Driving Dead

by Stephen G Collier

  They’d put him in a side-room and, as Jake entered, Prentice was halfway through getting dressed. He looked up at Jake, his embarrassment obvious. Failing to meet his supervisor’s eye, Prentice mumbled, ‘Are you going to take the piss as well, Sarge?’

  ‘Moi?’ Jake said with open arms, smiling.

  Prentice just grunted. ‘Most of the others have. Worst effin’ night of my life. Some birthday.’

  Jake sat down in a chair by the door and leaned forward with his arms on his knees. He looked across at Prentice who’d sat down in a chair next to the bed to put on his boots.

  Jake tried to keep a straight face. ‘Is there anything you want to tell me, Chris?’

  ‘See, I knew you couldn’t resist taking the “P” as well.’

  ‘I’m just asking after your welfare. Anyway, I thought that you didn’t have any clothes?’ Jake chuckled.

  ‘Had the nightshift go home and get some uniform for me,’ puffed Prentice, struggling with a shirt that for some reason had been turned inside out. ‘See? The bastards are still taking the piss when they’re not here, turning my shirtsleeves the wrong way around.’

  Jake couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘Don’t, Sarge, it’s not funny.’

  ‘Mmm… it is, Chris.’

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to miss work as I’m supposed to be on duty.’ He looked at his watch, then said, ‘Now.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Not really, no. I think I’d prefer to forget the whole night.’

  ‘Try,’ Jake said, more serious.

  Prentice gave a big sigh. ‘I went out to celebrate my birthday. Thought my mates had my back. Clearly, they hadn’t. Next thing I know I’m buck-naked and strapped to a lamppost on Eastlands.

  ‘And how did you get in that position? As it were.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘How much had you had to drink?’

  ‘Enough, obviously.’

  ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘I’m fine. I just want to get back to work and forget about it.’

  ‘You don’t want the day off then?’

  ‘Nah, got to get the pisstaking out of the way. Anyway, I’m not actually injured. Don’t know why they brought me down here.’

  ‘Only if you’re sure.’

  Prentice nodded.

  At that moment, they heard a commotion outside his room. Poking his head outside, Jake scanned the corridor and located the noise close to the resuscitation room.

  ‘I’ll see you in the car,’ said Jake, and left to see what the problem was. Instincts and experience told him that such noisy activity meant that someone was kicking off about something.

  Doing up his hi-vis jacket, he approached a nurse coming towards him.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we’ve had to get an MI crash team in for a chap brought in after a road accident.’ She eyed his uniform. ‘I’m surprised you don’t know about it.’

  Jake’s radio sprang into life, cutting off anything else the nurse might have been about to say.

  ‘Tango supervisor 1540. Urgent message. Over.’

  ‘I think I’m going to find out now.’ He smiled.

  The nurse returned the smile and walked on. Jake bent his head down towards his radio and told them to go ahead.

  ‘1540, we’re in attendance at a serious collision on the A5, north of Watford Gap, reported as a 10/30. Can you attend?’

  ‘Affirmative. Who have you got at the scene?’

  ‘Half of Tango Mike One and Mike Five have booked their arrival.’

  ‘Copy that. I’ll take the other half of Mike One up there with me.’

  ‘All received, Sarge, out.’

  Jake returned to Prentice, who was talking with the pretty young blonde nurse he’d just spoken to. Jake thought Prentice looked a little flushed and couldn’t decide whether it was because of his ordeal or something else. Jake watched Prentice give the nurse his business card and quickly write something on the back. His eyes sparkled as he engaged with the nurse. Jake decided that it was the latter. Prentice glanced over towards Jake, who indicated that they should leave.

  ‘I’ll be out in a minute, Sarge. Just need to sign the discharge sheet.’

  Jake nodded. He guessed he could let the lad off. He still remembered what it was like to be young and filled with confidence. And policemen and nurses always did have some kind of bond.

  He’d liked Prentice from the first time they’d met at Fulborough Wood some twelve months before. Fresh blood, fresh ideas, fresh talent. All waiting to be tapped into. Enthusiastic about his new role on the Road Policing Unit, and obviously his evenings out.

  But as Prentice was the newest officer on the shift, he needed to make sure that Prentice’s practical skills while out on the road were up to scratch. Despite his ordeal during the night, Prentice was far too awake for Jake’s liking. Adrenaline keeping him going he thought and assumed that he’d not had that much sleep, but he seemed to be coping well without it. He knew from his own experience that the fatigue would hit him like a double decker bus later. Something that at his age he wouldn’t be able to cope with at all. What he did know was that sometime soon Prentice was going to have to give up the story of his eventful birthday party.

  En-route to the collision, Jake thought about Prentice sitting next to him. He glanced towards him.

  ‘This’ll be your first fatal won’t it, Chris?’

  ‘On the unit, yes. Seen plenty of 10/30s on area, as I told you at my interview.’

  Jake reflected for a moment then said, ‘I’m going to put you as OIC then. You ready for that?’

  Jake flicked on the siren to warn a driver hogging lane three of his approach as he waited for a response from Prentice.

  Eventually Prentice said, ‘Sure, no problem.’

  ‘So, in the last twelve months you’ve been to your first murder and now your first fatal as the Officer-In-Charge.’

  ‘Seems that way. Still, Dad taught me a lot about how to cope with the trauma. He’d seen enough of it with his time on the force.’

  Jake nodded.

  They spoke briefly a little more about his father, as Jake navigated carefully to the scene of the crash.

  Christ! What a mess! It never failed to amaze Jake that anyone could walk away from a car crash alive. Although in this case, they already knew that there was at least one person who was dead.

  Jake fervently hoped that Prentice’s coping strategy would be robust enough to help him through what he knew he was going to find.

  The two policemen clambered out of their Land Rover Discovery patrol car and walked towards the scene. He could feel Prentice’s nervousness.

  ‘You going to be OK?’ checked Jake.

  ‘Of course.’

  Jake wasn’t so sure as he looked at the smashed-up car, which he identified as a Nissan Qashqai.

  ‘How many fatals have you been to then, Sarge?’ murmured Prentice, surveying the scene before him.

  ‘Lost count. Been to a few on this road though.’

  Jake watched Prentice quickly wipe his hands on his trousers. Nerves. Jake looked around him. He’d been to collisions on this road many times and very few of them had been minor.

  The road here was bounded by trees on the right and followed the bend in the road, on which they were stood. There was a high hedge on the left that afforded no view of oncoming traffic. As it crested the hill, it quite rightly had double white lines down the centre. Jake looked skyward. Darker clouds were building and a late autumn mugginess pervaded the quietness of the scene, as the three emergency services went about their work.

  ‘Does it get any easier?’ Prentice asked Jake as they approached the mangled car.

  ‘No, not really. You ju
st, compartmentalise. If you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah, I think so.’

  They saw Reg Johnson, standing talking to a fire officer, next to the Qashqai. Reg introduced Jake to him, who then went off and answered his phone.

  ‘Reg, I’ve brought Chris up with me. He can crew with you for the rest of the shift.’

  ‘Thanks, Sarge. Thought I might get away from his enthusiasm for the day.’

  ‘No such luck I’m afraid, Reg,’ Prentice said.

  ‘I’m putting him down on the sheet as Officer In Charge.’

  ‘Baptism of fire then?’

  ‘I went to a few when I was on Incident Response, but generally it got left to RP. Now I’m here, on RP, so I suppose from the point of view of being my first to deal with, yes.’

  ‘OK,’ Johnson said, ‘let’s get one thing straight. It’s Traffic, not RP or roads policing.’ He gestured air speech marks as he said roads policing. ‘Or whatever name they decide later. To me it’ll always be Traffic.’

  Prentice shook his head. Jake just smiled. He’d known Johnson as a traffic cop even before he joined the unit. He was a well-worn portly five-foot-six traditionally orientated traffic cop with thinning pepper-pot hair and the typical cynicism of a copper with nearly twenty-nine years’ service.

  ‘Bloody typical, init,’ Johnson said. ‘I picks up me “Truckers Salad” at Rothersthorpe and then get sent up here, before I could even get it to the table.’

  ‘God’s sake, Reg, stop whingeing. Not as if you need it, is it?’ Jake smiled.

  ‘I had to grab two pieces of toast and stuff me bacon between them, wasting another quid. Only used to have to pay two bob, y’know,’ Johnson continued to grumble.

  ‘Let’s call it inflation and leave it at that.’

  ‘Bloody old dinosaur,’ Prentice said as a joke, as they went to inspect the vehicles.

  They arrived at the crushed car. Taking in the sight before them, Jake asked Johnson to update him on the situation.

  ‘Who’s been taken from this vehicle, Reg?’

  ‘Male passenger very poorly, may go 10/30. Two kids, boy and a girl, both with non-life-threatening injuries. Female driver is still in situ. Paramedic has pronounced life extinct.’

  ‘What injuries did the male have, do you know?’

  ‘Head.’

  ‘Wasn’t he the guy we saw at the hospital who’d crashed?’ Prentice asked.

  ‘Possibly. Don’t forget to check that out, Chris. What about the kids then, Reg?’

  ‘The girl was still in her booster seat, but the boy probably wasn’t wearing a seat belt and got thrown forward.’

  ‘OK, Reg. Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll go see if I can get anything out of the drivers of the other vehicles.’

  Jake nodded.

  He peered inside the car with Prentice. What they saw made Prentice retch a little. Jake saw him take a deep breath to calm himself and try to hide his response.

  ‘Looks as if the airbag inflated, but didn’t do its job,’ Prentice noticed.

  ‘That could be for a number of reasons. Unusual though. We’ll get an evaluation from the collision investigators.’

  Jake saw that the driver’s chest was crushed, the steering wheel having been pushed against it, breaking ribs, puncturing the skin and probably the lungs, allowing her to bleed out. Her head was slumped forward, her hands still gripping the steering wheel.

  Johnson approached Jake. ‘Just got a quick idea as to what’s happened from the truck driver. He’s a bit shook up, but I think he’ll be OK, once the water fairies have cut his legs free.’

  ‘You do have a way with words for our colleagues, Reg.’ Jake remarked. Reg just smiled back at Jake. ‘How’d this happen then? What’s he saying?’

  ‘Apparently, the bulk-tipper artic was travelling south when the Qashqai appeared to accelerate up the hill and slammed into the side of his truck, stuffing itself between the rear axle of the cab unit and the front axle of the trailer. No sidebars to stop it going under, you see. He braked heavily and the fourth axle rode over the front of the Qashqai, eventually spitting the vehicle out into the path of the rigid sixteen tonner that smashed into its side. The impact pushed the Qashqai back into the first lorry which had come to a stop, crushing the Qashqai between the two of them.’

  ‘That’ll probably answer the question about the airbag,’ Jake said to Prentice, who nodded. Traumatic all the same, especially for the kids. What about the tipper driver?’

  ‘Minor cuts and bruises, he’ll be OK. He’s sitting in my car, still a bit shocked.’

  ‘OK, take an initial statement from him, breathalyse and drug test?’

  Johnson nodded. He turned to Prentice.

  ‘Make sure we get somebody down to the hospital for the kids and the father, get an ETA for the collision investigator, and make sure the scene is locked down for her.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  Jake walked away from Prentice as he instructed him to take details. As he did so, his attention was drawn to the back of a dark-haired woman, who approached Prentice. He took a step closer to them to catch the conversation and moved back towards Prentice. By the time he’d got to him she was walking away. He thought about calling her back, but decided to ask Prentice instead.

  ‘Who was that?’

  Prentice turned to his sergeant. ‘A doctor in the tailback of cars walked up to see if she could help.’

  ‘Really, did you get her name?’

  ‘Sorry, sarg, no.’

  Jake watched the woman walking away. Something told him that it didn’t feel right, but he put it out of his mind.

  7

  They strolled together arm in arm in Victoria Park. The breaking autumn sun was warm with a breeze that Jake saw tugged lightly at Kirsty Kingsfield’s long red hair.

  He glanced toward her. He knew that look on her face. ‘You shouldn’t still be beating yourself up about this, Kirsty.’

  ‘I know Jake, but I can’t get over the fact that if it hadn’t have been for Parker, my husband might still be alive.’ She pushed some stray hairs away from her face.

  In the twelve months since Jim Kingsfield’s death, at the hands of Bingham Tyler, Jake knew that all her tears were gone and the only emotion that remained was regret. Regret that nobody saw it coming. Regret at the incident, years before, that started a chain of events that no one would have believed. Back then, Kirsty would have been unable to comprehend that she would be walking in a park, arm in arm, with him. Of course, he’d not told Kirsty about the ongoing nightmares he was having about Tyler and everything that happened. He knew that wouldn’t be fair on her. She’d had enough to deal with.

  As they walked, Jake was determined to continue to support her, despite being told by his boss to put some distance between them. He argued that his role as her Family Liaison Officer didn’t just finish after the inquest was done. He could see that she was an emotional wreck. He felt that he needed to be there for her during her darkest times. There had been a drift towards alcoholism that he had helped her avert. There had been days of depression when she had not wanted to see or talk to anyone – only him. And then there were the days when she didn’t want to go to work, to cut up dead people. A job he knew she’d been drawing away from. A job that, as the senior forensic pathologist at the hospital, was cruelly taken away from her. Jake thought that this was the most callous of things to do by her employer, in her time of grief. But most of all, Jake knew that she couldn’t reconcile the fact that Stephanie Parker was the catalyst for Kirsty’s trauma.

  ‘This isn’t Stephanie Parker’s fault,’ he said.

  ‘But how can I think otherwise? I know we’ve spoken about this before, but I just can’t bring myself to look at her in any other way.’

  ‘You can’t blame her for this. Jim only knew her in the early years of his serv
ice. Nobody could have known and nobody can be blamed for what happened or for how things turned out.’

  ‘I know, but he obsessed about her disappearance. We had conversations about it. I never thought it would lead to… ’ Kirsty’s voice trailed away. Jake knew that the whole Tyler incident had left Kirsty with an open wound. Although she masked it well now, it was always just gnawing away under the surface, which is why he could do no other than stay by her side. To support her when she needed him. He was also acutely aware that his own feelings for her needed to be thrown into this emotional maelstrom. He needed, no, wanted, to make her smile and laugh again, but knew that was still a long way off.

  ‘Stephanie Parker is not here and she’s not on anyone’s radar. And she shouldn’t stay on yours, Kirsty.’

  ‘I know I’m a little paranoid about it, Jake. This feeling just won’t go away. I suppose I need to blame something or someone and she is the only one directly involved that I can hold on to.’

  Jake was quiet for a moment. ‘You know that there have been many incidents that continue to haunt me, as I am sure that there are many autopsies that you would prefer to forget?’

  She nodded slightly.

  ‘Our jobs put us in front of bad stuff every day. It’s what we signed up to. And we have to find a strategy to cope with it. I know this situation is a little different for both of us, but you have to realise Kirsty, that one day you will wake up and instinctively know that you’ve put it away in a box in your head, and be able to think about the good things and not the trauma.

  ‘One of my younger officers asked me this morning how I coped dealing with fatal road accidents, seeing dead people and dealing with their relatives.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him what I told you at the start of all this. How do you cope with the dead? How do you cope with doing what you do, day in and day out? You hide it away, in here,’ he tapped his head, ‘and you have to hope that it stays hidden away. The thing is, that stuff happens in life to bring it all back again. It’s like,’ he paused, ‘taking LSD ten or twenty years ago, then having a flashback when you least expect it.’