Ghost Note

Dedication

For Vivienne, Ariella, Nathaniel,

and Ben, Catherine, Dad (Kenneth), Pat, and Dyllis

– with all my love, Simon

~~~

Quotes

––––––––

'Playing live has always given me a buzz. It touches part of me that I can't explain, not easily anyway. I live for this – it's like oxygen to me, and I've got to breathe.'

(R. Preston)

––––––––

Time will come,

And time will pass,

And there's nothing you can do

To make it last

PAGAN

(D. Salvatore)

~~~

Table of Contents

Dedication

Quotes

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

A note from the author

~~~

Prologue

'What do you mean, for free?'

'For free means for free.'

'Are you nuts? Two and a half years we've slogged our arses off and you want to distribute it free, like a cereal-packet giveaway. What about our plans? What about our dreams to transform the industry? What about all the experimenting and development to make it work?'

'I know, I know, Marcus. I just think it should be shared.'

'Screw that with a spatula. What about the offer? What about the four-point-seven million? We're partners Shaun, we've built this together. My idea, your tech. We've got to take it to market. That was the whole point, damn it. Joe-public will wonder at it for a while, then it'll be forgotten or under-used. We can change that. We can have a world-wide legacy. And a massive source of income.'

'No Marcus. We've always said we needed agreement before we launched. I don't agree with you right now. It makes complete sense to give it away.'

'Does it my thin bony backside. No. You need more time to reflect on this. Fifty-fifty. That gives you well over two million. Enough to set up your business thrice over, for goodness-sakes.'

Marcus ejected a disk from his computer, and passed it back to Shaun. 'Look, we've been arguing about this for hours. I know how much you love your canoeing. You're in one of the best places on the planet for it. How 'bout I book you on one of those wilderness weekends and you use the trip to think this through a bit. I won't say any more until you're back. My niece, Fiona Byrd, is an excellent guide who knows the area better than anyone. She'd be pleased to take you out, show you some of the lesser-known campsites, do some fishing, give you some real space to think. And when you come back your choice is your choice. What do you say? Can't do any harm, you're here anyway, and your flight home isn't until Wednesday, is it?'

'Okay Marcus. But I'm not going to change my mind. Free is right.'

~~~

Chapter One

Wednesday evening.

Music swirled deep within my head the way the Lakeland mist moved and shimmied across the road. The wipers acted as a metronome, marking time with my rhythm. As the smell of the rain seeped through the vents, I started tapping on the cold, peeling leather of the steering wheel. I thought about the day. It had been a good one. We had got the demo we were all happy with. Finally.

I changed down for the corner that marked the edge of Ullswater. The trees flashed past on my right; wind-driven spray kicked up over the road and dumped itself on the windscreen. I touched the brakes and felt the back of the old estate start to slide away, as the worn tyres splayed through a massive puddle. I nudged the accelerator and the Volvo straightened. Drama avoided, I thought again about the session I'd just finished playing in.

Our band had been together for just under two years. Dougal Green owned a small recording studio in the basement of a youth centre just off the market square. It had been Dougal who put the advert in the Westmorland Evening News.

Usually a band asks for a singer or bass player and gives a list of musical influences they aspire to. In typical Dougal style, he did it the other way round. He posted Band Wanted and gave his mobile number. Hannah, my mate Ritchie's girlfriend, had been relining their cat's litter tray with paper when she saw the ad. She showed Ritchie, gave the cat something a bit more shiny from one of the colour magazines, and Ritchie called me the same evening. We'd been playing together for fun for years but hadn't been in a band since college. We phoned Dougal. He agreed to meet us the following weekend.

~

The road narrowed for a steep incline. The drystone walls – all glistening and shiny with rain tonight – lit up on either side until they blurred my peripheral vision. As I drove higher up the pass the mist got worse – patchy at first over the streambeds that ran under the road, then thicker and thicker, forcing me to slow and use the fog lights. I crested a false summit and swerved to avoid a police car, travelling fast – its blue lights diffused in an odd discoball effect through the fog – the brown-haired driver leaning forward to get a better view of what road was still visible.

~

Some poor soul stuck on a hillside somewhere, I thought to myself, map blown away, jacket left back at the B&B because of a deceptive forecast heard over a mouthful of toast twelve hours earlier.

And what a night for it. Rather you than me mate.

I turned the heater up a notch in sympathy, and pressed play on the stereo. Darude's thumping trance anthem Sandstorm ended in a flurry of keyboards. Donizetti's 'mad scene' started, the first few notes sending a shiver of nostalgia through me, far more powerful than any bad weather could do. This was playing the afternoon Ritchie and I had arrived at Dougal's studio.

~

A mellow late summer Saturday afternoon. We'd met up for lunch in town then headed over to the studio. Our first impression was a massive green door made of steel, set into bright red brickwork, with two buzzers: PENRITH YOUTH CENTRE and STUDIO. We could hear a high-pitched muffled noise.

Ritchie buzzed the studio. There was a pause, a metallic click, and the door opened a fraction. We pushed it open easily enough for a metal door four inches thick. The high-pitched keening changed into the crystal clear voice of a woman singing opera, coming from an expensive set of wall-mounted speakers at either end of a long yellow hallway. Straight ahead was another large door with the familiar youth centre logo. Next to it was a very impressive polished brass plaque telling anyone that didn't already know that the centre was FUNDED BY EUROPE.

A few feet in front of the door was a staircase leading downwards, with a large graffitied STUDIO at the head of the stairs. FUNDED BY ANYONE WHO'LL PAY ME tracked the line of the handrail in bright red letters.

Downstairs, a bright multi-coloured corridor took us to yet another steel door, this time open. The opera followed us through the building but was louder down here. We opened the door. In front of us was a recording console with two large monitors set up either side of the desk, with the diva singing her soul out in glorious stereo. A stack of amps, filters and hi-fi separates were bolted onto a home-made frame under the right side of the desk. A glass wall separated the production room from a much larger room covered in what looked like dark grey egg boxes. The glass just bounced more of the sound at us.

A door to the left of the desk opened and a lad our own age came through and waved us inside. We followed him into a vaulted cellar with three arched windows down one side. Three old sofas sat under the windows and another was across the far end wall. Promo tour posters covered the off-cream walls, in some places acting as shoring for the peeling paint. An assortment of odds and ends covered the window sills – an astronaut's helmet, a one-stringed violin, a very dusty Rubik's cube half completed, and a model of Spiderman halfway up the middle window. This one was unlike any comic. This Spiderman had bare legs. This Spiderman was wearing a kilt.

'I'm Dougal, grab a pew. The others will be here in a minute. Tea? Coffee? Beer? I'll get your first one and then you have to fend for yourselves. Here's the fridge, kettle, mugs, and bottle opener.'

We went for coffee; beer not seeming right for this first meeting. I plumped on the nearest sofa and looked around at the posters again. Calvin Harris, The Kaiser Chiefs, Dio, The Cure, Faithless, Bob Marley, Slash, early Beatles, Muddy Waters, Scooter, Donna Summer, Avicii, Moby, and Kraftwerk. It should have been disjointed and clashing. But in an odd way it worked. Especially with the opera filling the space around and between the posters. The singer was going through her crescendo and building for her climax. I listened, mesmerised.

Magnificent.

The aria finished seconds before a buzzer went off in the mixing room. Dougal disappeared for a moment, and the opera singer started doing her thing again. And again my body responded in goose bumps.

After a couple of minutes two more lads came through the mixing room and into the lounge. I'd seen one of them around the town, and recognised the other from the television, but couldn't figure why. Neither would have known me. Dougal got them coffee – they must have been on best audition behaviour too – one white, one black, and going by its smell, super strength. The lads lent on a table opposite my sofa. No one spoke. We were lost in the aria, the coffee, and I guess, the nerves of being in a group of strangers.

The singer finished again. This time Dougal stayed put, watching us, evaluating us.

A minute passed. Then another.

'That was stunning. What was it? I'm Roland by the way,' I said, wanting to fill the silence that was settling over the lounge. Nature abhors a vacuum and I abhor silence. Always have done. I find it uncomfortable and used to do anything to fill it.

The others gave various nods to me and to each other.

'Ian.'

'Dan.'

'Ritchie.'

'And I'm Dougal and welcome to my place,' he waved his hand around the lounge. 'You've just been listening to Lucia Di Lammermoor. Good enough for Luc Besson and his Fifth Element and a good way to break the ice. C'mon, enough with the pubquiz, let's go spank the planks and make some noise.'

We followed him into the large room. The egg-boxes on the wall were, in fact, acoustic baffled foam tiles to help absorb and deflect the sound. It gave the room a surreal quality, like someone had stolen half my hearing. Even breathing felt different, as if the muted sound was linked to the oxygen particles, and half of them had gone out the door when we came in.

Dougal had a variety of different amplifiers and instruments already plugged in and on stands. We tuned up for a couple of minutes, then began to play.

We started with a slow blues we all said we knew. I put a spell on you had been penned way back in the mid-fifties by one of the first real showmen, one Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Covered by everyone through the next sixty years from Nina Simone to Sonique – with even Johnny Depp playing guitar on one version – it was a radio staple that pretty much the whole world knew.

We certainly did.

It also happened to be a great song that worked well at any tempo and had lots of places each instrument could show off.

We certainly did.

Within a couple of bars we were right into it. No false starts, no hesitations, just plain fun music making. We played the song out, then someone called another and off we went. If we knew it we'd try to do the best version we could. If we didn't, we'd ad-lib till we moved onto another. Saturday afternoon ran into Saturday evening and then the wee hours of Sunday morning. We grabbed a few hours' kip on the sofas or cushions on the floor, made some strong fresh coffee, and went back into the studio to keep playing.

This was the time, during technically our second session that, I think, we all knew we had something special.

~

The lights of Ambleside shimmered orange through the wet windscreen – the weather was getting worse. Slowing as I came down the hill into the outskirts of the town, I passed several outdoor gear shops, and the famous apple pie shop – where we'd eaten after our first live gig together a month later – all closed and desolate this time of night.

A left, a right, and I was trying to find somewhere near my place to park. The rain lashed the street, the streaming slate houses even darker in the wet. Across the street, up three steps and I was fumbling to get my key in the door before I got soaked through. The rain won.

I was shivering as I entered the flat. Turning the lights on, I made my way across the lounge – dripping small puddles on my thick cream carpet – and dropping the car keys in their usual spot on my desk. The answerphone was blinking but I ignored it. Shower and warmth first.

Thirty minutes later, and I was warm and in dry clothes again. I made myself a coffee and fired up my music system. The Ramones flooded the flat. Now, that was better. I'd always been a bit sceptical about punk right up until Ritchie and I had spent one of those numerous evenings at college drinking and trying to out-do each other with different musical trivia questions. One of us would play a snippet of something and ask who had written it, or what time signature it was in, or who had done the album art. A wrong answer resulted in a forfeit of having to take a drink. Invariably these evenings would end up debating which was the best Pink Floyd line up, or what was the most costly album ever made, or what would it be like if the Stone Roses were to walk in to our local. Don't ask me why, it always happened. It was one of these evenings that Ritchie had pulled out an album on vinyl, put it on, and not told me a single thing about it from start to finish – most unlike him. He sat there grinning like a maniac as I listened. He was clearly delighted when I kept guessing, and got more drunk.

'And you said you don't like punk' was the only thing he said, as he showed me the sleeve – Rocket to Russia. I was hooked.

I borrowed the album that night and only returned it after Ritchie threatened to burn my entire music collection if I didn't give it back. And he'd have done it, too. He'd had that strange look in his eyes.

~

My door bell went, once, loudly, cutting straight through Joey Ramone. The answerphone was still blinking. No matter, I'd do it in a minute.

My eyes took a second to get used to the wet gloom outside. There was a person on the bottom step. If the rain streaming off his clothing was anything to go by, he'd been out in the wet a lot this evening. He looked about nineteen.

'Roland Preston?'

'Yes. Why?'

'I'm Police Constable Ross. Please come with me sir.'

'Sorry, why?'

'I can't tell you here sir. Please, sir. Now.'

My heart started up in my chest. Calm down.

'Can I get a jacket?'

'Yes sir, but I'd appreciate it if you do it quickly.'

'Do you want to come in?'

'No, thank you sir.'

Okay, so he wanted me but was giving me the freedom of movement within my flat. So I wasn't busted. Not yet. I turned off the music, grabbed my keys and a jacket off the back of the door and headed out, following him to a police car. I sat in the back, behind Ross, as he drove us down the street, past my battered old Volvo. He didn't give it a second glance. So not a driving thing then.

Ross took off his waterproof police cap with one hand as he drove. I caught sight of a shock of brown hair through the headrest. I shivered. Not because the police car was cold, and not this time because of Donizetti – the only music was Ross's tuneless whistling as he drove.

Was this about the band? Unlikely. We'd had a few dodgy times over the past two years, but nothing worthy of a police officer out on a miserable Saturday night. Usually a face-to-face with a guest house owner, or a letter through the post, either to the individual band member concerned or – very occasionally – to us collectively, sorted it out. And on one memorable occasion after playing a nightclub in Nottingham, some geezer had asked Dougal outside for a fight. The guy that started on Dougal was big, mean, and very drunk. As he reached into his pocket for a half-full beerbottle to use as a weapon, Dougal dodged forward, grabbed his head and kissed him once, hard, on the lips. The drunk staggering back in surprise and disgust, was left swearing and blushing in front of his mates, whilst Dougal legged it down the street with the rest of us.

So not the band. Nor debt. Nor personal altercations. That left my latest job. But there was no way they could know about that in the timescale, could they? I was better than that. I sat in the back beginning to feel nervous. I wished he'd put some music on, I'd be able to lose myself then. The radio chatter trashed any tunes in my head.

We drove through the wet, sleeping streets. Five minutes later we passed the Ambleside police station, shut up and dark. We didn't stop. This was getting weirder by the minute. By rights, we should be inside, with PC Ross asking me questions in a confined bare room with no windows.

'What's this all about, PC Ross?'

He looked in his mirror. 'I'm sorry sir, I'm breaching protocol enough already. Sergeant Cartwright ordered me to come and get you, sir.'

Sergeant Cartwright. Sergeant Bethany Cartwright. Beth. My ex. What the hell did she want?

Round a couple of bends. The town receded behind us. Blue lights still going but no siren – not enough other drivers out and about right now to warrant it.

We travelled up the valley road, no more talking. Ross slowed to make a turn into a gateway set into the drystone wall, on the right of the road. I could see a large single storey shed-like building with two roller shutter doors straight ahead, and a white access door to the left of them. One of the roller shutters was open and light poured out, illuminating the driving rain – looking like solid walls of water coming down everywhere at the same time. The noise in the car was now tremendous, with the rain mixing with the thrum thrum of the wipers as they fought a losing battle to keep the windscreen clear. PC Ross drove into the lit area and the noise changed instantly to the low drone of water on the building's metal roof. We parked next to a white Landrover with blue lights on the front grille, and an orange stripe down the side.

We were in a clean, clear, and functional garage space. A full-length wooden bench lined the rear wall. Hanging above the bench were portable stretchers, skis, torches, waterproofs, and labelled firstaid bags. On the bench, walkie talkies nestled into chargers plugged into a myriad of wall sockets, next to a steaming water boiler. Several mugs and flasks were lined up neatly on the other side of the boiler. A door on the far side of the flasks had the word CONTROL ROOM in neat black letters. It opened and a fit looking man came out, waved at Ross, and crossed over to the boiler.

PC Ross ushered me out of the car.

The Control Room was like the garage – neat, clean, bright, and functional. A large table sat in the middle of the room, a laminated map of the whole of the Lake District taped to the top of it. A desk with the base-station for the walkie-talkies was to the right, a wipeboard with a list of names and callsigns was on the left wall. A large LCD screen dominated the front wall, displaying weather conditions and satellite radar feeds for the next ten hours. A second door was set into the right wall, presumably leading to another office. Another couple of guys were leaning over the map, talking quietly. They looked up, said 'Hi Nick,' to Ross, and returned to studying the map. The fit lad came back carrying a tray with three plastic mugs – the type you get in camping shops and petrol stations.

'Have a brew,' he said, passing each of us a mug. Mine had Glenside Mountain Rescue team in red. Hot, sweet, medium strength tea. 'Nick, I'm sorry mate, Bethany's been assigned to another callout down at Coniston. It's not the normal procedure, but can you do this tonight, please? We're really up against it for time.'

Ross looked uncomfortable. He bit his lip, then nodded.

He led us through the door of the adjacent room. Again, a table formed the central feature, with more whiteboards around the walls, a couple of metal chairs at the edge of the room, and a videocamera set up on a tripod in the corner.

Ross reached the table first, and waited for the rest of us to get to him. No map this time, rather a brushed steel top. On the top, laid out lengthways was what looked like a red sleeping bag. Ross moved his right hand to the head of the bag and undid a zip.

'I'm sorry to ask you this, sir, but do you know this person?' he said, removing a large square of material. Below, a face, vacant, gazed up at me.

I looked, and dropped the mug.

I was staring at a face I knew like my own. The face of my sister.

~~~

Chapter Two

My mug hit the floor and bounced, sending scalding hot tea over my shins. I didn't notice. PC Ross was saying something, but I couldn't make out the words. My vision tunnelled and there was a rushing in my ears. I felt my throat constrict and a weight started pressing on my neck and shoulders.

This couldn't be happening.

I stumbled and someone caught my arm and lowered me into a chair. My teeth clenched so hard I could have spit fillings, and I felt the wet tracks of tears rolling down my face. I seemed to have stopped breathing. My body swayed in the chair, and then my breath exploded out of me in one gigantic sob. Someone, Ross maybe, put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Certainly it was his voice I heard.

'I'm sorry Mister Preston. I truly am. But could you formally identify this person, please sir?'

Without looking away from the lifeless eyes in front of me, I replied.

'Christine Preston. My sister.'

Again Ross squeezed my shoulder, and then moved to replace the square of nylon over her face.

'NO.'

I was out of the chair and grabbing his hand before I knew what I was doing. Ross backed away from the bag and laid the material down on the table. I leant forward and my tears splashed on to my sister's face.

'How? What happened?' I stammered.

'Car crash. Cameron and his team came across the scene earlier this evening. He'll give you more detail if you feel you're up for it?'

'God yes,' I said.

The fit looking guy stepped forward. 'I'm Cameron Fitzsimmons, team leader, Glenside Mountain Rescue. I'm sorry for your loss.' He was shorter than me, but stood looking up at me, sincere. 'We were coming back from a shout on the Eastern fells when one of the lads in the front spotted a blinking amber light to our left, just off the road. We checked and found a section of the wall demolished. Moving into the field, we found your sister's vehicle, with the front stoved-in by a large tree. We checked the car and found your sister inside. She was limp, with no pulse. She had suffered massive trauma to the chest and neck. I know this doesn't help, but she would have died instantly. We were able to get her out of the car, and brought her back in the vehicle to here.'

PC Ross took over. 'The morgue in Penrith is full, and Carlisle's had a powerout since this afternoon. That leaves Newcastle. When we cross-checked the registration with the electoral register, you were showing at the same address as the casualty. Sergeant Cartwright said she knew you, and wanted to avoid dragging you out of bed at two in the morning. She sent me to get you. She should have been here to tell you herself, but . . . well, um . . . '

I wasn't listening.

Were. Not are. It cut right through me; through my soul.

'What will happen to my sister?'

'The lads will take her to Newcastle, pending the funeral arrangements.'

I choked back another sob. 'What about her car?'

'It's on its way to our vehicle pound at the moment for investigation. We'll have a look at it this week but should be finished with it by Thursday. After that you have to collect it or we can get rid of it for you. Just let us know.'

I nodded, hearing the words, but again not really taking them on board. My life had, in the space of one evening, stopped. I still couldn't believe it. This couldn't be real. Chrissie must be alive and well and I must be dreaming too vivid a nightmare.

Ross cut through my thoughts.

'Sir, it's time to go now.'

Still in my dream I felt myself stand up, lean over my sister's face and kiss her cold, cold forehead.

'Safe travelling Sis,' I heard myself say. I brushed a lock of hair across her bruised face, turned round and was guided out, tears drowning my face.

~

I stared at the seat in front of me as we drove through the country roads. At some point we stopped outside a door I vaguely recognised as my own. PC Ross let me out and held my arm as I climbed up the steps. Three steps to eternity.

'I'm sorry,' he said, as I opened my door. Then he was gone. I shut the door quietly, as if somehow that would bring Chrissie back. Not bothering to turn the light on, I slumped onto the sofa and just sat, staring in the dark without seeing.

Goodness knows how long I sat there, but the next thing I was aware of was the silence. The rain had finally stopped. Light was beginning to creep into the flat through the windows. A small red light flashed on the other side of the room. I got up and pressed play on my answerphone.

'Hi Ro, I've finished work earlier than I thought and should be with you tonight. I've got something I want to show you. See you soon bro.'

I curled up in a ball on the cream carpet, and cried and cried.

~

My next week was a week from Hell. Phoning a random funeral company from the phone book; arranging to meet a priest from a nearby church; and having to choose a coffin. All of these were brutally hard. So was contacting Chrissie's friends to let them know. The easiest way I found in the end, was to use her email and Facebook accounts to send a simple paragraph to all her contacts asking them to get in touch with me. The message was the easy part – we'd agreed to use the same password on our accounts ages ago – but the talking to real live people on the end of the phone – her friends and mine – nearly drove me mad. Somehow I held it together. Within days the flat was looking like a cross between a disorganised florist's delivery van and a card shop. The thoughts, comments, and verbalised sympathy were, I'm sure, lovely but I couldn't read them – every time I tried I just welled up and felt the black hole inside me getting just that bit bigger. One day maybe, but not now.

Occasionally I would wander through the flat and poke my head through her door to ask her a question only to see her room, always so vibrant with her things, now so desolate; bereft without its owner. After a particularly depressing moment when I caught myself staring for over two hours at photographs that Chrissie had put round her mirror – some people and places shared between us, some not so – I did the only thing I could think of. Writing a note in coloured ink on bright yellow paper, I fixed a 'Phone in sick and go fishing instead' sign to her door. An old joke between us when we were both in jobs we hated. Every now and then we would phone in sick, but it would be to play music for my part, and to do something more adventurous on hers. It only backfired once. She'd been signed off for several weeks for pulling ligaments in her back, got bored after a couple of days, and went on an impromptu week's skiing with a friend. Chrissie broke her leg on the last day when her back spasmed, her concentration lapsed, and she skied into a pylon. Try as she might, no explanation to her boss of the suntanned face, panda-white eyes, and bright green leg cast was enough to keep that particular job.

~

Work was one of the two things that didn't stress me out at this time. I had one project I was working on but I had contacted them, explained the situation, and been granted an extension of time to get it finished.

The band was the other thing that helped save me from losing myself in despair. Every day, one or more of them would drop by at random times of the day, ostensibly to talk music or play some acoustic riffs that they'd been working on. In reality it was to check that I wasn't losing the plot. They knew it, I knew it, no one said it, but I really appreciated it. And I needed it. A few times driving in and out of Penrith, I would deliberately go round a blind bend far too fast, not caring what might happen to me, hoping for something. Thankfully, nothing did, until one of my wheels clipped a kerb and spun the back end into a telegraph pole. I was shaken and the car had a dent in the rear panel but nothing worse. It was, however, enough to jolt me out of my couldn't care less-ness.

Thursday came and went with no contact from the police. On Friday morning, I was in the middle of putting something together to say at the funeral, when my phone rang. It was PC Ross and could I meet him at the Ambleside police station in the next twenty minutes. Leaving a note for Dougal in case he arrived before I got back, I started walking. It took me fifteen minutes. This time the lights were on. The duty officer behind the desk paged Ross when I said who I was. Ross came out from a door to the right of the desk a few minutes later.

'Mister Preston, please come with me,' he said. Déjà vu. I followed him as he opened a couple of security doors until we reached an office that was obviously used as a meeting room. On the table there was a sheaf of papers and a large green opaque polythene bag. He offered me a seat, sat down next to me, and picked up the paperwork first.

'These are the reports from our vehicle technicians, and the coroner's report from the inquest. I can understand why you didn't attend. I've also included the statement from the mountain rescue team leader and a copy of my own report.' He passed the papers across to me and waited, stone-faced. I read them in reverse order. How Sergeant Cartwright had attended the scene of an accident and authorised the moving of the body to the Mountain Rescue base, and the subsequent identification of the body as one Christine Preston. How the MRT had found the car. How Chrissie had sustained her injuries and how these had killed her – Cameron had been right, massive crush injuries to the chest causing vital organ failure. And lastly, how her vehicle had been the cause of such devastating events. There was a detailed breakdown of measurements, road surface contents and construction, estimated speeds, collision forces, weather conditions, and even the wall's age. This was followed by a section containing colour photos obviously taken on the night – of the road; the hole in the stone wall; and Chrissie's red Honda Aerodeck. I turned the page to avoid looking at the close-up shots of the car's interior taken before Chrissie had been cut free. The last but one section was a clinical description of what the technicians had pieced together.

The car driven by Christine Preston was travelling at 48 miles per hour downhill. The driver moved across the road onto the oncoming side to reduce the need for slowing for a shallow bend. She then accelerated to 53 miles per hour along the middle of a straight. At 879 yards she applied the brakes to reduce speed for a sharp right hand bend. She deployed the clutch to change gear. Her brakes failed catastrophically at this point. Unable to slow the car with the engine in neutral she took 2 seconds to get into a lower gear. This time period was too long for the conditions and she entered the bend at a speed of 57 miles per hour 217% above the top safe entry speed. The car struck the 2 foot wide drystone wall at 54 miles per hour. It punched a hole in the wall 8 feet in width and threw 10 pound stones in a radius of 100 feet from the epicentre of the strike point. It impacted the first erratic boulder after travelling 22 feet from the wall. The boulder deflected the path of the car which travelled a further 8 feet until it stopped when the front hit a large oak tree. Department of Transport records show that the brakes were checked and functioning 6 months ago. Physical examination of the car showed 2 brake pipes were compromised with severe lacerations in the rubber sections. No brake fluid was found anywhere in the brake system. This lack of fluid would have prevented the effective application of the brakes. It is the Technical Inspecting Officer's considered opinion that the perishing of the brake pipes caused the brake failure and subsequently the vehicle to crash. It was dated and signed with a name I couldn't read.

The last piece of paper was the Cause of Death Certificate.

Nineteen letters, three of them in capitals: Death By Misadventure. You had to be kidding me. Misadventure. The complete opposite of my sister who lived for adventure. In fact we used to call her Miss Adventure, she was so into it. The irony was crushing me. I looked up and sighed. When would this madness end?

PC Ross looked even more uncomfortable than he had earlier. He reached onto the table and passed me the green bag.

'These are her personal effects and clothing we were able to retrieve from the car. Do you want to go through them here?'

'No,' I replied, somewhat more harshly than I'd intended. Ross looked relieved and ignored my tone.

'What do you want to do with the car? Do you want us to process it?'

'My friend Ritchie McIntyre will collect it tomorrow. Where's your storage area?'

He gave me the address and a contact number.

'Any problems give me a call on that. It's best to contact the centre a bit before as it gives them time to get the car organised.'

With that, he helped me pick up the green bag and reports and escorted me to the main door.

'If there's anything else I can do Mister Preston, call. Goodbye Mister Preston.'

I hefted the bag onto my shoulder and walked away from the police station, hoping never to see Ross again as long as I lived.

~

Back at the flat, I dropped