Looking for White Van Man

The prosecution used the white van to account for the swerve I was supposed to have made into the path of the Astra. In so doing, it inextricably linked the position of the van with the position of the "accident".

The white van was not mentioned in the original witness statements to the Police, or in the sole precognition statement given to Crookwank. The Procurator Fiscal declined to tell me when they first knew of it, claiming they had destroyed all their records of the case. The question of how the 3 witnesses knew about the van was of considerable interest. I wondered if one of Car Genie's police contacts (yes, he does know at least one officer in Tayside Police) had mentioned it to him. Eventually, I considered the most likely explanation was that Rob Roy, having left her office in Perth some 30 to 45 minutes after Miro, would have seen it by the roadside and mentioned it to her boyfriend.

I doubted that there had ever been a white van and was gob smacked when the Traffic Police told me they had attended such a vehicle at the location given. Over the phone, I asked if they could identify the patrol officer (with a view to interviewing him). I was told the officer's name was not in the report. I asked for a copy of the report, but was told it was "an operational matter". Many months later, I decided to test this by writing for a copy, mentioning the Freedom of Information Act. To my surprise, and disappointment, I was sent a censored copy of a Police Incident Log which spoke only of a vehicle that had broken down almost a mile to the west of the "accident" site, about 40 minutes after I had passed. By assuming that this "vehicle" was the white van I had enquired about, the Police had misled me. I made further enquiries and found that the patrol officer could be readily identified. So I asked for him to be found, and interviewed. Not surprisingly, he could remember nothing about a minor incident so long ago.

I contacted a local rag, the Dundee Courier, but got no help from the editor, or his staff. Still, I placed an advert in the paper, asking for the driver of the van to come forward, offering a reward. There were no takers.