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.
And who, I wondered, was the potential beneficiary of the insurance?
"So were you satisfied with the verdict?" I asked.
"It's what we expected," Mr. Hoogland said dismissively, looking past my right shoulder.
Time to dive in, I thought. "Are you absolutely sure that the dead man in the car was Roderick Ward?"
"What?" he said, suddenly giving me his full attention.
"Are you sure that it was Roderick Ward in that car?" I asked again.
"Yes, of course. The body was identified by his sister."
"Yes, but where is the sister today?" I said. "And is she the beneficiary of your client's insurance policy?"
He stared at me. "What are you implying?"
"Nothing," I lied. "I'm just curious. If my brother had died, and I'd been the one to identify him, then I'd be at the inquest." Mr. Hoogland wasn't to know that the coroner's letter to Stella Beecher was in my pocket.
"Why didn't you say this in court?" he asked.
"I'm not what they call an 'officially interested party,'"I said. "So why would I be allowed to speak? And it's not compulsory for members of the deceased's family to be present at an inquest. Anyway, I don't have access to the full pathologist's report. For all I know, he might have already done a DNA test and double-checked it against the national DNA database."
"Why would Roderick Ward's DNA be in the database?" he asked.
"Because he was arrested two years ago for breaking windows," I replied. "It should be there."
Mr. Hoogland opened a notebook and made some notes.
"And what is your name?" he asked.
"Is that important?" I said.
"You can't go round making accusations anonymously."
"I'm not accusing anyone," I said. "I just asked you if you were sure it was Roderick Ward in that car."
"That in itself is an accusation of fraud."
"Or murder," I said.
He stared at me again. "Are you serious?"
"Very," I said.
"But why?"
"It just seems too easy," I said. "Late at night on a country road with little or no traffic, low-speed collision, contusion on the side of the head, alcohol, car tips into convenient deep stretch of river, no attempt to get out of the car, life insurance. Need I go on?"
"So what are you going to do about your theory?"
"Nothing," I said. "It's not me that has the client who's about to pay out a large sum in life insurance."
I could see in his face that he was having doubts. He must be asking himself if I was a complete nutter.
"You've nothing to lose," I said. "At least find out for sure if the deceased really was Roderick Ward by getting a DNA test done. Maybe the pathologist already has. Look in his report."
He said nothing but stared at a point somewhere over the top of my head.
"And ask the pathologist if he tested to determine if the water in the lungs actually came from the river."
"You do have a suspicious mind," he said, again looking down at my face.
"Did Little Bo Peep actually lose her sheep, or were they stolen?"
He laughed. "Did Humpty Dumpty fall, or was he pushed?"
"Exactly," I said. "Do you have a card?"
He fished one out of his jacket pocket and gave it to me.