The Investigation (9 page)

Gregory was jammed into the back seat with Sorensen and Thomas.

“Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.

“There’s some coffee in a thermos next to the doctor,” said Calls from behind the wheel. He was speeding through the deserted streets at nearly seventy miles per hour, his siren howling. Gregory found the thermos, drained a full cup in one gulp, and passed it on to the others. The siren wailed in the night. This was the kind of ride Gregory loved. The headlights swept around the turns. It was gray everywhere, except for the white snow in the street.

“What happened out there?” Gregory asked. No one answered.

“The report came in from the local station,” said Calls after a moment.

“It seems that the guy on duty at the cemetery was pulled out from under a car by one of our motorcycle patrols. He had a broken head or something like that.”

“I see. What about the bodies?”

“The bodies?” Calls repeated slowly. “I guess they stayed there.”

“What do you mean ‘stayed there’?” Gregory asked, a little taken aback.

From the other side of the back seat, Thomas, the technical man, added a comment. “It looks like they scared the guy and he ran away.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gregory snarled. The Olds gave a loud roar as if it needed a new muffler. They were leaving the crowded buildings behind and approaching the suburbs. Near a big park they ran into a patch of fog. Calls slowed down, then stepped on the gas again when the fog cleared up. By the time they reached the outskirts of the city the traffic was beginning to get heavier: huge trailer trucks, brightly lit double-decker buses already crowded with commuters. Calls kept the siren blaring to clear the way.

“You didn’t get any sleep tonight, did you?” Gregory said to the doctor. Sorensen had dark circles under his eyes. He was slumped forward like a cripple.

“I went to bed around two o’clock. It’s always like this. And you can bet there won’t be anything for me to do when we get there.”

“We’d all rather be asleep,” said Gregory philosophically.

They raced through Fulham, slowed down just before the bridge, and crossed the Thames in a light fog. Below them the river was the color of lead. Some kind of small boat was passing by and they could hear the sound of a foghorn in the distance. A moment later a clump of trees on the bridge abutment was flashing by. Calls drove with great care. In fact, in Gregory’s opinion he was the Yard’s best driver.

“Does the Chief know yet?” Gregory didn’t direct the question to anyone in particular.

The answer came from Thomas, a short, vigorous man like the sergeant, but with a little mustache that made him look like a suburban hairdresser. “Yes, Allis was in touch with him. In fact, he gave all the orders.”

Gregory leaned forward. He was more comfortable that way, and he enjoyed watching the road through the space between the shoulders of the two men in the front seat. Passing trucks had tamped the wet snow on the pavement into a smooth crust, and he loved the way Calls took the curves, braking at the last minute as he raced into the turn, then, halfway around, stepping down on the gas and barreling ahead at full speed. Of course Calls never took a turn on two wheels—that would have been bad form for a police driver, except, perhaps, in unusual circumstances—but in any case, in snow like this you could end up in a ditch that way.

They were past Wimbledon already; the speedometer, oscillating gently, reached ninety, inched on toward one hundred, moved slightly backward, and, with a jiggle, again advanced, the needle making small jumps between the graduated points on the face of the gauge. Suddenly there was a big Buick in front of them. Calls honked his horn, but the other driver didn’t seem to hear. As they drew closer they could see a teddy bear dangling in the back window of the bright red sedan, and Gregory was reminded of the dream he’d had two days before. He smiled, experiencing a pleasant sense of strength and confidence.

Meanwhile, Calls caught up with the other car. When he was no more than fifteen feet behind it, he hit the switch and the siren emitted an earsplitting scream. The Buick braked violently, its rear wheels struggling for traction and splattering snow on their windshield; as it began to pull over the Buick skidded slightly in the deeper snow on the side of the road and its rear swung around toward the hood of the police car: a crash seemed inevitable, but Calls, giving the steering wheel a sharp, fast turn which threw them all to the right, speeded past. The shocked expression on the face of the young woman in the Buick remained with them even after they’d left the scene far behind. By the time it occurred to Gregory to look out the back window, she had managed to get back on the road again.

The fog began to lift and they found themselves in the middle of a snow-whitened plain. Here and there, almost vertical columns of smoke rose from the houses; the sky was so flat and still, so nondescript in color, that it was difficult to tell whether or not it was cloudy. Speeding through an interchange, their tires thumping nervously, they shot onto the expressway. Calls seemed to be drunk with power: crouching over the wheel, he pressed down even harder on the foot pedal; its engine roaring, the black sedan leaped forward at a hundred and ten miles per hour.

A town came into view in the distance, and Calls pulled over next to a road sign. Running off to the left of the expressway was a narrow road lined by a double row of old trees. About two hundred yards straight ahead, the expressway turned in the other direction. As soon as they stopped Gregory stood up—at least to the extent that standing was possible inside the car—and leaned forward to get a look at the map which the sergeant was spreading out on the wheel. They had to turn off to the left.

“Are we in Pickering yet?” asked Gregory. Calls was fiddling with the gearshift lever as if it were a toy.

“Another five miles.”

They followed the side road up a gently sloping hill, passing two or three long, barracks-style wooden buildings. As they reached the top of the incline the sun came out; the air, washed by the fog, was clean and sparkling, and it began to feel warmer. The whole town was spread out below them, the smoke from its chimneys turning pink in the bright sunlight, A narrow stream cut through the snow, leaving a twisting dark trail.

They drove on, crossing a small concrete bridge. On the other side, the figure of a helmeted constable, his overcoat reaching almost to his ankles, loomed before them, a red stop-disk in his hand. Calls stopped the car and rolled down his window.

“From here on you have to walk,” he informed his passengers, after exchanging a few words with the constable, then threw the car into gear and pulled over to the side of the road. They all got out. Everything seemed different now: white, quiet, peaceful; the first sign of the morning sun over the distant forest; the air crisp yet springlike. Globs of snow dropped onto the pavement from the overhanging branches of the chestnut trees along the road.

“Over there,” the constable said, pointing to where the road, curving gently, swung around the next hill. They stepped off the road onto a narrow footpath lined by white bushes, at the end of which they could see a brick roof. About three hundred paces straight ahead, a wrecked car was barely visible in the dark shadow cast by the trees. With Gregory in the lead, they followed the roadside path as directed by the constable, the wet snow squishing unpleasantly under their feet and sticking to their shoes, and soon reached a section of road blocked off by ropes; behind the barrier some tire tracks stretched from the road to the shoulder, then swung across to the scene of the accident.

There, half on the road, half off, stood a long, gray Bentley, its front end rammed into a tree trunk, its headlights smashed to bits, its front windshield cracked. The doors were hanging open and, as much as Gregory could see, the inside of the car was empty. One of the local policemen walked over. Gregory continued studying the position of the Bentley and, without turning around, asked:

“Well, what happened?”

“The ambulance left already, Inspector. They took Williams,” the constable answered.

“Williams—was he the one on duty at the mortuary?” Gregory turned to the constable.

“That’s right, Inspector.”

“I’m a lieutenant. Where is this mortuary?”

“Over there, sir.”

Gregory glanced in the direction indicated. The cemetery was unwalled; its long, regular lines of graves were covered with snow. He hadn’t noticed it before because it was located off to the east, and to see it he would have had to look right into the rising sun, which was still fairly low on the horizon. Nearby, hidden by a few bushes, a footpath branched off from the road and led up to a building surrounded by a thicket.

“Is that the mortuary? The building with the tar-paper roof?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I was on duty there until three this morning, then Williams relieved me. The way it was, our commanding officer got us all together, because—”

“Slow down and tell me the whole story. Williams had the duty after you. What happened next?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Well, who does?”

Gregory was experienced with this kind of conversation, so he remained patient.

Meanwhile, after getting the lay of the land, the men from the Yard settled down to their work. The photographer and the lab technician dumped their gear in the snow near where the highway patrolman’s motorcycle was leaning against the mile post. Sorensen tried to light a cigarette but his matches kept going out in the wind. The constable, a blonde, friendly-looking fellow with big eyes, cleared his throat.

“No one, Lieutenant. It was like this. Williams had the duty from three o’clock. Parrings was supposed to relieve him around six, but around half past five a driver called the station house to report that he’d just hit a constable who ran in front of his car, and that he smashed into a tree while trying to swerve out of the way. So then—”

“No,” said Gregory, “not yet. Now, tell me slowly, very slowly. First, exactly what was the man on duty at the mortuary supposed to do?”

“Well … we were supposed to walk around the place and check the door and windows.”

“All around the building?”

“Not exactly, sir, because there are bushes right up to the wall in the back, so we made a wide circle up to the graves and back.”

“How long did it take to make one circuit?”

“It depends. Tonight it took about ten minutes, because it was hard to get around in the snow and there was all that fog, and of course we had to check the door every time…”

“Good. Now tell me, what about the driver who phoned the station?”

“Sir?”

“Where is he now?”

“The driver? At the station, sir. He had a slight cut on his head and Dr. Adams wanted to look him over.”

“I see. Dr. Adams is the local doctor?”

“That’s right, sir.”

Still standing at the side of the road, Gregory suddenly snapped at the constable in an unexpectedly severe voice.

“What idiot was walking around in here and crushed all this snow? Was there anyone here you didn’t tell me about?”

Surprised but unperturbed, the constable winced.

“No one, sir. The C.O. told us to rope off the whole area to make sure.”

“What do you mean, no one? What about the ambulance crew? How did they get to Williams?”

“Oh, Williams was a little ways from here—we found him under that tree over there.” The constable pointed across the road at a depression in the snow perhaps ten or twelve paces behind the Bentley.

Without another word, Gregory stepped over the rope and, keeping as much to the side as possible, walked across the closed-off area. Like their car, he noticed, the Bentley had come from the direction of London. Stepping carefully, he walked back and forth a few times following the tracks. The impression of the tires was clear and even up to a certain point; from there on the snow was scattered in small lumps and bare pavement was visible. Apparently the driver had braked violently and his wheels, skidding sideways, had acted something like a snowplow. Farther on, still visible in the snow, were some long curving tracks leading right up to the rear tires of the Bentley, showing that it had swung sideways and driven straight into the tree. The tracks of a few other cars were also still preserved in the wet, plastic snow, especially along the side of the road. Among these were some deep ruts apparently left by the thick tires of a heavy truck; the treads were arranged in a characteristic prewar style. Gregory walked back in the direction of London for a while, and without any difficulty ascertained that the Bentley was the last car to have driven along this section of road, since in a few places its tire tracks had obliterated the marks left by the other vehicles. Now he began to look for human footprints: he headed in the opposite direction, moving away from the men and cars; the footpath, he found, was covered with footprints: enough for there to have been a parade. It must have been the ambulance attendants carrying the injured constable, he realized, making a mental note to compliment the Pickering police commander for having kept them off the road. The only footprints on the road itself had been made by a pair of heavy boots. It was evident that they were the tracks of a running man; someone who was probably not too good at running, though, because he had taken very short steps, apparently in an amateurish effort to increase his speed.

“He ran from the direction of the cemetery out into the middle of the road,” Gregory oriented himself, “and then headed toward the town. A constable running like that? Who was chasing him?”

He looked around for signs of the pursuer but there wasn’t a thing: the snow was untouched. Walking farther on, Gregory came to the place where a narrow lane, surrounded by dense bushes, branched off from the road and went up to the cemetery. About twenty paces farther along the road beyond that point, he saw some tire tracks and footprints in the snow, untouched and preserved perfectly. A vehicle had driven up from the opposite direction, turned around, and stopped (the tire tracks at this point were more deeply grooved); two men had gotten out; a third had approached them from the side, and led them over to the Bentley. They had walked toward it along the shoulder and had come back the same way. The man they were carrying had probably given them a little trouble, because there were a few round marks in the snow to indicate where they had set the stretcher down before sliding it into the ambulance. The spot where he found all these prints was just past the beginning of the lane, so Gregory took a look at the lane next, returning to the road after a moment or two because he had seen what he wanted: the running man’s tracks showed clearly how he had charged down the lane from the direction of the mortuary, the recently whitewashed wall of which blocked the view for about a hundred yards.