Page 11 of Watching You

Nate Carlisle studied Connie’s reaction as he drew back the cover from Divya Singh’s body.

‘You don’t have to worry about me, Dr Carlisle. Can I call you Nate? I’ve seen my fair share of corpses.’

‘Please do. And I don’t doubt it – your reputation precedes you – but the bodies here are my responsibility. Until I can be sure a visitor’s not going to faint or vomit on a body, I’m careful.’

‘Oh boy, you’ve had people vomit on a corpse?’ Connie pulled a face fit for a playground. ‘I would not want to clean that up. This carnage has to come a close second, though, right? Her body looks like it’s been concertinaed.’ She took hold of Mrs Singh’s hand and stroked it with her thumb.

Her arms and legs were crooked in places no limb should ever be.

The skin, in addition to the normal mottling that came with the after-effects of a lack of blood flow, was a battle-zone of bruising, cuts, caving and pressure.

The flattened top of her skull had caused her face to compress.

The result was the distortion of a fairground mirror, her features too wide and too close.

If Divya Singh’s life had begun as a blank piece of paper on which to write her story, now she was a crumpled ball of scrap, tossed carelessly away.

She was the essence of a broken woman, and whoever had killed her was a living, breathing, hate-consumed monster.

Connie cautioned herself to knock off the hyperbole before she compromised her investigative edge.

‘That was no way to end a life. Do you want to tell me what happened?’

‘Well, the vehicle struck her at—’

Connie gave a short, low laugh. ‘Sorry, I should have seen that coming. Not the vehicle, though I get the confusion. I was talking to my friend here.’ She patted Divya Singh’s hand.

Carlisle stared at her. ‘Er, okay, did you want some privacy?’

‘Depends how open-minded you are. I try to establish a close relationship with my clients, and I don’t have time to persuade you about my methods or expertise. So, you in or out? No pressure.’

Carlisle studied the woman who was holding the hand of a corpse as if she was visiting a beloved aunt in hospital and comforting her.

Connie was somewhere in her early thirties, hair pulled into a ponytail that looked to be more about efficiency than style.

She was around five foot six and carrying not an ounce of spare weight, and it looked to him as if that was probably to do with living a life where she didn’t stand still for a single moment.

There was no make-up on her face, and granted she’d had to go and wash the second she’d arrived at City Mortuary having attended the Jupiter Artland murder scene, but he didn’t think she was someone who bothered much with artifice.

Dr Connie Woolwine was as much a force of nature as gravity, but with added attitude.

‘I’ll stay,’ Carlisle said.

‘Good. Because Mrs Singh seems lonely.’

‘She was married with a son and grandchildren,’ Carlisle said, walking across to stand the other side of the body, the closer to watch Connie’s inspection.

‘She might have been part of a family and living a comfortable existence, but her nails are ragged and slightly bitten and the skin on her hands is rough. The damage to her skull is appalling but even so I can see she hasn’t had a haircut in forever.

The hyperpigmentation on her face would have been easy to treat with high street products.

There’s no self-care happening, yet I checked out her postcode in your file and she’s living in a middle-class area of the city.

It’s as if she didn’t matter to herself.

No one was buying her hand cream or treating her to a spa day.

There was no loving younger generation keeping an eye on the softer parts of her life.

She was just existing. That usually indicates an element of loneliness, don’t you think? ’

‘I met with her husband and her son. They were devastated. I had no reason to think Mrs Singh wasn’t loved.’

‘Ah, you see, that’s the thing. People loving you isn’t the same thing as actively being loved.

Ask any woman who looks after a house, kids, runs errands, holds down a part-time job, fights to make Christmas perfect, organises birthday parties, then everyone forgets when it’s Mother’s Day and she’s supposed to smile and not make a fuss.

Loving someone can be passive or active.

The gulf between the two is light years.

’ She smoothed Divya’s hair and tried to make it more shapely around her distorted skull.

‘I get it. Tell me how that helps,’ Carlisle said softly, curious rather than challenging her.

‘I don’t believe in random victim selection, Nate.

Human beings having free choice is something of a fallacy.

Every single thing we’ve seen and experienced in our life pre-determines the choices we make later on.

The brain is the ultimate blueprint for artificial intelligence.

Learning is layered and mostly subconscious.

I could ask if you want to meet me for a drink later.

Your options are yes, no or rain check. You might think you need a few minutes to consider, but your brain has already selected its preferred pathway whether you know it or not.

Mrs Singh’s killer chose her. Whether it was a daughter-in-law who didn’t like the way she was being treated or a group of empathy-free teenagers who wanted to know how it would feel to take a life, there was a selection process.

It’s the same thing with the Jupiter Artland victim.

So the better the connection I have to a victim, the closer I get to the people who hurt them. ’

Carlisle crossed his arms.

‘I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I do that.

And no, I’m not asking you on a date over the body of a woman who didn’t live the life I’d have wanted for her.

The more emotional the decision, the more we strive to find the answer.

It makes us explore our decision-making process more closely.

If I’d asked if you preferred brown, granary or rye bread your neural response would have been much less sharp. ’

‘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 a computer 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 to burn 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.