Very Nearly Dead Read online

  Would it comfort them if I came forward and confessed? Would they be understanding, or hate me forever? I suspected they’d hate me forever and derive little comfort from knowing who had done for their boy. But it would likely please them knowing she was locked up and off the streets, unable to do the same thing to anybody else’s young son.

  I pictured the disappointment on my little brother’s face if he was told I’d been charged with drink driving. I was something of a heroine to him. His opinion of me, and our relationship, would both change drastically if that happened, and not for the better.

  Having considered all these issues I decided to put me and my needs first.

  In other words, I staked my future on a roll of the dice. I was gambling I’d get away with my crime. Having taken the decision, I forced myself to go to the garage and turn on the light. There was work to do.

  I hadn’t looked at the car since parking it there the night before and I needed to know how bad, that is, how incriminating, the damage was.

  Plus, I was hoping against hope this was all some kind of a delusion, a mad nightmare I’d woken up from, and when I inspected my car I’d find nothing amiss. I’d had nightmares before which had seemed all too real. Why couldn’t this be one of them?

  When I inspected my car my heart sank. A wedge-shaped vertical dent down the front from the grill to the bumper was what sank it. The dent confirmed I’d crashed into something the previous night.

  How much of the damage had been caused by the boy and how much by the lamp post was anybody’s guess. It could have been all down to the lamp post, but what if it was? There was a depression on top of the bonnet which spoke of a body landing on it before being hurled off at speed.

  Paint was missing from the edges of the dent. It reminded me there would be traces of paint on the body and on the lamp post which could be used to identify the manufacture of the car which had mown the boy down, and possibly the age of the car, too.

  Was that blood near the dent? I didn’t know. Whatever it was, I set to work on it with a cloth and a bottle of Demon Clean to get rid of it. I felt like Lady Macbeth.

  The car was going to be a problem. Driving around in it would be like wearing a sign saying: ‘Arrest me – I’m the one who mowed the dead boy down’.

  On the other hand, I couldn’t very well drive to a body shop and get it fixed. If anything would get me arrested, that would. It wouldn’t be long before everyone in London, especially body shop owners, knew of the boy who’d been run over and left for dead in a hit-and-run incident. The body shop would report me to the police, and that would be it. Probably even now, the police were sending messages to all the car repair shops in London, telling them to look out for a car with a dent in the front, and report it when it came in for repair. They’d no doubt use the paint on the boy’s body to narrow down the search to certain makes and models of cars. It didn’t bode well.

  Not that I knew whether alerting body repair shops to accidents was police procedure. It probably wasn’t. They were likely too busy to take such measures. Still, in my paranoid world, it was a possibility I had to consider.

  There was something else, too. All those cameras they had everywhere these days. There weren’t any on the street where I had collided with the boy, but there might have been some in neighbouring streets. The police would be able to work out the approximate time of death of the boy, analyse the video footage from those cameras, and come up with the answer that it was an Audi which had done for him. The paint would narrow it down to a blue Audi. I could only hope that those cameras hadn’t picked up my registration number. If they had, I was as good as arrested and charged.

  I finished my cleaning and wondered if I could face breakfast. I couldn’t. It made me feel sick, even though I was desperately hungry, far more so than was usual for me.

  What should I do next? I needed to think.

  The answer came to me surprisingly quickly: I had to drive a long way off, up to Yorkshire, maybe even Scotland, to get the bodywork fixed. So far north people weren’t going to know about the incident I’d been involved in. The death of a boy in London in a hit-and-run incident wouldn’t register there. They had their own dead boys to worry about.

  I was still well over the limit. I must have been. I felt groggy and out of sorts. I could only hope I wouldn’t make a driving error which would get me pulled up by an officer in a squad car. No reason to think I would. It hadn’t happened to me yet. Mind you, this would be only the second time in my life I’d ever driven with too much alcohol in my system. The first time had been when I’d run over Sean Price. Prior to that, I’d always taken great care to never drive after drinking. I’d taken public transport to work and used taxis when I had to – an expensive remedy but one which I could now see had been well worthwhile. If only I’d paid for a taxi to take me home from O’Shaughnessy’s, I wouldn’t be in this mess.

  I was definitely going to get off the sauce, now I’d seen the damage it could cause.

  My hands were trembling. Not excessively, but I could see the tremors, and if I could see them, other people could too. Hopefully, if anyone noticed, they’d assume I was the nervy type, and not that I was an alcoholic.

  I opened the garage door, reversed the car onto the drive, and shut the door again. Then I had a thought. At some point in the future, if I was investigated by the police, they’d check my mobile phone records and work out I’d gone to an out-of-town body shop the day after Sean Price had been killed. I was about to switch it off when I noticed I had messages so I dialled 234 to listen to them.

  A mechanical voice with a distinctly female tone to it said, ‘You have two new messages. First new message. Message received Wednesday, 24 January, at 11.30am: “Hi, Jasmine, it’s Camilla. It’s not like you to take time off work without ringing in. Hope you’re not ill. Give me a call if you can to let me know how you are. See you.”’

  Camilla was my secretary at Womack and Brewer LLP, the firm of solicitors I worked for. It was odd my mobile said I’d received her call at 11.30am; it’d only just gone 10am. I put it down to a malfunction and listened to the next message.

  The mechanical voice spoke again, ‘Second new message, message received Thursday, 25 January, at 9.50am.’

  I clicked it off.

  Thursday, 25 January, at 9.50am?

  That was impossible. It was only Wednesday the twenty-fourth of January. My mobile phone was definitely playing up. Or was it? What if it really was the twenty-fifth? I looked at the display. The small text beneath the time stated, ‘Thur 25 January’.

  I went indoors and checked the display on my iPad, which confirmed it was the twenty-fifth.

  My head swirled.

  I’d gone to bed on Tuesday the twenty-third of January.

  I’d woken up on Thursday the twenty-fifth of January.

  What had happened to Wednesday the twenty-fourth? It was as if it’d never existed.

  Somehow I was missing a day. My memory was playing tricks on me – either that, or my devices were giving me the wrong information.

  I was about to close the iPad when I noticed an alert telling me I’d had a message from Kylie. I couldn’t ignore Kylie, even though my circumstances were desperate, so I read her message.

  School reunion soon. Are you coming? And do you want to meet up for a coffee sometime? Love, Kylie xx

  Christ, the school reunion. I’d forgotten it was coming up. There was a group of people who’d gone to the same school as me and who took it on themselves to make sure we had one every year. I hated the reunions, but I always went. I had to, because if I didn’t, people would come looking for me, to make sure I was still keeping my mouth shut. If I wasn’t, they’d shut it for me – permanently. It was never overtly stated that this was on the agenda, but I knew it was, as did the rest of the small group of people I’d associated with at school.

  None of us trusted any of the others to keep our mouths shut. We’d all kept schtum for eighteen years, but still we worried
someone might crack, and we’d be brought to justice and sent down for a very long time. So we all attended the reunions to make sure everyone was on-message. At all other times I made a point of not having anything to do with the rest of them as I was desperate to forget the past and put it behind me.

  It was pretty much understood that Seth, in particular, would be annoyed if any of us didn’t show up to a reunion – and no-one wanted to get on the wrong side of Seth.

  I didn’t want to meet with Kylie, even though we’d been good friends back in the day. As a result of the crime we were all covering up I’d gone off a number of people, including her. I wanted to tell her I couldn’t meet her and wouldn’t go to the reunion – but in the interests of survival, I messaged back.

  Yes, I’m coming to the reunion. And coffee sounds good. How about next Tuesday lunchtime? xx

  She replied:

  Tuesday fine. TNQ at 12.30? xx

  Then, just to be absolutely sure of the date, I switched the television on and tuned in to a news channel. That confirmed it was the twenty-fifth of January. I was definitely missing a day.

  What was going on?

  I replayed in my head as best I could my actions over the previous couple of days.

  I’d gone to work as usual on Monday, done the same on Tuesday, got home, sat in front of the TV in the evening, and received a telephone call about a suspected criminal who needed the advice of a lawyer. He was being held in the Crystal Palace nick. I drove over there, advised him, went to O’Shaughnessy’s where I remembered having only drunk a half of session beer, then I’d got in my car. While driving under the influence of what must’ve been a lot more drink than I remembered having, I’d had my accident, left the scene of the crime, got home, and collapsed into bed. Then I’d got up – on Thursday instead of Wednesday.

  Was it possible I’d been up and about on Wednesday, done stuff, and forgotten everything about it? Maybe it was. I’d had blackouts in my time, but they were the sort of blackouts where I’d lost an evening. Never before had I lost an entire day.

  The room spun as I tried to come to terms with the idea.

  There was another possibility. I could have slept from about 11.50pm on Tuesday to 9am on Thursday, fully thirty-three hours.

  I hoped to God that was the explanation – because if it wasn’t, then the alternative was that I’d had one of my blackouts covering a longer and more sustained period than ever before. The thought of what I might have got up to while so totally out of control made me shudder. I might have fatally compromised my plan to evade justice.

  My chest heaved and I began to hyperventilate. Then I told myself: breathe deeply and get a grip, Jasmine, you’re going to get through this. Forcing myself to slow my respiration, I managed to calm down.

  What should I do, now I’d had this revelation on top of everything else? There was only one course of action which made any sense. Carry on with my planned bodywork repairs, and hope for the best. I switched off my mobile, returned to my car, and headed for the M1, taking a circuitous route to avoid the roads I’d been driving on the previous night. The dehydration I was feeling coupled with sweat erupting from my every pore told me I was unfit to drive. I was over the limit, and my nerves felt barely capable of transmitting messages to my extremities. Nevertheless, I somehow made the car head in the direction I wanted, at the correct speed, without attracting the attention of the law.

  As I drove up the M1 I realised I was spookily tired, and that trying to get any further than Luton would be to risk falling asleep at the wheel, so I pulled off at Junction 11 and found a back street with tin sheds and brick sheds either side of it, each of them home to some sort of motor-related business. I say back street; it wasn’t even a street. It was a narrow dirt track.

  One of them specialised in ‘Re-sprays, Panel-Beating etc.’ It looked like the place for me. It felt safer than a big corporate repair place would’ve done. I reasoned the corporate establishments would be more likely to ask awkward questions.

  A small metal sign proclaimed: Jack Davis, prop. Est. 1998. It was a one-man show. It would be ideal.

  Jack’s business was housed in a red-brick shed with an open front. The wind was whipping through it. I wondered how it could be possible to work in there without getting frostbite. I was cold even though I was wrapped up in my parka.

  Jack was inside, wearing blue overalls and a protective mask, and was busy spraying black paint on a black BMW with blacked-out windows. It looked like the kind of car your average drug dealer would drive, which told me I’d come to the right place. I hung around patting my hands together to keep them warm until he noticed me.

  ‘Mr Davis,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

  He pushed the clear plastic visor of his mask up from his face. He had lines between his eyebrows and more lines running from his nose past the downturned corners of his mouth, suggesting anxiety. That made me feel guilty, and put me off him, but by then I felt committed to getting a quote at least.

  ‘Let the dog see the rabbit,’ he said, frowning at me. I got the impression he didn’t smile much.

  I gestured in the direction of my car which was parked only a few yards from where he’d been working, and wondered whether I’d wasted my time coming all the way up here, and whether I could’ve risked having the job done in London. Then I reassured myself it was better to err on the side of caution – if, indeed, Jack Davis, prop., Est. 1998, represented caution.

  ‘There’s a couple of dents in my car,’ I told him, pointing at them, one after the other, quite unnecessarily.

  He gave me his trademark frown, the lines between his black eyebrows deepening. ‘I can see that. What caused them?’

  I pondered saying something like what business is it of yours? And decided against it. A friendly approach would be better, as there was a chance it would get him onside. ‘I’m not sure.’

  He looked at me with his downturned mouth, and I noticed his eyes for the first time. They were the sort of grey-blue eyes which wouldn’t take any shit from anyone.

  ‘How can you not be sure? It’s your car, isn’t it?’

  Of all the body shop owners in Luton to choose from, I had to choose the stroppy one, the one who wanted to know things I wasn’t willing to discuss. I felt a growing unease. Where was this line of questioning going? Why didn’t he just offer his professional opinion on fixing it and give me a quote?

  ‘Yes, it’s my car,’ I said.

  I was playing for time. I needed a better answer, an excuse for not knowing what had caused the damage, and a plausible one at that, if he made the point I thought he might make next, which he did.

  ‘It looks like you hit something or someone with your car. You hit them pretty badly too, by the looks of things.’

  Christ on a bike – what was he wanting me to tell him? The name of my victim?

  He gave me an unflinching stare with those grey-blue don’t-take-any-shit-from-the-likes-of-you eyes, and I wondered whether I should stare right back, but I’d heard liars do that to convince people they’re not lying, and thought Jack Davis might’ve heard the same thing, so I didn’t. At the same time, I couldn’t look away too quickly, because liars do that, too. I had to hold his gaze for just long enough to look like I was telling the truth, then slowly let it go. It was a fine line between staring for too long and not long enough.

  ‘I had it stolen the other day by a couple of joyriders,’ I told him, looking him in the eye. I glanced casually back in the direction of the damaged bonnet. ‘I don’t know what they got up to in it.’

  I didn’t know where the story came from, but felt relieved I’d thought of it.

  He nodded and ran his fingers through his greying hair. ‘It happens a lot,’ he said. ‘Joyriders love causing accidents. I repair too many cars damaged by joyriders.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  He gave me another of his penetrating looks. ‘It must’ve shaken you up, having your car taken and crashed.’

&nbs
p; ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You look like you’re still worrying about it.’

  I realised he was staring at my hands, which were betraying my feelings and self-consciously thrust them into my pockets. Not that it did any good – he’d already noticed they were trembling. What he didn’t know was they were doing it from withdrawal symptoms as well as worry.

  ‘How much will it be? And how soon can you do it?’

  He took a pace back, looking the car up and down, and did the whistling thing through his teeth tradesmen do to let you know the job you’ve asked of them is so big and so difficult that it’s unreasonable of you to have asked them to do it at all.

  ‘Have you had the mechanicals checked out?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but it drives okay.’

  ‘You ought to get it looked at by a mechanic. You never know what damage might have been done under the bonnet.’

  ‘I’ll get it sorted after you’ve got the accident damage to the body fixed. How much will it be?’

  He pursed his lips and walked around my car, delaying his reply to let me know he was giving the matter an awful lot of thought. When he’d walked a full circle, he scratched his head a couple of times, pursed his lips again, and said, ‘Parts, labour, paint, sundries, hmmm, fifteen hundred pounds in total.’

  It was my turn to whistle through my teeth.

  I wondered whether I should get a few more quotes, but decided not to. In the general scheme of things, speed was more important than economy.

  ‘How soon can you do it?’

  ‘Next week at the earliest.’

  ‘I need it for tonight.’

  ‘No can do.’

  ‘What if I pay you extra to jump the queue?’

  The expression on his face told me he thought I was unhinged. ‘I could get it done for tomorrow lunchtime if you were to pay me a couple of grand for it,’ he said. ‘Cash,’ he added.

  ‘Can’t you do it sooner?’