Road Kill

William watched him leave with a shrewd stare. “I see your mate’s enough of a New Man to let you stand up for yourself,” he said wryly. Now he’d relaxed I could hear the culture in his voice, close to the lazy drawl of the wealthy classes.

“Sam knows his limitations,” I said. “But don’t underestimate him. He may not like physical confrontations, but he could beat your computer to death with one hand tied behind his back.”

William nodded and the humour left his face as the conversation died away.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said. “Who was he?”

“His name was Simon Grannell,” he said simply, “but everybody called him Slick.”

The name tickled at the back of my memory but I couldn’t put a face to it. “So, what happened, do you know?” I asked.

“Not sure. We got there not long after,” he said, sounding both tired and angry, running a hand over the top of his scalp. “Slick was already toast and your lady friend was still lying in the middle of the road. I damned near ran over her, too.”

Despite the heat my arms went cold enough to sprout instant goosebumps. “‘Too’?” I said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’m no expert but it looked like something went over her after they hit the deck.”

“Jesus,” I muttered under my breath. “I suppose her Ducati’s totalled?”

“Ducati?” William frowned. “What Ducati? Slick’s bike was a Suzuki streetfighter. They were on that.”

Slick Grannell and a streetfighter Suzuki. Now I remembered him. One of the flashy group of riders who liked to show off at the local bikers’ haunt near Kirkby Lonsdale.

The last time I’d seen him was probably one mild dry Sunday in early July, setting off from Devil’s Bridge like the lights had just gone green on his own personal drag strip and someone else was picking up the tab on his tyres. An idle thought had crossed my mind at the time that he was heading for a fall. I never expected for a moment that he’d take my best friend with him.

For a moment I said nothing but something started niggling at the back of my mind. Clare had passed her bike test before she learned to drive a car and I’d never known her willingly ride pillion. She hated it. Yet there she’d been, out on the back of this guy Slick’s bike when I could have sworn she thought he was as big an idiot as I did.

“What the hell was Clare doing out with Slick?” I asked.

William glanced at me sharply, as though maybe he sensed the implied criticism of his mate. “I don’t know,” he said. He saw my expression and was back to his grim-faced look again. “I just want to find out what happened to them,” he said, “and she’s the only one who can fill in the blanks.”

Pauline reappeared at that moment and I glanced at her, hopeful, but she shook her head. “They aren’t for telling me anything,” she said.

“Right,” I said, determined. “My turn.”

***

“Look, I appreciate that you’re concerned for your friend, but there really is nothing I can tell you beyond the fact we’re doing everything we can.”

The doctor finished making some illegible scrawl on her clipboard and almost threw it down onto the cluttered desk. She barely seemed out of her teens but she must have passed out top in her class for stubbornness. She was frail and slender and looked tired down to her bones.

The pager in the pocket of her white coat went off and she picked it out, reading the display distractedly, then shut it off. Her attention was already somewhere else. I touched her sleeve, enough to bring her back to me.

“OK,” I said quickly. “I know I’m not family but to me Clare is family. Closer than family. I understand her legs are smashed. Can you at least tell me if it’s as bad as I’ve heard?”

The young doctor’s eyes flicked down to where my fingers rested on her arm, then up to meet my gaze again and I saw wariness replace exasperation. I took my hand back. She sighed noisily and pushed a lank strand of hair out of her eyes.

“Yes, it’s bad,” she said at last, the admission seeming to sap the last of her meagre energy. She stuck her hands into her pockets, pulling her shoulders down, too.

I shrugged helplessly. “So – will she walk?”

“That depends,” the doctor said, stony, “on whether we can save her legs.”

She paused and must have seen the blank shock in my face. She let her breath out heavily, took pity on me. “Look, your friend came in with her pelvic girdle completely fractured in three places. Before we could do anything else we had to put her in an ex-fix in A&E to stabilise her. You know what one of those is, right?”

“Right,” I said. You can’t ride a bike and not have seen people hobbling round with their busted limbs wired back together in an external fixator.

She eyed me for a moment before she went on. “I won’t go into technical details, but basically your friend’s left femur is in too many pieces to count. Her right’s not as bad but it’s still a mess. If whatever vehicle that hit them had run over her torso instead of her legs, she’d be dead right now. As it is, she’s got nerve and blood vessel damage to both limbs. If we can’t repair it—” she shrugged, “—she’ll lose her legs.”

I was silent for a moment. “Would it help if you had the best orthopaedic surgeon in the country to work on her – someone who specialises in motorcycle injuries?”

She bridled at that, waving me away. “I can assure you that the surgical team here is excellent—”

“As good as Richard Foxcroft?”

She began to form an affirmative reply on a reflex, then stopped as the name went in. “Mr Foxcroft?” she said