Chapter Ten
For the rest of the day, the promenade was cordoned off.
Edward headed into the radio station early, knowing they would cover the story on his Friday phone-in at nine, maybe spend the first two hours on it – he had already seen an account of the crash on the local Coast Live website, which made much of how near the bike had been to ‘wiping out four entire families’. The rider had not been named by police.
Edward’s antibiotics had kicked in quickly and his voice had almost returned to normal, so he was back to work, speeding in on his moped. When Edward’s phone buzzed, he was on the outskirts of Pinn Village. He stopped, cut the engine, and answered in a single action.
‘Mr Temmis?’
‘DC Jordan Callintree, hello.’
‘I forgot you had my number. And,’ he cleared his throat, ‘it’s DS now.
’ It was a while since they had last spoken, after Jordan had been key in solving the hit-and-run that had killed Edward’s son, Matty.
Edward thought the young police officer’s voice sounded more distant, more formal than he remembered. ‘Have you got a minute?’
‘I have,’ Edward replied. ‘I’m guessing it’s you that’s busy right now.’
‘Yep. It’s that. Obviously it’s the crash … I’m calling in connection with that. I need to contact someone you know.’
Edward had the sudden inkling that this was about the crossbow woman, but Callintree quickly swept the thought out of his mind.
‘The crash in the pizza place,’ the police officer said stiffly. ‘I was there. Motorbiker dead, as you’ll have heard. Getting him clear of the fire – a young woman helped me out. Now, I think you know the woman. During my investigation last year—’
‘Of course.’ The Case.
‘She was the person you tried to help, Mr Temmis, am I right? She got some terrible injuries on her face.’
‘Stevie Mason. Is she in trouble?’
‘No! Well …’ The hesitation was telling. ‘A witness statement would be helpful. Are you presenting your show tonight?’
‘On my way in now.’
‘And this won’t go on it, what I’m about to tell you?’
This was difficult. But Edward respected Jordan Callintree more than any other acquaintance in the town.
Young and junior at the time, the gangly police officer had been the only one to doggedly refuse to drop the investigation into Matty’s death.
While radio presenters skimmed facts and stories, Callintree had the good officer’s desire to dig deep.
Edward believed they respected each other, not that they would ever say it out loud.
‘I’m going to take your silence as agreement, Mr Temmis.’
‘Edward.’
‘The motorbike rider doesn’t check out.’
‘I’m not following you.’
‘There’s a lot I can’t say.’ The policeman seemed to swallow before continuing. ‘False plates.’
‘Really?’
‘And that fact alone means we need to do more comprehensive follow-up, to rule out …’
The sentence tailed off. Edward waited. But there was no more. To rule out what?
‘I should have taken Miss Mason’s name and number, but police officers suffer shock too.’
‘I’m so sorry. Let me send you her contact card as soon as I get off the call.’
‘Not a word on the air, please.’
‘About what?’
‘False plates.’
‘I won’t mention that on the air,’ Edward promised. ‘God knows there’s plenty else to say. But what do false plates mean? That he’s trying to avoid getting done on the speed cameras?’
At the other end, the police officer gave no answer.
‘If you need to trace people, we can help with that,’ said Edward a little desperately. ‘We could do an appeal for you. That’s something radio is very good at.’
There was silence at the other end, so long that Edward finally had to break it.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Temmis, I might take you up on that.’
After the throat infection, this was Edward’s first day feeling like himself again.
He felt the keenness of youth as he flashed his pass at RTR-92’s security guard, Jojo.
The man stood, stiffened his back and saluted, a joke they shared.
‘Hope you’re on the mend,’ said Jojo. Then his face turned serious. ‘That crash today—’
‘I know, right?’ said Edward. ‘And so close to us.’
He took the lift to the fourth floor, where the studios were.
Waiting to meet him was his producer, Melody.
She was slender and nervous, with Bugs Bunny teeth and uneven shoulders.
She wore willowy dresses which channelled Kate Bush on a moor somewhere.
Her thick black hair was normally bunched tightly, pulling the skin taut on her cheekbones – he had heard that called the Tiverton Facelift.
The only disruption to the sense of a slightly fragile twenty-two-year-old was the small dagger inked at the base of her neck.
She had been at Oxford University, and her accent was posh Devon.
Edward had unfairly decided a relative had wangled her the job before she had even realized she had an interest in radio.
‘This story …’ she started, wide-eyed.
Melody’s hair was tumbling now, as if the crash at Toppings had shocked it out of bed. He wondered if she had come in especially early herself – saw unusual lipstick and guessed at a date abruptly cut short.
‘Toppings. Incredible.’
Melody said, ‘Before I forget, Mr Aspinall rang.’
‘What does he want?’
‘He’d heard about it, of course, asked if we can “bring the show out of hibernation” and broadcast from the promenade.’
Insulted, Edward was about to say, ‘That’s crazy, the line will just cut out the whole time,’ and then remembered that he was the official NFC: he had to get scoops or he would be out of a job.
What if he could make this story his own, make his show appointment-to-listen?
He might just recover from the shambles at Harpford Hall.
‘Great idea, Melody, let’s do it!’
‘We can’t get it running till tomorrow; will it still be a story then?’
Edward was tempted to say he didn’t have a show on Saturdays, but he was beginning to feel the heady possibility of professional revival.
‘Could be, or could be the start,’ he said, deciding that the confidence with Jordan Callintree excluded Melody, and he should say no more.
He opted to add only: ‘There may be more to it than just a crash.’
She let the comment go, tipping her head left and right as if she had a crick in her neck.
‘It’s only a few hours ago, I guess, so it’s hard to judge.
’ Now they were in the production office and he was swishing through pages of local news on his smartphone.
‘Like you, I rushed in,’ he heard her say.
‘Well done you.’ His phrase sounded like an old man’s congratulation.
He was not her boss. Still, she glowed when she heard the words.
‘All I see online is a “Miracle Escape for Pizza Families” story,’ he murmured, ‘and he’s being described as “Tragic Toppings Biker” in the headlines. There’s no name.’
She said, ‘Is there a question for the phone-in?’
‘We should just ask, “Were you there?” Find out who saw it. Give the latest. Or’ – he thought of Aspinall’s anger and the way the village hall meeting had revealed how precarious his position was – ‘scoops. We should get scoops.’
‘You want me to go to Taste?’
And there it was.
The complete absence of understanding that what they were doing was journalism, and they were supposed to be discovering things. Taste was the ice-cream shop on Old Fore Street. He wanted to cry. Their jobs might depend on Melody understanding this.
‘I don’t mean scoops of raspberry ripple. I mean news scoops. Exclusives.’
‘What if there aren’t any?’
‘News,’ he announced gravely, ‘is what someone else wants to hide. All the rest is advertising. I can’t remember who said that.
’ He was thinking about Callintree’s call.
Had he promised to be silent about Stevie’s presence, or just the false number plate?
He decided only the latter. ‘You know, I might have a witness to it.’
‘Really?’ Melody had been looking down at her smartphone. Her finger froze on the screen.
‘A … source rang. Said a friend of mine was there. Also, the police want to find the families who were in the restaurant. We should check for an official statement.’
Edward could not get through to Callintree, but when he rang the Devon Police press office, they did indeed have a statement to give him. He read it out on the air, as sombre as a 1960s newsreader:
‘Local police are appealing for witnesses who might have seen the fatal crash earlier today. A motorbike rider smashed through the front window of Toppings, the pizza parlour on Sidmouth waterfront. It’s believed at least five families were dining inside.
One group has been traced, but there are others who haven’t yet spoken to the police.
We appreciate this has been a very stressful day but we urge you to tell us if you were in the restaurant so we can speak to you about the incident. ’
‘Wonder why they need to follow up?’ Melody asked into his headphones when the first adverts came on. She was in the control room, behind three panes of glass.
Edward was only half-listening. He stared at his phone, waiting for a reply from Stevie Mason.
Then he was swept away by the listener calls.
They poured in. There were a dozen in the first hour – Trevor in Plymouth saying restaurants beside main roads should have protective railings; Dot in Haccombe asking what we knew about the poor dead person on the bike and whether he had family (‘I don’t think we know anything at all, not even a name,’ said Edward); a listener coincidentally also named Edward calling from Yelland village to suggest prayerful thanks for the sparing of life; the same message from a vicar in Torridge, and an angry call from Pinki, a young environmentalist in Ringmore, who said: ‘We were asking for this tragedy ever since we put roads along seafronts.’ (Edward thought: Okay, Monday’s show – the question – Ban roads next to seafronts?)
There were so many callers. A fatal accident involving young children in an almost miraculous escape, right in the middle of Sidmouth on a May Friday …
Penelope in Langtree rang to say, ‘As the Germans said after the Second World War, so we must ourselves pronounce, “Nie Wieder”. Which means never again.’ She pronounced it ‘Knees Wider’.
But it was hard to work out what had caused the crash, and even harder to see what you could do to prevent such a thing recurring, so by eleven o’clock, when the topic would change for the last hour of the show, Edward had the feeling that he had explored a blizzard of reaction without getting even an inch closer to the reality of what had happened, and by next week there would be nothing more to say.
During the news at eleven, his phone sparked into life.
‘Stevie.’
‘I was out, wedding prep, fuck, exhausting.’
‘Did the cop get you?’
‘What cop?’
‘Oh.’ Was Edward allowed to be the first to speak to her? ‘DS Jordan Callintree. Intelligent, you can trust him. You helped him at the pizza house.’
‘Am I under suspicion or something?’
‘The opposite! I gave him your number. The news is ending in a minute. I think it’s just formalities with—’ He saw the clock. ‘Wait. Can we speak on air about it?’
‘I don’t know, I’m a bit in shock still.’
‘I know this is a big favour, but I’ve got a boss who basically says my show is going to be closed unless it starts being interesting. He wants us to break things.’
‘And you want to break me?’
‘Not like that, but yes, have you on, like an exclusive sort of thing.’
‘Shite, really? Broadcast me? I don’t know, my parents will go potty if they hear what I did.’
‘We can use a pseudonym.’
A pause, then: ‘Use Rebecca.’
He managed to get her patched through just as the news ended. As his programme jingle played, he said through the phone talkback: ‘Stevie listen, no swearing, okay?’
Then he introduced her. Melody, in the control suite on the other side of the glass, had been caught cold by the sudden introduction of a guest she knew nothing about. He scrawled on a sheet of paper and held it up: FRIEND STEVIE WAS AT PIZZA.
Now he was introducing her. ‘I won’t give her real name,’ he said, ‘but I gather this person was at the scene of the accident. We will call her Rebecca.’
‘Yes.’
‘Could you tell us more?’
‘About what?’
‘The fire, the other families in there?’
And then she was away. The voice – still that undertow of Glasgow accent; the rasp, almost as if the throat had been scarred like her face. She dropped words like stones, rounded, separate, each one pertinent.
‘I came in via the entrance on The Backs. I didn’t see the bike crash.
I just heard the terrible noise from the other side.
The promenade side. I had a job there once, so I knew the back door was always open.
I thought maybe – I don’t know what I thought.
I opened it and I was looking out into the street.
I saw the biker. The motorbike, bloody hell—’
‘Just please, the language, if you can, Rebecca, we have boring rules about that.’
‘Sorry, Mr Temmis. I don’t know what the noise made me think, but whatever it was did not prepare me.’
‘Some people would have turned around and just got out.’
‘Not me,’ she said. Only Stevie could say such a thing without sounding like she was blowing her own trumpet.
‘Also – I saw the policeman. Didn’t know he was police.
Thought I recognized him but wasn’t sure.
He was with the biker. The families were climbing out of the window.
I passed the crumpled bike on my right and then I clocked the fire … ’
Her description took in every detail. Edward closed his microphone, knowing she would speak for five minutes before another question was needed.
It was like watching a movie, hearing her voice paint the picture.
He turned to see Melody, entranced like him.
They stared vacantly at each other through the glass as Stevie described the children being bundled out by parents, the smell of the smoke, the efforts to remove the body of the biker.
He wondered at Stevie’s heroism and couldn’t help but think that if he had been close when the fire and smoke erupted from the pizzeria, he would have turned and run.
When he left the radio station at midnight, the security guard handed him an envelope.
‘Strange one this,’ she said. The woman was new, and in the dim of the reception he could barely make out her face. ‘There was a knock on the main doors, Mr Temmis, and when I got there, this was slipped under. They could have come in, but they must have slid away into the night.’
He took the envelope, studying his name on the outside: E. TEMMIS. It was written in thick pencil and the handwriting was like a child’s. He pocketed the note and thought no more of it as he left the building and stepped into the warm night air.