Beyond Reach

Table of Contents

 

 

 

Also by Graham Hurley from Orion:

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
REAPER
THE DEVIL’S BREATH
THUNDER IN THE BLOOD
SABBATHMAN
THE PERFECT SOLDIER
HEAVEN’S LIGHT
NOCTURNE
PERMISSIBLE LIMITS
AIRSHOW (non-fiction)

Detective Inspector Joe Faraday Investigations
TURNSTONE
THE TAKE
ANGELS PASSING
DEAD LIGHT
CUT TO BLACK
BLOOD AND HONEY
ONE UNDER
THE PRICE OF DARKNESS
NO LOVELIER DEATH

 
 
 

 
Beyond Reach

 

 
GRAHAM HURLEY

 
 
Orion

 
An Orion Books ebook

 

 
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Orion Books

 
This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books

 

 
© Graham Hurley 2010

 

 
The right of Graham Hurley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

 
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

 

 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

 

 
A CIP catalogue record for this book

 
is available from the British Library.

 

eISBN : 978 1 4091 0790 3

 

 
This ebook produced by Orion Books

 

 
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

 
Orion House 5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

 
London, WC2H 9EA

 

 
A Hachette UK Company

 

 
www.orionbooks.co.uk

To Nick Waugh with love

Love that is not madness is not love.

6 JUNE 1984. PORTSMOUTH

More than twenty years later they were still with her, shards of memory, broken by terror and by time.

She’d been partying that night, an end-of-year celebration. She’d had a lot to drink earlier in the evening, toasting her mates and the sunset with bottles of cheap red on the beach beside the pier. She remembered lying on her back, her eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the pebbles through the thinness of her T-shirt. A first in Social Studies was more than she’d really deserved. As ever, she’d been lucky.

After the beach came a disjointed series of parties, moving from address to address, following the trail of pissheads and celebrants. On a balcony overlooking the harbour mouth, she’d fended off a drunken lecturer from the Art College. Later, in a basement bedsit on the seafront, she’d buried herself in a corner with a guy she’d been fond of in the first year. The relationship had come to nothing but they were still friends and that was nice. Later still, with a girlfriend called Beth, she’d ended up at the Student Union dancing to Bon Jovi and Starship. Beth had pulled a 2:1 in French and German, and was already looking at a couple of job offers. ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now’ seemed a pretty good way of kissing goodbye to three mad years at the Poly.

Getting back to her own place was a mystery. By now, she was drunk enough to insist on walking home alone. It was less than a mile, for Christ’s sake. Her balance might be dodgy but her feet knew the way. She was a homing pigeon. She was a strong girl. She’d scored a First. She’d be just fine.

Key in the door. Don’t bother with the hall light. Try and follow the worn strip of carpet. Bounce softly from wall to wall. Finally make it to the last door on the right, the door before the steps down into the shared kitchen, the door to the room with the big window. The window opened onto the tiny square of garden. On hot nights she always lowered the sash, pulled back the curtain, let the air in. Habit, like innocence, dies hard.

TWENTY-FOUR YEARS LATER: SUNDAY, 18 MAY 2008. 09.26

The post-mortem started later than planned. Steph Callan was a uniformed sergeant on the Road Death Investigation Team. After the delights of last night, using a torch to help retrieve lumps of flesh scattered across the B2177, she now found herself looking at the tiled emptiness of the post-mortem room at Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital.

One of the technicians emerged from the cubbyhole they used as a kitchen. Instead of his usual scrubs he was wearing jeans and a blue Pompey top. Steph could smell toast. The post-mortem was clearly hours away.

‘Where’s Jenny?’ Jenny Cutler was the on-call pathologist.

‘Sick. We’re expecting a bloke called Dodman. He’s just rung. Shit traffic getting out of Bristol.’ The technician stifled a yawn. ‘You want coffee or tea?’

Steph had never heard of Dodman. She settled for coffee, producing her mobile, glad of the chance to make a call or two of her own. P/C Walters was still in bed.

‘Skipper?’ he grunted.

‘Hit-and-run in Portsmouth, Sean. Southwick Hill Road. Happened last night. Bloke called Munday. No witnesses at this stage. That’s all we know.’

‘And this bloke’s dead?’

‘Very.’

The first officer on the scene had described the injuries as ‘horrible’. Steph had arrived after the body had been taken away but six years on the Roads Policing Unit told her that traffic cops were no friends of overstatement. Another guy, the driver of the Crash Incident Tender, had been blunter. ‘Roadkill,’ he’d muttered.

Now, on the phone, Steph told Walters to organise a couple of P/Cs for door-to-door enquiries. A web of residential streets lay to the south of the B2177 and there was a chance that someone might have heard or seen something. Examination of the road surface had revealed nothing as helpful as tyre marks but vehicle debris had been recovered and bagged. Munday’s clothing would be submitted for forensic examination and the post-mortem, once it got under way, might also tease out the beginnings of some kind of narrative. Walters grunted and said he was on the case. Steph brought the conversation to an end.

From the kitchen came the roar of a football crowd. One of the technicians had installed a portable TV. Steph pocketed her mobile and stepped across. There was interference on the picture but she recognised the brimming terraces of the new Wembley Stadium. These were news pictures. Less than twenty-four hours ago, a single goal had won the FA Cup for Pompey.

The technician in the blue top turned to find Steph at the door. He’d been up at the final and hadn’t slept since.

‘Magic, eh? Who’d have thought?’

Steph was still gazing at the screen.

‘So where’s Dodman?’ she said.

 

The pathologist arrived an hour and a half later, a tall lanky figure in his mid-thirties. Steph talked him through last night’s sequence of events.

‘The body was called in by a passing motorist,’ she said. ‘His wife’s still in shock.’

Dodman was tucking the bottom of his scrubs into the tops of his wellies.

‘You’ve seen the body?’

‘Not yet.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Better get on, then.’

The technicians retrieved the corpse from one of the big fridges. Munday’s body was still bagged from the scene of the accident. Steph followed the trolley into the chill of the post-mortem room.

The body was transferred onto the slab and one of the technicians scissored through the attached ID tag before unzipping the bag. Two years on the Road Death team had armoured Steph against moments like these but what lay inside amongst the puddle of bodily fluids belonged in an abattoir. The guy on the crash tender had been right. Roadkill.

The technicians tugged the bag free. Munday’s body was still clothed but the paramedics at the scene must have removed one leg of the soiled jeans. Steph could see the roughness of the cut, way up near the crotch, and the whiteness of the flesh below the knee, peeled neatly back from the bone beneath. The exposed calf muscles glistened under the lights, a plump shiny redness veined with purple that reminded Steph of prime beef. Tenderloin, maybe. Or rump.

The Scenes of Crime photographer was circling the body, taking shot after shot as Dodman dictated notes into the overhead microphone. Flaying injuries to the lower right leg. Oblique fracture of the tibia. Lacerations to the upper right thigh. Abrasions and bruises on both arms.

Steph was staring at what remained of Munday. One or more wheels must have run this man over. Not just his right leg, stripping the flesh from the bone, but his chest and his head as well. His face was no more than a smear - a suggestion of a nose, a glimpse of yellowing teeth where his mouth should have been - and the head itself had been flattened.

Dodman’s murmured commentary faltered, then picked up again. Crushed cranial vault. Visible extrusions of brain tissue through multiple scalp lacerations. Steph tried to keep up, tried to focus on the fat grey threads of jelly that laced what remained of this man’s head. Memories, she told herself. Intelligence. The very stuff of what we are, of what we do. Billions of nerve cells that should have warned him to take care when crossing the road. She closed her eyes and took a tiny step backwards, secretly glad that something like this could still shock her.

 

Three hours later, the post-mortem complete, she looked up from her notes. The technician had discovered that the photographer was also a Pompey fan. Better still, he lived in Portsmouth and was happy to offer a lift back to the city. The technician, who’d been planning on taking the train, peeled off his bloodied gloves and washed his hands. A mate had told him the team would be parading the Cup for the benefit of the fans. Open-top bus. Civic reception. Then a monster crowd on Southsea Common. Harry Redknapp, he said, was a fucking genius.

Steph got to her feet. The Investigator from Scenes of Crime was deep in conversation with the pathologist. Dodman was confirming the exact configuration of the wedge-shaped fracture in the tibia. The base of the wedge was at the front of the bone, which meant that Munday had been facing the vehicle when it knocked him over. A near-identical fracture in the other leg - same configuration, same height - offered another clue. In all probability, he’d simply stood there, not moving.

‘Do we think he was pissed?’ Steph asked.