A Bitter Feast(7)

A boulder, he thought woozily. He might as well be a boulder in a stream. The water was so cold. Not water, he realized, but ground. The cold was seeping through his trousers. The night had turned chill. Why, he wondered, had the woman in the car had her window down? He was shivering now, his teeth beginning to chatter.

The woman came back to him, throwing a rough blanket over his shoulders. “Can you stand if I help you?”

Kincaid started to nod, then quickly thought better of it. She steadied him as he pushed himself up, then she supported him across the rough ground of the verge to her car. Opening the door, she eased him down onto the seat, examining his head in the light of the dome lamp. “You’ve got a good cut there, and one on your cheek, but the bleeding’s let up. What else hurts?”

“Ribs,” he managed with a grimace. “And my hand,” he added with surprise, glancing down at his right hand. He could see bruising, and the beginning of swelling. “Why didn’t I feel it?”

“Shock.” She reached into the footwell and drew something out of a bag. “I keep a thermos in the car for the drive home.” She unscrewed the cap and filled it. “Here. Drink up.”

Kincaid took it left-handed, with shaking fingers. It was coffee, hot and milky. A few sips stopped his teeth chattering. He could see the ambulance crew moving round the wrecked car, their yellow safety jackets gleaming in the light of the flares they’d laid.

“The woman,” he said. “The driver—”

His helper was shaking her head. “Nothing they could do. It’s going to be a job to get both of them out. I can’t imagine what happened. She always seemed such a careful person.”

“You knew her?”

“Oh, not well. But I recognized her. Nell Greene. She was an administrator at my base hospital. In Cheltenham. A nice woman, but she left under some sort of cloud.”

Nell, Kincaid thought. He wished he’d known. He kept hearing her voice, entreating him.

One of the yellow jackets loomed nearer. The woman, who’d been squatting beside the open car door, rose and spoke to him, their voices drifting down to Kincaid.

“Dead,” the man said.

His companion gave him a puzzled look. “What are you talking about? We know they’re dead.”

“No. I mean the bloke in the passenger seat. There was barely a trickle from that head wound. I’d swear he was already bloody dead when the car crashed.”



The woman in scrubs, he learned, was called Tracey, Tracey Woodman, and she’d been on her way home from an ambulance shift out of Cheltenham.

“I was only a half mile behind you,” she told him. “I heard the crash.” Her shoulders twitched in an involuntary shudder. “There’s nothing else sounds like that. I feared the worst.” She glanced down at him. “You were lucky.”

One of the ambulance crew called to her and, after telling Kincaid firmly to stay put, she walked away. The police arrived shortly after, first one panda car, then a second. The fire brigade was not far behind. Kincaid watched as the police and the firefighters conferred with the medics, set flares across the road to redirect traffic, then began setting up a cordon round the accident scene. Used to being in charge, he felt oddly helpless. It was only when an officer came over to speak to him that he realized he not only had no transportation, he had no means of communication. His mobile had been on the car seat.

“My mobile phone,” he said. “Did anyone find it?”

The officer, whose name badge read HAWKINS, shook his head. “No joy, I’m afraid. You’ll have to wait for the scene investigators to finish, and while I’m sure they’ll do their best, that won’t be anytime soon.” Hawkins took Kincaid’s details, raising his eyebrows at Kincaid’s rank. Kincaid at least had identification. His driving license and warrant card were still in his jacket pocket. He winced as he drew them out. His hand was throbbing and every breath brought a stabbing pain in his ribs.

“And what were you doing here? Sir,” Hawkins added hastily.

“Meeting my wife. We’re visiting friends for the weekend. At Beck House.”

This garnered another raised eyebrow. “Just so we can contact you, sir. And we’ll need a blood draw before you leave the scene. You’ll need to come into the station at Cheltenham to make a full statement tomorrow.”

He’d thought about asking if he could borrow the officer’s phone to ring Gemma when Tracey Woodman returned. “When they’re finished with you, I’d be happy to give you a lift.”

Kincaid accepted gratefully.

Woodman examined him, frowning. “You’ll need that cut on your forehead stitched.”

He shook his head, suddenly feeling exhausted. “Not tonight.”

“Then let me at least clean you up a bit, after they stick you.” Leading him over to the ambulance, she sat him on the tailgate, where one of the ambulance medics took a blood sample and labeled it. Then Woodman swabbed gently at the cut in his hairline, finishing with some strips of tape. “There. You’re going to look quite rakish, even once it’s stitched. Downright piratical.”

“My kids will be impressed.” He managed a smile. “Not to mention my wife. Once she gets over killing me for worrying her. I’m hours late, and I lost my mobile in the crash.”