The Shepherd File (8 page)

The
Casualties

Holmes took it easily as far as Chiswick and then began to pick up speed. Monique Shepherd was silent. He asked about shopping. She shrugged. ‘I’ve changed my mind. I would like to go straight home please.’

He could sense the tension in her. Lamb would have asked her point blank about Uplands. Holmes felt it was unwise; at least at this moment. He asked about her sister. The tension, if anything, increased. Yes, her sister from Liege was staying with her. Yes, she was taking the boy out. Holmes tried to talk casually but it was no good. He could feel the tension growing. He decided to change his tactics.

‘So you’re going to Uplands?’

‘Only to collect some things my husband left there.’

It was swiftly done; and she was not to know that Shepherd’s bag which he had left at Uplands was now at Scotland Yard.

‘So you’re not going to work for Colonel Lamb?’

‘No.’

‘He meant it kindly.’

‘I am sure he did.’

‘You don’t want to work for the department?’

‘No.’

He waited, but she did not volunteer her reasons. He did not press the point. They were coming to the Reading motorway and he accelerated, flicking the overdrive. The two-litre super-charged engine began to work hard, without noticeable effort. The wind hissed at the open windows.

He looked sideways at her. She was sitting upright, unrelaxed, the draught ruffling her hair so that the dark curls danced and waved over her face. Her lips attracted. They were firm, beautifully textured, fine skinned, with a long modulated line of mouth turning delicately to the slight dimpling where the lips ended and the cheeks began.

He looked away and into his driving mirror and there was a car on his tail. It did not seem at first of much significance but then he recognized it as a car he had seen twice before. He felt the tightening of his throat come with the split-second concentration of attention. He felt the danger without knowing it.

He had seen it in the Mall, just after they started, and again a few miles back in Chiswick — a large black Humber with what looked like a police aerial on the roof and two men inside, a driver and a passenger in the front seat. They were not in uniform, they were in plain clothes, and if the car was a police car they might be Special Branch or CID men, but if it was not they were two ordinary men dressed in two ordinary dark suits.

Holmes swung the Wolseley into the motorway’s slow lane, giving the car the chance to overtake, but the driver seemed suspiciously slow. He kept the Humber on the Wolseley’s tail, a yard or so behind, slightly to one side, too close for the speed they were doing.

Then it happened, suddenly, without warning, like so many things that can destroy or change. Holmes slowed the car again. His right foot lifted the pressure slightly from the accelerator while he waited, curious, for the next move, senses alert, filled with a sudden exhilaration from the adrenalin pumping in his blood. He was aware that Monique Shepherd had turned to look at him. She had sensed something was happening …

Holmes knew that at any moment she would look round and see the car. The question in his mind was whether to pretend to ignore the car, to take it for granted that it was behaving like any other car.

She turned and looked back. Holmes was looking in the driving mirror at the impassive shapes of the two men in the car. They were in silhouette in the mirror, hazy with the glare of the sun, but she would be able to see them clearly through the back window. He sensed rather than heard her reaction — the quick indrawn breath. He was still watching the two men. So far they had made no movement to indicate their intentions. On impulse, he accelerated.

The black Wolseley shot away, the needle mounting into the nineties, and for a moment the other car lagged behind, but as Holmes slacked off the accelerator a little the big Humber was coming up fast. They were both doing well over ninety.

The Humber pulled out into the fast lane. This was it. The Humber was coming up faster and Holmes’ foot went hard down. He wondered if he should warn the girl to get down and decided to wait a second longer and in that second the behaviour of the Humber changed. It slewed away slightly towards the centre strip of grass that separated the carriageways. The offside wheels of the Humber began to run on the wrong side of the white line marking the edge of the tarmac, within inches of the grass.

Holmes looked at his speedometer. Ninety-eight. He could feel the thrumming of the steering. He looked back. The Humber was hugging the grass strip. It veered away from it on to the road again, but the reprieve only lasted a second. It veered back and this time closer. The front wheels of the Humber kicked up dust right at the edge of the grass. Holmes watched with a growing bewilderment and then with growing horror.

Ahead of them was the sleek grey line of a flyover bridge, crossing the road. The concrete towers that supported the bridge came down on either side of the motorway and the centre tower filled the grass strip that divided the two lanes. The grey stone column holding the spans towered up from the grass, high and sleek and impregnable. Everything happened so quickly it was difficult to follow. Holmes saw the wheels of die car behind him jerk hideously as they hit the grass, springs thudding. The car swerved upwards, the front wheels spinning free, treads stripping, clods of turf and dust-smoke flying. The bridge flashed overhead, the stone pillar flashed past, and a fraction of a second later there was an ear-splitting explosion.

The Humber had hit the pillar of the flyover. The bridge shuddered. A cloud of grey-black dust rose like the smoke of a bomb. Through this dust spurted objects, a spraying glitter of exploding glass, a tyre with part of an axle hurtling over the bridge, a back seat cushion, ripped, skidding down the road. The car hit straight, concertina-ed. The noise was like a bomb. Within ten-thousandths of a second the human beings in the car were pulp, bones tearing through the skin, thigh bones splintering, feet and ankles torn off, vertebrae punctured by steel knives, faces obliterated, flesh squeezed out from between the bone and the skin, the bones torn, the skin fragmented.

Cars juddered and turned away from the debris spurting all over the motorway. A motorcyclist going through the cloud of dust on the up lane hit some of the debris and was catapulted into the air, gradually turning over, the machine following him a yard or so behind, rising in a graceful parabola and turning at the same time, up-ending, so that the handlebars were upside down and facing rearwards, the driver turning slightly faster, legs and arms spread-eagled, sending up a puff of dust as he fell under the up-ended machine. Man and machine tangled and grated along the road.

Five cars were scattering on the down lane, running off the verge to avoid debris. One had come to rest halfway over the banking, rear wheels spinning in the air. One car which had been going more slowly than the others had managed to stop short of the debris but two others piled into the slow car from behind, throwing it forwards and sideways. A fifth car coming up fast on the outside lane went into the centre grass strip, misjudged the effect of the soft earth on the steering and went right over, hitting the motorcyclist and his machine which were skidding on up the track.

The car which hit the motorcyclist was over on one side, sliding across the road, crumpling, spraying out petrol from a torn tank. The motorcycle missed the car by inches but its projecting brake and clutch controls, mud-flaps and footrests struck sparks as they grated the road surface. The spray of petrol from the torn car tank flicked over the motorcycle. The petrol exploded.

There was a brightly terrifying flash. Flames crumped up from side to side of the motorway, enveloping the dust and debris, sending up a black greasy cloud of smoke. The flames roared. They took hold and spread. A woman screamed. A flock of birds, starlings, swooping over the road at the moment of the explosion, caught the full upward draught of heat and flared, each individual bird momentarily enveloped in a tiny blue halo of dancing flame, dead as they flew.

The Wolseley had stopped two hundred yards beyond the flyover. Holmes and the girl got out and began to walk back. A raw acrid smell was blowing towards them. They could first smell and then taste burning rubber and tar and hot metal. They came out of the cloud of smoke and into another, thicker, and began to cough.

‘It's no good,’ she said. She stopped, turning her head down wind, shielding her eyes. The flyover loomed overhead, partially glimpsed through shredded smoke. They were close enough to hear the roar of the fire. They could see shapes in the glare of flame, incandescent, under the greasy black cloud.

They stood watching the bubbling black smoke, the high writhing cloud spread over the sky, the bits and pieces scattered on the road. A queue of cars was forming, both sides of the accident. Drivers were standing by, awed, watching. There was nothing to be done.

Holmes was recalling what he had seen, each detail, each move, and he had seen everything that had happened in close up, a long sequence of it before the Humber had hit the grass. He had seen everything after that, as well, yet he did not know what had happened.

They got back into the car. She lit a cigarette. Her hands were trembling.

‘There was nothing we could do,’ he said. He started the car, letting it tick over. It was as though he was reluctant to drive on after that and sat there in apprehension, waiting.

She was lying with her head back on the seat, her body angled, slumped, the skirt crumpled above her knees. She wanted a tablet but the amylozine was in her dressing-table drawer.

The gear went home and the car moved, the acceleration and the sound of the tyres on the road making an ascending melody, rising through the gears into top, until the speed sang. Monique looked across at Holmes. His face was hard. He was holding the wheel with his shoulders crouched.

The Wolseley slowed down, into the access lane, and turned at the cloverleaf into the Bray road. They went over a small bridge and the pine trees on the estate were visible ahead. Neither spoke until the car stopped outside the bungalow. ‘Come in and have a drink.’

She pushed open the door and went up the path, round the side, past the deserted sandpit and the scattered toys. A chrome yellow butterfly was flickering about the sun umbrella, attracted by the orange and blue stripes. The scent of pines was very strong.

She was fumbling in her handbag for the key to the back door and she heard his feet on the terrace behind her. The key clattered in the lock. She opened the door and went in, leaving it wide open, and he followed. He was aware of her nerves. She went to get the ice tray for the drinks. It stuck in the freezer and she wrenched at it. She fumbled with glasses, hands fluttering.

‘Is your sister in?’ he asked.

‘They’ve gone out. I expect they’re at the shops.’

He looked at his watch. It was nearly mid-day.

‘Go into the sitting-room,’ she said. ‘It’s cooler. I’ll bring the drinks.’

When she came in a few moments later with the tray he was standing by the window, hands in pockets, looking out.

‘Cigarette?’

‘No, thank you.’

She took one herself from the carton, hungrily, lit it, took one of the glasses, handed it to him, took the other for herself and drank deeply, as if she could not wait any longer, expressing in her actions the same kind of hunger she had had for the cigarette.

‘Is your sister going to be long?’

‘Perhaps.’

The gin was strong. The misted glass was cold to the touch. As he put it to his lips he could scent the gin and the lemon.

‘What caused it?’ she asked.

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘I can still see it. You read about road accidents. You don’t realize.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It was bad.’

‘Was it a tyre — or something?’ she asked.

‘Perhaps.’ He did not want to say what he thought.

She looked up, searching his face, feeling the sick feeling inside her and the trembling of her legs getting worse. He finished his drink and put it down, moving away, a gesture of departure. ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

‘I’m afraid I must. Thank you for the drink,’ he smiled. You mix them strong, don’t you?’

‘But — ’ She hesitated.

He waited. ‘I thought — ’ she said finally, ‘you wanted to ask me some questions.’

He had wanted to ask a number of questions but they would have to wait because now he had more urgent things to do. He wanted to be quite clear about what had happened on the motorway; and he wanted to follow it up quickly.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to ask questions.’

‘I’m not fooled by this offer of work,’ she said, suddenly.

He stood looking at her. He didn’t think she had been. ‘But someone,’ he said, ‘is fooling you, aren’t they?’

She did not reply. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Shepherd,’ he said.

He shook hands formally and she was aware of his strength, the bright eyes, the way the light shone on his face. His hand felt cool to touch but warm underneath as though the warmth would suddenly come to the surface of the skin. She seemed to be in a pool of light.

She heard the front door open and close and his footsteps recede along the path. She went to the window to look. He was walking briskly, not looking back, and the line of his shoulders and the way he carried his head, the movement, the physical shape, tightened her, bunching in a tight ball in her throat. She did not know what had caused this except that there was something in her that responded to him. It was the way he looked, the way he moved, the way he walked.