“I’m telling you,” Lew said with more force. “My fucking eyes were shut.”
“Got you now. Sorry.”
“Next thing Aaron yells something and we’re fucking turning over. That was it.”
“What did he yell?”
“‘Jeez!’ Something like that. Ask him.”
Chilling. He thought Aaron was still alive.
He’d been trapped in the car beside a corpse. Surely he remembered? But the brain has its own way of dealing with shock. He must have suppressed the ghastly memory he couldn’t deal with yet.
Diamond changed tack. “The old guy on the trike. Did he cause the accident?”
“Him? What do you mean?”
“He was there, Lew.”
“Wasn’t.”
The only witness to the crash was self-deluding about everything he couldn’t cope with. This critically important interview was imploding. “Believe me, he was.”
“No.”
“I’m telling you.”
“Stay out of my head, will you?”
A sharp rebuke. Worse, Lew reached for the call switch and pressed it. The session was about to end.
“I’m on your side, Lew.”
But now the eyes registered only mistrust.
Diamond was thinking if the medics had decided an amputation was necessary there might not be another chance in days of getting to the truth. “We’re all aware of what you’re going through. You know what the police are like. They have to know every detail of what happened.”
“Piss off.” Lew pressed the button again.
The sister came in, heard what was said and summed up the situation. “I had my doubts it would work. It’s too soon. I’m afraid I must ask you to leave.”
Diamond didn’t argue. “Thanks, anyway.” He removed the sterile clothes and gave her a card. “If he changes his mind, these are my contact details.”
She glanced at the card and smiled faintly. “I don’t suppose he knew he was talking to a superintendent.”
“I’ve heard worse,” he said.
On his way back to the car he was seething with frustration. He’d succeeded only in upsetting a critically injured man. The fragmented account of the collision had added little of use to what he already knew. He’d not asked for this bloody job and he was getting nowhere with it.
There was a voice message on his mobile asking him to call Desmond De Lisle. Who the hell was that?
Dessie.
He called the number.
“How’s it progressing, squire?” Dessie asked.
“Squire” was slightly less objectionable than “man,” but it still rankled. “It isn’t. One of the survivors is too far gone to speak and the other isn’t making sense. But you were trying to reach me.”
“Don’t get your hopes up. Nothing to make your day. The smashed car is being worked on as we speak, checking mechanical faults, brakes and what have you. It’s not a job you can do in a day or even a week. What I’m calling about is we also have the bits of the trike to play with.”
“Does it matter?”
“May do. Something interesting has come up. The trike wasn’t factory built. None of the parts are standard manufacture except the tyres. He was riding a homemade machine.”
“Strange.”
“I think so. And it’s expertly done. The welding, the gears, the electrics, are as well built as any commercial bike. Kept in nice condition, too. From all I can tell, looking at the brakes and the mechanics, it was roadworthy.”
“Could he have made it himself?”
“Can’t answer that, squire, but whoever put it together was hot stuff at metalwork.”
“Thanks for letting me know. Have you learned anything else?”
“Not a lot. The tread marks confirm what I showed you at the scene. The patrol car moves out to pass the parked vehicles and immediately brakes hard, gets into a skid, hits the trike, rises up the bank, turns over-”
“Hold on, Dessie. You’ve added something. You didn’t mention the trike when we walked it through.”
“Obviously. Because you hadn’t found it at that stage. For him to be flung up there, with all that force, he must get hit broadside on.”
“Okay. The big question is why PC Green slammed on the brakes.”
“Haven’t you worked that out?”
“The trike?”
“Got to be. He was unsighted by the parked cars and didn’t see the winking LED lights until the last moment.”
“Right. And it’s possible the old man was wandering all over the road. I heard from a witness that he wasn’t too straight with his steering. Does that fit your reading of it?”
“Tell you later, when we get round to the computer simulation.” Dessie paused. “You say there was a witness?”
“Someone saw him ride past higher up the street. They didn’t witness the crash.”
“Was he breathalysed?”
“The old man? No chance,” Diamond said. “I’m not even sure he was breathing when I found him.”
“Shouldn’t we ask the hospital for a blood sample?”
Slipped up there, Diamond thought with a stab of guilt. Being so new to crash investigation, he’d missed a basic procedure. “Quite right. I’m seeing to it.”
“And the driver?”
“What about the driver?”
“You’ll need to know if he was legal.”
“They’re doing a postmortem this morning. The usual body fluids and tissue samples will be sent for testing. I’ve no reason to think he’d been drinking.”
“The shunt was entirely down to the civilian, then,” Dessie said with irony. “The police are squeaky-clean.”
“That’s my strong impression.”
“Just bad luck they met a speeding tricyclist.”
When he ended the call, Diamond was feeling a long way out of his depth, wondering how “just bad luck” would be received by Professional Standards and the IPCC. He would need all of Dessie’s graphics and stats to back up a conclusion as artless as that.
He started the car and drove into work. Please God a really juicy murder had been committed overnight and this whole wretched inquiry could be passed to someone else.
T his isn’t a compulsion. I’m not psychotic. I can stop at any time. And when I do, the world won’t be any the wiser, which will be a personal success. I keep this record of my ordered state of mind at every stage so I can look back at each episode and recall exactly why it was necessary to put an end to a life and how I dealt with it. Of course there are glitches sometimes. I think back to the first and cringe at how naïve I was. Fortunately no one noticed except me.
Right now I’m thinking another one may be beckoning, but not in the near future, not before I’ve taken time to make all the arrangements. Good preparation is the key.
5
Georgina looked ready to unload a sackful of blame. She crooked a finger at Diamond when he arrived in the temporary CID room. Then she headed straight for the place he called the goldfish bowl and parked herself in his chair.
“Where have you been all morning?”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s not that late, is it? I was at the hospital, ma’am. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
“Your two assistants aren’t here.”
“Hard at work on their duties, Keith Halliwell at the autopsy and Ingeborg Smith with the press officer. It’s non-stop.” Diamond liked her to believe everyone was fully stretched and today it happened to be true. The Critical Care unit, the autopsy room and the press office. No one had been swanning around.
Georgina, in full battle order, was forced to abandon the charge. “And what news is there from the hospital? How is he?”
“Able to speak now.”
“Really?” Some of the disapproval vanished from her face. “Is he making sense?”
“On and off. He’s well dosed with morphine, or whatever they give them.”
“Was he able to tell you his name?”
“I didn’t ask.”
With a rasping catch of breath she was back on the attack. “That’s the first thing to find out.”