One of Us Is Dead

57 Monday 10 October 2022

As James Biggs had instructed, Grace, with Branson standing beside him, selected a point in the recording around twenty-two minutes in, then clicked to make it full screen. Both of them watched.

It was footage from a forward-facing dash camera. From a vehicle travelling at very high speed at night — Dermot Bryson’s Ferrari, Grace presumed. A digital clock in the top right-hand corner of the display showed 23.19. Headlights lit up a section of road he immediately recognized as the dual-carriageway stretch of the A27, where the Sussex University campus would be to the left and the Amex football stadium over to the right. The Ferrari was travelling recklessly fast, switching lanes, undertaking and overtaking at near insane closing speeds. He watched the digital readout in the bottom left corner of the screen: 110mph; 115mph.

‘This is not going to end well,’ murmured Branson.

‘It doesn’t,’ Grace replied.

The speed reduced dramatically as they approached the roundabout for the Cuilfail tunnel, then shot past 120mph as the car accelerated down the hill towards the Beddingham roundabout. It slowed sharply at the bottom, then, taking the roundabout at a rate that would have been impossible in his own Alfa Romeo, Grace thought.

The car began accelerating again, but only for a short distance before turning off the main road onto what was little more than a heavily wooded lane, barely two car widths.

Then something loomed ahead.

An obstacle in the road.

Two tiny bright lights.

The Ferrari decelerated fiercely, swerving left, right, left, right. He could almost feel the driver fighting to keep it pointing forward. The digital readout plunged. 70-60-50-40-30-20-0.

Barely a few feet in front of them, a deer, with massive antlers, stood in the beam, frozen, staring straight at the camera with big yellow eyes. Then, after several seconds, it bolted into the night.

‘Shit!’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Remember Tony Warren — became a chief super over in Worthing?’

‘Yeah, he was my boss at Gatwick for a brief time.’

‘He totalled his car in a deer strike on Christmas Eve two years ago — and put himself in hospital for a month with a busted hip and ruptured spleen. You seriously do not want to hit one.’

‘And how was the deer? Did it carry on helping Santa with his deliveries?’

‘And I thought I was the sick one here!’

The car began accelerating again and in moments the speed readout was above 80mph. The road ahead was dead straight, and the speed rose again.

A bend was coming up.

As they approached, the speed dropped: 75; 70.

Whoever was driving must know this road well, Grace thought. If not, they were a total idiot. But if this was indeed the Ferrari’s dashcam, and it was Dermot Bryson driving, then yes, he would know this stretch of road like the back of his hand.

Then, as the headlights showed they were entering a long, sweeping curve, Grace almost missed a heartbeat, as a pair of dazzling headlights came from the opposite direction, straight towards them.

Straight towards a head-on collision.

‘Jesus,’ he murmured under his breath.

The car’s lights veered to the right. So did the oncoming lights, getting brighter with each fraction of a second.

Then to the left.

So did the oncoming lights.

Yards away now from a massive collision.

Suddenly, the lights in front of the dashcam swerved sharply right. For an instant, all they illuminated were trees and shrubbery.

An instant later there was an intensely bright flash, and the camera appeared to be cartwheeling into a darkness, showing streaks of light, like sparks, either side.

‘Jesus,’ Branson said. ‘I’m perspiring!’

‘Quite a ride,’ Grace said grimly. ‘Want a replay?’

Without waiting for an answer, he played the footage again from the same place, slowing it right down after the deer incident, watching mystified. A car, going like a bat out of hell had come the other way, head-on at them — how on earth had the two vehicles avoided colliding?

By Dermot Bryson driving off the road? Swerving to avoid it?

He was struggling to make sense of what he had seen. And the speed at which the oncoming vehicle appeared to be travelling.

The team in the FCIU were highly skilled in their forensic examinations of both crashed vehicles and the crash scene. Whoever had been driving in the opposite direction would have left massive tyre tracks on the road, as would Bryson’s Ferrari. He had a whole bunch of question marks in his head.

‘What do you know about who was driving and what the car was?’ Branson asked.

‘We’re about to find out.’ He dialled James Biggs’ number.

The RPU Inspector answered on the first ring. ‘Quite a show, right, boss?’

‘A shit-show and a half, Biggsy. But I’m sure Glenn will have seen a car chase in a movie to top it,’ Grace replied and glanced up. His colleague nodded with a grim smile. ‘He’s been watching it with me, I’ll put him on speaker.’

‘Bullit?’ Branson suggested. ‘Fast and Furious?’

‘And the rest...’ Biggs replied grimly.

‘So what do we know about the other vehicle, the oncoming one?’ Grace asked him.

‘That’s the interesting bit, boss. There’s no trace of any other car.’

‘No trace? What do you mean no trace?’

‘Just that, boss. There’s no trace of an oncoming car. There’s nothing to indicate it was there.’

‘But it’s on the recording — the headlights. Coming straight at Bryson’s Ferrari at immense speed.’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘It must have braked.’

‘You’d expect a car coming the other way at speed, on a narrow road with barely enough room for two cars to pass, to have stamped on its brakes, right?’ the RPU Inspector said.

‘Stamped on them and then some,’ Grace retorted.

‘Exactly. You’d have expected both drivers, no matter how inebriated or intoxicated from drink or drugs, to have braked like crazy. But the only skid marks we’ve found on the road are from Bryson’s Ferrari. Nothing from the opposite direction and no sign of debris from any other car either.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘Nothing.’

Great, Roy Grace thought. We’ve got a ghost gun and now a ghost car. ‘This isn’t making a lot of sense, Biggsy.’

‘You’re right, boss. I don’t think this is an ordinary double fatal RTC. I feel that you and the Major Crime Team should run this investigation. The RPU and the FCIU will retain the scene, of course. We’ve still got the road closed, and we need it closed for quite a bit longer, but we’ve a posse of angry locals.’

‘Have you moved the bodies yet?’ Grace asked.

‘Yes, they were recovered to the mortuary. We had the coroner’s officer, Michele Websdale, attending the scene yesterday, and at that point we didn’t have any reason to suspect this was something other than a straightforward driver-run-out-of-talent accident. Since then, with what we’ve found, I’ve requested a Home Office post-mortem and the coroner has agreed.’

‘Do you know who the pathologist will be?’

‘Nadiuska De Sancha.’

Grace was relieved. Nadiuska De Sancha was good news, efficient and pleasant to work with. ‘The PM is planned for 8 a.m. tomorrow?’

‘It is. At the moment I have one of my officers attending but I think it should be yours, boss.’

Grace made a mental note to send one of his team over to the mortuary, to attend, as soon as he ended this call.

‘Where’s the gun?’

‘I’ve had a Tactical Firearms Unit make it safe and remove it as an exhibit.’

‘And the residents are angry about the road closure?’

‘Fuming about it. About all the vehicles everywhere — the RPU, the Forensic Collision Investigations Unit, the coroner’s officer — who left with the bodies — and all the rest. As the Yanks might say, this is a right howdy-doody.’

‘So what have you got that’s making you so suspicious?’

‘Something I’d like you to see.’

‘Tell me?’

‘I’d like you to tell me, when you’ve figured it out. You’re the sharp detective, I’m just a humble traffic cop.’