‘Of course. Yes, I know. I heard about it. But it was an accident. You yourself gave evidence—the car was not driven too fast, the child ran across his path—’
‘That’s right. Just like tonight. An accident. Car not driven too fast. But—’
‘—the man reeled across your path.’ The sergeant thought it over. ‘A coincidence. Extraordinary coincidence, Constable—you’d have to agree to that?’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Constable Evans, poker-faced.
‘And yet—’
In the brightness shining across from the pub, lighting up the small group standing there facing one another, tense and still, the men were lifting the stretcher into the ambulance; the hush was absolute as the throbbing of the engine died away into the night. The sergeant could begin herding them all off down to the station now.
And yet—And yet—
‘The accident to your daughter, Evans, and her baby—you were the only witness, isn’t that so?’
‘Me and that—me and the driver, yes.’
‘Yet you gave evidence that certainly saved him from a prison sentence. And now—’
‘And now he’s dead. A second accident,’ said Evans.
‘Coincidence,’ said the sergeant again. He thought it all over quietly. Extraordinary. But coincidences did happen. And what else—? He could ferret around, he could inquire, but how much would that tell him? A man driving on a routine journey. A man reeling drunkenly across his path. Two unbiased witnesses on the spot, seeing it all happen. Collusion?—only collusion could offer any other explanation.
But these were not people to get together to hatch up a plot—to plan, to carry out a thing like this; and one of them was, in fact, a ‘foreigner’—anyone from across the county border was a foreigner here; he could check but he knew he would find it was true—the second witness was a stranger to them all.
Coincidence: it had to be. Fate. The Hand of God.
The sergeant, a religious man, took off his cap, standing there looking down at the pool of blood, dark on the roadway, where a man had died—run down by the man whose child the victim himself had run down a few weeks before.
‘The Hand of God,’ he said. ‘Some of us might call it Fate. I call it the Hand of God.’
The Other Granny—she was a fly old bird. Grannies come in different ages but this Granny had had a long family, with Bill Evans’ son-in-law at the tail end of it: she was old. They all met at Evans’ home on the day of the inquest and drank a quiet cup of tea to celebrate his exoneration from blame in the accident to Jellinks. An extraordinary coincidence, the coroner had said, echoing the sergeant’s words on that earlier night; but Fate, that was all you could call it, blind Fate.
And Fate was what they were calling it at home, over their cups of tea. ‘Everyone knows Bill gave his evidence honest and true, when he might have said a wrong word and got that villain what he deserved. Not that you could say anything else, love. We know that. You had to say it.’
‘Yes, I did,’ said Bill.
‘Well, I don’t know that I could have done it,’ said young Tom. ‘Not stood there and let him off scot-free, when he’d surely have got a stretch for it. I got to respect you, Dad, honest.’ Unless, he added, with one of the few smiles he had smiled since his pretty young wife and their baby had died, his pa-in-law might have been saving it up—for this?
‘Don’t talk silly!’ said the old lady. ‘How could Bill know that Jellinks would be staggering about the road that hour of night? It wasn’t closing time, was it? And just as he happened to be driving by; all sorts of odd times he goes up to—well, we all know where he was going, poor old Bill, same as all of us goes. And that Jim What’s-his-name coming out with Sam, the exact right minute to see it happen. Fate it was, the Coringer said so, and he was right. Fate. Retribution, that’s the big word for it and just Fate that our Bill was the one to hand it out.’ And she got up and stretched her old bones and said if Bill would be a dear now and run her home—
‘I’ll take you, Mum, in the side-car.’
‘No, you won’t, Tom, thanks all the same. I’ll go with Bill. That side-car of yours—no, thanks! I’m a bit too fly for that.’
And a bit too fly for Police Constable Evans too. Sitting beside him, nice and comfortable in the car. ‘Well, it’s all over, Bill, my dear. And you’ll feel better, now it’s done.’
‘What’s done?’ said Bill, his grip tightening on the steering wheel.
‘Like I said—retribution. What they’re all calling Fate. And let ’em,’ said the old lady. ‘Then everyone’s happy. That’s best.’