Dead Simple

on its side in a demolished section of hedgerow.
    Slivers of blue flashing light skidded across the wet tarmac and shiny grass verge. Fire tenders, police cars and one ambulance were still on the scene, and a whole bunch of people, firemen and cops, mostly in reflective jackets, stood around. One cop was sweeping glass from the road with a broom.
    A police photographer’s camera flashed. Two crash investigators were laying out a measuring tape. Metal and glass litter glinted everywhere. Phil Wheeler saw a wheel-wrench, a trainer, a rug, a jacket.
    ‘Sure looks a goddamn bad mess, Dad!’ Missouri tonight.
    ‘Very bad.’
    Phil Wheeler had become hardened over the years, and nothing much shocked him any more. He’d seen just about every tragedy one could possibly have in a motor car. A headless businessman, still in a suit jacket, shirt and tie, strapped into the driver’s seat in the remains of his Ferrari, was among the images he remembered most vividly.
    Davey, just turned twenty-six, was dressed in his uniform New York Yankees baseball cap the wrong way around, fleece jacket over lumberjack shirt, jeans, heavy-duty boots. Davey liked to dress the way he saw Americans dress, on television. The boy had a mental age of about six, and that would never change. But he had a superhuman physical strength that often came in handy on call-outs. Davey could bend sheet metal with his bare hands. Once, he had lifted the front end of a car off a trapped motorcycle by himself.
    ‘Very bad,’ he agreed. ‘Reckon there are dead people here, Dad?’
    ‘Hope not, Davey.’
    ‘Reckon there might be?’
    A traffic cop, with a peaked cap and yellow fluorescent waistcoat, came up to the driver’s window. Phil wound it down and recognized the officer.
    ‘Evening, Brian. This looks a mess.’
    ‘There’s a vehicle with lifting gear on its way for the lorry. Can you handle the van?’
    ‘No worries. What happened?’
    ‘Head-on, Transit and the lorry. We need the van in the AI compound.’
    ‘Consider it sorted.’
    Davey took his flashlight and climbed down from the cab. While his dad talked to the cop, he shone the beam around, down at slicks of oil and foam across the road. Then he peered inquisitively at the tall, square ambulance, its interior light shining behind drawn curtains across the rear window, wondering what might be happening in there.
    It was almost two hours before they had all the pieces of the Transit loaded and chained onto the flatbed. His dad and the traffic cop, Brian, walked off a short distance. Phil lit a cigarette with his storm-proof lighter. Davey followed them, making a one-handed roll-up and lighting it with his Zippo. The ambulance and most of the other emergency vehicles had gone, and a massive crane truck was winching the front end of the cement lorry up, until its front wheels – the driver’s-side one flat and buckled – were clear of the ground.
    The rain had eased off and a badger moon shone through a break in the clouds. His dad and Brian were now talking about fishing – the best bait for carp at this time of year. Bored now and in need of a pee, Davey wandered off down the road, sucking on his roll-up, looking up in the sky for bats. He liked bats, mice, rats, voles, all those kinds of creatures. In fact he liked all animals. Animals never laughed at him the way humans used to, when he was at school. Maybe he’d go out to the badger sett when they got home. He liked to sit out there in the moonlight and watch them play.
    Jigging the flashlight beam, he walked a short distance into the bushes, unzipped his fly and emptied his bladder onto a clump of nettles. Just as he finished, a voice called out, right in front of him, startling the hell out of him.
    ‘Hey, hello?’
    A crackly, disembodied voice.
    Davey jumped.
    Then he heard the voice again.
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Shite!’ He shone the beam ahead into the undergrowth but couldn’t see anyone. ‘Hello?’ he called back. Moments later he heard the voice again.
    ‘Hello? Hey, hello? Josh? Luke? Pete? Robbo?’
    Davey swung the beam left, right, then further ahead. There was a rustling sound and a rabbit tail bobbed, for an instant, in the beam then was gone. ‘Hello, who’s that?’
    Silence.
    A hiss of static. A crackle. Then, only a few feet to his right, he heard the voice again. ‘Hello? Hello? Hello?’
    Something glinted in a bush. He knelt down. It was a radio, with an aerial. Inspecting it closer, with some