I caught my father eyeing the room. I was glad it was relatively tidy. There were a couple of Elle magazines scattered on the floor, so I discretely pushed them under the nearest armchair with my foot. With a grunt, my father turned to face me. He was wearing his uniform, and as always, he looked immaculate in it. He took a beige coloured file from under his arm and handed it to me.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's your statement about what happened yesterday," he said, crossing the room to the window and pulling back the curtain.
"I haven't written my statement," I said, opening the file to find several typed sheets of paper.
"I wrote it for you," he said, turning to face me.
"I think it's best if I were to write my own..." I started.
"We all need to be saying the same thing," he said, taking a pen from his shirt pocket and offering it to me. "Besides, I've spoken to Inspector Skrimshire in Penzance this morning. I've briefed him on our version of what happened yesterday, and he seems quite satisfied. He does, however, want to see copies of all our statements ASAP. So just sign the statement and I can get one of the team to run him over a copy."
"But..." I started, quickly skimming over the statement. It read just how my father had described the incident yesterday as we stood in the road together. I had been driving down the Old Buckmore Road, lights and sirens flashing. The driver of the cart had either refused to steer his horse off the road to let me pass or he hadn't seen the vehicle because of the state of his poor eyesight, in which case he was himself at fault and caused his own death and that of his family. I had given a negative breath test and received minor scrapes and bruises.
"Sign it," my father said, waving the pen before me.
Slowly, I took the pen from him and signed the bottom of each page. I closed the file and handed it back to him with the pen.
"What about those people?" I asked him, my heart beginning to race again.
"The drifters?" he said, cocking one of his thick, black eyebrows at me.
"Yes," I whispered.
"In the morgue," he said flatly, tucking the file back beneath his arm, and the pen into the breast pocket of his shirt. "Don't worry, the post-mortem has been carried out on the old guy and the pathologist noted the state of his eyesight. The old fella was practically blind." Then, placing a hand on my shoulder as if to reassure me, he added, "See? It wasn't your fault. The old boy shouldn't have been on the road with that horse and cart. The pathologist reckons he wouldn't have been able to see more than a few feet in front of him. The truth of the matter is, the old sod probably steered that horse and cart into you and not the other way around. You're lucky to still be alive."
"I guess," I said thoughtfully. Perhaps my dad was right. Okay, so I had had a couple of whiskeys, but I wasn't drunk. I could hold my liquor - most of my teenage years had been spent in a drunken blur. I knew when I was drunk, and I hadn't been yesterday.
"I'll get the paperwork over to Inspector Skrimshire today so he can contact the coroner," my father explained.
"Coroner?" I gasped. "Will there be an investigation?"
"Calm down," he hushed. "I'm doing the investigation. I'll hand everything over to Skrimshire and he'll pass it onto the coroner's office. There's always an inquest into these things. The coroner will simply want to decide how and when those people came to die, so it can be marked on their death certificates. It's just so they can be buried and their estate can be settled."
"Do they have any family?" I asked him.
"Mac is looking into it, but it will be like searching for a needle in a haystack," he grunted again. "Like I said, these people don't hold down roots like us. They flutter through life like litter on the wind, moving from one place to the next. Christ, we can't even be sure of their names, let alone anything else. No one is going to miss them. No one cares what happened to them."
I thought that to be very sad. To spend a lifetime and not have anyone miss you when you're gone. Not even to care. With his hand still on my shoulder, my father leant forward and did something he hadn't done since I was a little girl. He kissed me gently on the forehead.
"I know you're tearing yourself up inside over what happened, but it was an accident, Sydney. Take a couple of weeks off from work - get a different perspective on things and you'll feel better for it, I promise."
"I'm not due any leave until..." I started.
"I'm not just your father, I'm your sergeant, and I'm telling you to take some time off," he said. "Get your bearings, clear your head, and come back when all of this has died down."
"Okay," I said, wondering if I couldn't book myself a cheap flight and go visit with my mother in Spain. Then again, the last time I'd visited, I felt as if I were just in the way. Julio had those smarmy-looking friends who hung about all the time, leering at the English girls. They made my flesh crawl. Maybe I would just stay at home, read a few books, go walking along the shore. I could find plenty to do if I really thought about it. Maybe go and max out the credit card in Penzance? That would be reckless - but fun. There was nothing like a good bit of retail therapy.
Taking his hand from my shoulder and heading for the door, my father looked back at me and said, "If I were you, I'd keep away from work. You know what some of them can be like - real gossips. Anything you say will only get bent all out of shape, and we need to keep our stories straight. The less you say about this to anyone, the better. I'll keep out of your way, too, until you get yourself sorted out. Give me a call when you feel like coming back."
He opened the door, and just as he was about to disappear, I said, "Thanks, dad."
He looked back at me. "Just keep a low profile for the next week or two until this whole thing blows over."
"Okay," I said.
"And promise me, no more screw-ups."
"I promise," I whispered as he shut the door, leaving me alone in my apartment.
