A Bitter Feast(58)
“Yes. Your wife has a knack for talking to people. A good cop, I think.” Slowing as they reached the village, he glanced at Kincaid. “Did you meet on the job? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“We were partners,” Kincaid admitted, a little ruefully. “Very un-PC of us. But the only thing I regret about it is not working with her on the job any longer. You’re right—she has good instincts. And she’s definitely the person you want on your side in a crisis.” They were alongside the Lamb now. The village was already busy with walkers and tourists, but the pub car park looked ominously empty. “Addie was out when Viv Holland rang. Gemma’s gone in her stead.”
Booth whistled. “That was quick work.”
“It sounded as if Viv needed some support.”
Passing the pub and the church, they quickly left the outskirts of the village behind. Copsehill Road ran north and Kincaid had not been this way before. Glimpses of open fields to either side were quickly eclipsed by trees and hedges. The arching trees began to connect overhead, shutting out the crystalline blue of the sky. The light turned a leafy green and Kincaid had a hard time visualizing the road in the dark, in the rain. Spots of color appeared ahead—red traffic cones, just beyond a layby, and then the bright blue and yellow of a patrol car, pulled sideways across the lane. The uniformed officer standing beside the car came towards them as Booth brought the Volvo to a stop and rolled down his window.
“Sir, if you could just—”
Booth held out his ID.
“Oh, sorry, sir. Dr. Mason’s expecting you. If you could just pull your car up there,” he added, gesturing towards the wider spot.
When Booth had parked the car, they got out, Kincaid carefully avoiding the muddy pools at the road’s edge. As they threaded their way through the cones and walked round a slight curve, Kincaid saw other vehicles, a mud-splattered Jeep and a mortuary van, parked on the verge. Beyond those, he glimpsed another patrol car blocking the road from the opposite direction.
A woman wearing a disposable paper overall came towards them. Middle-aged, square-faced, with alert brown eyes, she had obviously pulled the overall over her puffy jacket. She looked a bit like the Michelin Man. “Booth,” she said, shaking his hand. “Sorry to roust you on a Sunday morning. Who’s your walking-casualty friend here?” she added, turning her sharp eyes on Kincaid.
“Detective Superintendent Kincaid, from the Met. He was in the other car in the Friday-night crash.”
“Ah. The friend of the Talbots.” Kincaid must have looked surprised because she smiled. “News travels fast in these parts. Well, I’d say you were the lucky one in that collision. I won’t ask you to shake—I can see that arm is plaguing you—but I assume you want to have a look at our victim as well.”
Leading them to the muddy Jeep, she opened the rear hatch and pulled out the requisite paper suits and booties. Kincaid struggled getting his injured arm into the overall, but persevered, determined not to be kept away from the scene.
“Accident-investigation team not here yet?” Booth asked, steadying himself on the Jeep as he pulled on the paper booties.
“As soon as they finish the crash scene on the motorway. I came straight from there. Drug-driving on a Sunday morning, I ask you. Driver survived, too, the idiot.”
When they were ready, the doctor led them past the mortuary van, and for the first time Kincaid glimpsed the victim.
The man lay on his back at an angle to the road, his head nearest the hedge and lower than his torso. The back of his head and his shoulders were partially submerged by the rainwater that had pooled in the dips at the side of the road. Kincaid had to suppress the urge to move him to a drier spot—the man was past caring about the cold or the damp.
Sturdily built, the victim wore dark trousers and a dark anorak. One of his shoes—black rubber-soled lace-ups of the sort worn by people who stood on their feet all day—had come off and lay a few feet from the body. His socks, although both dark, didn’t match.
Dr. Mason squatted beside the body and stretched out a gloved finger. “See here, just above the right knee? There’s not much tearing to the trouser fabric, but his leg is broken, I’d say from the initial impact. Also, I suspect his pelvis is fractured.”
“He turned towards the car as it came on?” Kincaid looked back the way they’d come, trying to work out the point of impact. Had the victim been thrown five feet? Ten? Taking a step back, he studied the tarmac. “There aren’t any skid marks, unless they’ve been washed away by the rain.”
“I’m not certain even last night’s downpour would have completely washed away burnt rubber,” Booth commented, having followed the direction of Kincaid’s gaze.
“I’m inclined to agree,” the pathologist said. “And there are also injuries to the back of the head that are consistent with our fellow’s initial contact with the tarmac. However”—Dr. Mason moved, squatting again by the man’s head— “this one is not.” She pointed to an indentation at the top of the man’s forehead. “There’s no blood, of course. If he bled, it will have been washed away by the rain, and I’d guess that there wasn’t much to begin with. His skull was fractured and if the blow didn’t kill him immediately, he probably didn’t live long afterwards.”
Kincaid winced. The position of the blow to the bartender’s skull was almost identical to the lump on Kincaid’s forehead, but much easier to see as the man had kept his thinning hair buzzed short. A dapple of sunlight moved over the face of the corpse, giving it a sudden eerie animation.