by Desmond Cory
Dobie climbed obediently into the driver’s seat, restarted the motor and engaged first gear, letting the car move cautiously forwards. ‘Best if I go slowly, I suppose.’
‘Yes. But don’t waste any time about it, either. It looks pretty touch-and-goish to me. Just don’t have any accidents is all.’
‘Is that what this … was? An accident?’
‘Hit and run, if so.’
‘How did you know? I mean, what made you think …?’
‘It happens that way sometimes.’ Coming from the back of the car, Kate’s voice had a curious disembodied quality, as though she, also, had been pre-recorded on rather poor quality tape. ‘Car swerves a bit too late, impact comes at an angle, shoe comes off and goes one way, body goes the other. Had a case rather like it up Roath way while you were in Cyprus, only that was an old geezer who’d had one too many at the local and this is just a …’
‘Kid.’
‘Yes. And unless we get her into intensive care pretty quick, the chances are she won’t get to be much older.’
‘Did the cops find the guy who did it? The other one? Who was on the case?’
‘Jacko. No. They often don’t. Hit and run capers are murder.’
‘Yes,’ Dobie said. ‘I suppose they are. Or manslaughter, anyway.’
‘Metaphorically, I meant. From Jacko’s point of view. Unless there’s a witness and a licence number, or part of one … it’s pretty hopeless.’
No cars, no lights, no movement. Nothing. Only the wind and the rain and a glimpse in the reflected headlights of open moorland. Dobie had pushed the speed up to thirty-five, which was as fast a pace as he cared to risk; he was a professor of mathematics, not Nigel Whatsit, and his eyesight wasn’t … Something over there on the left, another stone wall, maybe? But there didn’t seem to be anything behind it, no buildings or anything like that. There did seem to be a small gap in the lowering clouds over there to the east, but the sky elsewhere was dark as pitch. The road was slippery but not too bumpy. No apparent end to it, though. It went on for ever, like a road in someone’s nightmare. That was the trouble.
‘Reminded you of something, did it, Dobie?’
‘Well, yes. She … Sorry about that.’
‘That’s OK.’ Kate’s hand came over the back of the seat to rest lightly on Dobie’s right shoulder. ‘Look, with any luck we can save this one. We may be just in time. While if you hadn’t seen that shoe on the road … It’ll be a plus score for you, is what I’m getting at.’
‘Bloody hell, I’d have driven on. I wouldn’t have thought …’ Dobie over-braked in sudden agitation, the car tyres skidding slightly on the wet tarmac. ‘Hey. Here we go. A house. A light. This may do us.’
And a large sign saying, TONGWYNLAIS REHABILITATION CENTRE. They had arrived, at last. Dobie turned the car into the driveway with its bonnet nudging the heavy iron gates that barred the entrance, put his finger on the horn button and kept it there. It wasn’t, as he now saw, a house but some kind of a porter’s lodge. After some twenty seconds of ear-splitting blare the door was flung open and a thin young man in some kind of uniform emerged. If, that is, a peaked cap and a high-collared grey jacket constituted a uniform, as it might well, Dobie thought, nowadays. ‘OK, OK, OK. Where’s the fire?’
‘No fire,’ Dobie said. ‘An accident. Girl’s been hit by a car. We need some help.’ Dobie, though innately prone to maunder, could be surprisingly cogent on occasions.
‘Well, we got doctors here all right. But this ain’t a hospital.’
‘I’m a doctor.’ Kate was out of the car already. ‘What I need is a telephone.’
‘Ah. Well, that we can manage. Come on in then, Doctor.’
In the absence of further precise instructions, Dobie decided he’d do best to stay in the car; Kate would of course know what numbers to ring and so forth. His arms felt curiously stiff and he took his hands off the steering-wheel to rest them on his knees, listening to the rather asthmatic turning-over of the motor and staring at the metal plaque affixed to the iron gates directly in front of him. It said, like the other and larger notice,
TONGWYNLAIS REHABILITATION CENTRE
Director: Morris J. Train
Dobie, as he quite well recalled, had an appointment with this guy Train. An appointment he was going to be late for. He recalled this, however, without any perception of its relevance to his present situation, which was that of a man sitting in the driving seat of a stationary car in front of a closed iron gate – a man, moreover, whose hands for some reason wouldn’t stop trembling. He wasn’t, after all, the only occupant of the car.
Yes, Dobie had been reminded of something all right. That open mouth, those blindly staring eyes. And those loose tendrils of wet hair … Dobie’s wife had looked very like that the last time he had ever seen her, and it’s not only roads that people sometimes see in nightmares. Of course this kid was far younger than Jenny, there wasn’t really any facial or physical resemblance, it was clever of Kate to have seen that he’d nevertheless been … But then for all her intense practicality, Kate had her feminine intuitions, which seemed, at least where Dobie was concerned, to verge at times on the telepathic. She might even have sensed that while carrying the girl to the car Dobie had become vaguely aware of certain things that in the circumstances a true British gentleman shouldn’t, perhaps, have become aware of, the zip of her blue waterproof windcheater having slipped some five or six inches too far open … She might be wearing something underneath but it hadn’t seemed to be very much. Hadn’t felt like very much. That had to be why the kid was so damned cold, the smooth skin like ice against the palms of his hands. How long had she been there? Strange no one had spotted her before …
Dobie wriggled himself round in the seat to stare nervously at the slim figure slumped across the back seat. Touch-and-goish, Kate had said. He wished she’d hurry up. In the dimness of the car interior he couldn’t be sure if the girl was breathing or not, but he could see her face fairly clearly in the light leaking through from the porch lamp and it seemed to be calm and relaxed; placid, almost … Much younger than Jenny. Good Heavens, a schoolgirl, probably. Sixteen? Seventeen? No more, surely …? Dobie turned back in the seat and looked instead towards the half-open door of the porter’s lodge. Hurry up, Kate …
She came out, walking quickly, and got into the car, this time beside him. As she did so the iron gates, obviously under electronic control, began to swing open. ‘Couple of hundred yards up the drive there’s a bungalow on the left. Should be a Duty Medical Officer there, someone like that. Porter’s ringing him now. Come on, Dobie, what are we waiting for?’
Dobie grunted and edged the car forwards again. Here at least there were lampposts casting an orange glow, a reasonably well-lit driveway; the bungalow in question came into view as soon as they had passed through the gates. ‘Did you get an ambulance?’
‘Yes, but it may be twenty minutes before it gets here. The cops may get here quicker.’
‘The cops?’
‘I rang the CID Room direct. Foxy Boxy. He says they’ll be right over.’
‘But there hasn’t been a crime, has there?’
Kate sighed. ‘Be your age, Dobie. An unreported accident’s a crime, of course it is. And in this case, a pretty serious one. That kid could be dead, you know, for all some bugger cares about it. There could be brain damage … Anything. Of course it’s a crime.’
‘All right,’ Dobie said. ‘I was only—’
‘Here on the left.’
‘Yes, yes, OK.’
He pulled up just clear of the unlatched front gate, which was swinging to and fro in the wind, and Kate was out of the car before he had switched the ignition off. ‘Bring her in then, Dobie.’ Tote that barge. Lift that bale. ‘Yessuh ma’am, Ah sho will, ma’am,’ Dobie said. Scarlett O’Hara was already half-way up the gravel pathway and couldn’t have heard him. Dobie, following her at a sedater pace and bearing his burden, saw the front door of the bungalow come open and a gi
rlish figure appear as within a frame, silhouetted in the seemingly sharp light of the entrance hall. ‘Daddy’s on the telephone. But do come in.’ Dobie did so and stood for a moment blinking on the doormat. ‘Where should I …?’
‘Oh golly, yes, in Daddy’s study, please. It’s this way.’
His hostess of the moment, who might have been some two or three years younger than the girl he was carrying and hence might be accounted to have conducted matters so far with considerable aplomb, conducted them down a narrow pink-carpeted passageway and opened a door at the far end with a mildly theatrical flourish. Beyond the door was a small book-lined room with a desk, a swivel chair, and, in the far corner, a single bed with a blue coverlet and a thick spring mattress. ‘Daddy said it’s OK to use the bed and he’ll be coming himself in just a minute, he’s calling the dispensary just in case.’ This, in a single breath and in a tone pitched slightly above the level of a whisper. In her clear, fresh teenager’s voice, the end result was surprisingly audible.
‘Fine,’ Kate said. ‘I’ll need blankets, towels, hot water. Can you manage that?’
‘Oh yes. No problem. You’re the doctor?’
‘I’m the doctor.’
‘Dr Coyle, I think you said.’ Someone bustling busily into the room from behind her. ‘Right. That’s the patient?’
‘That’s the victim.’
‘Yes. She should be all right on that bed if you’ll just … lower her … gently … That’s the way. Oh dear, yes. That does look rather nasty.’
The little room seemed to be suddenly full of people charging this way and that. Kate taking off her raincoat. The dark-haired child pulling open a squeaky chest of drawers, over in the corner. The new arrival, portly, balding, forty-fiveish, moving forwards to peer down at the victim’s upturned face. Dobie, deprived of his role as a means of transport, stood still and did nothing. The girl on the bed did nothing, too.
‘Severe cranial trauma, obviously.’
‘And probable haemorrhage. Compound fracture of the ulna, quite a few minor contusions …’
‘Pulse?’
‘Weak. Very weak. Dobie? Outside, if you don’t mind. We’re going to get these wet clothes off her.’ Kate, already removing the remaining shoe, stooping to chafe the small bare foot vigorously between her hands. ‘Hypothermia’s about to set in. If you could attend to that dressing while I—’
‘Kate?’
Dobie, too, was staring down at the upturned face on the pillow. Arched eyebrows, the thin line of the nose, the suddenly prominent cheekbones. The face was the same as it had been a few moments before, but in another way it wasn’t. Kate didn’t seem to have heard him, either because her attention was riveted elsewhere or because Dobie, unlike the other girl, hadn’t spoken very clearly or distinctly. He swallowed and tried again. ‘What’s happening your end, Kate?’
She didn’t look up. ‘Look, be a good chap, Dobie—’
‘… Because I think mine’s gone.’
‘What …?’ She raised her head then, quite abruptly, to look first at Dobie and then towards the face of the victim. For a few seconds her hands went on rubbing, rubbing, rubbing, but then her eyebrows lifted slightly and she straightened up and took her hands away and then stepped back. It was the portly chap who picked up the dead girl’s wrist and, almost at once, dropped it again. He nodded slowly but didn’t say anything.
Nobody said anything.
Dobie felt sad, on Kate’s behalf. Of course it was as she’d said – a victim, not a patient. But it was one that she’d lost, all the same. He felt a little contrite on his own account, also. ‘I’m sorry. I tried to be as careful as I could but—’
‘No, no, no,’ the portly fellow said. ‘Nothing to do with the way you handled her. Or I shouldn’t think so.’ Since it wasn’t this chap’s reassurance but Kate’s that Dobie required, he didn’t find this altogether satisfying. But Kate still wasn’t saying anything. The door opened and closed as the dark-haired girl left the room, probably in obedience to some unseen gesture by her father; not until then did Kate speak. To the portly chap, not to Dobie.
‘The police’ll be on their way here as well. So I’m afraid this is going to put you to some inconvenience.’
‘That’s all right. All right in the sense that it’s only to be expected.’ He was wearing at a somewhat corkscrew angle some kind of a regimental tie, the Buff Orpingtons or something like that, and this, looking at Kate, he now straightened. ‘Didn’t have time for the social niceties, did we? My name’s Mighell. Robert Mighell. Your name’s familiar to me but I don’t think we ever met. Rather believe you’re the police pathologist for the district, aren’t you?’
‘Paddy Oates is the full-time pathologist. But I help out.’
‘Saw your name in the papers, I seem to remember, in connection with that extraordinary Dobie business. Frightful feller who killed his wife. I don’t know if the police—’
‘Yes, sorry, this by the way is Professor Dobie.’
‘Oh. Pleased to meet you.’ Mighell extended a hand towards Dobie without, as the saying has it, turning a hair. No doubt these minor social solecisms pass unregarded, Dobie thought, amongst people who work in a loony-bin, which was what, after all, this place was. Well, more or less. Having thus saluted Dobie, Mighell immediately returned his attention to Kate, which however unflattering was perfectly understandable. ‘Well, I don’t know if in the circumstances you’ll want to carry out any further examination of the, ah … victim …’
‘Paddy’ll be doing the PM in due course. Probably tomorrow. But meantime,’ Kate said, ‘there are one or two points I’m curious about and which the police might like to know when they get here. They’re going to be looking for a hit-and-run merchant, as seems to be reasonably certain, and I’m told that in these cases their chances of collaring the culprit disappear almost hour by hour. Of course, they’d find a second professional opinion very welcome, that’s if you can spare a few more minutes of your time …’
‘Certainly. Pleased. Delighted. Though you’ll realize that I haven’t too much experience in this field.’ Kate, however, was now restored to her customary business-as-usual attitude and seemed prepared to ignore this disclaimer; at any rate, she was now purposefully re-approaching the bed and the quietly recumbent corpse. ‘You still here, Dobie?’
‘Well, yes, I am. Just going, though. Sorry.’
He realized that Kate’s brusqueness arose in part from some kind of concern as to his reactions; Dobie wasn’t at ease with corpses these days, especially young ladies’ corpses. (Not, of course, that many people are.) But he wasn’t about to throw a wingding or anything like that. He made his way back down the passageway to where a half-open door and the sound of some male pop vocalist, not loud but very hoarse and raspy, seemed to indicate the position of the sitting-room. Dobie went in. The dark-haired girl was, he saw, sitting in an armchair by the unlit gas fire and staring straight in front of her. She was quite a tall girl for her age, or for what Dobie assumed to be her age, but something about the posture she’d adopted made her seem smaller than she really was … if that made sense.
‘May I come in?’
She looked up, not abruptly as had Kate but slowly and cautiously, as though adjusting her thoughts to some new and unexpected aspect of reality. ‘Oh yes. Rather. I mean, please do. Come in and sit down.’ And as Dobie was doing this, ‘You see, I thought you were the doctor.’
‘Oh no,’ Dobie said. ‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘I suppose Bev – Beverley – I suppose she’s …?’
‘Yes,’ Dobie said. ‘Yes, she’s dead.’
Death could perhaps be called that, he thought. A new and unexpected aspect of … Especially when you’re fourteen years old, or thereabouts. But also when you’re older. Much older. It shouldn’t ever be unexpected, but it is, almost always, and whatever age you happen to be, it’s not the sort of thing you tell pointless lies about. Because that’s what it is. A part of reality. An aspect of i
t. Though not one that you can usefully say very much about to a teenaged girl, or to anyone else. Aware that his own reflections were becoming slightly unhinged, Dobie grabbed hurriedly for the only immediate conversational prop with which he’d conveniently been provided. ‘You know her, then?’
‘She goes to my school.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, only she’s a boarder and I’m a day-bug. And of course she’s a Senior and I’m only Middle School.’
‘I see.’ Dobie nodded sagely. He guessed that this youthful creature found the use of the present tense in these circumstances to be comforting, if only because familiar; he felt rather the same way about it himself. ‘And you’re …’
‘Five B.’
‘No, I meant your … name …’
‘Oh. Sorry. Elspeth Mighell. How do you do.’
‘How do you do. Yes. My name’s Dobie.’
‘But her name is Cole.’
‘Coyle.’
‘So you’re not married.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, well, that’s all right,’ Elspeth Mighell said.
Dobie was relieved to hear this. The touch of formality that had entered the conversation, however, seemed to have reminded Elspeth of her duties as a hostess, such as she conceived of them. ‘Can I offer you something, Dobie?’
‘Eh?’
‘Tea? Coffee? Lemonade? Or maybe a Coke?’
Dobie considered these tempting alternatives for a moment. ‘You haven’t anything a wee bit stronger? To keep the chill out?’
‘Well … We have to keep all that stuff locked up, you see, and Daddy’s got the key. I could ask him for it if you like—’
‘No, no, he’s busy now, don’t bother. Is it fizzy lemonade?’