Dead Man's Grip

telling her that she did not know when she would be in and asking her to phone the chiropodist, she broke down in tears.
    She hung up, debating whether to phone her mother next or her best friend, Sarah Ellis. Sarah, who worked at a law firm in Crawley, had been her rock after Kes’s death five years ago in an avalanche while skiing in Canada. She dialled her number, then listened to the phone ringing, hoping desperately she was free.
    To her relief, Sarah answered on the fifth ring. But before Carly could get any words out, she started sobbing again.
    Then she heard a tap on her window. A moment later, her car door opened and the police officer she had seen earlier, the one who had told her to wait in her car, peered in. He was a sturdy-looking man in his mid-thirties, with a serious face beneath his white cap, and was holding a small device that resembled some kind of meter.
    ‘Would you mind stepping out of the car please, madam?’
    ‘I’ll call you back, Sarah,’ she spluttered, then climbed out into the rain, her eyes blurry with tears.
    The officer asked her again if she was the driver of the car, and then for her name and address. Then, holding a small instrument in a black and yellow weatherproof case, he addressed her in a stiffer, more formal tone. ‘Because you have been involved in a road traffic collision, I require you to provide a specimen of breath. I must tell you that failure or refusal to do so is an offence for which you can be arrested. Do you understand?’
    She nodded and sniffed.
    ‘Have you drunk any alcohol in the past twenty minutes?’
    How many people had an alcoholic drink before 9 a.m., she wondered? But then she felt a sudden panic closing in around her. Christ, how much had she drunk last night? Not that much, surely. It must be out of her system by now. She shook her head.
    ‘Have you smoked in the last five minutes?’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I bloody need a fag now.’ She was shaking and her throat felt tight.
    Ignoring her comment, the officer asked her age.
    ‘Forty-one.’
    He tapped it into the machine, then made a further couple of entries before holding the machine out to her. A tube wrapped in cellophane protruded.
    ‘If you could pull the sterile wrapper off for me.’
    She obliged, exposing the narrow white plastic tube inside it.
    ‘Thank you. I’d like you to take a deep breath, seal your lips around the tube and blow hard and continuously until I tell you to stop.’
    Carly took a deep breath, then exhaled. She kept waiting for him to tell her to stop, but he stayed silent. Just as her lungs started to feel spent, she heard a beep, and he nodded his head. ‘Thank you.’
    He showed her the dial of the machine. On it were the words sample taken . Then he stepped back, studying the machine for some moments.
    She watched his face anxiously, shaking even more now with nerves. Suddenly, his expression hardened and he said, ‘I’m sorry to
tell you that you have failed the breath test.’ He held the machine up so she could read the dial again. The one word on it: fail.
    She felt her legs giving way. Aware that a man was watching her from inside the café, she steadied herself against the side of her car. This wasn’t possible. She could not have failed. She just couldn’t have.
    ‘Madam, this device is indicating that you may be over the prescribed limit and I’m arresting you for providing a positive breath sample. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you may later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence.’
    She shook her head. ‘It’s not possible, she said. ‘I didn’t – I haven’t – I was out last night, but—’
    A few minutes ago Carly could not have imagined her day getting any worse. Now she was walking through the rain, being steered by the guiding arm of a police officer towards a marked car just beyond a line of police tape. She saw two ambulances, two fire engines and a whole host of other police vehicles. A tarpaulin had been erected around the rear section of the lorry and her imagination went into hyperdrive, guessing what was happening on the far side of it.
    There was a terrible, almost preternatural stillness. She was vaguely aware of the steady patter of the rain, that was all. She walked past a fluorescent yellow jacket lying on the road. It had the word POLICE stencilled on the back and she wondered why it had been