Family Business Read online

  FAMILY BUSINESS

  Mark Eklid

  Copyright © 2020 Mark Eklid

  All rights reserved.

  Independently published

  ISBN: 9798648417045

  To my partner, Sue

  PROLOGUE

  They were probably dead. I knew that as soon as I arrived at the scene. You develop an instinct when you’ve been doing this for as long as I have.

  The call from Control said there were reports of fatalities and, naturally, you suspect the worst when you hear those words but as soon as you respond to say you’re on your way you’re already thinking about the best route to get you there as quickly as you can. The sooner you can get there, the better. You never just assume the worst. You should never assume anything in this job because it’s rarely straightforward and often surprises you – sometimes in a good way.

  I reckoned I was only about five minutes away when the call came through that night and, because it was so late, there was hardly any traffic around, so I got there no problem. I was the first on the scene.

  I started to slow down when I saw the hazard lights of a car parked on the left of the road. There was nobody else around, so I reckoned these had to be the people who had called the accident through. It was the end of a fairly long straight stretch at that point, just before the road turned to the right, and there was no street lighting, so you could see the intermittent blinks of amber light for quite a while in the full beam. I killed the sirens and slowed down.

  It’s a bit of a relief, actually, when you see that the witnesses have stayed and waited for you to get there because they don’t always. Sometimes they’ll drive off when they see the police car arriving. Maybe they think they’ve done their bit or maybe there’s a reason why they don’t want to talk to the police at that time, I don’t know, but you have to make sure you get a clear look at them on the camera as you drive up, just in case, so that you’ve recorded their number plate. This time they stayed, which is good. It means you can get a statement from them without having to go through the hassle of having to track them down later.

  I pulled up a bit of a way behind the car because I could see in my headlights a gap in the hedge to my left and the steam rising from another vehicle where it had come to a very sudden halt against a very large tree. The other car was a bit further down the road. I positioned my car on an angle, pointing towards the crash scene so that it was illuminated by my headlights, and left the blues going. If anyone was to come down the road from either direction, you want them to see there had been an incident and, hopefully, they work out that they’re not meant to try to continue along the road. You can set up proper road blocks when other units arrive, but you have to do all you can as soon as you get there because it’s important to preserve the scene for the Serious Collision Investigation team to do their jobs properly.

  I radioed through to Control.

  ‘This is Mike Foxtrot Three.’

  ‘Receiving, Mike Foxtrot Three.’

  ‘I’m on the scene now. There appears to be only one vehicle involved and I’m just about to go to have a look. I’ll update shortly.’

  ‘Got that. There are three units on the way and Fire and Ambulance should be with you very soon.’

  ‘OK. Can you divert a couple of those units to close off the road from both directions please, approaching from Upper Whiston and Morthen?’

  ‘On to it, Mike Foxtrot Three.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  When I got out of the car, that’s when I knew, really, that there was very little chance of getting them out alive because it was too quiet. When you get to a crash scene, if you’re the first there, you sometimes have to prioritise and when you have people who are screaming and shouting you want to help them, of course you do, but it’s the ones who are quiet and not moving that you have to be most worried about. They’re the ones you should check on first but sometimes, of course, there’s nothing you can do for them.

  There was no noise at all that night. It was a lovely, still, late summer night with no wind. It was almost respectfully quiet. I do remember hearing a burst of a horn from what sounded like a heavy lorry on the motorway in the near distance and the sound sort of lingered mournfully in the air for a while but it was only later, when I knew more, that the sound felt like it carried extra significance.

  I could see the tyre skid marks in the light of the headlights, snaking first to the right and then sharply left towards where the vehicle had come to a halt through the hedge. My first thoughts were that they might have been trying to avoid hitting an animal in the road. There were fields on either side of the road, so that’s always possible. It’s surprising how many accidents are caused by people trying to avoid running over a fox or a badger.

  The doors of the other car opened when the people inside saw me walking towards them and I gestured to them to stay by their car. A woman in her twenties got out of the driver’s seat and a man, about the same age, got out from the passenger side.

  ‘Are you OK? Are you the ones who called through to 999?’

  The woman nodded.

  ‘It must have only just happened when we got here. The horn was going off and the lights were still on when we pulled up.’ She spoke quickly, almost tripping over her words she was so keen to pass on the information.

  ‘Callum went over to see if there was, you know, anything we could do but he said it looks like they’re both dead.’

  I glanced over to the lad. He looked really shaken and was staring towards the crash scene with narrowed eyes, like he was both repelled and irresistibly drawn to the horror of it, unable to take it all in. He said nothing.

  Poor kid. It’s tough to deal with, no matter how many times you see it. I do sometimes get affected by it myself but usually only later, when you finally get to sit down and have a bit of time to yourself. There’s so much you have to do that you can’t think about it at the time. You go into what I call ‘police mode’. It sounds cold to say but you only have a brief interaction with the victim in a fatal, so it doesn’t affect you that much. It’s a different matter if the victims are young though – especially babies and small children. That really gets to you.

  ‘Thank you for your patience but can I ask you to stay in your car for a bit longer until either myself or another officer can get a few details from you. I appreciate it’s very late.’

  ‘No, no, that’s OK,’ said the woman. ‘We understand.’

  She turned and climbed back into the car. It took the man a few seconds more before he could break the thrall the crash scene held over him and he was able to tentatively back away to join her.

  I unclipped the Maglite off my belt and took a deep breath as I followed the trail of the skid marks. I could see the car was a right mess. It was a little red MG convertible. An absolute classic. Must have been somebody’s pride and joy but it didn’t offer very much protection to the poor buggers inside when it hit a bloody big tree at what must have been a fair speed. I picked my way through the gap in the hedge and shone the torch over to the front of the car, which had been crumpled by the impact. The force of it had bent the car at a 30 degree angle.

  It was a two-seater and I could already tell, from the angle the car had come to a rest against the tree, that both seats were occupied. I approached from the driver’s side and took a pair of disposable gloves from my jacket pocket.

  It can be difficult to get to the occupants sometimes in a crash like that but there wasn’t an issue this time because the roof was down. I pressed my fingers against the driver’s neck to see if there was a pulse but, of course, there wasn’t. The steering wheel had practically embedded itself in his chest. He must have died instantly.

  I had to go round the other side of the tree to get to the
passenger and I shone my light around the immediate area in case anyone or anything had been thrown clear of the car but I couldn’t see anything.

  The windscreen appeared to have taken an impact blow from inside the car and I was able to confirm that when I reached the passenger. Her body had recoiled from the collision to slump lifelessly back in the seat after her head had hit the glass. She was turned towards me with fixed, blank, open eyes staring through a mask of blood and matted hair across her face. I checked. No pulse.

  I stepped back through the gap in the hedge and could hear another police car approaching. I radioed through to Control with an update.

  ‘Mike Foxtrot Three.’

  ‘Receiving, Mike Foxtrot Three.’

  ‘I have two occupants who both appear to be deceased. We have one male driver and a female passenger, both of them look like they are in their mid-fifties. The vehicle is a red MG convertible sports car, registration number...’

  I shone the torch on the back plate.

  ‘... yankee one hotel juliet lima.’

  ‘10-4 that, thank you.’

  The second police car had pulled up on the far side from the witnesses’ car, blocking the road from the opposite direction. I recognised it was Dave Wood as he climbed out and put his cap on. I walked over towards him to have a word but, in the glare of his headlights, I could see what looked like another fresh single tyre skid mark. This was on the left side of the road as I walked towards it, which then curved towards my right. I dropped to my haunches and had a closer look under the torch light.

  ‘Hey, Sarge.’

  ‘Now then, Woody,’ I said. ‘Does this look pretty recent to you?’

  He dropped down beside me.

  ‘Could be. What are you thinking?’

  ‘Judging by these marks, I’d say there was a motorbike heading from your direction which has drifted to the wrong side of the road coming round the bend and he’s been forced to brake heavily and swerved when he’s seen the car coming towards him. There are skid marks from the crashed car just about 50 yards from here, heading from the opposite direction, and they go to the right first before they swerve off to the left towards the tree. I thought at first it might be an animal in the road that he was trying to avoid, but I wonder if the driver saw the bike on the wrong side of the road heading straight towards him, veered right to try to avoid a collision and then he’s seen the bike trying to get back on to the correct side of the road, so he’s veered left and lost control.’

  Woody nodded. ‘What’s the situation with the car?’

  ‘Both dead.’

  He nodded again.

  ‘You’d better have a good look over to the right there, in case a bike has gone off the road and we’ve got another victim here. I don’t think there’s another car involved – did you see anything on the way down?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Have a search further up the road just in case there’s anything we’ve missed. I’ll have a word with the witnesses to see if they can tell me anything about a bike.’

  ‘Righto, Sarge.’

  We both stood up and headed our separate ways.

  I tapped on the window of the car. The driver looked like she was trying her best to comfort her bloke, who had his head in his hands and visibly jumped when he heard the tapping noise. The driver buzzed open the window.

  ‘Sorry to keep you. I will get an officer to you very soon if you’d be good enough to give us a statement but, in the meantime, could you tell me if you noticed a motorcycle at all as you drove here?

  ‘Yes we did!’ Her face lit up at the recollection. ‘There was a bike. It was coming in the opposite direction and it wasn’t half moving, wasn’t it, Callum?’

  She turned to him but he barely acknowledged the prompt.

  ‘It whizzed past us about half a mile up the road before we got to the crash.’

  I took my pocket notebook out of my jacket.

  ‘Do you have a dash cam at all?’ I had a quick look. I couldn’t see one.

  ‘No, we haven’t. Sorry.’ She looked disappointed, as if she fully expected me to censure her for being a bad witness, which was kind of sweet of her.

  ‘No bother. I wonder if you could tell me anything else about the bike. Do either of you know much about them?’

  Occasionally, you can get very useful detailed information when you’re dealing with bike enthusiasts.

  ‘Not really. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK. What sort of bike do you think it was – a big powerful one or a little moped?’

  ‘Definitely a big one. It was quite loud as it went past us.’

  ‘Single headlamp? Double headlamp?’

  ‘Err, single.’

  ‘One person aboard or two?’

  ‘One. I think. Yes, one.’

  ‘Did you see the colour of the bike or the colour of the clothing the rider was wearing? What about the colour of the helmet?’

  ‘It was very dark,’ she said, apologetically.

  ‘I appreciate that. Anything you can tell us will be helpful.’

  ‘I think the bike was dark-coloured and I think he was wearing proper leathers, you know, but I do remember seeing a flash of red from his helmet.’

  I wrote it all down. It wasn’t a great deal to go on, but it was a start. You don’t know at the time if the information has any relevance but, as I said, you never assume anything in this job. So I thanked them for their co-operation again and called the information through to Control, just in case any of the other cars had spotted a motorcyclist still on the road matching the description or if they come across an abandoned bike. You never know.

  There were more officers on the scene by then and the ambulance had rolled up as well. I could see Woody giving them a bit of a briefing, probably just to confirm to them they didn’t need to hurry. I went back to the car to get an incident pad so I could start the log. I’d already decided I was going to pull rank and turn it over to Woody after I’d done my bit. I knew he wouldn’t thank me for that.

  I looked at my watch. It was just after one. There’s never much chance you can get away from the scene until the end of your shift when you’re dealing with that sort of incident but that’s the way it goes.

  1

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The old man peered over the counter to where a thinning crown of greying hair bobbed to the noise of rummaging.

  The sound of plastic against plastic was interrupted momentarily by a few indecipherable muttered words of frustration before what was clearly an, as yet, unresolved search continued.

  The old man rocked back on his heels and peered over again. He was starting to get the feeling he had not been heard, so he cleared his throat and spoke again.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  The activity stopped. The bobbing head rose to reveal the face, beneath the lightly perspiring forehead, of a flustered man in his mid-fifties.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realise you were there. I’ll be with you in a few secs. I just need to find this… I know it’s in here somewhere because I...’

  The process of moving plastic around carried on.

  ‘You can never put your hands on the flaming thing when you need...’

  The old man cleared his throat again.

  ‘Is this the family history place?’

  The search would have to wait. The customer comes first. The man strained to ease himself off his creaking knees and rose to his full height.

  He was not especially tall, a bit above average maybe, and had the slight physique of one who made no effort to stay in shape because he had no cause to. He wore metal-rimmed glasses and a dark shirt and had a city council name badge on a lanyard about his neck. It settled against his chest, the right way forward, to show the old man, if he had cared to look, that he was talking to Graham.

  Graham drew a deep breath, put on his best ‘you now have my full attention’ smile and said: ‘The Local Studies Library, that’s right, sir. How can I help you
?’

  The old man stared blankly for a few seconds, as if he had forgotten why he was there in the first place, his mouth slightly agape, waiting for the words to come.

  ‘Aye, well, I’ve been watching that programme on the telly, you know the one with the famous people – well, I say famous, I’ve never bloody heard of half of them – anyway, the one where they find out about their ancestors and that. Are You What, Where Do You – oh, I can never remember what they call the bloody thing.’

  ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ He had allowed the floundering to go on for long enough.

  ‘What?’ The old man was taken aback, not sure if the bloke on the other side of the counter had suddenly become confrontational, before the realisation dawned.

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. Have you ever seen it?’

  If he had a pound for every time someone had asked him that question – when dealing with customers or when he told people for the first time where he worked – Graham reckoned he would now be spending his days in his own villa in the Canaries instead of fetching and carrying dusty volumes for dusty customers in a run-down Local Studies Library. He sighed.

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Bloody good programme. It gets a bit irritating when they start blubbing over somebody who died 150 years ago, but bloody good programme. Anyhow, I was watching it the other day and I decided I’d like to do my family history. Make sure the stories can be passed down when I’ve, you know, gone.’

  Graham smiled.

  ‘Good idea. A lot of people come here for exactly the same reason. Can I ask you, Mr…’

  ‘Smith.’

  ‘Mr Smith.’ Not a promising start. ‘Have you ever done any work on your family tree before or has anybody else in your family had a go?’

  ‘I haven’t. I don’t think anybody else has. Not as far as I’m aware anyway.’

  ‘OK, no bother. We’ve got access to the two major family history research websites at the library and either myself or one of the other members of staff here can show you how to get started. Those are our computer terminals over there.’