A 'BRILLIANT' City banker and her taxi driver were killed when a young man reversed his car across the busy M25 motorway in darkness, a jury was told on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old motorist, who faces a charge of causing the two deaths by dangerous driving, even removed the light bulbs from the back of his crashed vehicle after the collision.

The court heard that Waqas Ahmed had been driving his Rover car back from Denmark on New Year's Eve in 1998, when the mass pile-up happened.

City banker Mrs May Ling McDougall - who headed the risk management team at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi in the City - was killed outright.

The 34-year-old from Berry Lane, Chorleywood, was being driven home by 53-year-old cabbie Frank Jones, from Amersham.

Instead of going home, her husband, Alisdair, had gone straight to work from the airport.

Mrs McDougall and Mr Jones were killed as the Peugeot 405 taxi was squashed between two articulated lorries which had crashed as they tried to avoid the wreckage in front of them, caused by Ahmed reversing into the path of oncoming cars.

Jonathan Coode, prosecuting at Reading Crown Court, told how Claire Eyles, a Virgin Atlantic Airways purser, was on her way home from Heathrow Airport after landing from Hong Kong at about 6am that morning.

She was between junctions 16 and 17 near Maple Cross on the M25 in Buckinghamshire when she saw the defendant's white Rover car reversing towards her.

Mr Coode said: 'He was coming across the lanes of the M25, backwards, in reverse, at an angle of 45 degrees. He was coming off the hard shoulder, across lanes one and two.

'He was not displaying any lights to the rear. Why he was doing that is, at present, a complete mystery. What is clear is that Ahmed was at the wheel when he did that.'

The prosecutor told the jury that to go across a motorway backwards, in those circumstances, was just about the most dangerous thing a driver could have done, given that traffic was coming along behind.

Mr Coode continued: 'Miss Eyles only had about 50ft to play with, at 60 miles per hour - a split second.

'She tried to swerve to avoid Ahmed. The front of her Renault 5 hit his car amidships on the passenger side. They both span out of control. That, effectively, was the first accident.'

Mr Coode then told of the second accident, in which the Peugeot taxi was crushed between the Tesco Scania lorry which had stopped and the Mercedes lorry, which failed to stop.

The driver of the Mercedes admitted driving without due care and attention and was fined because he failed to stop after the first accident.

The jury was told by Mr Coode: 'He (the Mercedes driver) was going about 54 mph. He managed to brake and got down to about 45 mph at impact.

'There was then a collision. The effect of that collision was to effectively squash the Peugeot car between two articulated lorries. It may even have been hard enough to shunt the Tesco lorry forward a few feet.'

After his arrest and in interview with the police in April, Ahmed admitted that he had removed the rear light bulbs of his Rover car following the accident, after his insurance company told him he could retrieve personal possessions.

But Mr Coode said: 'When the car was examined, the rear light clusters contained no light bulbs at all.

'The Crown says he was lying about that in an effort to make it look better for him.'

Ahmed, of Heeley Bank Road, Sheffield, denies causing death by dangerous driving of Mrs McDougall and Mr Jones.

The case continues.