A Traitor to Memory

Leach corrected the DC's misapprehension. “We're assuming a single car, not three, did the damage, McKnight. We'll hold that position till we hear otherwise from Lambeth. One hit from the vehicle put her flat out on the pavement. Then once over her, once in reverse, and back again.”


Leach indicated several pictures on the china board before he went on. They depicted the street as it had been in the aftermath of the hit-and-run. He gestured to one in particular showing a section of tarmac photographed between two orange traffic cones with a line of cars along the pavement in the background. “The point of impact appeared to be here,” he said. “And the body landed here, square in the centre of the road.” Another set of traffic cones, plus a large rectangle of the street taped off. “The rain took care of some of the blood that would have been where the body landed. But it wasn't raining hard enough to carry away all the blood from the site or the tissue and bone fragments either. However, the body's not where the tissue and bone are. Instead, it's over here next to this Vauxhall at the kerb. And notice how she's tucked a bit under it? We reckon that our driver, having knocked her down and having done his bit of back and forthing over her body, then got out of his car, dragged the woman to one side, and drove off.”

“She couldn't have been dragged beneath a set of wheels? Lorry, perhaps?” The question came from a DC who was noisily eating from a cup of instant noodles. “Why rule that out?”

“Nature of what few tyre marks we've got,” Leach informed him, reaching for his coffee, which he'd left on a nearby desk heaped with files and computer printouts. He was more loosely strung than Lynley had expected upon their first introduction not forty minutes earlier in his office. Lynley took this as a good sign of what it was going to be like working with the DCI.

“But why not three cars, sir?” one of the other DCs asked. “The first knocks her down, drives off in a panic. She's wearing black so the next two don't even see her lying in the road and run over her before they know what's happened.”

Leach took a gulp of coffee and shook his head. “You won't find anyone giving you good odds on our having three conscienceless citizens all in the same neighbourhood on the same night running over the same body and not one of them reporting it. And nothing in your scenario explains how the hell she ended up partway under that Vauxhall. Only one explanation does that, Potashnik, and it's why we're the ones looking at the situation.”

There was a murmur of agreement at this.

“I'd put good money on the bloke who reported it being the driver we're looking for,” someone from the back of the room called out.

“Pitchley pulled in a brief and put in the plug straightaway,” Leach acknowledged, “and that bears the stench of manure, you're right. But I don't think we've heard the last from him, and that car of his is going to be what unseals his lips, make no mistake.”

“Pinch a bloke's Boxter and he'll sing ‘God Save the Queen’ on demand,” a DC at the front pointed out.

“That's what I'm relying on,” Leach agreed. “I'm not saying he's the driver who did her in in the first place, and I'm not saying he's not. But no matter which way the wind's blowing, he won't be getting that Porsche off us till we know why the dead woman was carrying his address. If it takes holding the Porsche to shake the information from him, then holding the Porsche and going over it six times with granny's hoover is exactly what's going to happen. Now …”

Leach went on to make the action assignments, most of which put his team into the street where the hit-and-run had occurred. It was lined with houses—some conversions and some individual homes—and the DCs were to get a statement from everyone in the area about what had been seen, heard, smelled, or dreamed about on the previous night. His directions allocated other DCs to dog the forensic lab: some of them monitoring the progress made on the examination of Eugenie Davies' car, others given the responsibility for pulling together all the information regarding trace evidence on the woman's body, still others matching the trace evidence from the body to the Boxter that the police had impounded. This same group would be evaluating any and all tyre prints left in the West Hampstead street and on Eugenie Davies' body and her clothes. A final group of constables—the largest—were assigned to search for a car with damage to its front end. “Body shops, car parks, car hire firms, streets, mews, and lay-bys on the motorway,” Leach informed them. “You don't run down a woman in the street and drive away with no damage.”

“That does put the Boxter out of the running,” a female DC noted.