Her first thought was to ignore it, but if there had been an accident she might need to summon assistance. She snatched the phone off the seat and answered the call, realising as she did so that her hand was shaking.
‘Hello?’
‘Caroline, are you home yet?’
It was a voice she vaguely recognised, but couldn’t quite place. Her eyes did not leave the obstruction ahead as she drew to a halt and released her seatbelt.
‘Not yet. Why? Who is this?’
‘Just listen to me. Whatever you do, you must not stop the car. Whatever happens, do not under any circumstances stop the car.’ The man was speaking low and fast. ‘Go home. Go straight home. Are you listening to me?’
The panic in the voice on the phone reflected Caroline’s own rising anxiety. She hesitated.
‘But there’s a car across the road, and it looks like somebody’s in it. Maybe they’re ill, or they’ve had an accident. Why can’t I stop? What’s going on?’
‘Just do as I’m telling you, Caroline. Do not get out of the car. Put your foot down now and get past that car and don’t stop again for anybody or anything. Just do it.’
The voice was tense, urgent. Caroline felt fear rise in her throat. What was this? She glanced in the rear-view mirror, and made her decision. She flung the mobile phone onto the seat beside her and grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. The stationary car was long and low, taking up most of the width of the road with its back wheels slightly off the ground as the bonnet angled down into the ditch. There wasn’t much space to get round the boot of the car, but she could do it. She had to do it.
She rammed her foot hard to the floor. The tyres skidded on the frosty road, but they gripped, and she swung the car to the left. Her nearside wheels rose up on the bank below the hedge and the car hovered at a perilous angle. She pulled the steering wheel back round to the right and her car landed with a bump, facing the opposite side of the road. Caroline pulled the wheel back round to the left to straighten up, the engine roaring as she accelerated.
Suddenly she felt herself begin to slide. She spun the steering wheel madly in one direction and then the other, but whatever she did, the car took no notice. Black ice, and she was travelling too fast. She remembered being told to steer into a skid, but that didn’t feel right.
A name flashed into her head. She suddenly realised who had called her. But why him? She called out his name, but she knew that by then there was nothing he could do. Her eyes were drawn to the mirror, to the shadowy rear of the car, where all she could see were the whites of Natasha’s wide, terrified eyes.
She slammed her foot on the brakes, but nothing happened. The car slid sideways, hit the bank again, rose up at an angle and flipped, turning over and over, crashing through the hedge and into the ditch, Caroline’s broken body coming to rest half in and half out of the open window.
*
The policeman drove along the narrow lanes, enjoying a rare moment of peace in the run-up to Christmas. An anonymous caller had phoned to say there was a car off the road somewhere around here, but according to the dispatcher the caller hadn’t been able to give any details. The policeman was hoping this would be nothing more than some idiot dumping his car because it had run out of juice or broken down. He had had enough of dealing with drunks in the current party season, and a nice little abandoned vehicle should keep him out of the way for a while – maybe even to the end of his shift.
The realisation that his optimism was unfounded crept up on him slowly. It was the lights that convinced him. Nobody dumped their car with the lights on, and yet up ahead he could see a stationary white light, shining brightly, illuminating the bare trees at the side of the road. As he got closer, the dazzling beams from the twin headlights blinded him. He shielded his eyes slightly with the back of his hand, approaching as cautiously as possible in case there was a body he couldn’t see lying in the road. He pulled up about twenty metres from the car and switched off his engine.
He knew immediately that it was bad. The car was upside down, the front end resting up the bank at one side of the lane. But it was the noise that chilled him. Cutting through the silence of the surrounding countryside, the gentle purr of an expensive engine provided a subtle backing track to the unmistakable sound of Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. The mellow music was escaping into the frosty night air from an open window through which jutted a woman’s head at such an implausible angle that the policeman didn’t need to approach the car to know she was dead.
He moved slowly towards the upended car to turn off the engine, and with it the music. He was able to breathe again. Now it was just a single-vehicle road traffic accident, although a tragic one. He reached for his radio.