“Person,” Ingeborg said.
“What?”
“You said people. My understanding is that there’s only one survivor and we won’t be talking to him for a while. He’s in intensive care.”
“Sergeant Morgan,” Halliwell added. “Lew Morgan.”
“You know him?”
“Been at Bath as long as I have.”
They pulled up in Beckford Gardens some way short of the taped-off area. A patrol car parked sideways with beacon lights flashing was blocking the road. Beyond were more police vehicles and lifting gear. “We’ll get a sense of the scene as we always do,” Diamond said, trying to sound upbeat before they left the car. “Let’s treat it as we would a crime scene.”
“Except that the body will have been removed,” Ingeborg said, making clear she was every bit as unhappy about this assignment as he was. “It’s not the same at all, guv. We won’t be looking for a murder weapon. Or suspects.”
“Or motives,” Halliwell chimed in.
“It was a traffic accident,” Ingeborg said. “Shocking, but no mystery.”
“Hang on, there are things to investigate,” Diamond told them. “And there are victims.”
“Casualties.” Ingeborg was unconvinced.
“One fatal, one critically injured,” Diamond said. “As I understand it, they were called out to a so-called emergency about a naked man. In my book, they were victims.”
“Who made the call?”
“That’s one of the mysteries we have to unravel.”
“Whodunit,” Halliwell said, and triggered one of those moments when there was imminent danger of Diamond combusting.
This time he just rolled his eyes.
They stepped into the taped-off area.
The stretch where the crash had happened was about halfway along Beckford Gardens, a long narrow road in the north-eastern section of the city known as Bathwick. Houses and bungalows along one side faced bushes and trees on the other. You couldn’t see the railway and the canal on the undeveloped side but they weren’t far off.
The mangled wreckage of the Ford Focus police car was across the pavement. It had demolished someone’s garden wall and come to rest on its side with the front end in their rose-bed. Bits of the bodywork in the familiar blue and yellow Battenburg livery were lying where they had been dropped by the rescue team.
Diamond’s hope of treating this as a crime scene had to be swiftly revised. Massive tyres had crisscrossed the surfaces where he would have hoped to find tracks of the original crash. Heavy machinery, a truck-mounted crane and a flatbed lorry stood close to the centre of things, as well as a fire tender. The car roof had been removed with hydraulic cutters to get at the casualties inside. Fire and rescue officers, police and highways officials couldn’t avoid splashing through pools of oil and water as they went about their business removing equipment.
He went over to one of the police and identified himself. He was taken to meet the collision investigator, who looked about seventeen and said his name was Dessie. He was in a high-visibility jacket and hard hat with the word CHIEF across it. Two young women, similarly dressed, except that their hard hats had nothing written on them, were close by, using a laser rangefinder.
“Who do you represent?” Dessie asked. “I’m the specialist here.”
“Professional Standards. We won’t tread on your toes. Can you run through what happened?”
“Man, you’re joking. The only guy who can answer that is in intensive care.” Dessie might have been young but he wasn’t subdued by rank.
Diamond didn’t particularly like being addressed as “man,” but equally Dessie probably didn’t appreciate people who called themselves Professional Standards muscling in on his territory. “You must have formed an opinion. A police car doesn’t smash into a wall for no reason.”
“Take your pick,” Dessie said, spreading his hands. “Driver fell asleep at the wheel, had a stroke, an epileptic fit, an attack of cramp, a visual problem, a call on his mobile. His brakes failed, his steering went. A stone shattered the windscreen. A deer ran across the road. Or a cat, or a dog, or a runaway ostrich.”
“A naked man?” Halliwell said before Diamond could turn ballistic.
“Don’t come clever with me,” Dessie said, regardless that he was being clever with them.
“That’s what the call was about-a naked man.”
“Sure, and they were expecting him. He wouldn’t have caused the crash.”
“If he stepped out from behind one of those parked cars, he would,” Halliwell said. “Anyone, clothed or not, would have made them hit the brakes and very likely go out of control.”
“That’s one more scenario. I’m trained to keep an open mind.”
“Perhaps you should tell us what you’ve learned so far,” Diamond said through gritted teeth.
“Now you’re talking, man. I’ve noted three points of interest. I can walk you through if you want.”
“It would help.” He resisted the urge to add “sonny.”
Dessie was already on his way to a place some thirty metres from the wrecked police car, zigzagging between groups of fire and rescue officers. He was a fast mover.
He stopped where a white Toyota and a silver Renault were parked close to the kerb. Presumably they belonged to people from the adjacent houses. “There’s bugger all left to see because of all the vehicles that have come through since,” Dessie said when Diamond and the others joined him, “but everything was photographed and measured-skid marks this side of the Toyota indicating that something braked hard here and narrowly avoided hitting the thing. Delta Three-our patrol car-was travelling north along here, on the lookout for the naked man. You can see for yourselves how narrow it is. There isn’t much space for overtaking.”
With that settled, he marched briskly to the steep grass verge that fringed the road opposite the houses and rose to about five feet above the level of the road surface. Tyre tracks were clearly visible, showing something had mounted the slope and veered back to the road several metres on. “Second point of interest. The tracks show where the front offside wheel mounted the soft shoulder. The indentation is deepest at the high point. When you look at the wheels in a moment you’ll see mud and grass adhering to the tyre wall. It’s pretty obvious they struck this bank and lost control. The speed they were going and the angle were enough to tip the car over.” He headed across the road to the wreck of Delta Three, embedded in what remained of the garden wall.
“It’s a miracle anyone got out alive,” Ingeborg said when they caught up.
“What you’re looking at now is my third and final piece of evidence, the shell of the thing after they were cut out,” Dessie told her. “Take note of the mud on the wheels.”
The young man was justified in treating them as beginners in accident investigation, Diamond had to remind himself, but he couldn’t take much more of it. “When did you get here?”
“While they were extracting the dead driver. The survivor was already in the ambulance on his way to the Royal United.”
“So you didn’t see the car in its original state after it hit the wall?”
“Others were here. It was photographed. I won’t be short of evidence.”
“We won’t be short of evidence,” Diamond told him. “We’ll need copies of everything you have. Has anyone from the houses come forward?”
“A few I spoke to,” Dessie said. “None of them saw the crash. Several heard it.”
“We’d better do some doorstepping.”
“Hold on,” Dessie said. “That’s my call.”
“Have you made it?”
“Not yet. I’ve been far too busy with other stuff.”
“And you don’t have much help by the look of it. But you’re in luck, because we’ll knock on doors and share information with you.”
The young man blinked.
“Better get on, then,” Diamond said. “Can’t keep you from your duties any longer.”
He waited for Dessie to get out of earshot. “Something’s not right here,” he told his companions. “An experienced driver doesn’t lose control, even on a 999 job.”