Page 12 of Watching You
‘You like making people uncomfortable,’ Carlisle said.
‘Not like; it speeds up the knowledge process for me. I find it necessary to get to know people quickly to communicate with them effectively. Breaking barriers, reading faces, triggering responses, that all helps. Mrs Singh’s body is so badly broken that it’s hard to figure out exactly what was happening at the moment of impact. What did her cervical spine tell you?’
‘I can show you the x-rays,’ he said, walking over to acomputer and opening a folder. ‘Here you can see the fractures that occurred when her head was snapped backwards with the force of the blow. Mrs Singh has relatively little body weight or muscle to protect from impact injuries. Her head flew straight back. It’s a linear fracture of C5.’
Connie hadn’t moved from her place at Divya Singh’s side.
‘What would the fracture have looked like if she’d been craning her neck at the moment of impact, to look back? Or if she’d turned her whole body and was facing the car as it hit her?’
‘Her head would have gone to the side or forward, in which case the break would have been at more of a diagonal line. Or the start point of the break which has the widest part of the fracture would have been at the front of her neck, not the rear.’
Connie reached down and stroked Divya’s Singh’s cheek. ‘How’s your hearing, sweetheart?’ she whispered.
Carlisle went back to the table. ‘Her husband said it was fine. No hearing aid. She’d never complained about it.’
‘Maybe it’s better that you never saw it coming.’ Connie ran a gentle hand down to the shattered legs, almost entirely blackened, which still bore the impact marks. ‘Can we turn her over?’
Carlisle helped. Connie sighed as she took in the damage. Nate traced the line of the car’s front bumper with his finger, straight across the backs of both thighs.
‘It didn’t clip her, didn’t come from the side. The vehicle was right behind her and not braking at all. The multiple fractures and tissue damage have made it hard to get an accurate postmortem height, but her husband says she was only five foot two.’
‘You were a feather,’ Connie said. ‘I bet you almost drifted down on the breeze. What do you know about the car?’
‘Not much. Top of the number plate is about two inches up so not a four-by-four. There are no markings on Mrs Singh’s body. Annoyingly the speed helped in that regard, because the impact was so sharp and severe that her body was thrown instantaneously. We’ve got some tyre substance on the pavement where the car mounted and that’s being processed, but the chemical make-up we get back will likely apply to multiple car makes,’ Carlisle explained.
‘And the physics – what damage would the car have sustained?’
‘The postmortem report will be referred to a vehicle collision specialist, but in the interim I can say a broken number plate is possible and a substantial dent in the front of the vehicle is certain. I doubt Mrs Singh even hit the windscreen. The pavement blood spatters show conclusively that she landed directly on the ground, not on the car first. Ultimately, it depends on the make of the car and how tough it is. Mrs Singh only weighs eight stone.’
‘Okay,’ Connie murmured. ‘That’s all I needed. Could you turn her over again, please?’ Carlisle obliged.
Connie took both of the cold, dead hands in her own, pulling them across into the centre of the body and leaning over to look at her face. ‘Divya, I hope you don’t mind me calling you by your first name. Dr Carlisle and I are going to do all we can to find the person or people who hurt you. You’re going to be taken care of, and as soon as possible, returned to your family to find you some peace. Dr Carlisle is a good man, and I’m happy leaving you here in his care, albeit that I’m sorry you have to wait here until this is resolved.’
Carlisle gently pulled the cover back over the body.
‘Can we do some actual police work now or were you wanting to talk about feelings some more?’ Lively asked from the doorway.
Connie swung round to face him, looked him up and down, and took her time responding.
‘Long time no see, DS Lively. We didn’t really get to know one another last time, did we? So let’s see … you’re in your mid-fifties, no wedding band, no white mark where a band once was. Your accent says you didn’t grow up in one of the more affluent areas of Scotland. You probably have been married because thirty years ago marrying young was still a thing. Divorce rates being what they are in the police, though, I’m thinking early divorce, not friendly, and the wife was glad to see the back of all that overtime and the macho boys’ club bullshit. It’s all a distant memory for you. You don’t have any kids, because kids wear the rough edges off people, and while the younger generation irritates those who’ve experienced parenthood, it makes them more tolerant.
‘You’ve recently started exercising because your belt has just been pulled in a notch, and you’re conscious of your body because even now you’re trying to hold your gut in. I’m guessing that’s not for my benefit or Dr Carlisle’s. So there’s a new woman on the scene, but from the pinched look on your face now that I’ve mentioned it, you’re not in a relationship with her yet, probably haven’t had the guts to ask her out. You do actually want to talk about your feelings because it was the first thought you had when you came in here, and the things we blurt out without thinking – even while being a smartass – are usually lodged in truth. Tell me again how talking about feelings and doing police work are two different things.’
She stripped off her gloves and suit, ditched them in the bin next to the door, and went to find Baarda who was in a meeting in a different part of the building.
‘Fuck me, that woman’s terrifying,’ Lively said. ‘We used toburn witches in Scotland. Does she not know this is dangerous territory for her?’
‘Well, that might have been some sort of dark magic, or she might have been on a call with DS Salter for fifteen minutes earlier this afternoon. Either way, she shut you up, so I’d say that’s one woman you don’t want to mess with.’ Carlisle slapped Lively on the shoulder and left.
Chapter 12
28 May
Lively was in a corner and there was only one way out. He grabbed the nearest weapon, picking up an axe, gripping it hard, and flinging it with every last vestige of the muscle he’d let soften over the years. He’d grown up knowing how to win a fight, and that knowledge meant he’d never had to spend hours in a gym or purchase illicit steroids to bulk up and look tough.
When he’d invited Beth Waterfall on a date, he’d pictured a bar, hopefully followed by a meal, or maybe a Sunday afternoon walk to a countryside pub, perhaps even a trip to the coast. He’d asked what she’d most wanted to do, and she’d replied by text with an address, a date and a time. It had taken him a full one minute checking and double-checking her text to be certain he was at the right place, until Beth had appeared beside him and asked if he was having second thoughts about the date.
Fifteen minutes later, after a cursory training session that would have given any health and safety training officer a fit ofthe screaming abdabs, he’d found himself standing at the end lane of a hall with a bar at one end and multiple targets at the other, each separated by netting that really didn’t feel as secure as it should.
