Dead Simple

his brains coming out. Knew right away he was a goner. Only one survivor, but he died too.’
    Michael began shaking uncontrollably. ‘This guy who is missing. Do you know who he is?’
    ‘Uh huh!’
    ‘Tell me who he is?’
    ‘I have to go in a minute, help my dad.’
    ‘Davey, listen to me. I may be that guy.’
    ‘You shittin’ me?’
    ‘What’s his name, Davey?’
    ‘Uh – dunno. They’re just saying he’s meant to be getting married tomorrow.’
    Michael closed his eyes. Oh no, oh Christ, oh no. ‘Davey, was this accident – ah – this auto wreck – about nine o’clock on Tuesday night?’
    ‘That’s about the size of it.’
    With new urgency, Michael held the walkie-talkie up close to his mouth. ‘Davey, I’m that guy! I’m that guy who is getting married tomorrow!’
    ‘You shittin’ me?’
    ‘No, Davey. Listen to me carefully.’
    ‘I have to go – can talk to you later.’
    Michael shouted at him, ‘DAVEY, DON’T GO, PLEASE DON’T GO. YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN SAVE ME.’
    Silence came back at him. Just the crackle of static to tell him Davey was still on the other end.
    ‘Davey?’
    ‘I have to go, know what I’m saying?’
    ‘Davey, I need your help. You are the only person in the world who can help me. Do you want to help me?’
    Another long silence. Then, ‘What did you say your name was?’
    ‘Michael Harrison.’
    ‘They just said your name on television!’
    ‘Do you have a car, Davey? Can you drive?’
    ‘My dad has a truck.’
    ‘Can I speak to your dad?’
    ‘Uh – I dunno. He’s pretty busy, you know, we have to go out and tow in a wreck.’
    Michael thought, desperately hard, how to get through to this character. ‘Davey, would you like to be a hero? Would you like to be on television?’
    The voice became giggly. ‘Me on television? You mean like, me be a movie star?’
    ‘Yes, you could be a movie star! Just get your dad to speak to me and I’ll tell him how you could be a movie star. Why don’t you get him, put him on the walkie-talkie? How about that?’
    ‘I dunno.’
    ‘Davey, please get your dad.’
    ‘Like here’s the problem. My dad don’t know I have this walkie-talkie, you see he’d be pretty mad at me if he knew I had this.’
    Humouring him, Michael said, ‘I think he’d be proud of you, if he knew you were a hero.’
    ‘You reckon?’
    ‘I reckon.’
    ‘I have to go now. See ya! Over and out!’
    The walkie-talkie fell silent again.
    Pleading with all his heart, Michael was calling: ‘Davey, please, Davey, don’t leave me, please get your dad, please, Davey!’
    But Davey had gone.

27
    Ashley, sitting bleakly in an old, deep armchair in the tiny sitting room of Michael’s mother’s bungalow, stared blankly ahead through a blur of tears. She looked with no appetite at the untouched plate of assorted biscuits on the coffee table, then across at the colour photograph, on the mantelpiece above the fake-coal electric fire, of Michael, aged twelve, on a bicycle, then out through the net curtains at the view across the rain-lashed street to playing fields just below Brighton racecourse.
    ‘I have the dressmaker coming at two,’ she said. ‘What do you think I should do?’ She sipped her coffee then dabbed her eyes with a tissue. Bobo, Gill Harrison’s tiny white shih-tzu dog with a bow on its head, looked up at Ashley and gave a begging whine for a biscuit. She responded by stroking the soft hair of its belly.
    Gill Harrison sat on the edge of the sofa opposite her. She was dressed in a shapeless white T-shirt, shell-suit trousers and cheap white trainers. A thin ribbon of smoke trailed from a cigarette gripped between her fingers. Light glinted off a diamond engagement ring that was far too large to be real, next to a thin gold wedding band. A bracelet hung loose on her wrist.
    She spoke in a gravelly voice, tinged with a coarse Sussex accent, and her strain showed through it. ‘He’s a good boy. He never let anyone down in his life – that’s what I told the policeman what came round. This is not him, not Michael.’ She shook her head and took a heavy drag on her cigarette. ‘He likes a joke—’ She gave a wry laugh. ‘When he was a kid he was a terror at Christmas with a flippin’ whoopee cushion. Always giving people a fright. But this is not him, Ashley.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Something’s happened to him. Them boys done something to him. Or he’s had an accident as well. He hasn’t run out on