Part 22 (2/2)

Perhaps because with more of the gla.s.s missing there was a through current of air, the smell of petrol did begin to abate, but there was still, I imagined, a severed fuel line somewhere beneath me, with freshly-released vapour continually seeping through the cracks. How much liquid bonfire, I wondered numbly, did a Daimler's tank hold?

There were a great many more cars now ahead in the road, all stopped, their occupants out and crash-gazing.

No doubt to the rear it would be the same thing. Sunday afternoon entertainment at its worst.

Simms and I sat on in our silent immobility and I thought of the old joke about worrying, that there was no point in it. If one worried that things would get bad and they didn't, there was no point in worrying. If they got bad and one worried they would get worse, and they didn't, there was no point in worrying. If they got worse and one worried that one might die, and one didn't, there was no point in worrying, and if one died one could no longer worry, so why worry?

For worry read fear, I thought; but the theory didn't work. I went straight on being scared silly.

It was odd, I thought, that for all the risks I took, I very seldom felt any fear of death. I thought about physical pain, as indeed one often had to in a trade like mine, and remembered things I'd endured, and I didn't know why the imagined pain of burning should fill me with a terror hard to control. I swallowed and felt lonely, and hoped that if it came it would be over quickly.

There were sirens at length in the distance and the best sight in the world, as far as I was concerned, was the red fire-engine which slowly forced its way forward, scattering spectator cars to either side of the road.

There was room, just, for three cars abreast; a wall on one side of the road, a row of trees on the other. Behind the fire-engine I could see the flas.h.i.+ng blue light of a police car and beyond that another flas.h.i.+ng light which might betoken an ambulance.

figures in authority uniforms appeared from the vehicles, the best being in flameproof suits lugging a hose. They stopped in front of the Daimler, seeing the bus wedged into one side of it and the family car on the other and one of them shouted to me through the s.p.a.ce where the windscreen should have been.

'There's petrol running from these vehicles,' he said.

'Can't you get out?'

What a d.a.m.n silly question, I thought. I said, 'No.'

'We're going to spray the road underneath you. Shut your eyes and hold something over your Mouth and nose.'

I nodded and did as I was bid, managing to s.h.i.+eld my face inside the neck of my jersey. I listened to the long whoos.h.i.+ng of the spray and thought no sound could be sweeter. Incineration faded progressively from near certainty to diminis.h.i.+ng probability to unlikely outcome, and the release from fear was almost as hard to manage as the fear itself. I wiped blood and sweat off my face and felt shaky.

After a while some of the firemen brought up metalcutting gear and more or less tore out of its frame the buckled door next to where Harley had been sitting.

Into this new entrance edged a policeman who took a preliminary look at Simms and me and then perched on the rear seat where he could see my head. I turned it as far as I could towards him, seeing a serious face under the peaked cap: about my own age, I judged, and full of strain.

'A doctor's coming,' he said, offering crumbs. 'He'll deal with your wounds.'

'I don't thInk I'm bleeding,' I said. 'It's Simms's blood that's on me.'

'Ah.' He drew out a notebook and consulted it. 'Did you see what caused this . . . all this?'

'No,' I said, thinking it faintly surprising that he should be asking at this point. 'I was looking back at Mr and Mrs Ostermeyer, who were sitting where you are now. The car just seemed to go out of control.' I thought back, remembering. 'I think Harley... Mr Ostermeyer . . . may have seen something. For a second he looked horrified... then we hit the wall and rebounded into the path of the bus.'

He nodded, making a note.

'Mr Ostermeyer is now conscious,' he said, sounding carefully noncommittal. 'He says you were shot.'

'We were what?'

'Shot. Not all of you. You, personally.'

'No.' I must have sounded as bewildered as I felt. 'Of course not.'

'Mr and Mrs Ostermeyer are very distressed but he is quite clear he saw a gun. He says the chauffeur had just pulled out to pa.s.s a car that had been in front of you for some way, and the driver of that car had the window down and was pointing a gun out of it. He says the gun was pointing at you, and you were shot. Twice at least, he says. He saw the spurts of flame.'

I looked from the policeman to Simms, and at the chauffeur's blood over everything and at the solidly scarlet congealed mess below his jaw.

'No,' I protested, not wanting to believe it. 'It can't be right.'

'Mrs Ostermeyer is intensely worried that you are sitting here bleeding to death.'

'I feel squeezed, not punctured.'

'Can you feel your feet?'

I moved my toes, one foot after another. There wasn't the slightest doubt, particularly about the left.

'Good,' he said. 'Well, sir, we are treating THis from now on as a possible murder enquiry, and apart from that I'm afraid the firemen say it may be some time before they can get you loose. They need more gear.

Can you be patient?' He didn't wait for a reply, and went on, 'As I said, a doctor is here and will come to you, but if you aren't in urgent need of him there are two other people back there in a very bad way, and I hope you can be patient about that also.'

I nodded slightly. I could be patient for hours if I wasn't going to burn.

'Why,' I asked, 'would anyone shoot at us?'

'Have you no idea?'

'None at all.'

'Unfortunately,' he said, 'there isn't always an understandable reason.'

I met his eyes. 'I live in Hungerford,'I said.

'Yes, sir, so I've been told.' He nodded and slithered out of the car, and left me thinking about the time in Hungerford when a berserk man had gunned down many innocent people, including some in cars, and turned the quiet country town into a place of horror. No one who lived in Hungerford would ever discount the possibility of being randomly slaughtered.

The bullet that had torn into Simms would have gone through my own neck or head, I thought, if I hadn't turned round to talk to Martha. I'd put my head between the headrests, the better to see her. I tried to sort out what had happened next, but I hadn't seen Simms. .h.i.t. I'd heard only the bang and crash of the window breaking and felt the hot spray of the blood that had fountained out of his smashed main artery in the time it had taken him to die. He had been dead, I thought, before anyone had started screaming: the jet of blood had stopped by then.

The steering wheel was now rammed hard against his chest with the instrument panel slanting down across his knees, higher my end than his. The edge of it pressed uncomfortably into my stomach, and I could see that if it had travelled back another six inches, it would have cut me in halF.

A good many people arrived looking official with measuring tapes and cameras, taking photographs of Simms particularly and consulting in low tones. A police surgeon solemnly put a stethoscope to Simms's chest and declared him dead, and without bothering with the stethoscope declared me alive.

How bad was the compression, he wanted to know.

Uncomfortable, I said.

'I know you, don't I?' he said, considering me.

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