‘Are you all right to keep going?’
‘Yes, sorry.’ He took himself back to the crash. To the sounds and the smell. To the sense of utter helplessness. ‘That’s when I heard this really awful noise. It was like an animal in pain. It wasn’t the girl in the front. She was unconscious, I think.’ He paused, uncertain if he was remembering everything accurately. ‘I climbed out – there was nothing I could do for the kids in the car – and I followed the noise, in the dark. That’s when I saw the other girl. The one I’d missed. I swear I never saw her at first. She was about fifty feet away along the verge. I don’t know how she got out of the car. She was on the grass, sort of kneeling up, rocking. She had her hands – both her hands – on her face, like this.’
He lifted his own hands and cupped his chin, his fingertips resting against his cheekbones, just as she had. It made him remember her eyes, or at least one of her eyes. The other was lost in a black, messy pulp.
‘I went over. Crouched down next to her.’ He paused again. ‘She was making a lot of noise. It sounded like a pan bubbling over. I couldn’t make out anything she was saying. It sounded like she was choking. There was blood all over her hands and her clothes. I tried to…I tried, well…I tried to help. But she kept swaying back and forth. I couldn’t get her to stop. I don’t why I wanted her to keep still. She must have been in so much pain. I took my sweatshirt off and put it around her shoulders. It seemed to go on for ages: the rocking, the choking noise, the lad being hysterical over by the car. Then she suddenly pitched over. I didn’t have time to catch her. Maybe I was looking for the ambulances, I don’t remember. She didn’t put her hands out. She sort of fell forward, a dead weight. I’m assuming she blacked out. She was kind of splayed on her front, with her head skewed to one side. I didn’t dare move her.’
Pete swallowed; his throat was still dry from the smoke and the trauma.
‘I bent down, checked that she was still breathing. She was, but my God, her face. It was…well, it was such a mess. I sat on the grass next to her. One of her hands was poking out from underneath her body. I held her fingers, really carefully. I didn’t know what was broken and what wasn’t. I kept talking to her. I just thought that if she was even a tiny bit aware, then at least she would know she wasn’t on her own.’ He stopped and waited, desperate for them to tell him something – anything – about how she was doing.
The older officer took pity on him, but only so much. ‘Like I said, they’re all being well looked after.’
That could mean anything. Pete wanted to know more, but realised it was none of his business – other than that he had been there, in the darkness, on the side of the road, before the fire crews and the police and the lights. He’d been there when it was lonely and frightening. He’d talked to her and held her hand, willed her to cope, to keep breathing, to hang on in there. After the ambulances arrived, he’d watched her being worked on by the paramedics. He’d been shocked by the seeming brutality with which they manhandled her, turning her over, taping her jaw in place, pumping something into her slim arm. He saw her being hoisted onto the stretcher and slid into the brightly lit interior of the ambulance. He’d watched it drive away, bumping down the kerb with a thud that had made him wince. He’d looked after the flashing lights long after they disappeared.
It was a natural point to take a breather. Instinctively all three men glanced out of the window again to the road, the endless traffic and, beyond that, the damaged wall.
But they’re weren’t done with his statement yet. ‘You stayed on the scene for quite a while, didn’t you, Pete?’
‘Yeah. One of the officers asked me to stay, to give an initial witness statement. And anyway, I couldn’t leave. I needed to see them get the lad out. What I mean is, I needed to see them all into the ambulances.’ Because for that brief, seemingly endless period, between hearing the bang and the police arriving, they had been his responsibility.
Both of the officers nodded. Then the older one asked, ‘Is there anything else that might be of use to us? Anything you saw that might have contributed to the crash. Anything at all? The road conditions, the weather, the traffic?’
‘No. It was a really calm, clear night. I like I said, the road was quiet, empty.’
‘Okay.’
Pete suddenly felt tired, but they still weren’t finished.
‘Can we just get you to circle back a little bit, Pete? Thinking about the young man again – the one who was kneeling next to the car.’
‘Yes.’ Pete added nothing else.
‘Any observations you want to make about him?
‘Such as?’
‘His behaviour? His level of coherence? His breath? Was there anything to indicate that he might have been drinking or taking drugs?’
Pete paused, gave it real thought. They were all young. It was late. The girl was wearing party clothes. They’d probably been drinking. Two girls, two boys. Testosterone swirling. The temptation of an empty road. A Seat Leon – the ‘go-to car’ for boy racers.
He opened his eyes and shook his head. ‘No.’
He’d been young himself once, a lifetime ago.
Chapter 14
SHAZIA PULLED the door closed behind them and immediately knew the house was empty, because it felt empty. They often chided Mo for being noisy, complaining about his music and his big feet stomping around upstairs. It was the family joke – Mo, the klutz, an accident waiting to happen. Shazia stood in their hallway and made a pact with herself that she would never again moan about his crashing about, if he would just walk through the door, unharmed, with a credible explanation of where he had been for the past fourteen hours.
Nihal was, once again, on his phone. She turned away, unable to watch his distress, and wearily climbed the stairs. At the top she stopped, her breathing laboured. The fear of losing Mo had aged her, overnight. She crossed the landing and went into his room. It was the usual mix of mess and manic tidiness. His clean clothes – all ironed by her – were, as always, carefully folded away in his wardrobe; he liked to look smart, ‘sharp’ in his terminology. But his worn stuff was strewn around the room, some on his chair, some on the floor, more on the end of his bed. It looked like a hurricane had passed though. In contrast, his expensive, deeply cherished trainers were all lined up in a neat row against the skirting board, laces tucked in. No, not at all of them. There was a gap. A pair was missing. His new Nikes.
Shazia turned away. On the desk his daada had bought for him was Mo’s college work, a slew of papers, printed sheets and textbooks, all neatly annotated in his small, precise handwriting. Chaos and control in one revealing snapshot. It was odd that a boy could be made up of so many contradictions.
Even in his room, surrounded by his things, Shazia found that she couldn’t cry – she wanted to, but she couldn’t, because she didn’t know what she was mourning. She picked up one of Mo’s sweatshirts; underneath were his only pair of smart black trousers and the branded polo shirt that he had to wear for work. Shelf-stacking at Sainsbury’s: minimum wage, hard work, good life experience. Clothes that should have gone straight into the linen basket. She scooped them up as well, along with a couple of stray socks and a towel. The towel was still damp from his shower the previous evening.