Angel Touch (14 page)

‘You'll have to check in with the policeman,' the Staff Nurse yelled after us.

I held the staircase door open for Lisabeth and said: ‘You first.'

Lisabeth held back and then handed the bouquet to Fenella. ‘After you, Binky.' Then, aside to me, she said: ‘She's got a way with policemen,' as if confiding some dark secret.

We tramped up the stairs and enjoyed a mutual moan about why hospitals always put the sickest people in the most inaccessible places. On the fourth floor, we opened the fire doors and let Fenella go into the corridor first.

There were more double doors at the end, and in front of them on a tubular chair sat a uniformed constable reading the
Sunday Express.
Under the chair, between his legs, were his helmet and an empty cup and saucer. He folded the paper away as we approached, but he didn't stand up.

‘We'd like to see Salome, please,' said Fenella with a smile.

‘Mrs Asmoyah,' added Lisabeth politely, and she pointed to the flowers as if they explained everything.

‘Sorry, my love,' said the PC, in a soft Kentish drawl. ‘No visitors.'

‘Oh dear,' said Fenella, ‘and we've come such a long way.'

‘Out of my hands, my dear. Doctor's orders.'

Fenella pouted. She does it rather well.

‘You can have a look, though, but you can't go in. Okay?'

All three of us nodded in unison and we stood in line as he pushed open the double doors for us. I felt as if I was back at school, not that even my school had pupils like F and L.

Another set of swing doors greeted us. These had a big sign saying ‘NO UNAUTHORISED ENTRY' and various instructions about hospital waste disposal, from which I averted my sensitive gaze.

The doors also had two round glass windows in them, and our neighbourhood policeman stood aside to let us press our noses against them. Lisabeth and Fenella took the left one (‘Fenella, you're steaming up the glass!') and I took the right.

Salome was in a metal frame bed with about half a ton of bits and pieces surrounding it so it didn't escape. There was some sort of monitor with dials that I couldn't make head nor tail of, two drip stands with tubes – one lot going up her nose, the other into her arm – and her right leg was coated in plaster and suspended in mid air by a pulley contraption on which the Spanish Inquisition probably held the patent. I made a mental note to myself that if the doctor on her case set that beautiful leg anything other than back the way it should be, then he had better start looking for a good dentist.

Lisabeth and Fenella were coo-ing sympathetic noises and tut-tutting a lot and were riveted to the porthole window like two old men sharing a What the Butler Saw machine. I took the opportunity to have a word with the Kentish Constabulary's finest.

‘I hear the passenger with her is a goner,' I said knowledgeably.

‘Yeah.' He nodded. ‘But she don't know that yet, of course.'

Of course she doesn't; she's unconscious, you chucklehead. But I didn't say it. Still, at least he'd confirmed Salome was driving.

‘I can't believe she'd been drinking. It's not like her at all,' I said quietly.

‘Well, they've taken a blood sample, so I understand, on account of her not being able to give a breath specimen, but I've not heard one way or the other. You a relative?'

I think I flinched at that. Well, I mean, you just can't trust policemen, can you? One minute nice as pie and the next – asking questions.

‘Business colleague. She's quite something in the City, you know.' Then I felt I'd better add: ‘The Stock Exchange.'

I wondered if I should add ‘in London,' but I didn't want appear too pushy.

‘Where did it happen?' I asked casually.

‘‘Bout eight or nine miles from here off the A227. Place called Blackberry Hill. Bloody dangerous piece of road, between you and me,' he confided. ‘We get a lot of day trippers motoring around the Downs, and they see the signs for Brands Hatch and they automatically put their foot down thinking they're bleedin' Formula One drivers.'

I filed that away and asked if it was all right for the girls to stay until the doctors had done their rounds.

He said he supposed it was and offered to show them into the Intensive Care room, which had a hot drinks machine. By this time, Lisabeth was sniffing dramatically into a wad of Kleenex and Fenella had an arm round her (well, half around – her arms aren't
that
long) for comfort.

I gave Fenella a handful of loose change for cups of tea and told her I was just popping out to ‘see to Armstrong' and I'd be back in an hour. She knew me well enough not ask what I was up to in front of a policeman.

Back in Armstrong, I dug out a road atlas from under the driver's seat and turned to the page covering south-east London and north Kent. I found the A227, which fed into the M20 motorway near Wrotham, easily enough, but the scale of the map was too small to identify anything called Blackberry Hill. From what the copper had said, though, it was somewhere between the North Downs Way country park and Brands Hatch. It was worth a looksee anyway, and was bound to be somebody around to ask; a poacher or an itinerant hop-picker or whatever sort of person wandered the countryside these days.

I zipped back along the M20, letting Armstrong have his head as I thought it made a nice change for him not to plod through heavy traffic at ten miles an hour. At the A227 turn-off, I switched off the cassette-player so I could concentrate on the terrain.

The road wound gradually upwards towards the Downs – only the English could call uplands downs – until I was clear of the motorways that cut through Kent like the prongs of a carving fork stabbing at France. The scenery was lush and the home values just as high as in London. I even passed a couple of oast houses where hops used to be dried after being picked by families of East Enders for a pittance and a daily beer ration. Nowadays, the graphic designers who'd converted the oast houses into very bijou residences all commuted to their dockland offices in the East End. It's a funny world.

At a petrol station near Vigo, I got directions to Blackberry Hill, proving yet again that taxi-drivers are the only people who can get service at a garage without buying anything.

A few miles further on, I took a left on to a B road that curved up even higher. It didn't say Blackberry Hill anywhere, there was just an old-fashioned road sign saying Broughton Street was four miles away. The hill was a switchback, and at the top of the first rise, I stopped and got out to have a look around.

There was no traffic at that time in the morning; it was too late for the milkman and too early for the lunch-time pubbers. So I climbed onto Armstrong's bonnet for a better view.

Blackberry Hill curled down then to my right and up again. From my vantage-point, I could see exactly where the accident had happened – about 60 yards from the summit – as the cops had left a portable barrier with yellow flashing lights on top to mark the spot.

I got back into Armstrong and wound him up again. I couldn't see anything from road level because of the hedgerow, but as I started up the second switch of the hill, I noticed an Escort estate car parked on the left, opposite the police barrier. I parked behind it and prepared some sarky backchat in case the owners turned out to be sightseers. Then I saw that it had a light on the top and the crest of Kent Fire Brigade on the driver's door.

I couldn't see anyone around, so I sauntered over to the barrier.

About a hundred and fifty feet down the side of the hill was Sal's VW Golf, lying on its roof waving its wheels at the sky. The body shell had been crushed in, and anybody in there could only have come out through the windscreen.

I climbed the barrier and scuttered down towards the wreck, dislodging bits of chalk underfoot. As I drew nearer, a man stepped out from behind the Golf. He was wearing a peaked cap and pullover with epaulettes and elbow pads and carrying a clipboard.

‘There's very little worth nicking, son,' he said straight off. Some people are dead suspicious.

‘I'm here on behalf of the owner,' I said, nodding at the Golf.

‘And who would that be?' he asked, narrowing his eyes.

‘Mrs Salome Asmoyah,' I said politely, and offered to spell it.

He looked down at his clipboard.

‘That's okay, then. We have to be careful, you know; there are so many rubber-neckers and bloody souvenir-hunters, you wouldn't believe. ‘Specially on Sundays. They make a fucking day out of it if they hear of a prang as nasty as this.'

I tut-tutted sympathetically.

‘What do you reckon happened?' I knew he couldn't resist being asked his professional opinion.

‘For my money, she just came over the top of the hill from the Broughton side too fast. It's straight up that side – ‘ he waved his clipboard at the hill – ‘but it twists this side. She didn't correct enough or she lost control or maybe she'd had a few bevvies. Who knows? Anyway, she hit the hedge, which is only about an inch thick, and found there was nothing this side. I think maybe she jammed the anchors on, because the car didn't sail out into space or anything.'

He made a motion with his clipboard like an aircraft taking off.

‘It hit the hedge sideways and just kept rolling. There are faint traces of tyre on the road, but no serious skidding. Could have been just carelessness or inexperience or the booze.'

‘That's not like her,' I said, putting on the concern.

‘But tearing about the countryside late at night with a man not her husband is par for the course, eh?' He saw my expression change. ‘I know, I know. That's none of my business. That's for the cops now, but they don't seem to be worried. The poor cow'll have to live with it.'

‘Brakes okay?' I pointed at the car.

‘Yeah, as far as I can tell.'

I walked around the wreck with him.

‘No fire?'

‘Nah.' He dismissed the idea. ‘It's only in American movies where they catch fire. The petrol tank split open as it rolled, and most of the gas spilled out over the hill.'

We'd come full circle round the Golf, our feet crunching bits of windscreen.

‘She was a lucky lady, your friend,' he said thoughtfully.

I agreed, and we stood in silence for a minute, gazing at the pile of crumpled metal.

‘If you'd brought a brush and shovel with you, you could have taken it home,' he said, slapping his clipboard against a thigh.

‘Yeah. I reckon even the insurance company will accept this one as a write-off. What'll happen to it?'

The Fire Officer shrugged his shoulders.

‘Probably stay here till it rots. It ain't on the road, and this isn't exactly prime farming land.'

‘Would there be any objection to me shifting it?' I asked on a hunch. ‘It would be easier to get this back to London than to get an insurance assessor out here,' I added on the spur of the moment.

‘Don't see why not. I've finished with it, but you'll have to check with the boys in blue. Here.' He reached into a back pocket and produced an official-looking business card, which said his name was Davis. ‘Clear it with Inspector Ball in Maidstone first, but it should be all right. The police photographers were down here first thing this morning.'

I thanked him. Then I asked what time it had happened.

‘Just before midnight – well, before then maybe. It was reported by a bloke down the hill coming back from the pub. He heard a crunch or two and saw the headlights where he knew there wasn't a road. Road Traffic were here within ten minutes, and the ambulance almost straight after. We brought a rescue team and an appliance –' I realised he meant a fire engine – ‘but we were able to get the girl through the windscreen. She was lucky not to be trapped; nine out of ten would be. Of course, there was no rush with the bloke.'

‘You were here?'

‘Yes.' He nodded. ‘I'm on three days' leave, but I wanted to get my report done. It's best. When there's a death.'

I bent down to try and look in the back of the Golf. ‘All the luggage has gone to the hospital,' said Davis.

I straightened up.

‘She'll probably ask for her clothes as soon as she comes round,' I said, just for the sake of something to say.

Davis and I climbed back up to the road together. ‘She wasn't showing much dress sense last night,' he said over his shoulder to me.

‘What?'

‘Your lady friend, the black girl.'

‘I don't follow.' I stopped but he didn't and I wheezed after him.

‘Dressed like a fucking commando she was, last night. You know, battle fatigues – camouflage gear. If it hadn't been for the long hair and the high heels, we'd have thought we had a squaddie on our hands. In fact, one of the Road Traffic boys thought she was a Libyan terrorist at first. God knows where she'd been last night.'