Lex Tindall prided himself on being at work before anyone else, so his motorbike was roaring up the slip road and onto the industrial estate by five to seven. Ten minutes later, he was rolling the first dumpers out ready for the day’s collection, which happened around eight thirty.
It was a warm morning already, with a cloudless sky. Another evening out on the scramble bikes then, until maybe ten o’clock. The day wouldn’t go fast enough but he liked his job and didn’t fret about it.
He moved over to the row of huge metal bins and loaded the first one. It was hauled up into the air and tipped over, tipped back and brought down again. He rolled it off, and wheeled the second bin up. The mechanism seemed to jam and it failed to engage and lift. Then he got it moving but it stuck a few feet up. This went on for long enough to be annoying. He got the bin back down, disengaged it, and inspected the lifting gear. It seemed to be all right, smooth and without any jams. But when he tried again, the same thing happened. There could be a jam higher up.
Lex got a safety ladder, and a hard hat, and climbed up steadily. The big container bins were twelve feet in height and held a large volume of compressed rubbish. He reached the top, fully aware that this was against every safety rule and that if anyone came up now and found him … but no one else would be here for another quarter of an hour.
He could see nothing wrong with the haulage mechanism that tipped the contents, but he leaned over a little way to peer in.
Twenty seconds later, he was on the ground and making fast for the office and the phone, yelling, yelling as he ran.
The police cars, ambulance and fire engine arrived at the industrial estate around the same time as half a dozen officers pounded on the door of 147 Rondella Road and, when they got no reply, broke it down, found Jason Smith and arrested him. Jason’s mobile phone had stored numbers including that of Andrew Morson, and the record of his call the previous night.
It was difficult and dangerous work and took what felt like hours for the firemen to scale up the outside and then down the inside of the refuse container. The man was easily seen, but had to be moved with extreme caution.
‘You got him?’
One of the firemen raised his arm, but it was a slow job to get the gear, and a stretcher, into place, then load the man onto it. The fireman looked carefully, without touching, glanced up at the others and grimaced.
By then, Kieron Bright and two others were on their way, blue lights and siren and 110 mph, to the scene. They arrived just as Simon Serrailler, aka Johnno Miles, was being lowered with maximum care to the ground and the waiting paramedics. Seconds later, the whirr of the air ambulance was overhead, coming in to land on an open stretch of tarmac.
Bright pushed his way through and looked down at the body on the stretcher.
‘God Almighty,’ he said, and felt a surge of the purest coldest anger.
The chopper blades were still turning as the doctors ran across, rucksacks of medical kit bumping against their backs.
‘He’s gone,’ someone said. ‘Has to be.’
The first doctor was kneeling, the second unpacking his bag.
‘Do we know what happened? Do we know how long he’s been in there?’
They worked fast as they asked the questions to which no one had answers.
Kieron Bright turned away. He paced around the area, turned, paced back. He had given up smoking twenty years earlier but he felt the need of a cigarette. One of the officers who had driven down with him came over. ‘Shall I find out if they’ve a kitchen or a machine in there?’
‘Thanks.’
‘How’s he looking?’
Bright shook his head. Serrailler looked dead. He was so beaten up as to be almost unrecognisable and there had been no sign that he was alive.
‘My best officer by miles.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yes. Go and see about drinks, will you?’
As the man went, there was a shout. ‘Chief …’
He knew what they wanted. He had to stand there while they formally pronounced Serrailler dead at the scene and got his permission to take the body away.
The doctor was kneeling, leaning back on his heels. ‘Christ knows how, but he’s got a pulse,’ he said, and then looked warningly at Kieron. ‘Barely detectable but it’s a sign that he’s not dead.’ He did not have to add ‘yet’.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘It’s a tough call. He’s lost a huge amount of blood and he’s deteriorating. My guess is that aside from what we can see, which is a lot, he has internal injuries and bleeding. Frankly, there’s so much that I wouldn’t know where to start if we keep him here.’
‘Has he been conscious at all?’
‘No, thank God. I think what we’re going to do is move him as carefully as we possibly can and get him airlifted to a major trauma centre. If he survives being moved, if he survives the journey, then that’s the only place where he stands the slightest chance.’ He stood and began to give orders to the others.
Kieron watched hopelessly.
The helicopter was airborne as there was a shout of ‘Drinks!’ from the building behind them. The remaining men walked across in silence.