Stuart Harrison - Lost Summer

‘London.’

‘And you’re a journalist. When I heard the name I wondered if it was you. You always knew what you wanted to do. How long have you been back?’

‘I arrived last night.’

‘I don’t suppose it’s changed much.’

‘No, not really.’

‘So, what brings you back here anyway? Gordon said something about you wanting to know about the lads that were killed in that accident last month?’

‘I’m looking into it for the sister of one of them. She has some questions about what happened.’

‘Helen Pierce,’ Graham said, frowning.

‘You spoke to her?’

‘A few times. Ben, wasn’t it, her brother’s name? He was driving but she said he couldn’t have been. Something to do with his illness. He was epileptic.’

‘According to Helen her brother never learned to drive because of it. She said he didn’t drink either.’

‘Because of the medicine he was taking. Yes, she told me that too.’ Graham opened a flap in the counter. ‘Look, why don’t you come inside where we can talk properly?’

They went through to a small inner office and Graham gestured to a chair at his desk. ‘Have a seat, Adam.’ He went around the desk and settled himself in his own chair. ‘Is Helen Pierce a friend of yours, or is your interest in this professional?’

‘A bit of both, I suppose you could say.’

‘You know there’s been an inquest already? There’s really no doubt that Ben Pierce was driving the car when it crashed, and the autopsy results proved he’d been drinking.’

‘I know. I talked to the pathologist this morning.’

‘So, how can I help?’

‘I don’t know exactly. I’d like to find out more about how the accident happened,’ Adam said.

‘Hang on.’ Graham got up and went to a row of filing cabinets where he dug out a copy of the accident report. ‘It was the fifth of September. A woman reported seeing the wreck from the Geltsdale road when she was taking her kids to school. I went up there straight away.’

The Geltsdale road crossed the fells and wound down to the valley in a series of curves, passing through the forest for a good part of the way. From what Adam could remember it was pretty steep in places. Graham pushed the report across the desk.

‘It’s all there if you want to see it. Ben Pierce was in the driver’s seat just as you see him in the photograph; the others had been thrown clear. They were all dead when I arrived. The accident happened some time the night before.’

Adam scanned the report. Everything had been measured and recorded, including the skid marks on the road, and the contents of the car, which had been recovered. Mostly clothing and other belongings, including three backpacks. ‘It looks from this as if they were going somewhere,’ Adam said, reading through the list.

‘Probably back home to London. They were part of a load of protesters we had here over the summer. A lot of them were leaving about then.’

‘What time did the accident happen?’

‘Between about nine and ten as far as we can tell.’

‘Funny time to be leaving,’ Adam said, to which Graham made no comment.

An empty half-bottle of supermarket brand whisky had been found, which might seem a little convenient to a suspicious mind, but Adam couldn’t see anything in the report that looked obviously wrong. The car itself was found to have worn tread on one of the tyres but was otherwise mechanically sound. The logical conclusion anyone could draw was that the driver had been drunk while travelling too fast along a dangerously steep road at night. He’d lost control and skidded over the edge. End of story.

‘What were they doing there?’

Graham got up to file the report away again. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked over his shoulder.

‘They were packed up as if they were planning to leave, and they were travelling towards Castleton. But it’s a long way from anywhere up there.’

‘Perhaps they’d been to a pub somewhere.’

‘But there are no pubs up there, unless you go right over the fells,’ Adam reasoned. ‘You didn’t check?’

‘There was no reason to.’

That was true, Adam acknowledged silently. ‘What about this protest they were involved with? Where was that?’

‘On the estate at Castleton Wood, at the northern end.’

‘Castleton Wood?’

‘Didn’t you know? The estate is for sale. A company called Forest Havens wants to buy it. The woods have been full of bloody protesters since the spring. They’ve got a camp up there.’

A definite trace of rancour had appeared in Graham’s tone, which Adam wondered about. But something else struck him. ‘The wood is nowhere near where the accident happened. In fact it’s the other way, so they couldn’t have been coming from there.’

‘Perhaps they’d been to Alston.’

Maybe they had, Adam thought, though that was a twenty-mile drive over the fells. ‘You didn’t try to find out then?’

‘Like I said, I had no reason to.’

‘Not even after Helen Pierce expressed misgivings?’

‘I listened to what she had to say, but facts are facts, Adam.’

Adam glanced through the report again, looking for something out of place, but if there was anything there he couldn’t see it. He thought about the injuries on the bodies of Ben’s friends. ‘I gather from what you said a minute ago that you don’t have a lot of sympathy for the protesters?’

‘They’re bloody troublemakers, a lot of them. All kinds of hippy types sitting on their arses collecting the dole all summer. Half of them on drugs.’

‘Is that the prevailing opinion?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Has there been trouble between them and local people?’

‘Not to speak of.’

‘Helen Pierce thought her brother might have been threatened.’

‘There might have been a few scuffles, but nothing serious.’

‘When I spoke to the pathologist she said that she thought two of the boys, Frost and Davies, might have been in a fight a few days before the accident. One of them had a broken rib among other things. What do you make of that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, did you know about it? It must have been in the autopsy report.’

‘I don’t know what you’re getting at,’ Graham said, sounding suddenly defensive.

Adam pressed the point. ‘Maybe the accident and the protest might be linked somehow.’

‘Linked, how?’

‘I don’t know. Why would anybody beat them up? People get worked up about these things. It seems to me it would have been worth looking into anyway.’

Adam knew that he was implying criticism of the way Graham had handled Helen Pierce’s concerns and it was clear from his expression that Graham didn’t appreciate it.

‘There’s nothing to suggest that those three lads being part of the protest had anything to do with this,’ Graham said. ‘What happened was an accident, plain and simple. Young lads out drinking, happens all the time. Take my advice, Adam, don’t start trying to make something out of this that isn’t there.’

‘But you said yourself you didn’t really investigate any other possibility.’

‘There was nothing to investigate.’

‘Maybe on the face of it,’ Adam insisted doggedly. He knew that based on the evidence he was being unreasonable, but he pushed the point anyway. ‘After Helen Pierce talked to you didn’t you at least wonder why her brother was driving? You know neither of the other two had been drinking. Even the pathologist wondered about that.’

‘But she also said both of them were in the back of the car when it left the road,’ Graham said flatly. ‘So what was I supposed to do?’

‘You might have tried to find out where they had been. Perhaps to see if anybody had seen Ben drinking, maybe in a pub in Alston. It could be that somebody even saw him get behind the wheel when they left. At least that would have proved the point to Helen Pierce.’