Chapters (50)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication Page
- Contents
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Ninteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Epilogue
- Letter From the Author
- Acknowledgements
- About the Author
I found the answer pretty quickly – or as quickly as anything could be found online in those days. Sugar in the petrol tank. Simple. I crept downstairs after everyone had gone to bed, grabbed a bag of granulated sugar from the cupboard, along with a plastic funnel, and went into the garage. I poured a pound of sugar into the tank then went to bed, confident that we would be travelling by train the following day.
But that’s not what happened.
The next day, when I got up, I asked Sandra where Pete was.
‘He’s gone to the petrol station to fill up before the journey,’ she replied.
I walked out to look in the garage. The car was indeed gone. My plan hadn’t worked. I started to tremble. But then the phone rang inside the house. It was the police. Uncle Pete had been in an accident.
What I hadn’t realised, hadn’t discovered through my internet research, is that a car with sugar in the tank will start up and travel a little way before it breaks down. Pete had been halfway across the busiest crossroads in town, the roads full of last-minute Christmas shoppers, when his car had suddenly broken down. The car behind went into his rear, another car ploughed into that; it caused a four-vehicle pile-up. Uncle Pete was all right apart from minor whiplash and the fact that his precious motor was written off. The woman in the car behind was less lucky; she banged her face on the steering wheel, suffered concussion, broke her cheekbone.
When the police and insurance companies got involved, they quickly discovered the sugar in the tank. When the police turned up on our doorstep and told us what had happened, questioned everybody, I had known there was only one thing I could do.
Thirty-seven
Thirty-seven
‘You told them you saw your autistic cousin do it,’ Moseley said, tutting. He and Jones had been gone for ten minutes before returning, their expressions even graver than before. ‘Pinned it on Dominic. Seems like that’s your way of operating, isn’t it? Point the finger of blame.’
‘But I owned up in the end,’ I protested.
‘And why was that?’
I stared at the surface of the desk. ‘Pete looked at the history on my computer.’ I didn’t know you could delete it, not back then.
‘So you didn’t actually own up. You were found out. How long was this after the incident?’
I had a feeling he knew the answer. ‘About a week.’
‘During which time your poor cousin had been through hell, I bet.’
‘He denied it, said it was me. But they didn’t know which one of us to believe. Until they found the evidence.’