Road Kill

ROAD KILL

One

I swung the sledgehammer in a sweeping arc over my shoulder and smashed it downwards into the wall in front of me, allowing the sledge’s own weight and momentum to do half the work. Every dozen blows or so I stopped to let the billowing dust subside and to take a breather.

It was hard, hot, backbreaking work. Straightening up was something to be approached with caution, hearing the snap and pop as my spine realigned itself. The constant jarring through my hands was starting to make my left arm ache where I’d last had it broken, a year and a half before. I rubbed at it, feeling the calcified ridges on the bones of my forearm, and wondered if there was still a weakness there.

It was a bright Sunday in early August. I’d been beating the hell out of the bedroom walls of my new home practically since sunrise and, as therapy went, it was doing me the power of good.

I propped the sledge in a corner and gauged the time by the shadow the sunlight was casting into the room’s dirty interior. A little after twelve o’clock at a guess. My old wristwatch had clogged with grit and finally given up the ghost days ago and I hadn’t yet had the need, or the inclination, to venture out and get another.

It was during one of these brief periods of inactivity that I heard the distinctive sound of a motorbike being caned up the long dragging hill towards the cottage.

I crossed to the open first floor window, stepping carefully over lumps of fallen masonry and plaster that signified my morning’s work so far, and hung out across the sill. Easier said than done. The cottage was built somewhere towards the end of the nineteenth century with rubble-filled walls of local stone, a couple of feet thick.

The road was almost straight but it dipped occasionally out of sight. Sure enough, as I looked out I caught the flash of a bike headlight as it rose and fell into the undulations and shimmered through the heat haze coming up from the tarmac.

I leaned on my elbows, grateful of the slight breeze stirring my hair and cooling the sweat on my skin, and waited. The road past my new home went on for only another half mile and then became a farm track. The other two cottages in the same row had been recently revamped as holiday lets and were currently empty. If anyone was coming up here on a bike they were either very lost, or they were coming to see me.

The bike drew closer, the tortured exhaust note rising to a thunder, driving out the peace and stillness that normally surrounded this place. In the field over the road a gaggle of fat half-grown lambs scattered before it, bounding stiff-legged to safety.

The rider snapped into view over the last rise without appearing to slow his pace any. I recognised the distinctive shape of the Norton Commando as he thrashed past and waved my hand. The rider’s helmet ducked as he caught the gesture, grabbing a big handful of brake lever.

I held my breath and waited for the inevitable disaster, but it didn’t happen. The rider kept the bike straight and upright and brought it to a fast halt. He described a neat turn in the narrow road without having to put his feet down and came to a stop outside my front door, reaching for the strap on his helmet.

I’d already identified the rider by his leathers and by the bike, but it wasn’t someone I’d been expecting to pay me a visit. I’d known Sam Pickering for years but getting yourself caught up in the game plan of a murdering madman, as I’d done, has a tendency to put off even the keenest admirer and we’d drifted apart. I certainly didn’t know he’d got my new address, that’s for sure.

“Hello Sam,” I called down, casual. “Long time, no see. What brings you up here?”

Sam managed to extricate himself from his old AGV lid. Under it, his beard stuck out at angles and his straggly dark hair was plastered flat to his scalp. “Hell fire, Charlie,” he said, gasping for breath. “You’re a bloody difficult girl to track down.”

The day changed at that moment, grew unaccountably cooler. “What is it?” I said.

He looked up at me then. Perhaps it was because he was squinting into the sun that made him look so fearful. “It’s Jacob and Clare,” he said. “They’ve had an accident. A bad one.”

“Bad?” I straightened. “What do you mean ‘bad’?”

Sam screwed up his face, as though I might decide at any moment to shoot the messenger. “Jacob didn’t make it,” he said at last, heavily. “They’ve taken Clare to Lancaster but apparently she wasn’t looking good.”

“Wait there,” I said.

I ducked back inside, pulling the window shut after me and headed for the stairs, grabbing stuff as I went. My full leathers were hanging on the peg near the back door, but I ignored them. Suddenly I couldn’t hear over the thunder of blood in my ears.

The lean-to off what used to be the cottage kitchen had a doorway just wide enough to squeeze a bike through, so it had become my integral garage. I wheeled my elderly Suzuki RGV 250 straight out into the small rear yard and kicked it into life, letting the two-stroke engine tick over just long enough for me to struggle into my old jacket, helmet and gloves, and slam the Yale behind me.

I fumbled with the awkward latch on the back gate and my temper fizzed briefly, making me lash out at it with my fist. The pain the stupid action caused brought back a measure of sanity. I took a deep breath and tried to force calm on my rampaging heartrate. A morning’s hard physical labour hadn’t made the palms of my hands sweat. Sam had managed to bring that on with a couple of sentences.

He was waiting as instructed as I wheeled the Suzuki out alongside him. He’d put his helmet back on and now he regarded me with some anxiety through his open visor.

“Let’s go,” I said tightly. “Keep up or I’ll leave you behind.”

He managed a half smile, as though I was joking. The Commando’s engine was three times the size of my little RGV, but on the kind of twisty country roads we had to cover there would be little to choose between them. Besides, I was in a hell of a hurry.

Jacob dead.

Clare badly injured.

Jesus.

***

I don’t remember much about the ride to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. Perhaps the only way I could push the bike anywhere near fast enough was simply not to think about what I was doing.

Jacob Nash and Clare Elliot. I’d known them more than five years but never separately, couldn’t think of them any other way than together. Two halves of a whole.

I’d been so caught up with the renovations to the cottage that the last time I’d seen the pair of them was nearly a month ago. They’d been the same as ever, teasing, happy, vibrantly alive. Thinking of either of them dead sent me reeling into panic and denial.

Not that I was any stranger to death. I’d seen it, touched it and smelled it, more times than was good for me to remember. I’d even felt it come for me, for those I loved, and then swing away almost on a whim.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t truly believe the news about Jacob. Why I was making this near-suicidal dash to the hospital. Until I knew for certain that it was hopeless and he was truly gone, I would try to bind him to this life by sheer effort of will.

My mind kept running over and over what might have happened, but Sam had only arrived after the event, so he hadn’t been a direct witness. Clare had been asking for me, he’d been told, and he was the one who’d volunteered to try and track me down from scrappy bits of information and hearsay. Just about anything, by his way of thinking, was better than hanging around at the hospital.

The very fact that at one point after the crash Clare had obviously been conscious and lucid filled me with a small measure of hope but I shied away from the possible nature of her injuries.

Besides, what was she going to do without Jacob? Did she even know that he was dead?

I couldn’t imagine what kind of self-induced error had brought the pair of them down. Jacob was a seriously fast rider, had raced bikes in his younger days and still pushed hard on the road. He had skill I couldn’t even begin to match and a seeming sixth sense for dangers lurking round the next blind bend.

And Clare had too much respect for her classic Ducati 851 Strada to be reckless. In biking, as in all things, Clare just had too much style to do something as untidy as crashing.

So what the hell had gone wrong?

***

Lancaster on a Sunday was fairly quiet and I totally disregarded the posted speed limits all the way through town. Sam was right behind me when I finally pulled into the car park at the RLI and dived into a space marked ‘reserved for consultants only’.

For once I didn’t chain the bike up, or even check to see that it was settled fully onto its side-stand. Taking the keys out of the ignition was the most I could manage. Having Sam there made me try for composure, so we walked, rather than ran, into the building itself.

Nevertheless, I hit the entrance doors to Accident & Emergency shoulder first without slowing, punching them open and woe betide anyone unlucky enough to be standing on the other side.

Sam bypassed the reception desk and trotted off down a corridor. I wanted to stop and ask, but at the same time I didn’t want to let him out of sight, so I hurried after him with barely a break in stride.

It had been around ten months since my last visit to the RLI – only that time I’d arrived on a stretcher. I felt the familiar tightness in my chest that being inside the place again always brought on. They say the body doesn’t remember pain. They lie.

After a couple of corners the corridor opened out into a large recess that formed a waiting area. The three walls were lined with a rake of squat cloth chairs pushed together into benches. In the centre was a low table covered with nervously dog-eared magazines.

There were already half a dozen people in occupation. Most of them looked awkward and uncomfortable in their full race-replica leathers. A row of helmets sat like trophy skulls across the end run of seats.

I had time to wonder who they all were, these strangers. I didn’t think I’d been away long enough to be so completely out of touch. Nobody looked immediately familiar but I didn’t have time for a thorough inspection.

As soon as we appeared, a middle-aged woman who’d been sitting in a corner jumped to her feet and launched herself in my direction.

Before I knew it I’d been enveloped in a motherly embrace of such ferocity I barely knew how to react. Aggression I can deal with in my sleep. Affection defeats me every time.

I gave in long enough to hug her in return, then managed to lever myself back far enough to be able to breathe unrestricted.

“Pauline?” I said, suddenly grateful to see her. “What are you doing here?”

“Sam got them to call me,” she said gently. “He thought Clare might appreciate a friendly face.”

I’d known Pauline Jamieson since she started coming to the self-defence classes I was teaching around Lancaster a couple of years ago. Then, when those came to a somewhat abrupt end, she stuck by me as a friend.

After I’d introduced them, Pauline had got to know Jacob and Clare almost as well as I did. So, of course she would be here. Unaccountably, for the first time my voice wobbled and threatened to take the rest of my face down with it.

Pauline took one look at me and wrapped me in a big hug again. She was wearing a strappy summer dress that was a bit of a fashion mistake with her ample figure but she had the self-confidence to carry it off regardless. Her hair was a vivid shade of burgundy and she smelt of apples and peppermint.

“Clare will make it,” she said, eyeing me intently. Just when I thought her firm tone meant she’d had an updated report, she dashed my hopes by adding, “You’ve got to keep telling yourself that.”

“How is she? Have they told you anything?”

“Only that both her legs are broken,” Pauline said. She was one of the most matter-of-fact people I knew, but just saying the words even she winced. “Pelvis too, I think. I’m still waiting to hear.”

I blanked my mind to the image of Clare’s long artlessly perfect legs in pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “Does she know about Jacob?”

“Jacob?” Pauline frowned and glanced at Sam, then her eyebrows shot up and she let go of me just long enough to put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my goodness,” she said, a little faintly. “That wasn’t who she was on the bike with, Charlie. I thought so initially – everybody did – but we were wrong, thank heavens. It wasn’t Jacob.”

Parts of my brain overloaded and shut down. Anger sparked and flashed over. A gut instinct response, like the irate mother of a just-found missing child. The relief was so strong it actually hurt.

“Oh thank Christ for that,” I moaned, pulling away from Pauline’s arms to sink onto the nearest chair with my head in my hands.

“You might want to rethink the celebration a little, or at least tone it down,” said a voice above me, tight with compressed emotion. “It might not be your mate who’s cashed in his chips, but it was one of ours.”

I lifted my head to find one of the group of bikers had come over and was glaring at the three of us in fairly equal measure.

He was black, with high cheekbones and a buzz cut. Probably somewhere in his late twenties, he was built like a gym junkie, bulked out further by the snazzy one-piece leathers he was wearing. On the outside of both knees were hard plastic sliders, stuck on with velcro. The sliders were well scuffed, so either he had the bottle to lean his bike over far enough to get his knee down, or he fell off a lot.

The leathers were the latest pattern of expensive Nankai gear in white and two shades of bright green. I would have laid money on him having the latest pattern of expensive Kawasaki sports bike to match.

We each of us reacted to his intrusion according to our nature. Sam took a step back, I got to my feet and took a step forwards, and Pauline moved into the middle ground between us, stoutly undaunted.

“Don’t you think there’s been more than enough bloodshed for one day, young man?” she asked, her voice mild.

To my surprise, the big guy looked flustered at her quiet admonition. He dropped his gaze, hunching his shoulders uncomfortably inside all that kevlar-reinforced padding as though he’d developed a sudden itch.

“I’m sorry,” I said quickly, giving him a way out with honour along with an apologetic smile. I had to tilt my head back to look up at him and I was no short-stop. “I’ve just ridden down here like a bat out of hell believing one of my oldest friends was dead.” I shrugged. “But it was still thoughtless of me.”

He nodded at that, little more than a ducking of his head. On impulse I stuck my hand out.

“Charlie Fox,” I said. He took it and shook it, gently, his fingers engulfing mine.

“William,” he said in grudging response.

“Just William?”

There was a pause, then his face cracked in spite of himself. The smile lightened him up by about ten years and took him several notches down the threat scale at the same time. “Yeah,” he said. “Just William.”

Pauline introduced herself, too, then announced she was going to roust the medical staff again for more news. Sam had been hovering nervously while this exchange took place. “I’ll get coffee,” he offered and scurried away before I could do more than nod and smile at him.

William watched him leave with a shrewd stare. “I see your mate’s enough of a New Man to let you stand up for yourself,” he said wryly. Now he’d relaxed I could hear the culture in his voice, close to the lazy drawl of the wealthy classes.

“Sam knows his limitations,” I said. “But don’t underestimate him. He may not like physical confrontations, but he could beat your computer to death with one hand tied behind his back.”

William nodded and the humour left his face as the conversation died away.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “Who was he?”

“His name was Simon Grannell,” he said simply, “but everybody called him Slick.”

The name tickled at the back of my memory but I couldn’t put a face to it. “So, what happened, do you know?” I asked.

“Not sure. We got there not long after,” he said, sounding both tired and angry, running a hand over the top of his scalp. “Slick was already toast and your lady friend was still lying in the middle of the road. I damned near ran over her, too.”

Despite the heat my arms went cold enough to sprout instant goosebumps. “‘Too’?” I said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’m no expert but it looked like something went over her after they hit the deck.”

“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. “I suppose her Ducati’s totalled?”

“Ducati?” William frowned. “What Ducati? Slick’s bike was a Suzuki streetfighter. They were on that.”

Slick Grannell and a streetfighter Suzuki. Now I remembered him. One of the flashy group of riders who liked to show off at the local bikers’ haunt near Kirkby Lonsdale.

The last time I’d seen him was probably one mild dry Sunday in early July, setting off from Devil’s Bridge like the lights had just gone green on his own personal drag strip and someone else was picking up the tab on his tyres. An idle thought had crossed my mind at the time that he was heading for a fall. I never expected for a moment that he’d take my best friend with him.

For a moment I said nothing but something started niggling at the back of my mind. Clare had passed her bike test before she learned to drive a car and I’d never known her willingly ride pillion. She hated it. Yet there she’d been, out on the back of this guy Slick’s bike when I could have sworn she thought he was as big an idiot as I did.

“What the hell was Clare doing out with Slick?” I asked.

William glanced at me sharply, as though maybe he sensed the implied criticism of his mate. “I don’t know,” he said. He saw my expression and was back to his grim-faced look again. “I just want to find out what happened to them,” he said, “and she’s the only one who can fill in the blanks.”

Pauline reappeared at that moment and I glanced at her, hopeful, but she shook her head. “They aren’t for telling me anything,” she said.

“Right,” I said, determined. “My turn.”

***

“Look, I appreciate that you’re concerned for your friend, but there really is nothing I can tell you beyond the fact we’re doing everything we can.”

The doctor finished making some illegible scrawl on her clipboard and almost threw it down onto the cluttered desk. She barely seemed out of her teens but she must have passed out top in her class for stubbornness. She was frail and slender and looked tired down to her bones.

The pager in the pocket of her white coat went off and she picked it out, reading the display distractedly, then shut it off. Her attention was already somewhere else. I touched her sleeve, enough to bring her back to me.

“OK,” I said quickly. “I know I’m not family but to me Clare is family. Closer than family. I understand her legs are smashed. Can you at least tell me if it’s as bad as I’ve heard?”

The young doctor’s eyes flicked down to where my fingers rested on her arm, then up to meet my gaze again and I saw wariness replace exasperation. I took my hand back. She sighed noisily and pushed a lank strand of hair out of her eyes.

“Yes, it’s bad,” she said at last, the admission seeming to sap the last of her meagre energy. She stuck her hands into her pockets, pulling her shoulders down, too.

I shrugged helplessly. “So – will she walk?”

“That depends,” the doctor said, stony, “on whether we can save her legs.”

She paused and must have seen the blank shock in my face. She let her breath out heavily, took pity on me. “Look, your friend came in with her pelvic girdle completely fractured in three places. Before we could do anything else we had to put her in an ex-fix in A&E to stabilise her. You know what one of those is, right?”

“Right,” I said. You can’t ride a bike and not have seen people hobbling round with their busted limbs wired back together in an external fixator.

She eyed me for a moment before she went on. “I won’t go into technical details, but basically your friend’s left femur is in too many pieces to count. Her right’s not as bad but it’s still a mess. If whatever vehicle that hit them had run over her torso instead of her legs, she’d be dead right now. As it is, she’s got nerve and blood vessel damage to both limbs. If we can’t repair it—” she shrugged, “—she’ll lose her legs.”

I was silent for a moment. “Would it help if you had the best orthopaedic surgeon in the country to work on her – someone who specialises in motorcycle injuries?”

She bridled at that, waving me away. “I can assure you that the surgical team here is excellent—”

“As good as Richard Foxcroft?”

She began to form an affirmative reply on a reflex, then stopped as the name went in. “Mr Foxcroft?” she said and the wariness was back in full force. She threw me a short, assessing gaze. “He used to be one of the consultants here but I can’t—”

I grabbed a pen from her clipboard and scrawled a rapid set of digits across the corner of a sheet of paper, ripping it off and handing it to her. “That’s his home number,” I said. “He could be here in an hour and a half. Will you at least call him and see what he says?”

She was eyeing me now with outright suspicion, fingering the torn scrap I’d given her. The temptation was clear but she was still dubious. “And how do I explain to Mr Foxcroft where I got hold of this?” she demanded.

I gave her my most winning smile. “Tell him it came from his daughter,” I said.

***

Half the secret of being pushy is knowing when to stop pushing and let the weight of your argument roll all by itself. I went back to the waiting area prepared to dig in for the long haul.

Sam had returned successful from his coffee-gathering foray and seemed to have broken the ice a little with William. When I reappeared they were sitting talking about their own past accidents and lucky escapes, their faces sober.

It was the kind of talk bikers always seem to fall back on at times like these. Any moment now, one of them was going to show the other his scars. I hoped nobody asked to see mine or we’d be here all night.

Sam looked up at my approach, mirroring the hopeful expression I’d worn earlier myself, but I shook my head. I wasn’t quite willing to share the news that Clare might be facing amputation, not quite yet. Not until the young doctor had made that phone call, at any rate.

“Where’s Pauline?” I asked.

“Gone to see if she can track down Jacob,” Sam said. “He’s not answering at home or on his mobile. Pauline said she’d have a run out to Caton and see if the Range Rover’s outside the house.”

The jacket pocket of William’s leathers started playing the theme from Mission: Impossible. He got to his feet, bringing out a mobile phone, and moved away to take the call before the nurses could pounce on him. I took his seat beside Sam.

“So what are you up to these days?” Sam asked then, handing me a coffee. “You’ve been right off the map since the winter.”

I nodded my thanks. “Not much at the moment,” I said, evasive. “Apart from working on the cottage, of course. It belongs to my parents, really. I’m just sorting out the renovations for them and in return I get to live there rent free.”

If I’d hoped that might distract him, it didn’t work. He was regarding me with those sorrowful spaniel’s eyes of his. Eyes that didn’t miss much.

“Rumour had it you’d gone off to be a mercenary and were either dead or in prison.” He said the words with a smile that wasn’t entirely present in his voice.

“Interesting,” I returned, neutral, dipping my nose into my coffee cup again. And close, I thought. “But wrong on all counts.”

“But you’re still tied up with that Meyer bloke, aren’t you.”

It was posed more as an accusation than a question and there was enough hint of sulkiness in Sam’s tone to bring my head round in surprise.

“If you mean Sean, then yes I am,” I agreed calmly, watching him flush and allow our eye contact to slide. “You seem very well informed on the subject.”

He squirmed a little at that. “Yeah well, it just seems kind of odd that this guy turns up out of the blue and next thing I know you’ve gone off gallivanting all over the world with him.”

I refrained from reminding Sam that, not only had I never for a moment given him any cause to believe he was more than just a friend to me, but also that I’d do as I damn well pleased.

“Sean and I were in the army together. We go way back,” I said instead, deliberate, too irritated by his moody behaviour to much care how he put that one together. “He runs his own close protection agency now. I needed a job. He offered me one. I took it.”

What I didn’t add was that my first proper assignment in the States that spring had gone terribly wrong and since then I’d been in a kind of limbo, both with Sean and with my fledgling newfound career. Over the last few months I’d felt almost as though I was watching life from the sidelines without joining in. It was not, I recognised, a state of affairs that could go on much longer.

Sam drained the last of his own coffee and crumpled the plastic cup between his fingers, taking his time over it.

“You’ve changed, Charlie,” he said then, rather sadly.

I glanced at him.

“Yeah well,” I said. “Everything does.”

***

Sam might have been about to say more but at that moment a mismatched couple came storming down the corridor and burst into the waiting area.

The guy was short and squat with huge sloping shoulders inside his badge-covered leather jacket. He had big hands tattooed with snakes and old engine oil and he looked like a brawler. The scar from what was most likely a long-time healed glassing stretched the left-hand side of his upper lip back slightly, giving him a permanent sneer.

With him was a small woman, so slightly built she must have been able to pick her wardrobe from children’s departments. She had a lot of piercings and long dark hair that was scraped back and held tight almost at her crown by a scrunchie. So many silver bangles dangled out of the sleeves of her tasselled leather jacket that she jingled when she moved.

Beside me, Sam murmured, “Uh-oh,” under his breath and I raised an eyebrow at him. “Slick’s missus,” he added, catching the look.

I hadn’t known Slick had a regular girlfriend, never mind someone who was permanent enough to qualify as a wife. He’d never behaved as though he had any commitments, that’s for sure.

Now, she came storming across the waiting area heading straight for William, with the big biker stalking in her wake.

“What the fuck was he up to, William?” she demanded, her voice harsh and shrill. She was, I realised, quite a bit older than her first impression. There were deep lines etched in round her eyes and from the outer edges of her nostrils down to the corners of her mouth.

“We don’t know any more than you do, Tess,” William said, sounding snappy rather than sympathetic.

Tess was shivering violently. She gave a sniff, wiping her face with the back of her hand. I winced in case the bundle of silver rings on her fingers became entangled with the pewter ones in her nose but, remarkably perhaps, she came away unsnared.

“Stupid bastard,” she muttered bitterly. “How could he do this to me? Just when he was about to do something right for once, he chucks it all away over some blonde bimbo.”

There was enough blonde in my own hair for me to feel included in that insult. I got to my feet and moved in deliberately. The big biker who’d arrived with Tess took one look at my face and put himself between us.

It would have been easy to dismiss him just as muscle, but the eyes that stared out of his slightly flattened face like two hard grey pebbles were bright with intelligence.

“Leave it, Tess,” he snapped, the way you’d speak to a dog. “We dunno what happened to Slick.”

William looked momentarily surprised at this reasoned argument. “Yeah, Tess. Don’t say or do anything in haste you might have cause to regret at leisure,” he said, with a meaningful glance in my direction. “Like while you’re having your jaw wired back together, hmm?”

A picture floated into my head of Slick’s grinning, cocksure face. I would have sworn Clare had been just as disdainful of him. I could see him on that flashy gold and blue custom-painted bike of his, setting off just about every time up on the back wheel. Always close to the edge. This time over it.

“No way would Clare ever cheat on Jacob, so before you start accusing her of anything,” I said, making an attempt to keep my voice level and hearing the sting the effort of doing so was putting into it, “you might want to think about the fact that Slick Grannell was asking for trouble.”

Tess’s face darkened and she took a step forwards, bristling. With the hairstyle and the thin pointed features the overall effect was that of a Yorkshire terrier on speed. It seemed to take her a moment to realise that neither of the two men had made any moves to back her up. She stopped and glared at them, then turned back to me.

“Oh yeah?” she jeered. “Well, if everything’s so lovey-dovey between them, why isn’t her old man here by her bedside?”

I didn’t have an immediate answer to that one but at that moment I heard footsteps along the corridor and turned, hoping for Jacob himself or, at second best, my father. Instead, it was Pauline who hurried back into the waiting area. She’d clearly caught the tail-end of the conversation and was staring at the group of us, white faced.

“Pauline!” I said, relieved. “Did you find Jacob?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The house is locked up with the dogs still inside, and the car and Jacob’s bike were both there but . . .” She hesitated a moment, uncertain. “It’s like Jacob himself has just, well, disappeared.”