Glasgow
10 – 30 a.m.
April 17th
Wheeler had been on the ‘eighty-two’ all the way down Loch Lomond and was pleased. He had just enough in the bike’s tank to get him into Glasgow and he was grinning beneath his helmet as the signs for the M8 came up near Erskine Hospital. As he negotiated the roundabout at Erskine a black BMW four by four failed to give way to the right and broadsided the Honda 500 with a resounding metallic ‘crump’. Wheeler, thrown from the bike hit the tarmac and, to the eyes of witnesses, with a gut wrenching, face screwing and teeth gritting bodily slump hit the road. He jerkily tumbled and rolled in a wrenching skid, his clothes ripping, grazes appearing and finally, at just forty miles an hour, his helmet struck the metal barrier cracking and splitting it across the top, knocking him unconscious.
Already out of his dented BMW the driver was on his cell phone. He was smartly dressed, clearly on his way to work and in contrast to his groomed look his white face registered the shock of the accident.
Sure that the ambulance was on its way he gingerly headed for the slumped figure of Wheeler. Other cars had stopped, some had had to, and people getting out headed straight for the hot ‘ticking’ bike, now on its side, mangled in the road. Others headed straight to the oddly angled unconscious rider by the barrier. The BMW driver was there first about to pull Wheeler face up when a young woman called out.
“Don’t move him. He may have a neck injury. I’m a nurse. Call an ambulance. I’ll check his pulse.”
“I’ve already called.” As he said this the sound of sirens confirmed him, ‘dopplering’ their way along the ‘A’ road from Stobhill hospital.
In a few short minutes, still unconscious, Wheeler had been strapped to the stretcher, neck brace on for safety, and driven way.
Police, having taken the Honda off the road, took names of witnesses and some short statements after which they cleared traffic and the blocked tarmac artery to the M8 slowly eased back to full flow.
It wasn’t until the wreck clearance men turned up, fifteen minutes later that the number plate was run through checks and flagged up as ‘important’.
In the ambulance the paramedic went through Wheeler’s bag. He was surprised to find three different passports, in three different names. Even more shocked after a second ‘delve’ he gingerly pulled the dull black, heavy PSS pistol from the bag. His colleague gave a low whistle. The paramedic, a little unnerved by the cold coiled potential of the oiled, hard edged and evil black item, gently lowered it back into the rucksack. He raised both eyebrows at his colleague.
“We’ll call the cops when we get back.”
They pulled into Stobhill casualty unit, just outside Glasgow, and unloaded the still unconscious body of Martin Wheeler. The sliding doors closed behind him and the paramedic took a moment to find a duty police officer. The contents of the bag brought immediate attention from detectives and began a flurry of activity. When the number plate information was added to what Glasgow police knew about Wheeler an urgent phone call was made to Euston Tower in London.