Dead Heat - By Dick Francis & Felix Francis Page 0,63

had the roof disappeared, the front offside wing was completely ripped away and the wheel was sitting at a strange angle. That must have happened, I thought, when I hit the bus.

‘Has anyone been to inspect it?’ I asked him.

‘Not that I’m aware of, but it’s been sitting here since yesterday morning and I don’t exactly keep guard.’

‘Here’ was down the side of the workshop, behind a pair of recovery vehicles.

‘I was the driver,’ I said to him.

‘Blimey, you were lucky then. I thought it was a fatal when I first arrived.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Fire brigade and ambulance spent ages getting you out. That’s never a good sign. Had you in one of those neck-brace things. You didn’t look too good, I can tell you. Not moving, like. I thought you were probably dead.’

‘Thanks,’ I said sarcastically.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re not, like. Easier for me too.’

‘Why?’ I said.

‘If it had been a fatal,’ he said, ‘I would have to keep this pile of garbage here for the police inspectors and they take bloody ages to do their stuff. Since you’re OK, I can get it off the premises just as soon as your insurance bloke looks at it. Also,’ he added with a smile, ‘since you’re alive, I can now send you a bill for recovering it from the roadside.’

I made a mental note to phone the insurance company, not that they would give me much. I suspected that car was worth little more than the policy excess but it might just pay the wretched man’s bill for getting rid of the wreck.

‘I think the accident occurred because my brakes failed,’ I said. ‘Is there any way of checking that by looking?’

‘Help yourself, it’s your car.’ He turned away. ‘I’ve got work to do.’

‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I wouldn’t know what to look for. Could you have a look for me?’

‘It’ll cost you,’ he said.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘How much?’

‘Usual labour rates,’ he replied.

‘Can you look at it now?’ I said. ‘While I’m here?’

‘Suppose so,’ he said.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Usual rates.’

He spent about twenty minutes examining what was left of my car but the results were inconclusive.

‘Could have been the brakes, I suppose,’ he said finally. ‘Difficult to tell.’

I assured him that it definitely was the brakes that had failed and caused the accident.

‘If you were bloody certain it was the brakes, what did you want me to check it for?’

‘I want to know if the brakes had been tampered with,’ I said.

‘What, on purpose?’ He stared at me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘That’s what I want you to tell me.’

‘Blimey,’ he said again. He leaned back over the car.

‘Look here,’ he said. I joined him in leaning over what had been the offside front wing. He pointed at a jumbled mass of metal pipes and levers. ‘The brake system on this old Golf was a simple hydraulic, non power-assisted system.’ I nodded. I knew that. ‘What happens when you pushed the brake pedal is you forced a piston along this cylinder.’ He pointed at what looked like a metal pipe about an inch in diameter and about an inch and a half long. ‘The piston inside pushes brake fluid through the pipes to the wheels and the pressure causes the brake pads to squeeze the brake discs. That’s what slows the car down.’

‘Like a bicycle brake?’ I asked.

‘Well, not exactly. On a bike, there is a cable going from the brake lever to the brake pads. In a car, the pressure is transmitted through the fluid-filled pipes.’

‘I see,’ I said. But I wasn’t sure I did completely. ‘So what caused the brakes to fail?’

‘Brakes will fail if air gets into the pipes instead of the brake fluid. Then, when you push the pedal, all you do is compress the air and the brakes don’t work.’ He spotted my quizzical look. ‘You see, the brake fluid won’t compress but air will.’ I nodded. I knew that from my school chemistry.

‘So all someone needed to do,’ I said, ‘was to put some air into the pipes and the brakes wouldn’t work.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But it’s not that easy. For a start, there are two brake systems on this car so if one failed the other should still work.’

‘There were no brakes at all when I pushed the pedal,’ I said.

‘Air must have got into the master cylinder,’ he said. ‘That’s very unusual, but I have come across it once before. That time it was due to the pipe from the