Take the Next Road on your Left

3

I was hoping for a swift resolution. There certainly wasn’t going to be a corpse now. It was debatable that I was even to blame. The more removed I was from the time of impact the less muddy my recall of events. Okay I had wrenched the wheel back the opposite way from my approach to the junction but I hadn’t left the road. Wide as the road was at that point she’d not stepped out. No, I thought, if anything she’d run into me.
If I could explain that to the authorities, who arrived en masse and seemingly overmanned (five police vehicles and three ambulances for God’s sake!) I could leave them my mobile number and at the very least get to the meeting if only to render my apologies. I could then carry on to the local station to provide them with the more detailed statement that I was sure they’d be requesting of me.
But it didn’t quite work out that way.
As I sat behind the wheel my bodily quaking began to abate slightly when the police cars shot past me followed by two ambulances. Christ, I thought, maybe I have killed her. What I didn’t notice was another police vehicle sidle up behind me and that’s when it got really scary.
“The driver of the blue Peugeot 405 – please get out of the vehicle now!”
My chin, which had been nestling against the top of the steering wheel in relief, lifted slightly
“I drive a Peugeot 405”
I looked into the rear-view mirror and my heart, which had already dropped into my stomach and was teetering on the edge of the digestive tract, tumbled swiftly into my bowels.
There were two policemen crouched beside their patrol car. The driver was holding a megaphone which I attributed as the origin for the order to exit but the other was pointing what appeared to be a marksman’s rifle.
“Whose fucking nightmare have I wondered into?”
“I repeat” barked the featureless tongue of the loudspeaker, “Exit the vehicle now”
The bystanders were fully in retreat ushering back to the sanctuary of either street corner. I watched them scurry away, their backs bent low and arms swinging millimetres from the tarmac, like frightened apes. The guy next to me loped off like a Gazelle with diarrhoea. Then I saw the other rifles inching slowly around each corner of the adjacent buildings.
I leaned forward to ease myself out of the seat belt, obviously too quickly for besieging boys in blue.
“Do not reach for a weapon!” The dislocated edict shot me through with a streak of hysterical paranoia I’d never experienced before. Who the fuck do they think I am?
It also heightened the nervousness of the shooters and as I saw them brace their weapons I fully expected to see a guy in a dark cloak holding a scythe sitting behind me in the Peugeot. My past life flashed before me. It lasted about a second.
“Seatbelt!” I screamed so viciously that I began to cough “My fucking seatbelt!” Their butts lifted slightly. I pushed open the door tenderly as if it were a priceless Lamborghini thrusting my hands forward as proof that I bore no threat to these heavily armed and securely hidden officers of the law.
“Down on the floor” I kneeled.
“Down – flat - on your face” I stretched out in obedience.
The road seemed warm. I expected it to be cool. The grainy surface so close to my eyes, disquieted me and enhanced the surreal texture of the whole experience. My nostrils were suddenly enlivened with the smell of tar and navvy sweat, historically entombed within the cement like the ash remains of Vesuvius’ victims.
Then they were on me. Like a legal assault they rifled through my suit and ripped off my shoes.
“What’s going on?” I pleaded, not believing I would get an answer, but naively trying to instil some doubt as to the validity of their arrest.
“I’m not armed – I didn’t mean to hit the girl” The juxtaposition of both statements felt illogical but somehow not within the context of what was going on around me.
The mouths attached to the myriad of arms and legs that were restraining, probing and stretching my own limbs remained mute until one finally uttered a consoling phrase with which my survival clung to, like the last secure rock before Niagara Falls.
“He’s clean”