I looked to my right, and with my back to the hill, I headed off along the road. I didn’t have to go very far before I came across the scene of the accident. It was hard at first to get my bearings, as the last time I’d been here, I’d been shaken and in shock. I saw the spot in the ditch where my patrol car had ended up on its side. The bushes and bracken there were bent over and disrupted. Slowly, I moved further along the road to where the cart and the horse and been lying. I looked down and could see rusty brown bloodstains, which hadn’t yet been washed away by the rain. I closed my eyes, and at once I could see the small boy with his bright red hair matted together in scruffy clumps. I snapped open my eyes and could see the tyre marks. They skewered across the road from the right and towards the area where the cart and the Smith family had come to rest.
I bent down and inspected them. The tyre marks where thick and black, indicating that whoever had been out on this road had braked hard in their vehicle. That certainly hadn’t been me. I was sure of that. Only if I’d seen Jonathan Smith and his family would I have hit the brakes. I closed my eyes again. I could see myself taking my eyes off the road as I reached for the glove compartment. Then my vehicle was lifting off the road and flipping through the air. My patrol car stopped, not because I had hit the brakes, but because I hit the ditch and the wall beyond it. In my mind I could see myself staring through the cracked window screen of my patrol car. It gave the world a distorted and broken look. I could see my father arriving in his police car, lights and sirens blazing, the ECILOP sign looking distorted and out of shape. My father was beside me, pulling me from the car and dragging me angrily towards the accident.
Look what you’ve done! I could hear him barking at me over the roar of the wind.
I’m so sorry, I cried out.
I could see the blood again, black and congealed in the road, that little boy’s hair thick with it...
“The blood,” I whispered. “The blood!”
However painful it was, I closed my eyes and pictured that horrendous scene in my mind again. I could see the blood beneath the wheels of the upturned cart. I could see the blood down the front of the man trapped by the wheel, the woman with it on her face, the boy with it in his hair, and that flap of flesh hanging loosely from Jonathan Smith’s face. All of the blood was black, sticky and congealed.
“None of the blood was fresh,” I breathed, snapping open my eyes.
Now, I knew blood congealed fairly quickly and it had been cold that day – but there was no way the blood would have thickened within a few minutes. Those people had been lying out on this desolate stretch of road for at least...what? Ten minutes, maybe or more. With my heart racing in my chest, I knew it couldn’t have been me who had killed those people. Someone else had killed them, then fled the scene.
With my heart racing in my chest, I felt angry and hurt that I’d been punishing myself for something I hadn’t done. I wanted to scream and tell the world that I hadn’t killed Smith and the rest of his family. It felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest and I could at last breathe again. I felt a sudden flash of seething anger towards my father. If he hadn’t of been so quick to blame me, yet again, then cover for me, he could have done a proper investigation for once in his life and found the true culprit. Was it too late for that now? I wanted to march straight into town and tell him and the others I was innocent. I wanted to scream at those townsfolk who had stared at me, rolled their eyes, thinking that I had fucked up again. Could the clock ever be turned back? Would my father’s lies be revealed? Would he be ruined? Could I do that to him?
As I stood in the middle of the road fearing that I might never be able to prove my innocence, I suddenly felt a hand fall onto my shoulder.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” a voice said.
With a high-pitched gasp, I spun around.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“I could ask you the same question,” I said, staring at Vincent.
“I’ve been searching for you,” he said, dismounting from an old-looking push bike.
“No patrol car?” I asked with a half-smile.
“They are a bit short of them back at the station,” he said. “The one you were driving is still out of action and another has also gone in for some repairs.”
Vincent pulled the collar of his police coat up about his throat and shivered. “I’m frozen,” he groaned.
“Quit complaining,” I said. For the first time in Vincent’s presence, I wasn’t sure how to act. I hadn’t seen him since last night, when he had kissed me, then held me all night in his arms. Did he feel awkward, too? I wondered.