didn't seem to be any obvious reason why the accident had happened. No other vehicle seemed to have been involved. Perhaps it was mechanical failure, he decided, or maybe something had happened to the driver? Either way it didn't matter now.
The driver's door had been wedged shut by the awkward angle at which the car had suddenly come to rest. The windscreen was shattered (it had been pierced by a sharp, thick and low-growing branch) and he cautiously pushed the remaining glass out of the way and peered into the vehicle. He was then able to see the body of the driver, and it was immediately apparent that the injuries they had sustained had been fatal. The same branch which had smashed the window had impaled the stocky, grey-haired man through the left shoulder and his neck had been snapped, presumably by the force of the impact. Jolted out of his seat by the sudden and violent crash, the man's mouth had smashed against the steering wheel. Blood, bone and shattered teeth dribbled down the corpse's chin. The appalling injuries suffered by the driver were so obvious and extreme that for a few seconds Harry didn't notice there was a passenger in the car. A woman of similar age to the man next to her, it was instantly clear that she was dead too. Harry looked deep into her lifeless face. The second corpse didn't seem to have suffered any of the physical traumas that the first had, but it too had trickles of dark blood running from its mouth. Perhaps this lady's injuries were internal? His stomach was strong and, having obtained numerous first aid qualifications as part of his outdoor activities training, he instinctively leant across and checked for a pulse. Nothing. Although her skin was still warm to the touch, it was clear that it was already too late and there was nothing he could do for her. He stepped back and stared into the car again. In contrast to the driver, the reason for the woman's death was far from obvious. Whatever had happened to her, her face bore an inexplicable expression of absolute fear and gut- wrenching agony.
Harry's options were limited. Did he stop with the bodies and wait for another motorist to pass (which would likely be some time) or should he try and get back to the village as quickly as he could to alert the authorities? Although harder, the second option was clearly the most sensible. The poor buggers in he car were beyond help and there was nothing to be gained from stopping with them. Harry quickly scrambled back up to the road, brushed himself down and then began to run again, continuing with his clockwise circuit of the lake.
What started as a gentle training run had suddenly become a painful struggle. As well as having to contend with the shock of what he had just discovered, Harry also now needed to get his body moving again. He may only have stopped running for a couple of minutes, but that had been more than long enough for his muscles to begin to seize and tighten. He was just over halfway along his circuit so it made sense for him to continue on in the same direction. Perhaps he'd come across some of the school traffic that he'd originally hoped to avoid, heading back home after dropping off children.
Harry forced himself to try and maintain a steady pace. He was tired and he knew that he didn't have enough energy to run faster ? with more than three miles left to cover he knew that if he tried he'd probably end up walking most of the way back. At the same time, however, the furious, adrenaline-fuelled chemical reactions racing through his body were intent on making him pick up his speed. All he could see were the bodies he'd just found and all he could hear was the thump, thump, thump of his feet hitting the ground and his heavy, rasping breathing which seemed to be becoming harder, deeper and more desperate with each passing metre.
Finally another sound disturbed the uncomfortable silence and distracted him. He could hear a plane in the distance. He rounded another gentle corner at the bottom of the lake and began to run the relatively straight two and a half mile stretch of road that would lead him back into the village. The relentless sunlight flickered through the trees, blinding him intermittently with its brilliance and causing him to involuntarily screw his eyes shut. The run was getting harder. He was suddenly beginning to feel cold and the ends of his fingers and toes had begun to tingle. Had the temperature dropped or was it shock? He'd run this route many times before and he knew he was more than capable of completing the distance, but now he was beginning to doubt himself. And all the time the plane's engines were getting louder.
At the side of the road a twisting mountain stream tumbled down the hillside, disappeared under the road and trickled into the lake. That was Harry's two mile mark. If he pushed hard he knew that he could be home in less than fifteen minutes now, but it would take just about every last scrap of energy he had to do it. His legs were hurting. Christ, that plane was getting low and close...
When the noise from the plane became deafening and was so loud that he could feel it through the ground beneath his feet like an earthquake, Harry stopped running again. This plane sounded different. Apart from the sheer volume of the noise it was making, this didn't sound like one of the military jets that often flew down the valley or even one of the smaller civilian aircraft that frequently passed over. The aircraft was moving in the same direction as he was, coming from behind him and flying along the length of the lake towards the village. He could see it above the trees now and it was flying lower than any plane he'd seen around here before. The slope of the bank down to the lake was relatively gentle here. Breathing heavily he jogged down to the water's edge to watch.
The plane passed alongside him. It could have been no more than fifty meters from the surface of the lake and it was falling rapidly. As Harry watched in stunned disbelief its nose and starboard wing dropped slightly. The inevitable seemed to take an eternity to happen. Its rapid descent continued until the tip of the wing eventually clipped the water and somersaulted the plane forwards, flipping it over and over in mid-air and breaking it into several huge pieces which landed in the lake with a series of massive splashes, sending vast plumes of water shooting high into the air.
Harry didn't connect the two crashes he'd seen until he found a third. He discovered Kenneth Brent, the local postman, dead in the middle of the road next to his motor-scooter. Letters were blowing casually across the silent scene like leaves on the breeze.
By the time he arrived back at the village ? exhausted, bewildered and terrified ? he knew that something of vast and disastrous proportions had happened.
By the time he arrived back at the village the wreck of the plane had disappeared beneath the surface of the lake, leaving the water appearing calm and deceptively normal. By the time he arrived back at the village everyone else was dead.
JACOB FLYNN Part i
Jacob Flynn is serving a prison sentence for manslaughter. Like pretty much every other inmate, he will protest his innocence relentlessly to anyone who will listen. The fact of the matter is, however, that Flynn caused the death of a seventy-three year old gentleman through reckless driving. He will tell you that the old man was at fault as much as he was. He will give you any number of entirely plausible reasons why he feels his case was handled badly, and why the judge had something against him, and why his solicitor let him down, and how if it hadn't have been for the fact that he'd caught his lying bitch of a girlfriend in bed with his best friend then he wouldn't have been driving at almost twice the legal speed limit down a narrow residential road at just after two- thirty on a quiet Thursday afternoon in late November last year.
Whatever Flynn might tell you, the fact remains that he lost control of his car around a tight bend, mounted the pavement and mowed down Mr Eddie McDermott as he walked back to his house after a lunchtime drink with friends. The fact remains that his driving was the sole cause of Mr McDermott's untimely death, and in the eyes of the law he is being punished accordingly.
Flynn shares his small, rectangular cell with two other men, Suli Salman (minor drug trafficking offences and assault) and Roger Bewsey (corporate fraud). According to his own mental records, he has now been locked up for five months, three weeks and a day. It is just after eight o'clock in the morning and he has been awake for three hours.
I hate this place more with every second I have to spend here. I don't know how the rest of them can handle it in here. I still don't know how I'm going to handle it. Every morning I wake up and wish that I hadn't got into the car that day. Every morning I wish that I'd never found Elaine with that bastard Peters or that I'd never met the bitch in the first place. We'd only been together for just over a year, and look at how much it's cost me. I'll spend more time in here alone than we ever spent together. I know there's no point thinking like this but I can't help it. The hours in here are long and slow and I don't have anything else to do.
It's the stench that gets to me first. Even before I've opened my eyes I can smell the soulless, disinfected emptiness of this fucking place. Then I hear it ? the relentless clattering noise from the scum in the cells around me. No matter what time it is it's never quiet in here. There's no escape. It never bloody stops. I keep my eyes closed for as long as I can but eventually I have to sit up and look around this concrete and metal hell.
I shouldn't be here. Maybe if I'd driven a different way that day or if I hadn't gone round to see her then I
