A Traitor to Memory

He was about to drive past, when a flash of white within the mass of soaked material caught his eye. He glanced over. A rain-drenched sock, a tattered scarf, a limp collection of women's knickers? What?

But then he saw. His foot plunged wildly on the brake.

The white, he realised, belonged to a hand, a wrist, and a short length of arm which itself protruded from the black of a coat. Part of a mannequin, he thought resolutely to still the hammering of his heart. Someone's pea-brained idea of a joke. It's too short to be a person, anyway. And there're no legs or head. Just that arm.

But he lowered his window in spite of these reassuring conclusions. His face spattered with the rain, he peered at the shapeless form on the ground. And then he saw the rest.

There were legs. There was a head as well. It merely hadn't seemed so upon an initial glance through the rain-streaked window because the head was bowed deeply into the coat as if in prayer and the legs were tucked completely under the Calibra.

Heart attack, he thought in spite of what his eyes told him otherwise. Aneurysm. Stroke.

Only what were the legs doing under that car? Under it, when the only possible explanation for that was …

He snatched up his mobile and punched in triple nine.



DCI Eric Leach's body was screaming flu. He ached everywhere it was possible to ache. He was sweaty on the head, the face, and the chest; he had the chills. He should have phoned in ill when he first started feeling like crap in a basket. He should have gone to bed. There, he would have gleaned a double benefit. He would have caught up on the sleep he'd been missing since trying to reorganise his life post-divorce; he would have had an excuse when the phone call came through at midnight. Instead, here he was dragging his sorry shivering bum from an inadequately furnished flat into the cold, the wind, and the rain, where he was no doubt risking double pneumonia.

Live and learn, DCI Leach thought wearily. Next time he got married, he'd damn well stay married.

He saw the blue flashing lights of police vehicles as he made his final left turn. The hour was drawing on towards twenty past twelve, but the rising road in front of him was as bright as midday. Someone had hooked up floodlights, and these were complemented by the lightning-bolt hiccups of the forensic photographer.

The activity outside their houses had gathered a hefty collection of gawkers, but they were being held back by the crime scene tape that had been strung along the length of the street on both sides. Additional tape as well as barriers blocked the road at either end. Behind these, press photographers had already gathered, those vampires of the radio waves who continuously tuned in to the Met's frequency in the hope of learning that fresh blood was available somewhere.

DCI Leach thumbed a Strepsil out of its packet. He left his car behind an ambulance whose waterproof-shrouded attendants were lounging against its front bumper, drinking coffee from Thermos lids in an unhurried fashion that indicated which one of their services was going to be required. Leach nodded at them as he hunched his shoulders against the rain. He showed his warrant card to the gangling young PC who was in charge of keeping the press at bay, and he stepped past the barrier and approached the collection of professionals who were gathered round a saloon car halfway up the street.

He heard snatches of neighbourhood conversation as he wearily trudged up the slight incline. Most of it was murmured in the reverential tones employed by those who understood how impartial the reaper was when he sauntered by to do his grim business. But there was also the occasional ill-considered complaint about the confusion that ensued when a sudden death in the open demanded police examination. And when one of those complaints was spoken in just the sort of pinched-nose I-smell-something-decidedly-unpleasant-and-it's-you tone that Leach detested, he turned on his heel. He stalked in the direction of the protest, which was concluding with the phrase “… one's sleep being disturbed for no apparent reason other than to satisfy the baser inclinations of the tabloid photographers” and found its source, a helmet-haired ghoul with her entire life savings invested in a plastic surgery job that needed redoing. She was saying, “If one's council taxes cannot protect one from this sort of thing—” when Leach cut her off by speaking to the nearest constable guarding the scene.