The whoop-whoop sound of approaching sirens faded in and out, like waves crashing over me then retreating again. A dull thud beat at my temples and I just wanted to throw up. My eyelids flickered as I peered through the broken windscreen of my patrol car. The world looked as if it had been tipped over onto its side. There were congealed pools of black blood beneath the spinning wheels of the overturned cart, and its occupants, who now lay lifelessly, their black clothing fluttering in the breeze.
Had I caused this? My mind screamed.
The world started to fade again, part of me relieved that I didn't have to look at those bodies, the mewing horse, and the spinning wheels of the cart. I wanted the darkness to come and take me again. I wanted it to drown me, wash me away from here and never bring me back. I closed my eyes, drawing deep, shallow breaths into my chest, which was crushed flat against the steering wheel.
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
The sound of the sirens growing closer now, bringing with them my father. In the darkness of my own semi-consciousness, I could see him, stiff-backed behind the wheel of his immaculate squad car. His uniform, crisply ironed, the creases down the sleeves and across his broad shoulders, sharp as razors. His keen grey eyes staring straight ahead, finely cropped hair and bushy moustache making him look more like an army sergeant major than a cop. I could picture him stepping from the car, his black boots so highly polished that they glinted like diamonds in the winter sun. I could see the disappointment - the anger - in his face when he surveyed the scene and realised what I had done. It wouldn't take him long to figure this mess out - he would know this was one of my fuck-ups. But I had done nothing like this before - this was the fuck-up of all fuck-ups!
I glanced once more through the web of cracks in the windscreen, hoping that perhaps the dead and the horse and cart had somehow magically disappeared. They hadn't, and in those cracks, which did little to mask the carnage spread across the road, I saw the flicker of luminous blue lights as my father's patrol car arrived on scene. I could see the word ECILOP written in blue across the bonnet, and through the cracked windscreen it looked distorted out of shape. Over the sound of the squealing sirens, I could hear his boots pounding quickly over the gravelled road as he raced towards my upturned patrol car. Today his boots weren't glistening with polish, but with flecks of blood. I closed my eyes against the pain in my head and chest. I couldn't bear to look into his eyes. I didn't want to see the disappointment I knew would be in them.
"Sydney! Sydney!" I heard his deep voice thunder.
A hand grabbed my shoulder. Without having to open my eyes, I knew it was my father's. I knew his touch.
"Sydney?" he barked, but his voice didn't sound angry; it sounded confused - scared.
I opened my eyes and twisted my head to look at him.
"Sydney, what happened here? Are you okay?" he breathed beneath his thick, black moustache.
"I'm sorry, dad," I whispered, trying to fill my lungs with enough air so as to speak.
My father's face was just inches from mine as he kneeled, peering through the driver's window at me. My breath covered his worried face and he recoiled as the stale whiskey fumes wafted beneath his nose. They were unmistakeable. Just as I knew it would - and could I have really expected anything different - that look of fear and concern left my father's eyes and was replaced with something close to despair and disgust for me.
"What have you done?" he said, sounding as if he was going to choke. He looked back at the road, the bloody bodies, screeching horse and cart, then back at me.
"Oh, sweet Jesus, Sydney, what have you done?"
"I'm sorry..." I started to murmur, but the sound of his radio squawking garbled messages cut over me.
My father left me in the car, lying on its side in the road. I heard the crunch of his boots over gravel. Murmuring in pain, I twisted my head to the left as I followed the sound of his footsteps. Had he left me to sort out this mess on my own? I wondered. I heard him speaking, but even through the foggy haze of my pounding mind, I knew he was talking to someone on his mobile phone and not his radio. How did I know? His voice was hushed, and there was no garbled reply from whoever he was speaking to.
The world started to swim before me again like I had just stepped off a spinning roundabout. There was a scraping noise and I twisted my head again and could see my father yanking open the driver's door of my squad car. The bottom portion of the door scraped across the gravel, leaving what looked like white claw marks on the road. I winced in pain as my father struggled to free me from the car. He released my seatbelt, and at once it felt like a heavy weight had been lifted from my chest. I gasped in a lungful of breath, and instantly, that hazy feeling left my mind. Slipping his arms beneath mine, my father levered me free of my wrecked vehicle. He held me by the shoulders, helping me stand. My legs felt rubbery and I gripped his strong arms. Blood dripped in a thick stream from my forehead, spattering my white police shirt crimson. I looked down at the ground and it was covered in a crisscross maze of tyre marks where a vehicle had braked suddenly.
"Are you okay?" he barked, his face so close to mine that the tips of our noses almost touched.
"Yes, I'm okay," I whispered, dabbing at the cut on my head with my fingertips.
He looked into my blue eyes, like a doctor checking to see if I were truly conscious. When he had satisfied himself I wasn't going to drop to the ground, he let go of me and roared, "Look what you've done, you stupid girl!"
I didn't want to look at him. I couldn't bear to see that disapproving glare of his. It hurt me, and always had for a long as I could remember. That's why mum had left him - he had looked at her the same way if the house was messy, or his dinner hadn't been cooked just right. She was gone now - lived in Spain with her hot rod of a guy, Julio. Good luck to her!
"Look!" my father barked, taking my face in one of his giant hands and snapping my head towards the carnage in the road. "Look what you've done!"
"I'm sorr..." I started.
"You've been drinking, haven't you!" he almost screamed, his face growing white in anger. "Don't you dare try and deny it. I can smell the booze on your breath."
I looked again at the lifeless bodies...oh, my God...one of them looked really small...a child? I began to shake uncontrollably as the realisation of what I'd done finally hit me like a blunt axe through my skull. Tears began to stream down my face and my bottom lip began to wobble.
"Oh, my God," I said, my legs buckling in the middle. Before I'd dropped to my knees, my father gripped me by the arm, dragging me like a drunk towards the dead in the street.
"Look! Look! Look what you've done!" he roared in my ear. "Take a look! You've killed people here! You've killed an entire fucking family!"
"I'm sorry...please...stop...I'm so..." I begged him, clinging to his arm.
"Look!" he hissed, shoving me again towards the wreckage, the blood - the horror of what I had done. With tears streaming down my face and snot swinging from my nose, I stood, shaking and sobbing.
The wooden cart was tipped onto its side. Half of it was smashed and splintered like matchwood. There had been seats, but they had partially come free and stuck upwards into the bleak afternoon sky, like broken limbs. There was a body of a young woman, perhaps no older than me, trapped beneath one of the uprooted seats. One of her arms was wrapped at an unnatural angle about her own throat as if she had somehow strangled herself to death. Her face stared upwards like a pale moon, eyes wide and blank, mouth open showing her teeth. I looked away, but only into the face of another. This was a man, it was impossible to tell his age, his face was smeared black with blood. The centre of his body was trapped beneath one of the giant iron wheels. Part of the wheel was imbedded in his chest, like a length of cheese wire brought to a halt halfway through a thick lump of cheddar. There was another man, older, his face wrinkled with lines of age, each one like a deep valley, crisscrossing around his dead eyes and thin lips. A flap of skin had come away on his forehead and it hung down the length of his right cheek like a bloody bandage. I looked away and wished I hadn't. What confronted me was far worse than anything I'd yet seen. There was a child - a little boy. He had flame-red hair, and was wearing a smart black coat, shorts, and socks and shoes. One of them had come off and lay beside him. It looked like something one of those expensive porcelain dolls would wear. It wasn't the only thing about the boy which reminded me of a doll; it was his face. Soft, pure white looking in contrast to his bright hair. He couldn't have been any older than six. Slowly, I edged my way towards him. I wanted to pick the little boy up, cradle him in my arms and tell him I was sorry for what I had done. It was then that I noticed his hair wasn't auburn - it was only reddish-brown in colour because of the blood which flowed from the giant opening in the side of his head.
I lurched away and threw up into a nearby ditch. Vomit swung from my chin like a pendulum, and my stomach knotted. I leant forward, holding my sides, as I vomited again. It was hot and smelt of whiskey. I felt an arm slide around my shoulders. My father straightened me up, and held me in his arms. I felt the stiffness, the anger leave his body.
"This can be sorted," he whispered in my ear. "We can work this whole thing out."
"What do you mean?" I murmured into his chest.
"No one needs to know what really happened out here," he hushed, holding me tight. "Just do as I tell you and I can put this right."
"But the people...the dead people..." I cried. "I've been drinking..."
Then, holding me at arm's length, my father stared straight into my eyes and said, "Listen to me, Sydney. This was an accident caused by these people - not you!"
"But I killed..." I sobbed.
He shook me by the shoulders and said, "You're not listening to me. These people are nothing - they are nobodies. Drifters who come into town once a year for the summer then move on again. No one gives a shit about them. No one knows their names or anything about them. If we deal with this right, the story will make a few local headlines at the most. I can make this all go away if you just do and say as I tell you."
"But how?" I said, looking over his shoulder at the wreckage.
"What were you doing out here?" he suddenly asked, then said, "On second thought, don't tell me. I don't want to know. The less I know, the better for everyone. But you heard the control room calling you, right?"
"Yes," I nodded, looking back at him, wiping the tears from my face.
"Okay," he said thoughtfully. "So you heard the message and thought a colleague was asking for urgent assistance. So you switched on your sirens and lights and started to head back towards town. These people would have heard you coming, but did nothing to move out of your way. You rounded the bend back there, and instead of moving out of the way, or pull in, they kept coming towards you. The horse got scared by the flashing lights and the sirens, and the old guy lost control of the creature. It pulled the cart and it's passengers across the road and you collided with them. That's what happened, wasn't it?"
"But...I'd been drinking. I wasn't looking where..." I mumbled.
"The horse got scared and..." My father cut dead as we were joined on the road by another patrol car.
He let go of my shoulders and headed towards the two officers who were climbing out. They hadn't arrived with lights and sirens blazing, but silently. I recognised the two cops who got out of the car. Mac and Woody. Both had been friends of my father's for as long as I could remember. They had all been recruits together. They had visited our home often over the years with their wives and children. My father was now their sergeant.
"Mac!" my father hollered. "Bring me a breathalyser."
Mac reached back into the car, then came trotting over to us, Woody by his side. Both of them looked at me, the blood congealing on my forehead, then at the accident.
"Jeezus," Woody whistled between his front teeth.
My father took the breathalyser from Mac, then placing a white plastic tube onto the top of it, he took a deep breath. He placed the tube into his mouth and blew until the little green light flashed on the front of the device.
"Okay, so you blew a green," my father said openly in front of the other two officers.
"But..." I started, feeling confused and a little shocked by what my father had just done.
"She blew a green, isn't that right?" my father said, looking at his two friends.
"She sure did," Mac said, taking the breathalyser from my father.
"But you blew for me," I stammered.
"That blow to her head must be worse than it looks," Woody cut in. "Your girl is hallucinating, Richard."
"Both of you saw her blow a green, right?" my father said, fixing his friends with his grey stare.
"That's what's going down in our statements," Mac said.
"See," my father said, looking back at me. "Two witnesses saw you blow a green, and not just any old witnesses. Two police officers. Looking back at Woody, my father said, "Go and switch on the sirens and lights on my daughter's squad car."
Woody nodded, and ran over to the car which still lay on its side. He bent down and reached in, and almost at once, strobes of blue and red light filled the darkening sky and the whoop-whoop sound of sirens filled the air.
"I'll never get used to how loud those freaking things are," Mac said, sealing the breathalyser, just in case it was needed at a later date.
"I know, they are so loud, it makes you wonder how these drifters didn't hear them," my father said, looking me straight in the eyes.
"Scared the shit out of the horse by the looks of things," Mac added with a knowing smile.
It was like the three of them were reading from some well-rehearsed script. Although my father was desperately trying to get me out of trouble, I couldn't help but feel shocked by his deceitfulness. I had never seen this side of him before.
My father must have seen the disbelief in my eyes, as he came towards me and took me by the shoulders again. "You are a copper," he said. "If the truth came out about what really happened here, you could go to prison for a very long time for D and D and causing death by dangerous driving. Is that what you want?"
Numbly, I shook my head.
"Do you want to ruin your life because of a few nobodies who got in the way?" he asked me, his eyes never leaving mine.
I shook my head. "No," I whispered.
"You're a copper," he reminded me again with a squeeze of my shoulder. "We're all coppers here and we look after one another. We stick together. Right?"
"Right," I nodded slowly, now not sure if I were more in shock at what my father had just done or because of the accident itself.
"Good," my father, said. Looking at Woody, he added, "Do me a favour and take my daughter home. Then get back here double quick."
"No probs, Rich," Woody said, taking me by the arm.
"Right, let's get the circus going," my father said to Mac.
Mac nodded back at my father, then took the radio from his belt and spoke into it.
"Control from Romeo-Two, we have an RTA out on the old Buckmore Road. We have at least four fatals..."
Before he could finish, there was the sound of someone or something groaning in pain. All of us looked back at the bodies scattered across the road. My heart leapt into my throat as I saw the old man, with the lined and wrinkled face move. I pulled myself free from Woody's grasp and raced towards the man. I knelt down beside him and could see that his eyelids were flickering.
"He's still alive!" I hollered at my father. "Quick! Get an ambulance."
My father and the others were at my side in an instant, the three of them peering down over my shoulder. The old man moved again, just a twitch of his arm. This time he opened his eyes and stared straight up at me. I flinched backwards. The whites of his eyes were a milky yellow, both of them clouded over with cataracts. This was something not missed by Mac.
"Jeezus," he sighed. "No wonder the old fucker steered right out in front of you Sydney, he's almost blind."
I knew this point would be raised in all of their statements.
The old man's lips moved, as if he were trying to say something. I leaned in closer as I desperately fought to hear what it was he was trying to say. Suddenly, I felt a bony hand grip my arm. I gasped out loud and looked down to see the old man's gnarled and swollen fingers curled around my wrist like a deformed claw. He pulled me down towards him.
With my face almost touching his, I could feel his breath caress my cheek like a hot kiss.
"Witch," he whispered in my ear. "Witch!"
I pulled back from him, my skin prickling with gooseflesh. There was a rattling sound in the back of his throat, a red bauble of blood appeared between his dry, flaky lips. With his milky-coloured eyes rolling back in their sockets, the old man took one last breath and fell still.
"What did he say?" my father barked, pulling me to my feet.
I looked at him, too numb to answer.
"What did he say?" he snapped again.
"Witch," I whispered. "He called me a witch."