A Voss and Pike Casefile: The Early Days
Section 42: The Customs House, Reopened
The council's cabinet meeting went ahead on Monday as scheduled, in the Customs House hall under the banners, with the model of the Global Quarter still on its plinth and an empty space at the end of the front row.
Before the doors opened, you and Jonah went to the property store at Saltmarsh Central, where Marian's power chair stood on a trolley, still stained by the dock. Joss Merrin met you there, grey with lack of sleep.
"I'll show you what she showed me on my first day," she said. At the back of the chair, under the seat, a red lever, white letters: FREEWHEEL - PUSH. "That disengages the motors so someone can push the chair. She taught me: never touch it, never be near water with it. She'd have cut her own hand off first."
She looked at it for a long time. "It's engaged now."
Even someone who'd never touched a power chair could have read it. Four seconds, you thought. Perhaps fewer.
Marian's power chair was recovered with its freewheel lever, which disengages the motors so the chair can be pushed, in the engaged position - something she would never have done near water, and something only another person could have done.