Love You Dead

45 Sunday 1 March

PCs Jenny Dunn and Craig Johnson, responding on blue lights and wailing siren to the Grade One call, saw several cars pulled up ahead, just past the roundabout in front of the brightly lit Brighton Pier. A knot of people stood around, several of them vulture-like, as was usual these days at an accident scene, taking photographs on their phones.

As they drew close, slowing down, they saw a small Fiat embedded in a lamp post a short distance from a zebra crossing, its rear sticking out into the road at a skewed angle. The top half of the lamp post had snapped off, crushing the roof of the car.

Both unclipped their seat belts before the patrol car had come to a full halt. Jenny Dunn pulled on the handbrake and Johnson switched the response car’s lights to their stationary flashing mode. They jumped out, all their training for this kind of incident kicking in, and ran forward. It looked like a single vehicle RTC. Sunday night in central Brighton — possibly a drunk driver. Some of the onlookers, enjoying the last hours of the weekend, certainly looked like they’d had a drink or two. The ones standing out in the road were in danger themselves. A man in jeans and a bomber jacket was tugging frantically at the Fiat’s jammed driver’s door.

As quickly as possible, they needed to establish the status of anyone inside the car, clear the area around it, call the ambulance service — if no one had already called them — and, from the look of the impact, even from here, the Fire and Rescue would be needed too, with their cutting gear.

They pushed their way, urgently, through the growing crowd.

‘I saw it ’appen!’ a man shouted at them.

‘Bastard nearly killed me and me kid!’ shouted a woman with a pushchair.

They ran up to the car. It was an old model Fiat Panda, its bonnet embedded, in a V-shape, into the lamp post, the broken top half of which had partially flattened the roof. One person, unconscious, in the driver’s seat, his head pinned at an unnatural angle, by buckled steel, against the steering wheel. PC Dunn shone her torch in and saw the limp white airbag. A chill ran through her.

‘Oh, shite,’ she said in her strong Northern Irish accent.

PC Johnson ran back to the car to grab a roll of police cordon tape. PC Dunn radioed for an ambulance and Fire and Rescue Service — and was told both were already on their way.