Another One Goes Tonight

by Peter Lovesey

  The possibility of an animal, a fox or a deer, making a dash across the road from the wild area and causing the driver to slam on his brakes had made sense until now. Unlikely. The railway company had installed railings all the way along, not obvious from below. The bushes hid much of this iron barrier from view. There was only a narrow strip of ground to stand on.

  Diamond was forced to think again.

  He edged a short way along for a better angle, gripping branches and railings to keep his balance. A fire engine was parked immediately below him and he couldn’t see past it.

  He hadn’t gone far when he was forced to stop for a tangle of metal heaped against the railing. At first he thought some piece of the police car must have broken off in the crash and been flung up here, but it became obvious this wasn’t a car part. Chrome tubing, twisted cable and a circular grooved object that looked like a chain wheel were half-buried in the long grass. He crouched for a closer look. None of it was rusted. The metal had been scraped bare on one piece, gleaming as if it had just happened.

  Then he found a bicycle saddle.

  This could change everything.

  He stood up and looked for Halliwell and Ingeborg. Too far off to get their attention.

  And now he noticed that a whole section of the railing a little further on had come off its support and was angled inwards, as if it had been struck hard by the bike. In fact, there was an entire, undamaged bicycle wheel just below it on the grass, the tyre intact. He groped his way towards it.

  Had someone been riding this thing? If so, where was he?

  The damage to the railing had left a v-shaped gap that Diamond squeezed through.

  Tall, coarse grass. Nettles and brambles everywhere.

  He cupped his mouth and shouted, “Anyone about?”

  No response.

  He took out his phone.

  Halliwell’s voice said, “Guv?” From below, still at the level of the road.

  “You’d better join me, both of you, up on the wild bit behind the fire engine. I found something.”

  He hadn’t even pocketed the mobile when he saw a shoe.

  Then a leg.

  The familiar shock-horror adrenalin surge.

  Someone face down in the grass, dead-still.

  A corpse?

  Diamond squatted, caught his breath, composed himself, tugged at a shoulder.

  The pale, wrinkled face of a grey-haired old man, eyes closed, mouth gaping, with dried blood at the edge of the lips. Gently, he turned him on his back.

  Dead, apparently, but was he?

  What right did he have to decide such a thing?

  Do the drill, Diamond told himself. Feel for a pulse. Press two fingers to the side of the neck, in the hollow part beside the Adam’s apple.

  If there was anything, it was faint and feeble. Could have been the blood circulating through his own fingertips.

  No other hint of life. And no obvious injuries other than the blood at the mouth. A cut tongue may have caused that.

  He tried opening one of the eyelids. The pale blue eye was motionless, unseeing.

  The airways were clear. What else could he do?

  CPR.

  Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation of an old person, very likely dead, isn’t for the squeamish. The urgency of the situation overrode the reluctance. Gently he rotated the body, tipped the chin upwards, leaned over, made contact with the slack, cold lips and breathed into the mouth, enough to cause a slight rise of the chest.

  Didn’t mean there was life.

  He tried a second breath and then started chest compressions, linking his fingers and flattening his palms against the old man’s shirt.

  Thirty, wasn’t it? Thirty compressions followed by two breaths. And you do it as if you mean it, with brute force, regardless that this is a frail old body. Work that ribcage, using the weight from your own upper body and don’t even think about his brittle bones splintering. You’re the only chance he has, so do all you can to get the blood pulsing around his body.

  He’d already lost count, and that was careless. He pumped five more and stopped.

  The grey face framed by the grey hair showed nothing.

  He stooped lower for more mouth-to-mouth. The first instinctive revulsion had gone. He cared, he really cared. Hot lips against cold. Two lungfuls of air.

  Then back to the compressions. Already he felt the emotional bond that lifesaving creates. He couldn’t allow himself to think this might already be a corpse. He and his mate here were not letting go. There had to be life. Come on, old friend, he urged as he worked his aching shoulders, you and I can do this. He was trying to keep counting, but it was next to impossible. Maybe some inner clock was controlling him.

  He heard a shout.

  Halliwell had scrambled up the bank and was running towards him.

  Diamond shouted, “Call an ambulance. There may be a chance.”

  Paramedics must have attended the crash but they’d long since left with the known casualties. All the attention in the first critical hours had been on the men trapped in the car. No one had thought to climb up here.

  He remained on his aching knees beside the unconscious man, working the chest and speaking occasional words of encouragement. So much of him was invested in this rescue bid that he’d actually felt a spasm of anger at Halliwell’s interruption. He and his helpless old man were on a mission and nobody had better unsettle them.

  Halliwell had put through the call. “They’re on the way. Want me to take over?”

  “I’m managing. I think there was a pulse.”

  “He’s not looking great.”

  Ingeborg joined them and had the good idea of wrapping coats around the lower half of the body for warmth. She and Halliwell unzipped their padded jackets.

  “Is that the remains of his bike?”

  “Must be,” Halliwell said. “He was hit by the car and thrown up here.”

  “What was he doing, an old guy on the road at six in the morning?”

  Nobody had an answer. Diamond continued with his task as if it was his only chance of keeping alive. He was counting aloud now, almost shouting the numbers to inform his two colleagues that they’d better shut up asking pointless questions that were only a distraction.

  Halliwell heard the ambulance siren first and went to meet the paramedics. Diamond continued resolutely with the CPR. There had been no change.

  The flashing blue lights drew close and lit up the scene, giving the accident victim an even more deathly look.

  The roof of the ambulance was on the same level as the top of the bank. Two paramedics scrambled up.

  “I thought there was a faint pulse,” Diamond told them between counting.

  “You did good,” one said as he pulled open the shirt and stuck defibrillator pads to the motionless white chest. “Got to be positive. We’ll give him a jerk with this and some more compressions and then get him to the resus bay and see if he was born lucky.”

  After the ambulance had powered away, siren screaming, massive anti-climax set in. Diamond felt shattered, exhausted, mentally bereft. The people he’d worked with daily for years were like strangers at this minute. The frail old man being rushed to hospital was the only reality. And yet he had to accept that his part in the rescue effort was over.

  Recriminations wouldn’t be long in following. Someone else should have checked the wild part long before they had got there. The fact that it was across the street from the crash and well above eye level was no excuse.

  And now Dessie had been drawn here by all the activity. He stood gazing at the mangled bicycle parts lying in the long grass. If he felt he should shoulder some blame for missing the hidden victim he wasn’t admitting it.

  “So here’s another point of interest,” Ingeborg said acidly.

  He gave her a sharp glance
. “Arguably, yes.”

  Nothing more was said for a time. Then Halliwell commented, “Funny sort of pushbike.”

  “I was thinking the same,” Ingeborg said. “Isn’t that a third wheel?”

  “It’s a tricycle,” Dessie said. “An adult trike, with a small electric motor.” He indicated with his foot. His hands remained in his pockets as if he hadn’t yet accepted that this piece of wreckage was part of his remit.

  Halliwell squatted and tugged back the grass for a closer look. “There’s some kind of bag attached to the handlebars.”

  “Don’t touch,” Dessie said. “All the pieces will have to be photographed in situ and then taken to our investigation bay. Was he dressed?”

  Halliwell and Ingeborg exchanged puzzled glances.

  “I get you now,” Ingeborg said to Dessie. “You’re thinking of the naked man. Sorry to disappoint. He was clothed.”

  “Rather eccentrically,” Halliwell said, “in an old-fashioned Norfolk overcoat and trousers with gaiters.”

  “And a deerstalker,” Ingeborg added. She’d found one a few yards off in the long grass.

  “So what’s your expert opinion, Dessie?” Diamond asked. It was taking a huge effort to force himself back to the demands of the job.

  “About this? I’ll wait for more evidence.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Halliwell said. “Poor old geezer out for an early-morning ride gets hit by the patrol car and is thrown up here on impact.”

  “I’ll need to see all the technical evidence. There are so many factors—the speed, the visibility, the weather, the skid patterns . . . We always make a computer-aided simulation.”

  “Which will tell you they swerved to avoid him and mounted the bank and went out of control,” Diamond said.

  Halliwell said, “I see the patrol car travelling at speed towards the two parked cars, pulling out to pass them and suddenly being faced with the trike. It’s early morning, still dark. They won’t have seen him coming. They’re used to reacting to headlights, not the little lights you get on a bike. Split-second decision. The driver jams on the brakes, pulls the car sharp right and up the verge and still hits the trike.”

  “Wouldn’t he be thrown inwards, towards the centre of the road?” Ingeborg said. “He wouldn’t end up here.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Diamond said. “If he hit the side of the car swinging towards him at an angle, he’d be bounced this way.”

  Maybe Dessie had a point. The accident wasn’t so straightforward as it had first appeared.

  “And he wasn’t wearing a helmet,” Ingeborg added.

  “Crazy,” Halliwell said, speaking for all of them.

  Dessie went off to fetch a police photographer.

  Diamond said to the others, “It’s okay trading theories with Dessie. There’s some overlap with what we’re trying to find out. But let’s be clear that he’s dealing with the mechanics of the crash. We’re concerned with the officers and how professional they were, and suddenly there’s a worrying new dimension to it.”

  “A civilian casualty,” Halliwell said.

  “Who may have been killed,” Ingeborg added. “And as an ex-journo I know what the papers will make of that.”

  “Let’s not lose time talking about what may or may not happen,” Diamond said. The emotional aftermath was still churning him up. “Did you learn anything from the rubbernecks down there?”

  They shook their heads. “It happened before anyone was about,” Ingeborg said.

  “I’m not taking that for granted. One witness could transform this case. We need to knock on doors now. Every door. One thing they’ll be able to tell us is if our guys were using blues and twos.”

  “I doubt if they would have had the siren on,” Ingeborg said. “A quiet residential road so early in the morning. Lights, yes, as they were going at speed.”

  “Even so, we want confirmation, so we ask. And from now on our main priority has to be the tricyclist, a member of the public who was hit by a police car and seriously injured, may have lost his life, in fact. We all know how that will go down.”

  “Riding a trike at night is asking to be hit,” Halliwell said.

  Ingeborg turned on him, “Fascist.”

  “What do you mean? It’s crazy.”

  “It won’t be seen that way,” Diamond said. “But we need everything we can get on this man. Was he right in the head, sober, capable of riding a bike? If he’s local, somebody will know who he is.”

  “And the naked man?” Halliwell said. “We ought to ask about him. Who’s the local fruitcake who likes to get his kit off?”

  They started at the houses closest to the crash. Diamond didn’t need to knock at the bungalow with the smashed garden wall. The occupant was just emerging with a tray loaded with tea and biscuits. “Would you like one, my darling?” she asked him. She was about eighty, with hair almost as sparse as his.

  “That’s kind. I haven’t been here long,” he said. “Give me the tray and I’ll pass it to someone who needs it more.” He handed it to the nearest fire and rescue man and then turned back to the old lady. “Bit of a shock for you, waking up to this.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. “I grew up in London in the war. You never knew what each new day would bring. I’m sorry for the poor men in that police car. Is it true that one was killed?”

  He showed his card and asked if they could speak inside the house. She was only too pleased to cooperate but it didn’t take long to discover she knew nothing. The first she had learned of the incident was when she parted her curtains and saw what the patrol car had done to her wall. By then the rescue team was already at work.

  “Didn’t you hear the crash?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t wear my hearing aids in bed, my dear.”

  When asked if she’d ever seen a man on a tricycle riding past, she shook her head. “I’m not much help, am I?”

  “Then perhaps you can tell me if any of your neighbours behave strangely. There was a report of a man in the street with no clothes.”

  “Really? Disgusting.” Her eyes lit up. “And to think I missed it.”

  He tried the next house and was kept on the doorstep by an elderly Asian woman who didn’t speak any English. Communication was only achieved with gestures and sound effects. He was thankful his team didn’t hear his “Nee Naa Nee Naa Nee Naa” or watch him clap his hands to simulate the car hitting the wall. That was the easy part. The man on the trike was a bigger challenge and the nude neighbour almost impossible to convey without causing offence. All his efforts were rewarded only with disbelieving eyes and a shake of the head.

  Finally at the house facing the parked cars, he got a result. The owner, a large, muscled man in a black singlet and combat trousers, had heard the collision while at breakfast and been one of the first on the scene. He’d called the emergency number on his mobile and tried speaking to the two officers in the smashed patrol car, but neither had shown any sign of life until the paramedics arrived. He worked nights at a petrol station on the Warminster Road and hadn’t long been home. The white Toyota belonged to him. He was certain the police siren hadn’t been used. When asked about the tricyclist, he said he was sure he’d seen an elderly man on a trike.

  Diamond’s hopes soared. “Today, you mean?”

  “No, mate. One morning last week, between six and seven, when I was coming home from work.”

  “Which day was that?”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I remember, because he wasn’t all that easy to spot. He had one of those LED flashers. He was coming towards me, so he can’t have come far.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “The top of this street is a dead end. It goes a long way and gets a change of name—Hampton Row—but you can’t drive any further. It ends in a footbridge across the railway, and that’s it.”
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  “Could he have brought the tricycle across the footbridge?”

  “Unlikely. Too many steps.”

  “So it looks as if he starts in Hampton Row. What’s it like up there—just an extension of this, with houses one side and rough ground the other?”

  “Pretty similar, except they’re small terraced houses all the way along.” It was said in a superior tone. Beckford Gardens was the smart end.

  “No garages, then, where you could store a trike? Thanks. This is useful,” Diamond said, thinking it shouldn’t be too difficult to trace the tricyclist’s home if he lived in one of the terraced houses. He needed to know more about this man who had apparently been the cause of the crash. That was a given. And at a deeper, emotional level, he was tied to the life he still hoped he had helped to save.

  “One other question. The police car was on its way here to check on a report of a naked man. Can you think of anyone locally who gets up to stuff like that?”

  “Round here? Unlikely. Who reported it?”

  “At this stage I’m not sure. Our control centre ought to know the source of the call but I haven’t been able to check yet.”

  “What a weirdo.”

  “It takes all sorts.”

  Diamond returned outside to see if Ingeborg or Keith Halliwell had discovered anything more. He’d visited the three houses he’d picked for himself. Halliwell had got through his three and learned nothing of use and Ingeborg was still not back.

  “Probably getting coffee and cake,” Halliwell said.

  “If she is, she’d better have something to report.” He called the control room and asked if there was news from the hospital of Lew Morgan’s condition. The injured sergeant was under sedation. He wouldn’t be fit to interview for at least the next twelve hours. “How about the man on the trike?” Diamond asked.