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the trailer for loot.
    ‘Bollocks.’ I turned round and looked down. At the bottom of the bank, a young man was stamping his foot on the soggy grass in anger. Surrounded by boxes ofcigarettes, he was frantically scratching his head as he tried to figure out how to carry the pile he’d made of about two hundred packs of fags.
    ‘What’s that?’ I shouted down to him. It was just to make conversation really – I could see he was hacked off.
    ‘Piss off, Evans, you runt. They’re mine!’
    The flashing blue lights and a crashed truck on the motorway always interested people on the estate. Yes, they wanted to see if there was anything of value to nick, but they were also curious about the accident itself – maybe they could do something to help. It might sound morbid, but I think it brought a bit of excitement to an otherwise uneventful day.
    But on one occasion there was an accident that stopped me going across the field ever again.
    It was about seven o’clock in the evening – I remember the time because Space Nineteen Ninety-Nine was on the telly. I loved it, but not enough to miss a lorry crash. When the word went out that another one had toppled over, I made my way across the field, as always a little late in getting to the scene. But this time it was different. As I approached the usual large cluster of flashing blue lights, I could hear the muffled sounds of the emergency services barking orders to each other in the distance.
    I was puzzled. There wasn’t the usual mischievous giggling from the looters. No one had even passed me with anything. Perhaps there was nothing on the truck. I could only see the outline of people silhouetted by the white floodlights set up by the fire service. Everyone just seemed to be standing at the edge of the field looking down the embankment. Eager to see what was going on,I ran the last few yards, squeezed through the crowd and peered down.
    The lorry had been travelling so fast, it had smashed through the barrier and rolled down the bank into the massive ditch between the motorway and the field. The emergency teams were desperately trying to cut the driver from the smashed and dented cab.
    Unfortunately, the cattle trailer the truck had been pulling wasn’t getting the same attention. It lay on its side, having been violently twisted. The whole back panel had peeled away like the lid of a tin can. Cows lay dead or dying in all sorts of odd shapes around the scene. They had obviously been thrown from the trailer.
    I was only about ten at the time, and it was difficult for me to fathom. As I watched the emergency services busy concentrating on the driver in the cab, I was confused as to why they were completely oblivious to the desperate, stomach-churning cries from the animals. Couldn’t anyone else hear that blood-curdling noise?
    One cow lay on its stomach, struggling to stand, but was too injured, and so it just bobbed its head back and forth. Meanwhile, there were cows still packed in the cattle trailer. Their body heat and panicked breathing spurted vapour and steam out through the air slits along the sides of the trailer. It merged with the rest of the heat generated by all the bodies and hung in the air above, creating a sort of dry ice. It was a dramatic, intense scene.
    I looked around at all the people just staring down at the poor animals and found it difficult to understand why no one was being affected by the sound of their crying. I couldn’t help myself. I tentatively began taking small stepsdown the grassy bank towards the trailer. I didn’t know what I would do exactly, but I thought maybe I could go and hug one of the animals and talk to it.
    But as I stepped forward, a car screeched to a halt on the motorway, and two huge men dressed in lumberjack jeans and boots jumped out of a plain white van. The driver shouted down to me, ‘You, get back!’
    Then, as he turned to a policeman and began talking, the other man efficiently opened the doors at the back of