Sue for Mercy - Veronica Heley Page 0,1

he’d not have been hurt at all. As it was...

Drunk! I thought.

He was wearing a white shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, no tie, grey slacks, black shoes and socks. His eyes were closed and there was blood on his bright hair. Blood was also trickling down from one corner of his mouth. His legs were twisted; maybe he’d caught a foot under a pedal in his leap for safety. He looked about twenty-five years old and was exceedingly handsome.

I could feel his heart beat draggingly against my fingers through the soaked rag of his shirt. His hair was losing its brightness and beginning to curl in tendrils close to his head. The handkerchief which had been wound round his left hand fell away as I tried to lift him back into the car, revealing fingers covered with blood. Also, his thumb looked out of joint. I sniffed and recoiled, for he stank of whisky.

Sleet chilled my face and legs. I hesitated. The fool deserved all he got, driving round these badly-lit roads in an inconsiderate manner, drunk...

Stop — hold everything! This wasn’t the man who had been driving the sports car. In my mind’s eye I could recall the silhouettes of the man and woman who had been in the sports car as it drove up behind me. The driver had been wearing a hat and had an overcoat or scarf high up round his ears. I rather thought he had been wearing glasses. His passenger had not been wearing a hat, but she had been wearing some dark coat or jacket, and had a scarf tied over her hair. I checked the injured man and his car; no jacket, no overcoat, no glasses. And there was a trace of fresh blood on the back seat.

Once more I tried to lift him back into the car, but he was a big-boned man, and although I was no midget, I didn’t succeed. I could, however, pull him out into the road so that he lay in a more comfortable position, and this I did. All the time I was trying to remember what it was that had struck me as odd about the second car. I thought it was probably a 1300, with a yellow number plate. Newish. Then I got it; the man and the woman I had seen running away from the crash were the people I had previously seen as driver and passenger of the sports car. I had seen the woman quite clearly as she ducked into the waiting car. She had been wearing a dark trouser suit and her headscarf was a brilliant red. Both the man and the woman had got into the back seats of the second car, which had shot off immediately. This meant that there must be at least one, and possibly two more people who knew of the accident and had decided to do nothing about it. It was getting complicated.

In the meantime, the injured man was getting wet, and needed medical attention. Not a single car had passed.

I dithered. Should I leave him and go for help? It seemed I must do so. I started to run down the road towards the nearest drive, thinking how very unfair life was. There was I, condemned to wear glasses, despairingly conscious that I was not pretty, and there was this young man as handsome as the day was long, who had probably got perfect sight and perfect teeth, and a dozen girlfriends, and didn’t care for any of them. The first house I came to was in darkness, and I couldn’t get anyone to come to the door; of course it was well after midnight by that time, and I didn’t really blame them, but...

I ran back down the drive and almost under the wheels of a car being driven slowly along the middle of the road. It was an ancient family car, containing a middle-aged man and his wife with two fretful little girls. They had been away for the weekend, and broken down on the motorway on their way back. The driver was kind enough to help me load the injured man into the back of my Mini before going on his way. By that time I was as wet as my passenger.

The drive to the hospital was a nightmare. Several times I thought the injured man had stopped breathing.

A nurse took one look at him and ordered up a stretcher, a doctor and a trolley full of instruments. I