually that of Roderick Ward. The police must have had his DNA on record after his arrest for throwing the brick in Hungerford. And I also wanted to ask the doctor why he was so certain that the deceased had died in the way he had described. Had he done a test to confirm that the water in the lungs had actually come from the river? Could the man not have been forced to drink heavily, then been drowned elsewhere and just tipped into the river in his car when he was already dead? Could the pathologist be certain it wasn’t murder? Had he, in fact, even considered murder as an option?

  But of course, again I didn’t. Once more I remained sitting silently in the public gallery, wondering if I was looking for something sinister in this death that didn’t actually exist. Something that might begin to lead me to a resolution of my mother’s problems.

  Mr. Hoogland, however, did stand up again to ask some questions of the doctor, but even he would have had to admit that in the light of the blood-alcohol evidence, he was on a hiding to nothing.

  “Dr. Vegas,” he began anyway, “can you tell the court if, in your opinion, Mr. Ward would be alive today if a crash barrier had been installed at that location, preventing his vehicle from entering the water? Were there, for example, any injuries you found that he had sustained in the accident that would, by themselves, have proved fatal without his drowning?”

  “I can state that there were no injuries that Mr. Ward had suffered in the collision which would normally have resulted in loss of life,” the doctor replied. “In fact, there were almost no injuries of note, just a minor contusion to the right side of the head that would be consistent with it banging against the driver’s-door window during the collision with the bridge.” He turned to the coroner. “This may have been sufficient to render the deceased briefly unconscious or unaware, especially in his inebriated condition, but it would have been insufficient, on its own, to cause death. On examination of the deceased’s brain, I found no evidence of injury as a result of the collision.”

  It was obviously not the specific unequivocal answer that Mr. Hoogland had been hoping for. He tried again. “So let me get this clear, Dr. Vegas. Are you saying that Mr. Ward would now be alive if a safety barrier had been present at the spot?”

  “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.