She went straight to her desk and got out her notebook, running her eyes down the list of things she needed to do. On the way from Geoffrey Thorpe’s place, Clement had agreed that, as a coroner, he was the obvious person to arrange with the morgue staff about the viewing of the body, and would be sorting that out before going home.

So ticking that item off, she reached for the telephone and got through to a colleague in Birmingham, explaining her predicament and asking if a search could be made of the records to see if her victim had ever lived in the city, or might still have living relations there. It was a big ask, and her colleague didn’t sound impressed; Trudy hung up with the profound sense that her request would be buried at the bottom of a pile somewhere on some poor overworked constable’s desk. She wouldn’t be holding her breath.

Next she went to the records office to see if they had ‘anything known’ against Regal Cars. Apparently the tax people had no issues with them, nor had they had any run-ins with the various agencies whose job it was to monitor such businesses. Sometimes car dealers weren’t always scrupulous about the roadworthiness of some of their vehicles, but it seemed Regal Cars had no major black marks against them in the five years they’d been trading. Nor had their victim come to the attention of the police, with Terry Parker not even having been issued with a parking ticket.

With a sigh, she returned to her desk and set about the laborious process of typing up her notes for DI Jennings, and filling in all the forms that surrounded a fatal road traffic accident.

About halfway through her task, she realised that she hadn’t had time to make herself any sandwiches before leaving in such a hurry this morning (let alone have breakfast), and with no shops open, she could hardly go out and buy herself a pork pie or sausage roll.

She resigned herself to ignore her grumbling stomach, and instead worked steadily over her Remington typewriter. At this time of year, it would be getting dark around three o’clock, and she wanted to get the bulk of the work done before then.

She also had to return to the Vander household to pick up that invitation list. She wasn’t sure that it was strictly necessary she had it, but she wanted to do a thorough job. She didn’t want Inspector Jennings to point out anything that she might have missed, and have grounds to criticise her for slacking!

Hopefully someone would return to the office before the night shift kicked in, and could run her back home in the Land Rover. She didn’t fancy trying to have to make her way home in the dark on one of the police bicycles, with no guarantee that the roads had been cleared.

*