Peter James: Dead Man's Grip

‘Would you mind stepping out of the car please, madam?’

‘I’ll call you back, Sarah,’ she spluttered, then climbed out into the rain, her eyes blurry with tears.

The officer asked her again if she was the driver of the car, and then for her name and address. Then, holding a small instrument in a black and yellow weatherproof case, he addressed her in a stiffer, more formal tone. ‘Because you have been involved in a road traffic collision, I require you to provide a specimen of breath. I must tell you that failure or refusal to do so is an offence for which you can be arrested. Do you understand?’

She nodded and sniffed.

‘Have you drunk any alcohol in the past twenty minutes?’

How many people had an alcoholic drink before 9 a.m., she wondered? But then she felt a sudden panic closing in around her. Christ, how much had she drunk last night? Not that much, surely. It must be out of her system by now. She shook her head.

‘Have you smoked in the last five minutes?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I bloody need a fag now.’ She was shaking and her throat felt tight.

Ignoring her comment, the officer asked her age.

‘Forty-one.’

He tapped it into the machine, then made a further couple of entries before holding the machine out to her. A tube wrapped in cellophane protruded.

‘If you could pull the sterile wrapper off for me.’

She obliged, exposing the narrow white plastic tube inside it.

‘Thank you. I’d like you to take a deep breath, seal your lips around the tube and blow hard and continuously until I tell you to stop.’

Carly took a deep breath, then exhaled. She kept waiting for him to tell her to stop, but he stayed silent. Just as her lungs started to feel spent, she heard a beep, and he nodded his head. ‘Thank you.’

He showed her the dial of the machine. On it were the words sample taken . Then he stepped back, studying the machine for some moments.

She watched his face anxiously, shaking even more now with nerves. Suddenly, his expression hardened and he said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you that you have failed the breath test.’ He held the machine up so she could read the dial again. The one word on it: fail.

She felt her legs giving way. Aware that a man was watching her from inside the cafe´, she steadied herself against the side of her car. This wasn’t possible. She could not have failed. She just couldn’t have.

‘Madam, this device is indicating that you may be over the prescribed limit and I’m arresting you for providing a positive breath sample. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not possible, she said. ‘I didn’t – I haven’t – I was out last night, but-’

A few minutes ago Carly could not have imagined her day getting any worse. Now she was walking through the rain, being steered by the guiding arm of a police officer towards a marked car just beyond a line of police tape. She saw two ambulances, two fire engines and a whole host of other police vehicles. A tarpaulin had been erected around the rear section of the lorry and her imagination went into hyperdrive, guessing what was happening on the far side of it.

There was a terrible, almost preternatural stillness. She was vaguely aware of the steady patter of the rain, that was all. She walked past a fluorescent yellow jacket lying on the road. It had the word police stencilled on the back and she wondered why it had been discarded.

A tall, thin man with two cameras slung around his neck snapped her picture as she ducked under the tape. ‘I’m from the Argus newspaper. Can I have your name please?’ he asked her.

She said nothing, the words ‘I’m arresting you’ spinning around inside her head. She climbed lamely into the rear of the BMW estate and fumbled for the seat belt. The officer slammed the door on her.

The slam felt as final as a chapter of her life ending.

‘Dust. OK? See that? Can’t you see that?’

The young woman stared blankly at where her boss was pointing. Her English wasn’t too good and she had a problem understanding her, because the woman spoke so quickly that all her words seem to get joined together into one continuous, nasally undulating whine.

Did this idiot maid have defective vision or something? Fernanda Revere strutted angrily across the kitchen in her cerise Versace jogging suit and Jimmy Choo trainers, her wrist bangles clinking. A slightly built woman of forty-five, her looks surgically enhanced in a number of places and her wrinkles kept at bay with regular Botox, she exuded constant nervous energy.

Her husband, Lou, hunched on a barstool in the kitchen’s island unit, was eating his breakfast bagel and doing his best to ignore her. Today’s Wall Street Journal was on the Kindle lying beside his plate and President Obama was on the television above him.

Fernanda stopped in front of twin marble sinks that were wide enough to dunk a small elephant in. The vast bay window had a fine view across the rain-lashed manicured lawn, the shrubbery at the end and the dunes beyond, down to the sandy Long Island Sound beachfront and the Atlantic Ocean. On the floor was a megaphone which her husband used, on the rare occasions when he actually asserted himself, to shout threats at hikers who tramped over the dunes, which were a nature reserve.

But she wasn’t looking out of the window at this moment.

She ran her index finger along one of the shelves above the sinks and held it up inches in front of her maid’s eyes.

‘See that, Mannie? You know what that is? It’s called dust .’

The young woman stared uncomfortably at the dark grey smudge on her boss’s elegant manicured finger. She could also see the almost impossibly long varnished nail. And the diamond-encrusted Cartier watch on her wrist. She could smell her Jo Malone perfume.

Fernanda Revere tossed her short, peroxide-blonde hair angrily, then she wiped the dust off the finger on the bridge of her maid’s nose. The young woman flinched.

‘You’d better understand something, Mannie. I don’t allow dust in my house, got that? You want to stay here working for me or you want to go on the next plane back to the Philippines?’

‘Hon!’ said her husband. ‘Give it a break. The poor kid’s learning.’

Lou Revere looked back up at Obama on the television. The President was involved in a new diplomatic initiative in Palestine. Lou could do with Obama’s diplomacy in this house, he decided.

Fernanda rounded on her husband. ‘I don’t listen to you when you wear those clothes. You look too dumb to say anything intelligent in them.’

‘These are my golf clothes, OK? The same as I always wear.’

The ones that made him look ridiculous, she thought.

He grabbed the remote, tempted to turn the sound up and drown her voice out.

‘Jesus, what’s wrong with them?’

‘What’s wrong with them? You look like you’re wearing a circus clown’s pants and a pimp’s shirt. You look so – so…’ She flapped her hands, searching for the right word. ‘Stupid!’

Then she turned to the maid. ‘Don’t you agree? Doesn’t my husband look stupid?’

Mannie said nothing.

‘I mean, why do you all have to dress like circus clowns to play golf?’

‘It’s partly so we can see each other easily on the course,’ he said defensively.

‘Why don’t you just wear flashing lights on your heads, instead?’ She looked up at the clock on the wall, then immediately checked her watch: 9.20. Time for her yoga class. ‘See you later.’ She gave him a quick, loveless wave of her hand, as if she were brushing away a fly.