With Honours

Chapter 1: Weather Report

CHAPTER ONE

WEATHER REPORT

Jump in my car, I wanna take you home,

Come on and jump in my car, it's too far to walk on your own.

No thank you sir.

Ah, come on, I'm a trustworthy guy.

No thank you sir.

Oh little girl I wouldn't tell you no lie.

I know your game.

How can you say that, we've only just met.

You're all the same.

Ooh, she's got me there, but I'll get her yet.

I got you then.

No you didn't, I was catching my breath,

And look, it's starting to rain and baby you'll catch your death.

 "Jump in My Car" by David Hasselhof enters the UK Top 40 Singles Chart at number three in the second week of October, 2006. A band of low pressure sweeps across the country meteorologically too, bringing not only wind and rain, but also a 1000-foot high tornado which causes some alarm as it travels along the south coast, just offshore at Brighton, before blowing itself out.

 Although the month is much warmer than average——it is one of the hottest Octobers in the Meteorological Office's records——rainfall is also unseasonably high and, in that same second week of October, the east of England is lashed by heavy showers and intense thunderstorms. While humidity, sunshine, rain and high winds pepper those October days, the end of the month is fatefully marked by chill winds.

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 Monday 30 October 2006 00.30 AM

As the weather patterns shift, a band of high pressure builds over the North Sea. With nothing to move it, the pressure band spends the night sitting between the east coast of England and the western shoreline of The Netherlands, where the fragmented skeletal shapes of the islands of Zeeland claw at the cold dark sea, like bent fingers on the stiff hand of a corpse.

While the effect of the change in atmospheric pressure is hardly enough to be noticed outside of the Met Office by anyone other than the odd amateur weather forecaster, the increased pressure serves to extend the radio horizon. This creates the ideal conditions for the signal from a Dutch FM radio transmitter, which is normally confined to Holland and the North Sea, to reach further across the troposphere; to reach far enough, in fact, to impact upon the reception of a car radio in a purple Renault Clio as it drives out of the built-up central area of a small and uninspiring sleepy little town in the east of England.

The car radio, tuned to a local FM pop station, sputters out of tune as the foreign radio waves nudge against the domestic signal. The atmospheric interference, known as a tropospheric opening, conspires with the car’s cheap aerial and poor earth connection to produce an irritating warbling effect from the budget Binatone speakers.

Tim Crown takes his left hand from the steering wheel of the Renault Clio and reaches for the tuning dial. Turning the dial only de-tunes the radio further, sending a harsh static sound flooding through the speakers. Irritated by the crashing wave of unpleasant noise, Tim Crown stabs aggressively at the radio’s pre-set buttons, first one and then another. The radio fails to find a radio station, alternating at each stab between the warbled interference caused by the Dutch signals in the tropospheric opening and the sound of static found in the dead space between stations.