The Cut-Out

by Jon King

  “After you.”

  Dave broke off, then stood up straight to analyze the result. “As for Diana,” he said, “that’s a different level completely. I’ve been involved in things you’d never believe, taken out more political targets than there are balls on this table—” I counted them. There were twenty-two. “—But Diana? No, never anything as big as that.”

  I guzzled a mouthful of Guinness and lined up my shot. “But it could be done? I mean, assassinate someone in that way, by car crash. It could be done?”

  “Oh, for sure. Absolutely. Unlucky.”

  I missed, so I stood back from the table and chalked my cue. “You know the car was stolen prior to the accident,” I said.

  “Yeah, well that’s how it’s done, isn’t it. Borrow the car for a couple of days, fix it, send it back good as new. No one would ever know.”

  “When you say ‘fix it’…?”

  “The brakes. Maybe the steering, too, depending on what you want it to do. I presume there were other vehicles involved apart from the tail car…?”

  “There were, yeah. There were reports of a second Mercedes, a motorbike and a white Fiat Uno, as well as an as yet unidentified car, a dark-coloured car about the same size as the Uno.”

  “But it was the Uno that collided with the Mercedes, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then the Uno was the scraper. The second Mercedes was the tail car and the Uno was the scraper. The Uno would’ve been weighed down low to the ground, maybe with cement bags or concrete blocks. That way it holds the road when it collides with the bigger vehicle.”

  A white Uno colliding with a black Mercedes.

  I took my next shot, and sure enough the white collided with the black. Problem was I was aiming for the pink.

  “Witnesses say they saw a bright light in the tunnel,” I said. “They say they saw a bright flash just moments before the crash.”

  “A strobe gun, probably. My guess is they would’ve used it in combination with the Brakes.”

  “The Brakes?”

  “The Boston Brakes, to give it its full name. It’s the name of a technique used by the ground teams. They favour it for its deniability, and its reliability.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve—”

  His laughter cut me off. “Plenty of times,” he said. “Oman, Gambia, Afghanistan. Many a warlord or tribal chief ended up slamming into a concrete wall at ninety miles an hour. And then there was Northern Ireland—”

  “Northern Ireland?”

  “—We used the Brakes so many times over there we got it down to a fine art.”

  “Jesus. So how does it work?”

  “Pretty simple, really. A small explosive device called a Blockbuster is attached to the brakes, and a parasite is fitted somewhere under the bonnet, maybe integrated with the EMS.”

  “The EMS?”

  “The electronic management system, basically the vehicle’s on-board computer, assuming it’s got one. The parasite is a tiny transceiver, not much bigger than a microchip, and tuned to receive a signal from a remote control activated from … well, from anywhere close-by. Maybe from inside the tail car, but more likely the scraper.”

  “The Uno...?”

  “Right. There’d be two boys in the Uno, the pilot and the engineer. When the engineer triggers the remote the Blockbuster kills the brakes and the parasite takes over the steering. The driver’s got no chance, especially if he’s on the receiving end of the strobe gun as well. I’ll tell you, Jon, it’s a cinch. They would’ve stood no chance. The minute they got in that car they would’ve been snookered—just like you.”

  “Eh…?” I’d been so engrossed in Dave’s explanation of the Boston Brakes as a deniable assassination technique I’d taken my eye off the game. Bad move. As he’d been talking he’d potted three reds and then managed to tuck the white up behind the green. I was indeed snookered.

  “O’ course, once the car’s been fitted up they have to make sure that’s the one they’re gonna use.”

  “The limousine company have confirmed it was the only car available that night,” I said, the hairs on the back of my neck starting to stand up and prick me as I realized what I was saying. “They couldn’t have used another car if they’d wanted to.”

  “Well there you go, then. People think, how did they know they’d be in Paris on that particular night? How did they know they would use that particular car? But intelligence like that is easily acquired. Nothing’s left to chance. They’re like bloody magicians, that lot.”

  Thankfully I was something of a magician myself, I realized, as – more by chance than ability – I managed to escape the snooker at the first time of asking.

  “Jammy git.”

  Standing up from the table I stole a moment to study the man there with me—former SAS, former mercenary, and God only knows what else. He’d seen it all and done it all, no doubt about that. He’d been there at the dirty end of the game more times than he would care to remember and he knew what he was talking about. But a ‘Boston Brakes’ car accident to assassinate a princess? It seemed like a plot even Hollywood might struggle to construct.

  “How sure are you about all this, Dave?” I said.

  Dave just shrugged, fired home the last of the reds and started to clear the colours. “One hundred per cent, mate. From the minute the decoy car left the Ritz to the moment the tail car closed in, it was obvious what was going down. Any of the lads’ll tell you that.” He chalked his cue and lined up his next shot. “But you don’t have to take my word for it,” he said as he sunk the pink and then sent the final black crashing into the corner pocket. “Ask around. Anyone who knows what they’re talking about’ll tell you the same.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “Professor Mackay? Jon King. And this is my colleague, John Beveridge. It’s good of you to see us.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome. Please come in.”

  JB and I had come to Birmingham University to interview Britain’s foremost expert on road traffic accidents, Professor Murray Mackay. On behalf of the government, Professor Mackay had visited the crash tunnel in the days following the incident and had reconstructed the crash using state-of-the-art computer technology. We were hoping to gain some insights into how the crash had actually happened, from the professional’s point of view—how fast the Mercedes was really travelling on impact, what really caused it to lose control, exactly what role the mysterious Fiat Uno had played in the crash.

  And whether or not, in Professor Mackay’s opinion, the crash could have been orchestrated.

  We were also hoping for a sneak preview of the professor’s computer-generated 3-D simulation of the crash in the hope that it might just reveal something – anything – to challenge the drink-drive version of events. We weren’t to be disappointed.

  Professor Mackay ushered us into the cramped and cluttered room that served as his office. Paint flaked from the ceiling and walls. Bits and pieces of engines – pistons, cylinders, flywheels: a crankshaft – lay scattered on the bench top that ran the length of one wall, along with an ad hoc array of engineering tools—drill and pin chucks, calipers, squares, a pocket-size vice, a micrometer, as well as other, less familiar gizmos.

  Above the bench top, concealing at least some of the wall’s flaking paint, were posters of badly crashed cars and mangled engine parts. A framed photograph of the professor in his younger years hung there, too, together with a diploma proudly displaying his credential and status. Opposite the bench top stood the professor’s desk, itself host to a chaotic array of office paraphernalia, while beneath the desk a wastepaper bin overflowed with screwed up bits of paper. In sum the place was, frankly, a tip. But it was a tip clearly beloved by the man who occupied it.

  “You’ll have to excuse the mess,” the professor said, as he cleared a path through the debris and directed us to our seats—a pair of time-worn wooden chairs parked at one end of his desk. “Officially it’s my office, but it sort of doubles as my play room, as yo
u may have guessed. Please, take a seat.”

  I sat myself down and dug around in my attaché case for my Dictaphone. “Do you mind, Professor?” I said, as I pulled out the pocket-sized tape recorder and set it on the desk in front of him. “It means we can record an accurate record of what you say.”

  “Of course. That’s perfectly okay. In fact I’d rather you did.” Then he added: “Can I order you a coffee, or…?”

  “I’m fine,” JB replied.

  “Me too,” I said, and switched the Dictaphone on.

  A few minutes later we were locked in conversation.

  “There certainly was a lack of tyre marks for a crash of this nature,” Professor Mackay was saying. “Although I must emphasize, that doesn’t necessarily imply anything suspicious.”

  “But it does imply some pretty skilful driving on the part of the Uno driver,” I said.

  “I would agree there was some rather abnormal driving just prior to the crash, yes.”

  “Abnormal?”

  “Well the Uno did cross lanes as the Mercedes approached it from behind, causing the Mercedes to impact its rear wing. There doesn’t seem to be any meaningful explanation for that. Or indeed, for the lack of tyre marks found at the scene.”

  “So even if there were no skid marks as such, you would still expect there to have been at least some degree of tyre marks on the road in a crash of this nature?”

  “Well yes, of course, made either by the Uno as it tried to avoid a second collision with the Mercedes immediately after it crashed, or by the Mercedes as it slammed its brakes on to avoid crashing into the concrete pillar.”

  “But there weren’t any—no skid marks, no tyre marks.”

  “Correct.”

  “Doesn’t that imply the Mercedes brakes might have failed?” JB put in.

  The professor thought about this for a moment. Then: “I suppose it’s possible,” he conceded. “We haven’t concluded all our tests yet.”

  “But if Henri Paul slammed his brakes on, as you might expect any driver to do in that situation, surely he would have left skid marks on the road?”

  “You would have thought so, yes.”

  “Or at least tyre marks,” I pressed. “At least some evidence that Henri Paul tried to apply his brakes and avoid the crash.”

  The professor cleared his throat, in a way that said we were perhaps pushing him a little too hard. “As I say, there was some rather abnormal driving just prior to the crash. But beyond that I really can’t say.”

  “Of course.” I decided to change tack. Consulting the notes I’d made prior to our meeting, referring to one of the many inaccurate headlines blazoned on the nation’s tabloids in the days and weeks following the crash, I said: “The media reported that Henri Paul was driving at a hundred-and-twenty miles an hour when he crashed.”

  Professor Mackay was shaking his head. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “Our research clearly shows the Mercedes was travelling at around sixty miles an hour on impact.”

  “But the media stated the speedometer was stuck on a hundred-and-twenty miles an hour following the crash.”

  “I’m afraid that’s inaccurate, too. Mercedes design their speedometers to revert to zero in any high-velocity impact. And that’s precisely what happened in this case.”

  “So why do you think the media would print false facts like that?” JB wanted to know.

  But Professor Mackay wasn’t prepared to speculate. “That’s a question you’ll have to put to them, I’m afraid. I can only tell you the facts as we know them.”

  “But you can confirm the Fiat Uno was definitely involved in the crash?”

  “Oh, yes, most certainly. I can show you if you’d like?” the professor said, already pushing himself up from his seat. “If you’d care to follow me, gentlemen...?”

  We did. Having quickly gathered up our bits we were ushered out of the office and along a short corridor that led through a set of double swing doors into Professor Mackay’s laboratory. Less dishevelled than his office, I quietly noted. Peeling off left on entry the professor then led us through a second door and into a small computing room furnished with a bank of perhaps half a dozen consoles and monitors. The professor’s assistant – a nerdy looking fellow in his late thirties with acne, glasses and a thatch of wire-wool hair, and wearing a grey lab coat – was seated at one of the consoles, hunched over a keyboard. He looked up from his work as we entered.

  “These gentlemen would like to see the Alma Tunnel simulation, if you wouldn’t mind, Martin,” Professor Mackay said to the man. “They’re researching the crash for a book they’re writing.”

  “Certainly,” Martin said, and immediately interrupted what he was doing to open up the computer’s animation program. He tapped letters and digits on the keyboard as he spoke. “If you’re writing a book you’ll need to get your facts right. And for that you couldn’t have come to a better place. This program has produced the most accurate reconstruction model in the world, bar none.”

  A few more letters and digits typed in by Martin and we were viewing, as he’d rightly pointed out, the world’s most accurate computer reconstruction of the crash that killed Diana. It was a highly revealing, if slightly disturbing, experience.

  “Okay, look. Here’s the Fiat Uno, and here’s the Mercedes,” Professor Mackay commented as the 3-D simulation played out the crash sequence on the computer screen. It showed two vehicles travelling on a dual-lane highway, approaching an underpass—Diana’s Mercedes travelling at speed in the outside lane, and a white Fiat Uno travelling a good deal slower in the inside lane. As the vehicles approached the entrance to the underpass – the Alma Tunnel – the Fiat Uno clearly pulled out, causing the Mercedes to collide with the smaller vehicle and lose control as a result. A third vehicle – a high-powered motorbike – then entered the fray. Professor Mackay’s commentary continued: “And here’s where the Mercedes collides with the smaller car, the Uno—there! And then a motorbike suddenly appears, pulls alongside and overtakes and ... well, you can see for yourself what happens next. The driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, struggles to retain control as he drives on into the tunnel. There—you see? The Mercedes swerves violently left, then right, then left again and into a concrete pillar on the central reservation. The result, I’m afraid, was fatal.”

  “Left, then right, then left again…”

  “Yes, you can see how the Mercedes responds after colliding with the Fiat Uno. It swerves violently left, then right, then left again into the concrete pillar.”

  “What about the motorbike?” JB put in. “Where did that come from? Who was riding it?”

  “I’m afraid we don’t know.”

  “Well, did it influence the crash?”

  “Again, I’m afraid we can’t say at this stage.” Professor Mackay turned to his assistant. “Could you run it again please, Martin?”

  Martin ran the sequence a second time.

  “What we do know is that the Fiat Uno influenced the crash. There—do you see? The Mercedes clips the back of the Fiat Uno and Henri Paul loses control, swerving first left, then right, then left again and into the concrete pillar.”

  “Left, right and left again. Yes, I see.”

  “Of course, there’s nothing in that sequence of manoeuvres that would necessarily suggest foul play.”

  “Can you be certain of that?” I put to the professor.

  The strained look on Professor Mackay’s face told me that perhaps he hadn’t seriously considered the possibility. And what’s more, considering it now seemed to make him a tad uncomfortable. I logged the fact. Then, with no response forthcoming from the professor, I moved the conversation on.

  “What about the Fiat Uno?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s strange that its driver didn’t appear to brake, or at least perform some kind of correction manoeuvre to avoid colliding with the crashed Mercedes? You say there were no tyre marks on the road?”

  “That’s correct, yes.”

  “So the
Mercedes hit the back of the Fiat Uno, causing Henri Paul to lose control, and two seconds later the Mercedes crashed into the concrete pillar—right in front of the Uno?”

  “Correct.”

  “But there were no tyre marks on the road to suggest the Uno driver either braked or was forced to make any other kind of correction manoeuvre?”

  “Well, as I think I’ve already said, there was certainly some abnormal driving that occurred, but…”

  “Who do you think was driving the Fiat Uno?” I said. I knew the answer before it came.

  “I’m afraid I can’t speculate on that—”

  “Of course...”

  “—But I’d be very interested to read your findings. When did you say your book would be published?”

  The question stopped me dead. Since we’d been mysteriously dumped by the three publishers who, in the immediate wake of Diana’s death, had fought tooth and nail over the right to publish our book, we’d struggled to gain interest from any other. It was as if word had been put round the industry that no one was to publish our book, and as a result, every UK publisher of any standing had closed the door in our face. True, I was no Stephen King, but I was nonetheless a published author with Hodder & Stoughton and my readership was sufficiently established, as they say in the trade, that a book deal would ordinarily have been guaranteed—especially for a book with such obvious commercial potential as the one JB and I were now writing. If not Hodder then any number of other major publishers would, on any regular day, have stepped in and snapped it up. But not this one. Not this book. Not on this day. Professor Mackay’s question drove the fact home. And it stung.

  “I’ll be sure and let you know as soon as it’s available,” was the best answer I could muster.

  “Well I’ll expect a signed copy.”

  “No problem.”