Saul Cordell blended onto the M5 motorway from the M6 around West Bromwich at ten minutes past ten.

And still he didn’t quite know how he felt about the death of his father.

It had been almost twenty-four hours since the call from his mother informing him of his father’s brutal murder. He had felt the immediate horror at the manner of his death. He had felt the anger that some sick bastard had done this to his father, but he was still waiting for something more. For the knowledge to reach a deeper place inside him. A place that would produce tears, regret, grief.

He wondered if some part of him had gone numb. He hoped so because he’d been able to summon more genuine emotion for his patients than he could for his father.

‘Don’t rush,’ his mother had instructed, insisting there was nothing they could do for him now.

And he hadn’t.

After the phone call, he had sat in the darkness for hours waiting for some kind of reaction.

And when it hadn’t arrived he had watched the sun come up and headed off to work.

He’d called his mother, who had just sent away the family liaison officer. He had smiled ruefully. Of course she had. His mother could barely tolerate family in the kitchen she’d built from scratch never mind a stranger.

He had arrived at theatre at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow calm, focussed and ready to work.

The morning surgery had been a laparoscopic nephrectomy on a forty-four-year-old woman. The keyhole procedure had suffered complications when bleeding required him to revert to open surgery to remove the kidney. In the afternoon he had assisted his mentor, Doctor Flint, on the kidney transplant of a nine-year-old girl.

Neither surgery would he have missed for anything and his mother understood that. She always understood. Sometimes too much.

He knew how many times she had forgiven his father’s affairs over the years to keep the family together. He didn’t have the heart to tell her it had been for nothing. He had not one tangible memory from his childhood that centred on his father. He was there, of course, in the background of the slideshow but it was his mother always at the forefront.

He knew his mother hadn’t necessarily stayed with his father through love. Not after the first few dalliances, he reasoned. But she had known she couldn’t afford the same opportunities for her sons without him. A thought that saddened him and yet made him love her even more.

He was wondering if his brother had already reached home as bright lights shone into his rear-view mirror from behind.

‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he said to himself trying to block out the blinding light and concentrate on the road. He’d been driving nonstop since five o’clock and was not in the mood. The M61 had blended to the M62 onto the M6 and now the final stretch of mundane, boring concrete before he could exit at junction 3 at Halesowen.

He blinked a few times to try and remove the shards of light that seemed to have burned on to his retina.

The vehicle was almost kissing his rear bumper. Only two days ago he’d had to replace his personalised number plate after it had been stolen for the fourth time. He’d been tempted to replace it, but the registered number had been a present from his mother when he finished medical school.

He indicated and moved into the middle lane. Maybe the idiot behind was in some kind of rush.

The lights blinded him again as the car followed him into the middle lane.

Saul drove another quarter mile before switching back to the slow lane.

Immediately the car behind switched back too.

He was momentarily blinded and lost sight of the road. He gripped the wheel tightly and drove straight hoping he was following the line of the road, waiting for his vision to return.

What the hell was this guy’s problem? And why had his heartbeat increased so that the blood pounded through his ears?

Although not speeding he began to ease off the pedal bringing his speed down to sixty.

Suddenly the blinding light in his rear-view mirror disappeared, disorienting him.

He briefly hoped the guy had dropped right back. He let out a breath, unaware of the tension he’d been holding inside.

Two seconds later the flash was back, the vehicle’s headlights back on high beam.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ he said, slowing to fifty miles an hour.

On, off, on, off, on, off.

His eyes couldn’t adjust to the light.

He knew stopping could be dangerous. He’d read enough horror stories about that. He tried to think what to do.

On, off, on, off, on, off.

He couldn’t keep his eyes on the road. His vision was seriously limited.

He couldn’t dare reach towards his phone in the handset.

He felt trapped as the panic began to rise inside him.

He slowed even more as he continued to drive through the whiteout in his eyes.

The light began to fade away. He looked into the mirror to see where it had gone as it disappeared up the off-ramp of junction 2. Thank God, he thought, as the relief swept over him.

He turned his attention back to the road and the smile died on his lips.