Dead Tomorrow

question Lynn was unable to answer.
    She’d long ago lost count of the times she had sat anxiously in A&E at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, while medics treated her daughter. Once, at thirteen, Caitlin had had to have her stomach pumped after stealing a bottle of vodka from the drinks cabinet. Another time, at fourteen, she fell off a roof, stoned on hash. Then there was the horrific night she came into Lynn’s bedroom at two in the morning, glassy-eyed, sweating and so cold her teeth were chattering, announcing she had downed an Ecstasy tablet given to her by some lowlife in Brighton and that her head hurt.
    On each occasion, Dr Hunter came to the hospital and stayed with Caitlin until he knew she was out of danger. He didn’t have to do it, but that was the kind of man he was.
    And now the door was opening and he was coming in. A tall, elegant figure in a pinstriped suit with fine posture, he had a handsome face, framed with wavy salt and pepper hair, and gentle, caring green eyes that were partially concealed by half-moon glasses.
    ‘Lynn!’ he said, his strong, brisk voice oddly subdued this morning. ‘Come on in.’
    Dr Ross Hunter had two different expressions for greeting his patients. His normal, genuinely warm, happy-to-see-you smile was the only one Lynn had ever seen in all the years that she had been his patient. She had never before encountered his wistful biting-of-the-lower-lip grimace. The one he kept in the closet and hated to bring out.
    The one he had on his face today.

3
    It was a good placefor a speed trap. Commuters hurrying into Brighton who regularly drove down this stretch of the Lewes Road knew that, although there was a forty-mile-an-hour limit, they could accelerate safely after the lights and not have to slow down again along the dual carriageway until they reached the speed camera, almost a mile on.
    The blue, yellow and silver Battenburg markings of the BMW estate car, parked in a side road and partially obscured from their view by a bus shelter, came as an unwelcome early-morning surprise to most of them.
    PC Tony Omotoso stood on the far side of the car, holding the laser gun, using the roof as a rest, aiming the red dot at the front number plates, which gave the best reading on any vehicle he estimated to be speeding. He clicked the trigger on the plate of a Toyota saloon. The digital readout said 44 mph. The driver had spotted them and had already hit the brakes. Using the rigid guidelines, he allowed a tolerance of 10 per cent over the limit, plus two. The Toyota carried on past, its brake lights glowing. Next he sighted on the plate of a white Transit van–43 mph. Then a black Harley Softail motorbike sped past, going way over the limit, but he wasn’t able to get a fix in time.
    Standing to his left, ready to jump out the moment Tony called, was his fellow Road Policing Officer, PC Ian Upperton, tall and thin, in his cap and yellow high-visibility jacket. Both men were freezing.
    Upperton watched the Harley. He liked them–he liked all bikes, and his ambition was to become a motorcycleofficer. But Harleys were cruising bikes. His real passion was for the high-speed road-racer machines, like BMWs, Suzuki Hayabusas, Honda Fireblades. Bikes where you had to lean into bends in order to get round them, not merely turn the handlebars like a steering wheel.
    A red Ducati was going past now, but the rider had spotted them and slowed almost to a crawl. The clapped-out-looking green Fiesta coming up in the outside lane, however, clearly had not.
    ‘The Fiesta!’ Omotoso called out. ‘Fifty-two!’
    PC Upperton stepped out and signalled the car over. But, whether blindly or wilfully, the car shot past.
    ‘OK, let’s go.’ He called out the number plate–‘Whiskey Four-Three-Two Charlie Papa November’–then jumped behind the wheel.
    ‘Fuckers!’
    ‘Yeah, cunts!’
    ‘Why don’t you go chasing real criminals, right?’
    ‘Yeah, ’stead of fuckin’ persecuting motorists.’
    Tony Omotoso turned his head and saw two youths slouching past.
    Because 3,500 people die on the roads of England every year, against 500 a year who are murdered, that’s why , he wanted to say to them. Because me and Ian scrape dead and broken bodies off the roads every damn day of the week, because of arseholes like this one in the Fiesta.
    But he didn’t have time. His colleague already had the blue roof spinners flashing and the siren whup-whooping . He tossed the laser gun on to the