Driving Dead

by Stephen G Collier

  As she drove to work, along the Nene Valley Way, she thought again about how, when she’d woken up that morning, she had felt out of sorts. Not bad enough for her to take a sick day. But she felt even worse. She knew that she would get the third degree from Connie about being out on the town the previous night, if she asked to go home. So, she went into work as normal, trying to think of how and why she felt so ill.

  She stayed at her desk, not really concentrating on her work. She looked around the office. Her workspace was part of a large, open-plan office with partitions. Even the managers worked on the same floor. There were no special offices for managers or supervisors. It was supposed to ensure that the team worked together. There were motivational pictures on the wall – GOAL, PERSISTENCE and the ones that really pissed her off, ‘THERE’S NO I IN TEAM’ and ‘ASSUME – makes an ASS out of U and ME.’

  It was not the job she intended to do when she left school. After all, she got straight ‘A’s in her GCSEs and should have gone to uni, but couldn’t find a place. So she was left on the shelf, a bit like her personal life.

  God, my head hurts, she thought. She called to her colleague sitting opposite. ‘Hey, Gill, just how much did I have to drink last night? I feel crap.’

  ‘Not much,’ Gill responded, keeping her head down.

  ‘What do you mean by not much?’

  Gill looked up from her work. ‘Erm… you only had a couple of lagers in a bottle, then a load of shots and, of course, the wine before we all went out.’

  ‘That’s nothing to what I normally have. Although… shots?’ questioned Rachel. ‘I never drink shots.’

  ‘So you tell me. You were knocking a few of them back.’ She smiled at her knowingly.

  ‘So, why do I feel so bad?’

  ‘Must have been something you ate.’

  ‘But I didn’t eat anything.’

  ‘You must have, as you left with that blonde girl. You seemed to be getting on with quite well, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t. And what blonde girl?’

  ‘The one in that mini-dress, bit of a looker, probably bent as a nine-bob note, as my old dad would say, but you seemed OK with her.’

  ‘So, what happened? I’ve no memory of anything that happened last night?’

  ‘She was sitting at the bar on her own and came on to you. You carried on talking and drinking with her, and then left. Don’t you remember anything?’

  ‘Nope, not a thing.’

  ‘She must have put something in your drink then.’

  ‘How could she? You know how careful I am.’

  ‘It must have happened either before you left or afterwards. Where did you go?’

  ‘As I said,’ Rachel was more frustrated, ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember.’ She put her head down and sighed. She rubbed her face and moved her mousy brown hair back from her forehead.

  ‘You were both downing shots, as if they were going out of fashion. The rest of us left you to it. You seemed to be enjoying yourself so much.’

  ‘I must have had a skinful. Christ, I feel really unwell.’

  ‘Where did you leave the blonde?’

  ‘As I said, I don’t remember any blonde.’

  ‘OK, if you say so.’ Gill left it there and put her head down to get back to work. She had noticed Connie hovering in the background and didn’t want to get involved in a conversation with her.

  ‘All right, how did I get home?’

  Gill looked up again, glancing around the room to see where Connie was. ‘You came back to us just as we were leaving, so we all went home in the usual way.’

  ‘Oh.’ Rachel looked at the clock on the wall in front of her. 13.30, its red numerals flickered. She got up from her desk and walked over to her supervisor. She spoke quietly with him then returned to her workstation and, without a further word, left to go home.

  Heading out of the Brackmills Industrial Estate, Rachel drove her Fiat 500 out onto the A45 towards Wellingborough, then left onto the Lumbertubs Way.

  As she drove along the dual carriageway a bit slower than the fifty miles per hour speed limit, she felt a little drowsy. She took a swig of the Coca-Cola she had open in the cup holder. It didn’t do any good, because it was flat and she spluttered a bit as she drank.

  Leaving Northampton through Moulton and out onto the A43 heading toward Kettering, she thought she’d soon be back home in Broughton, where she could lie down and recover from her hangover. She reasoned that the journey home should be quick as she got onto the open road. It was usually a tiresome journey, particularly if you got stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle.

  Throughout the journey, she felt more and more unwell. Everything was swimming in front of her, in and out of focus. She hallucinated; spiders on the windscreen that she tried to bat off with the wipers. But her main concern was keeping it together until she got home. Feeling panicked, as she passed the Red House crossroads, she felt her feet and hands going numb, her eyelids getting heavier and, as she passed the turning for Walgrave, she blacked out.

  She was suddenly awoken by the blare of a car horn. She opened her eyes to see that she had drifted onto the wrong side of the road and a large van was heading directly towards her, the driver with his hand firmly planted on his horn and a look of horror on his face. To Rachel it sounded like a ship’s foghorn, blaring away, filling her senses.

  She wrenched the steering wheel of the little Fiat violently to the left to try to avoid the van, but it was too late. The van hit the Fiat, spinning it out of control and across the road where the large kerbstone lifted the little car off its wheels and over the barrier.

  It slithered and rolled down a steep embankment towards a water filled ditch. Despite her seat belt, Rachel was thrown about the vehicle, smashing her head and smashing the door window, then, as the vehicle rolled, hitting the gear lever, the front windscreen. Door post, gear lever, windscreen. Door post, gear lever, windscreen. Over and over again.

  The Fiat came to rest, upside down in the ditch. Rachel was unconscious, hanging in her seat belt. The vehicle slowly slipped further and further into the ditch, but she knew nothing of the dirty water that freely entered her lungs, drowning out her life.

  12

  There was a time when Jake thought he might like CID, but he’d never been a big one for the gallons of alcohol they managed to imbibe in one session. He preferred to savour his drinks; a whiskey, or a nice wine in a more relaxed atmosphere, as opposed to throwing as much beer down his neck as he could in the shortest time possible. If you didn’t fit in with that culture you may as well have given up. Which is what he’d done.

  He was still interested in the investigation of serious crime. He did, after all, look after the major collisions and road deaths for the county, until he’d been taken off that duty. Another Tyler legacy. So now, in his down time at work, Jake spent it sitting in his new office, reviewing the never-ending array of statistics that constantly occupied his time. Reviews of officers’ traffic offence reports were few and far between unless something had gone wrong, where the officer needed guidance or more frequently, a bollocking.

  He did enjoy the cut and thrust of a shift out on the street, doing what he always thought he was best at. He’d be foolish if he didn’t recognise the fact that his visit to Ian Morton’s place with Dave Harte a few days earlier kept his interest in the Fulborough Wood case alive.

  There was no indication of the bribe Morton had taken from Philpott to hide the remains, and Harte wanted to get a handle on the guy before passing it to the new DI. And when his supposed girlfriend turned up with a mouth like a drain, that just made his day.

  He sat back in his chair and rubbed his hands through his hair. The next problem was his ex. At this point in his career and personal life, he seemed only to be treading water, with no real chance of moving up the ranks, certainly not after the last twelv
e months’ troubles.

  His breakup with Rosie, almost nine months earlier, didn’t help his situation either. She had made no outward effort to save their marriage. Yes, she said and did what she thought was right, cooking, talking about work as if nothing was amiss, but he shuddered at the thought of his big, fat brother-in-law trucker getting it on with his wife. It was strange, that even after it was revealed that Rosie was having it away with Gaffney, her sister Elizabeth, Gaffney’s wife hadn’t even disowned her. It became clear from a conversation he’d had with Rosie that she would be glad to see the back of Adam.

  Reaching for his cup, Jake took a mouthful of tea, looked in the mug and turned up his nose. Cold. He opened his top drawer and took a biscuit from the packet that he’d bought from the local garage on his way to work. He flicked his way through another statistical report about speed enforcement targets and casually brushed away the crumbs he’d dropped on it, then picked up a planning report for the forthcoming European goods vehicle check on the M1 later in the month. He threw it back into his overflowing in-tray, not really having any inclination to read it. He sat back and rubbed his eyes. Time to get out on the street.

  There was a polite knock on his open office door. He looked up to see Beccy Burnett standing on the threshold. She entered before being asked.

  ‘Jake, got a minute?’

  ‘Always Beccy,’ he smiled. Her investigation with the force SIO, Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Marland, before being promoted to Assistant Chief Constable following Tyler’s death, was commended for its diligence and professionalism. The sheer number of exhibits from the destroyed police Volvo and the express train filled an aircraft hangar. Their investigation concluded that enough body parts were recovered from the collision to prove, through DNA evidence, that Bingham Tyler was well and truly dead. Even though some witnesses were adamant that he jumped out of the car before the collision.

  Beccy sat down in the chair opposite Jake against the back wall of the office. There was a large window behind his desk, over which he had a view of the trading estate, where they now resided.

  ‘Got a quick question for you.’

  ‘Fire away,’ he said leaning back in his chair, waiting.

  ‘You’re still FLO’ing Kirsty Kingsfield?’

  Jake nodded.

  Beccy looked around his office and not directly at him.

  ‘Come on, Beccy, you wouldn’t have come from your office on the top floor to ask me a question which you could easily have asked me on the phone.’

  ‘Perhaps I just wanted a break?’ she smiled.

  Jake was sceptical about that. ‘I know that look, Beccy. Something’s up, so what is it?’

  Beccy looked at Jake for a moment. ‘How often do you visit her?’

  ‘Not that often.’

  She tilted her head slightly and smiled. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, really. We’re not an item you know, if that’s what you think. You know I’m not like that. I don’t take advantage, do I?’

  He gave her a meaningful look, knowing that Beccy knew what the answer to that was.

  ‘It’s not me who’s thinking that. Personally, I think you’d make a fine couple.’

  ‘Don’t go there, Beccy. It’s bad enough with one affair in my marriage, let alone two. Anyway, she has no desires on me. I’m just there to help her through the trauma of losing her husband to a psychopath, which was less than twelve months ago – or have you forgotten?’ Jake sounded a little terse, which certainly wasn’t what he intended. He was not letting on about what feelings he did have for Kirsty. ‘I’m sorry, Beccy, but it takes time to recover from such trauma. She just sees me as her confidant, that’s all and as an FLO, that’s part of my job.’

  ‘OK, I believe you, but… ’ Beccy stood to go. ‘Just a heads-up, there are certain elements who think you’re too close to her, so be careful.’

  Jake gave Beccy a mock salute. ‘Aye, aye, sir. Noted.’

  As Beccy turned to go, there was another knock on the door. Jake nodded to Beccy in acknowledgement and indicated for his new visitor to come into his office as she left.

  ‘In trouble with the boss again, Jake?’

  ‘Don’t you start before you’ve even got through the door, Andy.’

  PC Andy Thomas was a forensic collision investigator who had many years’ experience in various units on the traffic department. But his best work was that of a collision investigator with the road death unit. He’d been on the unit for six years and was one of the most experienced collision investigators Jake had. When Andy pitched up in any supervisor’s office saying he had a problem, then most listened to what he had to say.

  Andy was of average height for a copper, fairly fit with black, receding hair swept back that revealed a deep widow’s peak. A Londoner, who, having seen the light, decamped from the Met up into ‘the sticks’.

  ‘OK. Andy, what’s up?’

  Andy pulled up the chair Beccy had just vacated, so it was close to Jake’s desk, and laid out four files.

  ‘There’s definitely a problem with these fatal files, that I mentioned to you a little while ago and I’m concerned,’ he said, as he sat down.

  ‘What concerns you, particularly?’

  ‘Well, just so you don’t think I’m going mad, I’d like you to read the toxicology reports from all of them.’ Andy stood and removed the relevant reports from the folders and placed them on the top of each file which he placed on Jake’s desk. ‘As you read them,’ he continued, ‘you will see that alcohol is not a contributing factor in any of these collisions. There is no significance in the location. There is no correlation between the times of the collisions. In fact, there are no correlating factors between any of them, except one.’

  Jake spread the four reports out on his desk.

  ‘In fact, for all intents and purposes, these are four unrelated fatal collisions, all within the last two months.’

  ‘Go on.’ Jake needed to hear where this was going.

  Andy sat back heavily in the chair, which by now he’d moved to the front of Jake’s desk. He took back the files, leaving Jake with the toxicology reports. Holding up each report as he spoke, he gave Jake a review of the files.

  ‘This fatal: M1 Southbound, two vehicles, decapitation, Mazda MX-5 taken out by the trailer of a forty-four tonner. Number two: A6003, Corby, single vehicle leaves carriageway into a tree. Number three: A5 Northbound, Watford Gap, mum dead, dad seriously injured, two traumatised kids. Number four: A43, Gibwood bend, female driver leaves the carriageway ends up upside-down in the ditch and drowns.’

  As Andy was explaining the collisions, Jake was carefully reading through the toxicology reports. He looked up. ‘Four reports. Four different pathologists. Four different toxicology screens. And?’

  ‘And what anomalies can you see in the reports?’

  ‘I don’t see anything that stands out. Nothing to link them that I can see.’

  ‘But there is something – and before you say it, I’ve checked all our other fatals for the last twelve months. Only these four last fatals have this.’

  He pointed to each of the reports on Jake’s desk. ‘See here, all of them have recorded an ‘unknown substance’ on their blood toxicology.’

  ‘But it could be a different one for each of them, couldn’t it?’

  ‘It could, but I bet you any money it isn’t.’

  Jake thought for a further moment. ‘I really can’t see any significance at this point, Andy, unless you have some other evidence. What would you have me do?’

  ‘Take it to Major Crimes?’

  ‘What and tell them that I think we have somebody going around, killing off drivers? I’d get laughed out the office.’

  ‘I still think we have something here, Jake.’

  ‘OK, Andy, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Go back to pathology and get on
e toxicologist to check all the samples again. If it turns out that it’s the same substance, then we will go to Major Crimes. Is that OK?’

  ‘That’s all I needed, Sarge.’

  Andy collected his files and left Jake’s office. That’s all I need, thought Jake, a bloody serial killer targeting drivers.

  13

  Jake stood at the wooden gate of his former home and looked around the front garden. In the time that they had both moved out, put it up for sale and received an offer quicker than they expected, the front lawn was overgrown, the hawthorn hedge down the left-hand side of the house needed cutting back and a number of plants had died. It looked unkempt, and, although he wasn’t the greatest gardener in the world, at least he knew how to keep it tidy.

  He took a deep breath to prepare himself for what he knew was going to be a stressful encounter with Rosie.

  He would never forget the day when the chase was on to search for Bingham Tyler, only to discover his wife in the arms of his brother-in-law, at the firm where they worked, Gaffney International Haulage.

  Tyler had attacked the staff and stolen a truck. If Jake hadn’t been the closest unit to the yard and, out of concern for his wife, got there first, he might never have known about her affair with Gaffney. And if it weren’t for the court order to monitise the estate equally, Jake wouldn’t be in the position of giving up his house, so she could have her half.

  He walked up the driveway towards the brown lacquered front door and let himself in. He remembered how much time it took to decide on whether to paint it a colour or just leave it as natural wood. He smiled, thinking about those better days, before all this trouble.

  He entered the light-coloured spacious hallway, a contrast to the darkness of the front door. He went straight upstairs to the bathroom, he needed the loo.

  On the day that he was supposed to have come to the house to hand it over to the estate agents, Jake never made it. He’d been called to an emergency on the A14. The estate agent understood and re-arranged. There was no rush from the new buyers. Rosie, on the other hand, was livid. Another nail in his coffin.