I rush through the thick cloud of smoke and grab all three bags from the doorway.
I drag them to the end of the small kitchen and throw a couple of tea towels over the top to cover the letters haemorrhaging out through the torn sides.
Coughing and hacking, I turn back to the door just as the uniforms appear.
‘Hello, are you Anna Clarke?’ The female officer offers her hand and bats smoke away from her face with the other. ‘I’m PC Cullen and this is my colleague, PC Storer.’
They look mismatched. He is relatively short and on the plump side while she is taller and whip-thin.
‘Hope we haven’t caught you at a bad time,’ he remarks behind a thin fog of smoke and bits. ‘Looks like you’re quite busy.’
Understatement of the fucking year.
‘I’m having a clear-out.’
I stand by the still-whirling contents of the incinerator, my words slow and faint.
They glance around the yard and then at each other.
‘Might we come in for a minute or two?’ PC Cullen breaks the silence. ‘It’s about the accident you witnessed a few days ago on Green Road.’
My breathing steadies.
No one has reported me for burning undelivered mail. They don’t know about the spare room mail mountain upstairs. They are here about the accident, probably as a result of my phone call to PC Brixham.
‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ I say curtly.
I’d already shut Albert away in the front room while I burned outside so we sit at the table in the middle room.
‘Do you live here alone?’ PC Cullen glances around the room like I might have stashed a husband or a lodger somewhere behind the furniture.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That’s not a crime, is it?’
She looks like the kind of person who plays squash after work on a Monday while everyone else crumples in front of the television with a glass of wine and packet of crisps.
She smiles. ‘Of course not, just curious.’
‘I’m trying to find out what that smell is,’ I say. ‘If you were wondering.’
They both sniff the air, and PC Storer shrugs.
‘Can’t smell a great deal apart from burning,’ he says, and his colleague shakes her head.
He reaches across his puckering jacket into his pocket and pulls out a small notebook and pencil.
‘We just want to go over a few details about the accident, Anna, if that’s OK?’
I glance out of the window and see that the smoke seems to be dying down at last.
‘Can you tell us exactly what happened that day?’ he begins. ‘Did you see the accident happen?’
I take a breath, trying to remember to take my time and make sure I don’t say anything that I might later regret. I don’t want to lie to them exactly, but if I tell the truth, then Amanda Danson is going to find it much easier to wriggle out of her responsibilities.
I am absolutely certain she mowed Liam down that day due to speed and lack of attention to the road. Yet the police refuse to deal with hunches and intuition. Everything has to have cast-iron proof, regardless of it allowing a low-life like her to escape justice.
I know how guilty she’s feeling about not paying attention to the road but I can hardly say I’ve been snooping and read her Facebook message to Liam.
‘The car was speeding and knocked him off his motorbike,’ I say.
As I utter the words I see it happen in my mind.
He looks up sharply from his notes. ‘You witnessed the moment of impact?’
I nod.
‘Can you tell us exactly what you saw, Anna?’ PC Cullen asks.
I have her full attention now. Her beady eyes have stopped their judgemental scan of the room.
‘I saw the car approaching head-on. She was going far too fast and. . . well, the driver sort of bent down a bit and then it happened.’
‘Bent down a bit?’
‘As if she was reaching for something,’ I say. ‘That’s what it looked like to me, anyway.’
They glance at each other, and PC Storer begins furiously scribbling away on his notepad.
This is probably the most exciting thing he has investigated for months. Kids shoplifting and people reporting antisocial behaviour are all that seem to happen around here.
‘Are you saying she wasn’t watching the road?’ PC Cullen probes. ‘How sure are you of what you witnessed?’
I shrug, careful to appear as though I’m reticent to point the finger of blame, yet hopefully remaining convincing enough to give Amanda Danson a massive problem.
‘I was at a bit of a distance.’ I’m getting into my stride now. ‘All I know is that her face was there one minute then not the next. Her head seemed lower and near the middle of the windscreen, as if she was bending forward to reach down for something. A phone, perhaps.’
PC Cullen widens her eyes at her colleague, as if to say ‘told you so’. I’m beginning to warm to her after all.
At last, he stops making notes and asks me lots of boring technical stuff like how far away was I exactly? How many seconds between initially seeing the car and then witnessing the impact was it exactly?
I rub at my prickling face like my hand is a flannel. I really need to learn a lesson from this. I have had plenty of time to revisit the scene of the accident and get the story crystal clear in my head and yet I’ve neglected to do so.
I have been back there a couple of times but not to measure tyre marks on the bloody road.
I know for certain what happened that day. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t actually witness the bit about the phone.
I have other irrefutable evidence, not only from the past but from the here and now; Amanda’s guilt-ridden Facebook message, her pathetic snivelling visit to the hospital and the fact she is still going to work and acting as if nothing has happened.
This is the real evidence that everyone else is missing.
‘It’s hard to say exactly what distance was involved. All I remember is that poor motorcyclist, flying up in the air then landing in a broken heap on the ground. It happened so fast, you see.’
‘We understand that, Anna,’ PC Cullen says gravely. ‘But you are our only witness of the accident happening, so it’s really important we get this right. What happened next, after the initial impact?’
I note with some satisfaction that, from what she says, the Mercedes driver behind me must have completely missed the accident actually happening.
I take a moment to recreate the scene in my head.
‘Well, the driver got out of her car and stood looking at Liam lying in the road. She seemed more shocked than sorry.’
‘Let’s just stick with the facts,’ PC Storer remarks. ‘She got out of the car, then what?’
‘It looked to me like she was thinking about getting back in and driving off,’ I say. ‘Then people started coming out of their houses and then she had no choice but to stay and face what she’d done.’
‘How did you get that impression?’ PC Cullen interjects. ‘Did she physically start to get back in the car?’
I shrug. ‘Not exactly, but—’
‘We have to record exactly what happened here, Miss Clarke,’ her colleague chips in again. ‘Not what might have happened.’
Out of nowhere I start thinking about what’s upstairs, directly above our heads. My neck tendons strain and begin to cramp my shoulders.
If all the undelivered mail falls through the ceiling now, I will lose my job and could be prosecuted. These two officers might even arrest me and take me to a holding cell.
My heart wallops away at my ribcage while my old therapist’s voice appears in my head and tries to help me out.
‘Calm down. The mail will not fall through the ceiling and in a few days it will all be gone.’
Still, I feel a desperate need to get them out of the house as quickly as possible.
‘You OK, Miss Clarke?’
PC Cullen is watching me again with her mean little button eyes.
Then she says: ‘Shall I make you a cup of tea?’
‘No!’ I almost jump out of my seat but just about manage to stop myself.
If she sees the bin bags in the kitchen they’ll search the house. I realise too late that I’ve raised my voice.
I smile and cough. ‘Sorry, I’ve not had much sleep since the accident. I find it hard to concentrate on conversation at times.’
‘You do seem on edge,’ PC Storer murmurs, tapping his pencil on his notepad and studying my face.
‘It’s because you’re making me remember it all.’ I feel irritated again. ‘It was traumatic. I expect it’s normal to feel on edge, isn’t it?’
He gives a quick nod and glances back down at the notebook.
My breaths are getting shorter and quicker. I need to bring this to an end.
‘Everyone was fussing around the driver of the car,’ I say quickly. ‘Liam was lying in the road; I didn’t move him or anything. I just held his hand, comforted him.’
‘You waited with him until the ambulance came,’ PC Storer says.
I nod.
‘Did he say anything to you?’ He pauses his pencil eagerly above the paper.
I shake my head. There is no way I’m going to share the moment where Liam asked me to help him. His words aren’t meant for some grubby police notebook.
‘From what I saw it was entirely her fault,’ I say firmly. ‘Liam did nothing wrong; it was her. She was distracted; she shouldn’t be on the road.’
The air in the room has turned thick and stagnant. My words seem to hang there, out of place.
‘Take your time and have a think through what happened again,’ PC Cullen says slowly, sliding a small card across the table. ‘And if you remember anything else, anything more specific, give us a call.’
I nod and rub at a small scorch mark on the table top. They’ll sit staring at me all day, if I let them.
‘If that’s all then,’ I say, getting up. ‘I’ll show you out.’
They both stand, and PC Storer strolls over to the window.
‘Bit windy for burning your rubbish today,’ he says, arching his back and stretching. ‘You’ll have the neighbours up in arms about their washing if you’re not careful.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I see PC Cullen moving towards the door at the staircase.
‘OK if I use your bathroom before we go, Anna?’ She points upstairs.
To use the bathroom, she’ll have to walk past the spare room. I left the door open when I dragged the bags of mail down to burn. She won’t even have to snoop to see the mail mountain in all its glory.
Instantly flooding with adrenaline, I fly over to the other side of the room and position myself between PC Cullen and the stairs door.
‘No!’ I bark. ‘You can’t.’