Looking Good Dead

62

Nick Nicholl drove the unmarked Vauxhall out of the security gates of Sussex House and floored the accelerator. Emma-Jane, on the radio, gave instructions to the Control Centre operator.

‘This is Golf Tango Juliet Echo. We need uniform backup in the vicinity of Freshfield Road. The incident is at Number 138, but I don’t want anyone there to see or hear the car until I say so – that is very important. Understood?’ She was shaking with nerves. This was the first serious incident she had been in control of, and she was conscious that she might be exceeding her authority. But what choice did she have? ‘Can you confirm?’

‘Golf Tango Juliet Echo, dispatching uniform backup to vicinity of Freshfield Road. Requesting total silence and invisibility until further instructions. ETA four minutes.’

They were racing down a long, steep hill. Emma-Jane glanced at the speedometer. Over 70 mph. She dialled the number that Mr Seiler had given her. Moments later he answered.

‘Mr Seiler? It’s Detective Constable Boutwood; we are on our way. Is the van still outside?’

‘Still outside,’ he confirmed. ‘Would you like that I go and speak with the driver?’

‘No,’ she implored. ‘No, please don’t do that. Please just stay indoors and watch him. I will stay on the line. Tell me what you can see.’

The flash of a Gatso speed camera behind them streaked around the car. Still maintaining his speed, DC Nicholl continued down the hill, accelerating even harder as he saw a green light ahead of them. The bloody thing changed to red.

‘Run it!’ she said to him. She held her breath as he edged over the line and made a sharp right turn, cutting dangerously in front of a car, which hooted furiously at them.

‘I am still seeing the white van,’ Mr Seiler said. ‘A man inside it.’

‘Just one man?’

They were driving along a dual carriageway, a 40 mph limit, the speedometer nudging ninety.

‘I only see one man.’

‘What is he doing?’

‘He has a laptop computer open.’

A second Gatso flashed.

‘You’d better be right about this,’ Nick Nicholl whispered. ‘Otherwise my licence is toast.’

Street lights sped past them. Tail lights appeared like in a DVD on fast-forward. More lights flashed at them, angry drivers.

Ignoring her colleague, she was totally focused on the informant. ‘We’re only a couple of minutes away,’ she said.

‘So you want me outside now?’

‘NO!’ Her voice came out as a shriek. ‘Please stay inside.’

Nick Nicholl braked, ran another red light, then made a sharp left up Elm Grove, a steep, wide hill with houses and shops on either side. The sign harmony carpets above a shopfront flashed past.

‘What can you see now, Mr Seiler?’

‘Nothing has changed.’

Suddenly the radio crackled. ‘Golf Tango Juliet Echo, this is PC Godfrey. Uniform Delta Zebra Bravo. We are approaching Freshfield Road. ETA thirty seconds.’

‘Stop where you are,’ she said, suddenly feeling incredibly important – and very nervous of fouling up.

They passed the gloomy buildings of Brighton General Hospital, where her grandmother had died of cancer last year, then made a lurching, tyre-squealing dog-leg right into Freshfield Road.

Emma-Jane glanced at the street numbers – 256… 254…248… Turning to Nick Nicholl, she said, ‘OK, slow down; there’s a mini-roundabout ahead. It’ll be the other side of that.’

As they drove on she suddenly saw the white Ford Transit about 200 yards ahead of them, its tail lights glowing red. And now her heart really began to race. Within a few seconds she could read the number plate.

GU03OAG

She hit the radio button. ‘Uniform Delta Zebra Bravo. There is a white Ford Transit outside Number 138 Freshfield Road. Please intercept.’

Then she turned to Nick Nicholl. ‘Go for it! Pull up in front! Block it!’ She unclipped her seat belt.

Within seconds they were sliding to a halt, angled in front of the van, and Emma-Jane had her door open before they had even stopped moving. She clambered out and grabbed the driver’s door of the Transit.

It was locked.

She heard a siren. Saw blue flashing light skidding across the black tarmac. Heard the Transit’s starter motor and the revving of its engine. Her arm was yanked almost out of its socket as the van jerked backwards. She heard the splintering crunch of metal on metal and glass. Then her arm was jerked forwards as the van accelerated, ramming the Vauxhall. The air was filled with the howling sound of an engine over-revving, the acrid reek of burning tyres, then a shriek of metal as the Vauxhall lurched sideways. She heard Nick shout, ‘Stop! Police!’

Then another scream of bending metal. She hung on for grim life.

Suddenly her feet were swept away. The van was accelerating clear; it swerved sharply to the left and her legs trailed in the air, then to the right. Towards a line of parked cars.

She felt a moment of blind terror.

Then all the air was shot out of her. She felt a terrible pressure, then heard a dull crunching sound like breaking glass and metal. In the seconds of agony before she passed into oblivion, her hands giving up their grip, her body rolling into the gutter, she realized it wasn’t glass and metal that had made that sound. It was her own bones.

Nick saw her lying in the road and hesitated for a moment. Glancing in his mirror, he saw the marked police car a long way back. Ahead of him, the Transit’s tail lights were disappearing down the hill. In a split-second decision he accelerated after it, shouting into his radio, ‘Man down! We need an ambulance!’

Within seconds he was gaining on the vehicle. He jolted over a speed hump. There were red traffic lights at the bottom of the hill, the junction with Eastern Road. The Transit would have to stop, or at least slow down.

It did neither.

As the van ran the junction Nick saw the glare of headlights, and moments later a Skoda taxi strike the driver’s door broadside. He heard a loud, dull metallic bang, like two giant dustbins swung together.

The Transit spun, and came to a halt, spewing steam, oil and water, its horn blaring, shards of glass and metal lying all around, one wheel buckled and at a skewed angle, almost parallel with the ground, the tyre flat.

The Skoda, slewing, carried on for some yards, making a high-pitched metallic grinding sound, steam pouring from its bonnet, then it mounted the pavement, hit the wall of a house and bounced a few feet back.

Nicholl halted his car, radioing for the emergency services, then jumped out and sprinted to the van. But as he reached it he realized there had been no need to hurry. The windscreen was cracked and stained with blood. The driver was slumped sideways, his body partially draped over the steering wheel, his neck twisted, his face, gashed open in several places, tilted up at the cracked windscreen, his eyes closed.

Steam continued rising and there was a stink of diesel. Nick Nicholl tried to open the buckled door but it was still locked. He pulled hard, nervous the van might catch fire, then harder, wrenching at it with all his strength. Finally it opened a few inches.

He was conscious of vehicles stopping; out of the corner of his eye he saw two people at the taxi, pulling the driver’s door open, and another person struggling with the rear passenger door. Nick yanked harder still on the Transit door; it yielded a little more. And as it did so, he caught sight of a glow coming from the passenger footwell.

A laptop computer, he realized.

Squeezing through the door, Nick peered at the man’s face closely. He was breathing. One of the principal lessons he had learned in first aid was never to move the victim of an accident unless it was to get them out of danger. He reached past the man and turned the ignition off. There was no smell of burning. He decided to wait, then went round to the other side of the van and removed the laptop – with presence of mind, only touching the machine through his handkerchief.

Then, desperately worried about Emma-Jane, he radioed to ask the status of the emergency vehicles. As he did so, he could already hear sirens.

And on top of his concern about the young Detective Constable, he had another worry. Roy Grace was not going to be a happy bunny when he heard about this crash.