The accident

A post from my sometime correspondent, David Burke.  Warning: somewhat gruesome ...

Working in Farnborough meant that it was easy to get home to Hook. However, before living here we were in Guildford and the journey was not so easy.

I did find a route over Ash Ranges which was very nice, in the country, just fields, rural and quiet with not too much traffic. I used it a lot to get home in the evening, it was a nice way to wind down after work. But I stopped using it after the accident.

It was a shocker really: the car was badly damaged and there was a lot of blood although I was able to clean it up afterwards. But it shook me up a lot. Put me off the route really.

There is a funny little double bend on the road where it passes under the railway. One moment you are driving parallel on one side of the line then under the bridge and you are running parallel on the  other side. After the bridge I pulled up the hill, so I wasn’t travelling fast. It was a clear night, autumnal, no rain but it was dusk and it was a bit difficult to see clearly outside.

It was warm in the car and I must have been day dreaming about the boys at home because I almost didn’t see the first one dash across the road in front of me. I touched the brakes and suddenly the other one was there in front of me. I hit him hard and there was a crunch and I saw the bonnet bend and rise up in front of me, then he was rolling from the impact, feet twisting in the air and I hit him again, oh no, and then he was gone.  

I pulled up quickly on the verge and ran back. He was on the road just behind the car, partly in the ditch, I bent down and saw that his eyes were open and then they closed and his body went limp.  I was shaking from shock and feeling sick but I looked around: no other cars thank goodness.  

What to do? 

Don’t leave him here, take him away in the car. There was some blood on his shoulder soaking through the heavy coat. I opened the boot and started to pull him to the car. I was shaking like a leaf. He was very heavy and dead bodies are notoriously difficult to handle but I got his head  over the sill then bent down and lifted his feet over the lip and into the boot.  Then I saw the lights and heard an approaching car and slammed the boot lid shut, trying not to look too guilty.

Our house in Guildford was a semi but it had a detached garage where I could deal with the body.

My wife was horrified at what was in the boot but I got her to help me to drag the body into the garage and I set up a noose hanging from one of the beams. We lived then in an area where this sort of thing was not unknown so I got one of  my neighbour to come over to help me. We tied the noose round the body and stripped off the coat. I could then see the black bloody bruise where the bonnet had hit him. We cut his head off and started to cut him up into steaks and chops as well as the bigger cuts.

We shared the venison between us and had some wonderful meals for the rest of the year. But repair costs for the car were horrendous.

David Burke