Page 8 of Watching You
DS Christie Salter arrived while they were still photographing the body in situ and trying to get accurate measurements of how far away each grocery item had flown in which direction to calculate the speed and point of impact. Carlisle didn’t need much information to know a few things already.
‘Dr Carlisle,’ Salter said. She was stifling a yawn and her eyes were red. ‘Can you give me the headlines while you work?’
Nate Carlisle liked Salter. She was one of those naturally calm police officers who cut to the chase with a gentle, controlled knife.
‘I can tell you that you don’t want to look at the body at this stage unless you’re really feeling up to it,’ Carlisle said.
Salter pulled her shoulders back. ‘Because I’m a woman.’
Carlisle didn’t even blink. ‘Because you’re a human being, and I wouldn’t wish these memories on anyone.’
‘Oh. I appreciate that, actually. It’s harder doing this now that I have a little one at home. Everything’s more personal. You have kids?’
‘I don’t. I want them though. I can imagine it changes everything.’ He folded his arms. ‘You’re going to look anyway, even though the photos and a postmortem visit would do just as well, right?’
‘It’s the job,’ Salter said. ‘Tell me what you know.’ She put on a suit and shoe covers then followed Carlisle over to the covered body.
Carlisle pulled back the scene preservation sheet and Salter reeled backwards, putting a hand to her mouth to stopper the cry that wanted to escape.
‘What am I looking at?’ Salter asked.
‘The victim has been bent backwards. Her head has dropped down her back and her legs are doubled up from the hips in the wrong direction. Sort of an opposite foetal position.’
‘How?’ was all Salter managed.
‘She was hit fast. There are tyre marks that indicate the car mounted the pavement back there,’ Carlisle pointed backwards, ‘but no brake or skid marks.’
‘It was deliberate.’
‘It was murder. I rarely reach that conclusion myself, but at the speed the vehicle must have hit, the driver couldn’t possibly have believed anything except death would follow.
There are two sets of injuries, one from the collision and one when the body hit the ground.
I know that already because I can see impact marks to the backs of her legs but there’s also a skull injury to her upper forehead and into the hairline which couldn’t have happened at the same time. ’
‘She flew up so high she landed on her head?’
‘It’s not science at this point, but my preliminary estimate is that the car was going a minimum of forty miles per hour on impact. Most likely more than fifty.’
Salter let that sink in. ‘How the hell are we supposed to break that sort of news to her family?’
‘Very quietly,’ Carlisle said. ‘Come with me.’
They walked to a driveway across the road where marker flags were being pushed into the grass.
‘What is that?’ Salter screwed up her eyes.
‘It’s a bag of carrots,’ Carlisle said. ‘From one of the shopping bags the victim was carrying. And I can’t stress this enough – I’ve never seen objects fly that far in the context of a vehicle to pedestrian collision.’
‘It’s like an assassination,’ Salter said.
‘Hold on.’ She pulled gloves from her pocket and trod carefully in the direction of a patch of long grass bordering a hedge.
Crouching, she gently pulled out a compact mirror from the weeds and opened it to reveal the shattered glass inside.
She sighed and set it back down where she’d found it.
‘Poor thing got her seven years of bad luck all in one go.’