His response was to pass her a piece of A4 showing a map with a cross on it.
‘What’s this?’
He whispered, ‘Where the body was found.’
ONE WEEK LATER
Chapter Nine
Stevie, getting married in eight days, was walking along the line of shops that led back from the seafront. It was nearly two o’clock on a Friday. The pavement was narrow and getting more crowded now that they were halfway through May. Unkindly nicknamed ‘God’s waiting room’ in winter months, Sidmouth was starting to get its annual invasion of young families. In high summer the town would be packed to the rafters – every restaurant table taken, every ice-cream van serving a queue.
Stevie heard the motorbike coming from behind. It was evidently travelling to the right of the crawling cars and, without looking, she knew there was barely the space. She caught sight of a little girl, walking alongside her mum, doing what children always did with her – staring at her eyepatch and the burns on her face. She wanted to pull a sudden horror-movie gurn, like Donald Sutherland in the last moment ofInvasion of the Body Snatchers.The motorbike revved, making the child jump, taking her attention.
Stevie kept her gaze forwards, navigating the bustle. She was conscious of the noise of the motorbike engine as she passed. She remembered the first part of the number plate: NPH.
The plates were false. The bike was fast. It turned right by the lifeboat station. The corner was sharp. The bike rider alternately braked and revved, powerfully, as if trying to dig the rear tyre into the road. The bike half-turned and the back wheel, suddenly reconnecting with the tarmac, jumped from the road like a rocket.
The 1800cc Yamaha was airborne when it ploughed through the front of Toppings Pizza Parlour. The smashing of the sunburnt glass was like an explosion. Inside, families were eating late lunches. Several had small children. At one table, a mum and dad sat either side of a baby in a high chair. On its side, with a deafening scrape, the motorbike slashed a gouge in the floor and broke down the far wall, revealing a piped toilet cistern which promptly burst like a fountain. The motorbiker’s chin had caught on the wooden frame of the frontage, snapping his neck. He lay on his side with his arms and legs crooked, spread on the floor like a swastika. There was silence, then shouting and screaming. Every parent reached for their child. Every adult counted the heads at their table: again, again, again. One mother, seeing her toddler had slipped off his chair and was walking towards the steaming Yamaha, raced to get him.
People on the street now made their own noise. Yelling in shock while drawing closer. The sounds came together — a man yelling as he spread his palm blindly across a shard of glass in the shopfront, the motorbike engine burping and sputtering, cistern water cascading onto the floor. The pizza restaurant staff were shouting. At the back the chef yelled, ‘Shut the oven down!’ This caused a second wave of panic. Could they smell leaking petrol from the bike? Two of the pizza staff headed forwards to unbuckle children from high chairs; the other three ran through the back door in a panic.
Sirens. More screaming. Smoke, fuel. A man inside therestaurant – a young dad – asked, ‘What was in that pannier?’ The storage box had cracked open and spilled a second box, which itself had opened and sent tiny yellow balls, the size of garden peas, rolling across the floor. One of the children broke free from her mum, picked one up and threw it. The parents were shouting at each other now, trying to move through the door and into the street, but the crowd was hemming them in. ‘Let them out!’ A policeman at last. ‘Let them out or I’ll use my taser, I swear to God!’ More sirens. More chaos. And then the fire started.
Detective Sergeant Jordan Callintree arrived at the scene on foot. He was off-duty, fetching groceries for the family at the Morrison’s on Fore Street. The cop was thin-shouldered, tall and skinny at the waist. Clean-shaven, with no obvious chin, Callintree’s hollow eyes shone with intelligence. He dumped his groceries and ran. Later he would be certain he had heard the roar of the motorbike and the smashing of the storefront glass while paying for his food and drink. He was sure he looked at his watch and saw it was two p.m. on the dot.
By the time DS Callintree arrived outside Toppings, the crowd had spilled into the road. There was smoke belching from the top of the broken shopfront. His immediate concern was whether anyone was trapped inside. Shouting ‘Police! Police!’ he cleared a path in front of him. At moments like this he wished he had more heft to his body and more depth to his voice. A middle-aged constable with twice the girth and a grey-streaked beard was waving a truncheon left and right, trying to move the crowd away from the frontage. There was a fire at the back of the shop.
‘Is that motorbike fuel I can smell?’ Callintree asked the constable, flashing his warrant card.
‘You bet.’
‘Appliances?’
‘On their way.’
‘Need to clear this crowd. No one inside? Injuries?’
‘Just the rider. A miracle,’ said the constable. ‘The bike sliced through the middle. The rider is inside.’
‘Jesus! Really?’
‘Below the shopfront. I thought I should wait.’
‘What – there’s a guy on the floor?’ Jordan Callintree shouted again to move people. ‘You should all be getting back! We have fuel and fire! Move your kids away!’ His words were repeated verbatim by the other officer, who turned back to shepherd the crowd.
Callintree jumped through the open storefront. As he moved forwards, the crowd had lurched back, as if suddenly pushed by a wave of panic. He looked down at the body of the biker. Coughing in the smoke, his mouth tasted like acid and his tongue burned. He could tell, staring down at the body, that the man was almost certainly dead. His face was swollen, yellowed already. But if there was any chance of life, he must move him before the fire caught hold. Flames had spilled over the edge of the pizza oven and were licking at the ceiling. A line of fire, like a fuse, led to the huge motorbike fuel tank. He could not wait. He had to lift the man, but he must lift him without wrenching his head, which was inside a crash helmet which he could not remove.
The crowd were now on the other side of the street. What if he asked for help and the place exploded? He would be blamed. As he waited for what must have been only a fraction of a second, he felt a presence beside him and looked up. A young woman with an eyepatch and scarring on her face was beside him. ‘I’ve done first aid,’ she said.
They both coughed in the smoke. Jordan Callintree could barely speak. ‘You shouldn’t be here, but I need to try to move him before that bike blows.’
‘Happy to fucking try. Not as if I have a face to lose. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Think so,’ replied the police officer. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said again.
Stevie Mason did not reply. She saw what he could not see. The flames were spreading behind them. The ceiling was on fire. Heroic copper this man might well be, but he was going to get himself killed, maybe both of them. She held her hands underneath the man’s crash helmet, determined to transfer no movement whatsoever into the neck as the body was dragged.
‘You’re a very brave young woman,’ shouted the police officer. His raised voice was thin in the roaring air and she could barely hear him. She wondered if she had seen him before. They had the rider halfway through the door now, dragged over broken glass. She did not need to reply. He would not hear her over the noise – the noise! Two fire engines were arriving, klaxons sounding to move the last stragglers from the crowd. The firefighters paid no attention at all to the young woman and the wafer-thin off-duty police officer wrestling with the prostrate motorbiker on the pavement. They had a job to do, and they turned on their hoses with an explosion of water.
