Accidental Crime - 29

Dawn

Dawn hated queuing. If queuing politely was a quintessentially English trait then that was proof enough that she had little sense of patriotism running through her blood. For every one of the thirteen minutes that she had sat stationary behind a Mazda MX-5 Dawn had devised a new plan for getting out of the line of traffic that was gifting Munch into the grateful hands of Nigel whose thief-like actions – there, she had said it – were surely only minutes away from ending her hopes for good.

The current plan was to mount the kerb, Grand Theft Auto-style, mowing down any pedestrians who dared stand in her way, gleefully honking her horn as the Corsa glided past all those who lacked the initiative and the courage to do what needed to be done.

As the clock ticked onto the seventeenth minute of the queuing – albeit with 10 feet of progress being made – it became clear that she too lacked the courage to risk everything on her kerb-mounting idea, as she remained rigidly behind the Mazda’s shapely figure, continually straining her neck muscles to look ahead to the source of the hold-up. The stuttering figure of an elderly lady walking a hyper-active Chihuahua made mowing a less appealing option than it had been when the shell-suit brigade had sauntered down the street a few minutes earlier, cupping their hands against their chests as if expecting every female driver to happily volunteer a free showing of their breasts. A few did offer their middle fingers and the brigade were more than happy to return the favour.

The next ten minutes brought steady progress, with Dawn clocking a high speed of 8 miles an hour, as the cause of the hold-up drew ever closer. As the Mazda pulled ahead during an unexpected surge in the queue, Dawn’s line of sight cleared to identify a Ford Mondeo lying half across the road, its front bumper kissing the base of a recently-installed street-light. An ambulance was parked on the kerb, the passenger-side overhanging the road sufficiently to make every approaching driver perform a rapid geometric assessment of their car and the nearest oncoming vehicle before taking the plunge and praying that there was just enough room to squeeze through. The Corsa was about five cars away from celebrating its narrowness but the opposing lane had become populated by two consecutive buses – what were the odds? – and there seemed little danger of either pausing to let such inferior vehicles as cars pass by.

The brief delay, which caused Dawn almost as much frustration as the lengthy wait before it, tempted her eyes to linger further on the source of the incident, scanning the scene in search of any clues as to what had happened. The driver, wearing an all-too-familiar suit, sat with his back to the traffic, a hunched figure of embarrassment, as a paramedic crouched before him, probably expressing her unhappiness at being called out during her lunch hour. One car decided to sneak through in between buses, the deafening horn of the second bus suggesting that the driver didn’t fully agree with the decision. Safely through, a quick flash of the hazard lights signalled the ambivalent thank you/sorry message that enabled the rest of the queue to return to normal breathing, each a car closer to being clear of the Mondeo.

As the Mazda crawled into position, ready to squeeze through, Dawn cast another look towards the Mondeo man. Her feet slipped off the pedals, stalling the car, as she watched him rise to his feet.

It was Nigel.

Oblivious to the blaring horns from the cars behind her as an unusually-large break in the oncoming traffic failed to be taken advantage of, Dawn sat open-mouthed, as the man who was supposed to be knocking on the door of the local patent office at that very moment ran towards her passenger door. Still barely able to comprehend what she was seeing, Dawn’s fingers acted independently to wind down the window so that Nigel’s despairing pleas – which had looked nothing short of a mad man’s ravings whilst silent to her ear – could be given the volume, and thereby the attention, he so frantically demanded.

‘Dawn! Dawn! I can’t believe it’s you! Please! Please pull over. I need your help. Urgently.’ He spoke as if every word surprised him, his breathlessness perfectly punctuating his pleas, compelling Dawn to act without any further explanation.

She reignited the engine and drove around the ambulance, narrowly missing an oncoming motorbike that had slightly misjudged just how far it could safely drift into the middle of the road, keeping in first gear throughout, the roar of the engine drowning out the obscenities drifting through the air from the obese Range Rover driver behind, who took every opportunity to turn his eyes away from the road and stare abusively in Dawn’s direction as she mounted the kerb. 

This wasn’t in the plan. Just how good was Munch that he would risk his life to get there first? Dawn sat still in her seat. She could speed away at any moment and the glory would be hers. She wouldn’t even need Jarrod’s help now. The office had been up in arms about the road-works caused by the new streetlights being put in but how good did they look now?

Whether intentionally or not, Dawn had now caused two car crashes – both saloon cars, she noted, as she once again relished her decision to buy a hatchback – and there was something rather disconcerting about the cliché that things always come in threes.

Nigel appeared at the window.

‘Oh, Dawn, you can’t believe how relieved I am to see you,’ he began, his words not quite matching the script she had anticipated. ‘Look, I really need your help. It’s an emergency.’

No-one thought more of Munch than her but surely ‘emergency’ was a little bit over the top?

‘What is it? What’s happened?’ she asked naively, demonstrating a level of detachment that would be important if he were to begin questioning why she was there too.

‘It’s my wife,’ he responded breathlessly, still appearing to be a little in shock from the crash.

‘Your wife?’ Dawn asked credulously. ‘What...what’s wrong with your wife?’

She didn’t see why she should be surprised by Nigel’s cover story. She had practically no experience of writing alibis and yet her email to Clarkson and been absolutely watertight.

‘She’s...she’s gone into labour,’ he stuttered, visibly shaking as he spoke the words. Dawn became aware that she was still sitting in her car, strapped in by the seat-belt as if she were about to leave him standing any moment. She unbuckled her belt and twisted her body round to face him fully. ‘I’m...I’m...I’m going to be a dad.’

She may have invented an illness but surely he couldn’t have invented a child?

‘Are you serious?’ she probed, half-convinced that the moment she stepped out of her car he would leap into the driver’s seat and hurtle down the road, his laughter fading into the distance as Dawn’s disconsolate figure leant against the ambulance doors. She pocketed her keys.

‘She called me half an hour ago. She’s five days overdue. I never...I mean, I just didn’t think-’ he broke off, wiping his hands over his face and looking around at what was left of the scene of the accident. ‘I’ve got to get there. Dawn, you’ve got to get me there.’ He began pacing back and forth, rubbing his hands together and mumbling to his wife to ‘hold on in there’, as if his whispered guidance would somehow be carried on the wind, across two miles of cityscape and through the window of St Margaret’s Hospital to the sweaty ear of the wife who curses his absence as the nurses tell her to ‘take it easy’, reassuring her that he will be there ‘any moment now’.

Dawn did not have the luxury of choosing her next move. Flinging open the passenger door and throwing himself into the seat next to her, Nigel compelled her to obey his every word.

‘Drive.’ He slammed the door shut, snapped the seat-belt into place and pointed to the road ahead, leaving Dawn with little choice but to nod and find her feet pressing down the pedals – her own seat-belt left unfastened – as she swerved back into the road, settling right behind the curvy rear of a Nissan Micra. In her mirror, Dawn saw the paramedic waving her arms in a bizarre act of amateur semaphore, beckoning them to return. She glanced across at Nigel’s sweating face. For all she knew, she was driving him to his death, taking him away from the life-saving treatment he needed after his collision. At least, she reasoned, they were heading to a hospital. If there was one place it was sensible to go when fleeing from a paramedic, it was a hospital.

‘I really appreciate this,’ he said, adjusting the window so that the air fanned his face. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t made it.’

‘Well, we haven’t made it yet,’ Dawn responded, helpfully, before adding, ‘but I’ll get us there as quickly as I can. I promise.’

The words surprised Dawn as she heard herself speak. Whatever control she had over the patent office plan appeared to have evaporated and she had found herself embroiled in someone else’s drama.

‘I was on my way anyway,’ she added, remembering the importance of maintaining a consistent alibi.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, barely listening.

‘The hospital,’ she said, as if not wholly convinced it was a real place, ‘I was heading there anyway. It’s my grandfather. He’s pretty ill.’

Maybe he was. It sounded believable.

‘Oh. Oh, I see. I...I thought you looked a bit flustered back there. You poor thing.’ He briefly laid a hand on her left thigh before retracting it. Neither seemed to know what was appropriate anymore.

‘It’s OK,’ she replied, ‘I’ve known it was just a matter of time. It’s just that now it’s come it’s hard, you know. You never prepare yourself for these things, do you?’

Even her tear ducts seemed poise to participate in the unfolding lie.

‘Can I ask what’s wrong?’ he probed, before adding, ‘oh, take a left here, it’s a shortcut’, as the car swung down the narrow side-street without indicating.

The simplest response, the response that would pause the lie before it spiralled into unchartered territory, was to say ‘no, you can’t’, perhaps even permitting a few tears to trickle down her ever-reddening cheeks to suggest that the topic was too difficult to discuss any further. Unfortunately for Dawn, the fake illness mustered no emotional response and she found herself rifling through a list of possibilities before flip-flopping between cancer and heart disease. Cancer she at least knew something about – and could probably name about 7 different types if a question came up in a pub quiz – but it did lead to a number of awkward questions regarding treatment and lifespan, which she didn’t feel fully equipped to answer. Heart disease, on the other hand, was more of an unknown quantity, but there was nothing wrong with not knowing the technical terms was there? She would gamble on it not being Nigel’s specialist topic on Mastermind.

‘Um, it’s...it’s heart disease actually,’ she stuttered, impressed at the wobble in her throat that she managed to bring out of nowhere at the last moment, coupled with the watery eyes and sweaty palms. Having often felt so let down by her body, she was stunned at its complicity in her time of need.

‘Heart disease?’ he asked, elongating each syllable as if assessing its validity. ‘Wow. That’s pretty nasty.’

She turned to him to give him one of those ‘yes it is but I’m pulling through’ smiles, before making a right turn up the hill that led to the hospital car park. She supposed there was no getting around parking now. A ‘pay as you leave’ system would be OK but if she was forced to decide on the length of her stay on entrance then this was going to be costly; a quick thirty-minute pop-in to check on her dying grandfather wouldn’t look good.

‘So...do you know what you’re having?’ she asked, keen to redirect the focus onto the forthcoming baby.

‘No...no, not yet,’ he responded, evidently growing in agitation, as he worked his way through the fingernails of his right hand, ‘but hopefully a boy. Yeah, I’d really like a boy.’

Nigel Junior. Dressed in matching suit and matching receding hairline. Always carrying a clipboard. She shook the thought out of her head, swinging the car round the mini-roundabout before a sharp left took them into the hospital complex and towards the car park.

‘It’ll be all right,’ she commented, aiming for the most reassuring tone she could muster as he bounced, shuffled, shook and sniffed in a perpetual cycle of excitable restlessness. ‘We got here pretty quickly. She’ll be fine.’

She noticed that her hand had settled on his right thigh, mirroring his own sympathetic touch minutes earlier, but he seemed to be sensually numb, his eyes fixed on the windows of the building to his left, clearly wondering behind which his wife was bringing their son, his son, into the world.

Her right foot slammed on the brakes, preventing the third crash of the day by the smallest of margins, as the distraction of her wandering hand almost guided the Corsa into the ticket barrier. Nigel’s forehead thudded against the sun visor but there was no reaction as Dawn realigned the car and headed forwards to park. Sweat continued to pour down his twice-concussed head – thankfully not mingled with blood from the latest impact – and Dawn could detect little more than senseless mutterings as she swung into the nearest bay.

‘We’re here,’ she half-shouted, not wholly convinced that Nigel was actually conscious. His eyes remained open, sweat continued to trickle down his brow and onto his ever-dampening trousers, but there was no movement in his previously-frantic frame. She retried the thigh-touching, observing a slight twitch in his foot as her hand made contact.

‘I can’t do this,’ he said at last, Dawn retrieving her hand, ‘I can’t...I can’t be a father.’

This was not the time, the place or even the person. Ever since she had ripped off the head of her doll aged six, Dawn had insisted that she could never be a parent and, if she were honest, she couldn’t exactly see Nigel changing nappies at 3 in the morning either.

‘You’ll be fine,’ she lied, ‘everyone gets worried about it. No-one thinks they can do it but they all do in the end, don’t they?’

It was her mother’s argument when the issue had re-appeared four months earlier when Aunty Fiona had broached the topic of Dawn’s love-life. She hadn’t agreed with it then and she didn’t agree with it now.

‘No...no, it’s not that,’ he spluttered, tears mingling with the sweat, ‘I...I’ve always wanted a child.’

‘Then what’s the problem? Go in there and become a dad. Your wife needs you.’

What should have happened next was Nigel declaring ‘you’re right’ before flinging open the car door, sprinting across the car park, leaping up the stairs and bursting into the maternity unit asking every passing nurse ‘where’s my wife?’ before being pointed towards a smiling woman clutching a newborn boy. That was what the moment demanded, what the both of them knew must happen, but Nigel didn’t even shift in his seat, his belt remaining buckled. Perhaps it was the hours of waiting that he just couldn’t handle? If the baby had popped out in thirty minutes – a Heineken advert from a few years back had made it clear that this was perfectly possible – then the beautiful scene would be ready, but she could tell from the look in his eyes that he knew what really awaited him inside, his face now contorting to replicate something similar to the look his wife would give when crushing his hand at the point of greatest pain.

‘I’ve...I’ve...I’ve been having an affair.’

He slowly turned his head towards her as if expecting support and reassurance, someone to tell him that it was OK, that everyone did it, that his wife wouldn’t mind as long as he went up in there now and became the husband she needed him to be while she gave birth to their child.

Dawn stared back. So, he was a thief and an adulterer. Why didn’t he just go the whole hog and murder her right there and then?

‘Are you serious?’ was the response she finally offered, not convinced that anyone in their right mind would joke about such a thing at a time like this but Nigel had hit his head rather hard and so she couldn’t be entirely sure.

‘I didn’t mean for it to happen. It’s only been the last two months. It’s been a...mistake. A stupid, stupid mistake. But how am I supposed to go and look her in the eye now? How am I supposed to hold my baby in my arms and tell them I’ll love them forever when I haven’t lasted five years with my wife?’

He buried his head in his hands and returned to the perpetual cycle of agitation that he had been so keen on earlier.

‘You don’t love your wife?’ she asked, fully aware that she was as out of her depth as a toddler trying to swim the ocean.

‘Of course I do,’ he insisted, ‘but what sort of man does that to the woman he loves? What sort of man does that to his child?’

She reasoned it probably wouldn’t be helpful to answer his question with the words that had now appeared in her head but something had to be said, if only to get him out of the car.

‘Look. What you’ve done wasn’t right, of course it wasn’t, but you’ve got a duty to your wife and you need to go in there and be the husband she needs you to be. Make it a fresh start. Tell her if you want but whatever you do, don’t run away from this. You’ll regret it, she’ll hate you and your child will never forgive you. Believe me, you’ve got to go in there. You can do this.’

‘You really think?’

He turned to her, tears in his eyes, desperate for the assurance he needed.

‘I really think.’

Lying had become remarkably easy.

Silence reigned, as Nigel looked around the car park for inspiration, before suddenly turning to face her and shouting, ‘your grandfather!’

‘What?’ she asked, confused, ‘what about him?’

‘I’ve been such a fool.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your grandfather. Every second that passes you’re missing your chance to see him. I’m keeping you from him. I’m ruining this for you. I’m...I’m so sorry. We’ve got to go. Now!’

And with that he was out of the car, running around to the driver’s side to open the door and usher Dawn towards the hospital entrance. She found herself stepping into a jog, as Nigel picked up pace, as the fake illness once again provided the impetus for her next move. She would lose him at the reception, she reasoned, insisting he went on ahead to find his wife while she looked for the right ward.

Nothing, not even the unlocked car neglectfully left behind in the sudden rush, would ruin this for her now. Once free of Nigel she would contact Jarrod and tell him the chase was off. She would get back in the car and head home with almost four hours of the working day to spare, perhaps catching a few episodes of Cash in the Attic while eating a Munch.

Jarrod would be relieved. She could tell he hadn’t been entirely convinced that the adventure was worthwhile but she had to give him credit for being involved, even if he was probably slowly sauntering into town, hands in pockets, pausing at every second hand bookshop on his way, ‘just in case’ a bargain was to be had. She had, she reflected, simply called him up, said she needed him, and he had responded; the power was thrilling! His submission, his willing acceptance to do as she asked, whilst expected at the time was unlike anything anyone had done for her before. She had asked him to put a stop to Nigel, whatever it took, and he had been willing to –

She paused, Nigel jogging on ahead while the stationary figure of Dawn lingered dangerously close to the taxi rank. She re-saw Nigel’s car resting half-way across the lane of the road, its front bumper receiving the sturdy frame of the streetlight. She saw the ambulance, the line of traffic, the near-misses. He had promised that he would help, that he would put a stop to Nigel. Was it possible, was it even conceivable that he would take such a risk, that he would do whatever it took to bring down the man she had portrayed as an enemy who must be defeated?

‘Dawn! Dawn, come on!’ Nigel shouted, taking a few steps back to beckon her to follow. She obeyed, silently, her thoughts turned to the housemate she knew so little about, the man who spent so much time alone, thinking, imagining, fantasising. What had he done? What was he capable of? If the crash had nothing to do with him then what about any other Nigels he might come across? What would he do to them?

She staggered forwards, the reception desk catching her falling figure, as the colour drained from her face. Nigel eased her to her feet, his words lost in the haze.

She didn’t know what to think. At 5am that morning she hadn’t expected the day to bring two car crashes, a terminally-ill grandfather, a trip to the hospital and the revelation of Nigel’s affair – anything seemed possible. And yet, she knew, of course she knew, that the crash was a freak accident, that Jarrod wouldn’t have been, couldn’t have been, anywhere near the scene. The world was full of coincidences, wasn’t it? She longed for someone to share the thought, to offer a reassuring word, but who could she trust with such madness? She barely trusted herself.

She took a seat next to an elderly lady clutching her handbag tightly between her fingers, three of which had plasters wrapped around the tips, and took a deep breath as Nigel squatted before her. The lady clutched her bag tighter, clearly convinced that this was all part of the plan to steal her hand-cream and tissues, and sniffed forcibly, kick-starting a flurry of sniffs and sneezes to circulate, Mexican-wave-style, around the cramped waiting room. Dawn looked up into Nigel’s comforting eyes, their wordless exchange prompting the over-polite receptionist to lean over the desk to ask if they were OK, smiling condescendingly as Nigel nodded back.

‘I need to go and see my child,’ he whispered, licking his lips as if re-tasting the words that had seemed so unbearable before.

‘Go,’ she whispered back, ‘you’ll be fine...just...just be strong for her.’

He stroked his hand across his mouth and chin before nodding in agreement and rising to his feet.

‘And what about you? Who’ll be here to keep you strong?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ she insisted. ‘Really. Just go. I want to hear all about it tomorrow!’

He smiled a smile she hadn’t seen before, a smile that strove to conceal as much as it dared to reveal, and turned swiftly down the corridor, his hand sweeping through his sweaty hair.

She gazed at the living dead before her, some barely clinging on to the chair, let alone the breath rapidly escaping their overworked lungs. This was no place for someone with a more than healthy granddad. Far from dying of heart disease, Granddad Bobby still completed a thirty-minute round trip to the shops every morning on his 1960s bicycle and put her cousin Tom to shame last month when he defeated him in record time in a game of swing ball in her uncle’s garden. He would have looked as out of place in the waiting room as a turtle at a pie eating contest. And yet, Dawn knew, of course she knew, that any day now there would be nothing fake about his condition, no need for a watertight alibi. The truth would be watertight in itself and the truth would say that Bobby’s time was up, that the bicycle would rust away in the garage next to the swing ball set that Tom doesn’t feel like using anymore. And she would be here, perhaps seated where she is now, waiting for news, waiting for the words that would transform the worlds of so many people. The receptionist would squat, Nigel-like, before her, perhaps take her hand in hers and tell her that she could go in and say goodbye, that there were a few minutes left and that she should use them to let him know that she loved him and would never forget him. Her thoughts, unlike now, would not be on the car she had left unlocked, the office she had run out of midway through the day, the flat-mate she had connected with as never before. No-one else would matter, no-one else would control her movements, no-one else would demand sympathy and words of support from her in her time of need.

She sighed and looked at the hands before her. She would, perhaps, give Bobby a call when she got home, just to check he was OK, that no misplaced fantasies had somehow affected the reality she had been so sure of only hours earlier.

She walked slowly out of the hospital, puffing out her chest as she passed the taxi rank, and fumbled around in her pocket for her keys. A 1960s bicycle was propped up against a black metal bar, the front wheel slightly askew, and the rider – a tweed-jacket-wearing-40-something-year-old – was battling to pass the lock through the bars, whilst clutching his helmet in his left hand. He stopped to meet Dawn’s eyes across the line of taxis between them and nodded his head towards her, as though acknowledging an acquaintance, before returning to the lock. She smiled and walked on, her fingers expertly looping around the keys she was pleasantly surprised to discover lodged securely in her right trouser pocket, feeling the first drop of rain of the afternoon moments before reaching the shelter of the hospital car park.

---------

Check back tomorrow for the next chapter!

If you can’t wait to read the rest, the novel is available to buy here.

Many thanks to everyone for their support! If you enjoy the novel, please consider leaving a positive review on Amazon.