Peter James: Dead Tomorrow

‘He’s unconscious,’ the woman said.

The victim’s dark, tinted visor was down. The police officer knew it was important not to move him if at all possible. As gently as he could, he lifted up the visor, then touched the man’s face, opened his lips, felt inside his mouth for his tongue.

‘Can you hear me, sir? Can you hear me?’

Behind him, Ian Upperton asked, ‘Who is the driver of the BMW?’

A woman walked up to him, clutching a mobile phone, her face sheet white. In her forties, she was brassy-looking, with bleached blonde hair, and was wearing a fur-trimmed denim jacket, jeans and suede boots.

Subdued, she spoke in the gravelly voice of a heavy smoker. ‘Me,’ she said. ‘Shit, oh shit, oh shit. I didn’t see him. He came up like the wind. I didn’t see him. The road was clear.’ She was shaking, in shock.

The officer, long practised, put his face up close to hers, much closer than he needed just to hear her. He wanted to smell her, or, more particularly, smell her breath. He had a keen nose and he could frequently detect last night’s alcohol on someone who had been on a bender. There might be just the faintest trace now, but it was hard to tell, as it was so heavily masked by minty chewing gum and the reek of cigarette tobacco.

‘Would you step into my car, front passenger seat? I’ll be with you in a few minutes,’ Upperton said.

‘She pulled straight out!’ a man in an anorak said to him, almost incredulously. ‘I was right behind him.’

‘I’d appreciate your name and address, sir,’ the PC said.

‘Of course. She just pulled straight out. Mind you, he was travelling,’ the man admitted. ‘I was in my Range Rover.’ He jerked a thumb. ‘He absolutely flew past me.’

Upperton could see the ambulance arriving. ‘I’ll be right back, sir,’ he said, and hurried down to meet the paramedics.

How they handled the scene from here would very much depend on their initial assessment. If in their view it looked likely to be a fatality, then they would have to close the road until the Crash Scene Investigators had carried out their survey. In the meantime he radioed the controller and asked for two more units.

Festive parties had started early this year. At just after quarter to nine on Wednesday morning Detective Superintendent Roy Grace was sitting in his office nursing a hangover. He never used to suffer from hangovers, or at least very rarely, but recently they seemed to have become a regular occurrence. Maybe it was an age thing – he would be forty next August. Or maybe it was…

What exactly?

He should be feeling more settled in himself, he knew. For the first time in nine years since his wife, Sandy, had vanished, he was in a steady relationship, with a woman he really adored. He had recently been promoted to head up Major Crime, and the biggest obstacle to his career, Assistant Chief Constable Alison Vosper, who had never liked him, was moving to the other end of the country to take up a Deputy Chief Constable position.

So why, he kept wondering, did he so often wake up feeling like shit? Why was he drinking so recklessly suddenly?

Was it the knowledge that Cleo, who was about to turn thirty, was subtly – and sometimes not so subtly – angling for commitment? He had already effectively moved in with her and Humphrey, her mongrel rescue puppy – at least on a semi-permanent basis. The reason was in part that he really did want to be with her, but also because his mate and colleague Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson, whose marriage was on the rocks, had become an increasingly permanent lodger in his house. Much though he loved this man, they were too much of an odd couple to live together, and it was easier to leave Glenn to his own devices, although it pained Roy to see the mess he kept the place in – and in particular the mess he had made of Roy ’s prized vinyl and CD music collection.

He drained his second coffee of the morning, then unscrewed the cap of a bottle of sparkling water. Last night he had attended the Christmas dinner of the staff of Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, in a Chinese restaurant on the Marina, and then, instead of doing the sensible thing and going home afterwards, he had gone on with a crowd to the Rendezvous Casino, where he had drunk several brandies – which always gave him the worst hangovers – lost a rapid £50 on roulette and a further £100 at a blackjack table, before Cleo had – fortunately for him – dragged him away.

Normally at his desk by seven in the morning, he had just arrived in the office ten minutes ago, and so far the only task he had been able to perform, other than making himself coffee, was logging on to his computer. And tonight he had to go out again, to the retirement party of a chief superintendent called Jim Wilkinson.

He stared out of the window, at the car park and the ASDA supermarket across the road, then at the urban landscape of his beloved city beyond. It was a fine, crisp morning, the air so clear he could see the distant tall white chimney of the power station at Shoreham Harbour, with the blue-grey ribbon of the English Channel beyond, before it blended into the sky on the distant horizon. He’d only been in this office for a short while, after moving across from the other side of the building, where his view had been of the grey slab of the custody block, so this fine view was still something of a novelty and a joy. But not today.

Gripping his coffee mug in both hands, he saw to his dismay it was shaking. Shit, how drunk had he got last night? And from his hazy memory, Cleo had not drunk anything, which was just as well, as she’d been able to drive him back to her place. And – bloody hell – he could not even remember if they’d made love.

He shouldn’t have driven here this morning, he knew. He was probably still way over the limit. His stomach felt like a revolving cement mixer and he wasn’t sure whether the two fried eggs Cleo had forced down him had been a good idea or not. He was cold. He unhooked his suit jacket from the back of his chair and pulled it back on, then peered at his computer screen, glancing through the overnight serials – the list of every logged incident in the city of Brighton and Hove. New items got added by the minute and older ones that were still current got updated.

Among the more significant were a homophobic attack in Kemp Town and a serious assault in King’s Road. One, which had just been updated, was an RTC on Coldean Lane, a collision between a car and a motorcycle. It had first been logged at 08.32 and had just been updated with the information that H900, the police helicopter with a paramedic on board, had been requested.

Not good, he thought, with a slight shiver. He liked bikes and used to have them in his teens, when he first joined the police force and was dating Sandy, but he hadn’t ridden one since. A former colleague, Dave Gaylor, had bought himself a cool black Harley with red wheels when he retired, and, now that he had free use of a car as part of his promotion, Grace was tempted to replace his Alfa Romeo, which had recently been written off in a chase, with a bike – when the bastards at the insurance company finally coughed up – or rather, if . But when he’d mentioned it to Cleo, she had gone ballistic, despite being a little reckless behind the wheel herself.

Cleo, who was the Senior Anatomical Pathology Technician (as chief morticians were now known, in the new politically correct jargon which pervaded every aspect of police life, and which Roy privately detested with a vengeance) at Brighton and Hove City Mortuary, launched into a litany of the fatal injuries she witnessed regularly on her hapless overnight motorcyclist guests at the mortuary every time he raised the subject. And he knew that in some medical circles, particularly those working in trauma, where black humour was prevalent, bikers were nicknamed Donors on Wheels.