Michael Andrews called Sergeant Freeman to present the police evidence. He liked and respected Freeman; he had heard evidence from him many times. He had a certain lack of humour, and he tended to be rather self-important, but was inordinately thorough, incredibly hardworking, and he presented his evidence with great clarity. It took almost half an hour; at the end of it, Andrews was already tired, and it was only eleven. The concentration required by these big cases was exhausting; it never ceased to surprise him. He called a break for fifteen minutes, and sank gratefully into the peace of his own room, a huge mug of strong, sweet coffee supplied by his staff. He worried sometimes that at the age of fifty he was getting a bit old for this game, and then reminded himself that he had found inquests tough at thirty.

Patrick Connell had obviously once been a big man, Andrews thought, watching him as he came to the witness stand; he was tall, but frail, and walked leaning on two sticks and with a heavy limp. He asked him if he would like to sit down to give his evidence; Connell said he would rather stand, but halfway through what was obviously a gruelling experience, he was forced to give in and sit.

“Now, Mr. Connell, tell us about your recollections, as far as you can remember. We have heard you suffered memory loss, but anything you can tell us will be important.”

The evidence was faltering, faulty indeed; Connell had no real memory of the aftermath of the crash before he reached the hospital, and indeed very little of the next few days; memory had begun to return, but only in fragments. “It was a very disturbing time, sir, as you can imagine, I’m sure.”

“Indeed. Now… you weren’t feeling sleepy beforehand? It says in your statement, if I might remind you again, that you had been to see your doctor about this tendency of yours to feel sleepy on the road. Remember you are under oath.”

A hesitation; he could feel the lawyers stiffen.

“I had been, sir, yes. About half an hour earlier. But I’d stopped for a coffee, and I was eating sweets, jelly babies-they’re my life-savers, odd though it may sound to you, sir-and I was talking to my passenger immediately before the crash; I do remember that very clearly…”

He had gained confidence now; he gave a clearly honest description of blame-free driving, within the speed limit, of the other vehicles, of the E-Type ahead of him, “just pulling ahead… He was driving very nicely, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m pleased to hear it… and may I say how pleased I am also that you have made such a good recovery, Mr. Connell, from your injuries. You may step down.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Andrews asked for Connell’s passenger next: he looked at her as she took the stand, tiny, pretty little thing, clearly absolutely terrified, and asked her very gently to take the oath. Her hand shook as she held the card; he wondered how good a witness she would be.

But she was very good: calm and clear describing how one moment everything had seemed perfectly fine, nobody speeding, nobody cutting across anybody, and then how the windscreen had so suddenly shattered. “It was terrifying. Like being in a thick fog. And then somehow, we stopped and we were in the middle of all this… this chaos.”

“How long would you say it was before you felt the lorry veer over across the lanes of the motorway?”

“Oh… it all happened so slowly. It seemed like hours; I suppose it couldn’t have been more than… what, ten seconds. And then quite quickly there was this terrible, awful noise and horns going and brakes screaming and then we… we stopped.”

“Yes. I don’t think we need to go over the next few minutes; your statement was very clear, and it must have been very traumatic for you.”

He felt bound, driven by personal curiosity as much as professional, to ask her why she left the scene of the crash.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “I wish I did, and I’m terribly ashamed of it. But I can’t explain it; I really can’t. I suppose I panicked. I remember thinking that if I got away, left the accident, it would be all right-no one would know I’d been there. I could just… just forget about it. It was so horrible, all the injured people especially-Patrick… Mr. Connell-and the wrecked cars, and people shouting and screaming. I felt I… well, I had to get away.”

“So you walked quite a long way, you say, and then hitched another lift and went home to Cardiff?”

“Yes, that’s right. And then I sort of managed to persuade myself that it hadn’t happened. Or rather that I hadn’t been there. That it was nothing to do with me. And the more time passed, the more impossible it got to admit. Until there were stories in the press, implying that Patrick-Mr. Connell-had gone to sleep.”

She started to cry; Michael Andrews waited patiently, then said, “Try not to feel too distressed, Miss Linley We all make mistakes and do things we can’t explain. I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Connell are most grateful that you told your story when you did.”

“Yes. Thank you. And we have become good friends now. But only because they’re so good; they’ve been so forgiving.”

Andrews found himself rather taken by her; he thanked her for all her evidence, and then asked her if she had managed to get the part she’d been auditioning for. He did that sometimes, ventured into the personal or lighthearted where he felt it would help the atmosphere. Georgia said she had, and added that it would be shown on Channel Four in the spring.

“I have to tell you, Miss Linley,” he said, “commercial advertising is not normally allowed in the courtroom. However, I will make an exception in this case.”

He heard the evidence of Jack Bryant, the owner of the E-Type. He couldn’t think who he reminded him of, and then realised; he was a dead ringer for that Nigel Havers character, the Charmer, the same smooth dress style, the same confident public-school manner. Andrews was about to dislike him, when he said right at the beginning of his evidence, after taking the oath, “I feel absolutely ghastly about this. Terrible. The whole thing could be said to be my fault…”

“Mr. Bryant,” said Andrews, “as I said at the beginning, we are not here to establish blame. Merely to find out what happened. Now, we have heard it was one of your wheel nuts that flew off and shattered the windscreen of Mr. Connell’s lorry; can you tell us how you think this could have happened?”

“No,” said Bryant, “I really can’t. I checked them all really carefully-my mechanic will second that-before I set out. I was going to Scotland, long way, for a bit of shooting, and I wanted everything to be as safe as possible.”

“Indeed. And you weren’t speeding at all?”

“No, I most definitely was not. Chance’d be a fine thing, in that car. Very beautiful, but not much of a goer these days. She’s an old lady, bit past her prime…”

Every inquest has its turning point; this one was provided by one of the experts at the police Forensics department.

“Thing is, you can overtighten those old nuts. One turn too far and it can break the thread-in our opinion, and on examining the car when it came into our possession, that’s what happened.”

Andrews looked at Bryant; he was visibly limp with relief. And then at the families: it was the kind of thing that was in a way most painful, the fatal event that was still an accident, an act that had killed, but made in good faith. He was not surprised to see them all sitting up very straight suddenly, their faces taut, and, in the case of the young girl’s mother, already in tears…