‘She does. And economical, too! Around town you’ll get up to ninety-one miles per gallon!’

‘Awesome!’

Olson directed him to make a right shortly after the next set of lights. A left, then another right down a short, winding road until they reached a T-junction back at the wide New Church Road, lined on both side with large, detached houses and some blocks of flats. He kept the spiel going as Goodman, clearly concerned about his licence, kept the speed to a rigid 31 mph. They were approaching, to their left, a school for posh kids which had a good reputation. Olson had educated all three of his own there up to public school level. Back in the days, he rued, when he was earning proper money.

But were his kids, all grown up now, grateful? Hell no, they’d sided with their mother after he’d traded her in for a younger model. Embarrassingly young, his daughter had said, the last time they’d spoken, more years ago than he could recall.

The rain, which had eased earlier, was now coming down heavily again and the windscreen was misting. Just as he leaned forward to switch the demister on, Goodman shouted out a petrified, ‘NO!’

Olson was thrown forward against his shoulder strap as the car braked hard. He just saw a flash of red, then heard a sickening thump. Someone small, arms splayed wide out, eyes frozen, hurtled over the front of the car, thudded against the windscreen, then vanished. There was a heavy bang on the roof.

The car slewed to a halt.

There was a moment of absolute silence.

Then Goodman shrieked, ‘OH SHIT, OH GOD, OH SHIT.’

37

Tuesday 3 September

The navy, white and turquoise helicopter of the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance was flying eastwards just below the 500-foot cloud ceiling. A few minutes earlier the AgustaWestland AW169 had lifted from Worthing Hospital in West Sussex and was now on a heading back to the Rochester City Airport base to refuel. And also to give the crew, who had been up early, a much-needed comfort break and a caffeine hit.

They had just dropped off a seriously injured farmworker. The unfortunate thirty-three-year-old had fallen into a threshing machine, which had severed his right leg below the knee and ripped off his right arm below the shoulder. He’d said to them apologetically, before they’d put him into an induced coma, that it had been his own damned stupid fault – he’d removed the safety mechanism, which was there to prevent just such an accident from happening. He’d done that, he said, because the machine had kept jamming and it gave him quicker access.

Luckily for the man, they’d reached him less than four minutes after receiving the call – the accident scene was almost directly in their flight path after returning from attending a motor scooter accident near Arundel. The rider there had suffered nothing worse than a broken leg and she’d been taken by road to hospital. If they’d been much longer before reaching the farmworker, he would have bled out and died, for certain.