‘A … source rang. Said a friend of mine was there. Also, thepolice 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 newsended. 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—’
