Crash

Siren whining, a third ambulance drove down the oncoming lane. A police motorcyclist cut in front of us and slowed to a halt, signalling me to wait and allow the ambulance to pass. I stopped the car and switched off the engine, looking over Catherine's shoulder at the grim tableau. Ten yards from us was the crushed limousine, the body of the young chauffeur still lying on the ground beside it. A policeman stared at the blood netting like a widow's veil around his face and hair. Three engineers worked with crowbars and cutting equipment at the rear doors of the limousine. They severed the jammed door mechanism and pulled back the door to expose the passengers trapped inside the compartment.

The two passengers, a pink-faced man in his fifties wearing a black overcoat, and a younger woman with a pale, anaemic skin, still sat upright in the rear seat. Their heads were held forward, staring together at the policemen and hundreds of spectators like two minor royalties at a lev£e. A policeman pulled away the travelling rug that covered their legs and waists. This single motion, exposing the bare legs of the young woman and the splayed feet of the older man, apparently broken at the ankles, immediately transformed the entire scene. The woman's skirt had ridden up around her waist, and her thighs lay apart as if she were deliberately exposing her pubis. Her left hand held the window strap, the white glove marked with blood from her small fingers. She gave the policeman a weak smile, like a partially disrobed queen beckoning a courtier to touch her private parts. Her companion's coat was flared to reveal the full length of his black trousers and patent shoes. His right thigh was extended like a dancehall instructor's in a tango glide. As he turned to the young woman, one hand searching for her, he slipped sideways off the seat, his ankles kicking at the clutter of leather valises and broken glass.

The traffic stream moved on. I started the engine and eased the car forwards. Vaughan raised the camera to his eye, lowering it from sight when an ambulance attendant tried to knock it from his hands. The pedestrian bridge passed overhead. Half out of the car, Vaughan peered at the scores of legs pressed against the metal railings, then opened the door and dived out.

As I pulled the Lincoln on to the verge he was running back to the pedestrian bridge, darting in and out of the cars.

We followed Vaughan back to the accident site. Hundreds of faces pressed at the windows of the cars moving down the flyover. Spectators stood three deep on the sidewalks and central reservation, crowded together against the wire mesh fence that separated the roadway embankment from the nearby shopping precinct and housing estate. The police had given up any attempt to disperse this enormous crowd. One group of engineers worked on the crushed sports car, prying at the metal roof which had been flattened on to the heads of the occupants. The passengers from the taxi were carried on stretchers to an ambulance. The dead chauffeur of the limousine lay with a blanket over his face, while a doctor and two ambulance men climbed into the rear compartment.

I looked round at the crowd. A considerable number of children were present, many lifted on their parents' shoulders to give them a better view. The revolving police beacons moved across the watching faces as we climbed the embankment to the wire mesh fence. None of the spectators showed any signs of alarm. They looked down at the scene with the calm and studied interest of intelligent buyers at a leading bloodstock sale. Their relaxed postures implied a shared understanding of the most subtle points, as if they all realized the full significance of the displacement of the limousine's radiator grille, the distortion of the taxi's body frame, the patterns of frosting on its shattered windshield.

Pushing amiably between Catherine and myself on the embankment was a thirteen-year-old boy in a cowboy suit. He chewed steadily on a piece of gum, watching the last of the taxi passengers being lifted on to a stretcher. A policeman with a broom scattered lime on the blood-smeared concrete beside the sports car. With careful strokes, as if frightened of working out the complex human arithmetic of these injuries, he swept the darkening clots against the verge of the central reservation.