‘Bomb,’ the Chief said.
They had been called into his office and were all sitting round when he sprang his surprise.
‘At the airport,’ he said. ‘Last night. It was in an outbuilding,’ he explained. ‘It was home-made and did little damage.’
They waited for further enlightenment. The Chief obliged. ‘As you know, the city airport is shared with the military. It doesn’t receive much in the way of civil traffic but the Armée de l’Air, which uses the eastern side, is always nervous. That’s why the incident was reported to me quietly. I was asked that no fuss should be made. I pass it on to you in the same spirit. There is to be no fuss.’
‘We should have men out there,’ Goriot said.
‘They stipulated no fuss,’ the Chief insisted firmly. ‘I say the same. It did little but make a noise. It was the usual thing – sodium chlorate, the main ingredient, packed into a tin. But it wasn’t very well sealed. You could use the mixture in one half of a two-battery torch and use the other battery to set the thing off and the pressure could be tremendous if it were properly packed.’
‘The one in the Impasse Tarien was made of torches,’ Goriot said and they were all silent because if anyone knew of the effects of home-made bombs, surely Goriot did.
‘Exactly,’ the Chief agreed, his expression sympathetic. ‘But this was a tame effort – somebody who didn’t know a lot about it. And I agree with the Air Force. It could start copycat bombs. These days people know how to make them. The army from the Avenue du Drapeau are doing the investigation and they have their own bomb experts.’
‘We should be involved,’ Goriot insisted.
‘I think we should not,’ the Chief said mildly. ‘It was small and crudely made and the Air Force even have the feeling it might have been a lark or a bit of spite by a conscript. It was clearly not a serious attempt to damage aircraft or installations. They prefer to keep it quiet and handle it themselves, and not invite any more.’
‘Where was it?’ Pel asked.
‘In an outbuilding near the perimeter on the civil half of the field. It didn’t do any real damage.’
‘Terrorists would have chosen somewhere more important. Hangar. Aircraft park. Officers’ mess. Armoury. Something of that sort.’
‘That’s what the Armée de l’Air decided,’ the Chief agreed.
‘Could it be a protest of some sort?’ Darcy suggested.
‘It could.’
Goriot, who had been writing furiously in his notebook, looked up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, to indicate he was on the ball. ‘Has anybody investigated what Philippe Duche’s up to?’ he asked.
‘Philippe Duche,’ Pel said patiently, ‘is running a haulage company.’
‘He was going to use explosive on the Zamenhoff robbery.’
‘He was going to ram the door open with the scoop of a digger,’ Pel corrected. ‘And anyway, Philippe Duche would have used something more sophisticated than a home-made bomb. He’d have got some type from Marseilles.’
‘We should watch him.’
‘We’ll leave him alone,’ the Chief said firmly. ‘I’ve talked to the prison governor and the prison visitors about him. We’ll give him his chance. If he takes it, so much the better. Leave him alone.’
As the conference broke up, the Chief drew Pel aside.
‘Keep an eye on Goriot,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t entirely trust him. He behaves a bit oddly. I think he’s determined to get back his seniority no matter who suffers. Perhaps that bomb in the Impasse Tarien did him more harm that we thought.’
Pel gave him a warm glance. It was the sort of hunch he admired and the Chief, shrewd as he was, wasn’t the type to go in for hunches as a rule.
‘By the way,’ the Chief said as they parted, ‘we’ve turned up two more missing persons. One was a girl of fifteen who ran away from home, regretted it and didn’t dare go home. She was living with a man of thirty. She’s home now, forgiven, and content – until she does it again. The other was an old woman who wandered off. She’s been found in hospital at Beaune.’
‘Goriot’s determined to have Philippe Duche behind bars again,’ Darcy said as they left the Chief’s office.
‘He’s eager to make his mark,’ Pel agreed. ‘He probably feels he’s lost of lot of leeway with all the time he’s had on light duties.’
As they left the Chief’s corridor, Inspector Nadauld of Uniformed Branch touched Pel’s arm.
‘Friday evening,’ he said. ‘We’re having a few drinks at the Bar Transvaal. My son’s wedding. The fact that he’s getting married to a girl from Avallon – in Avallon – doesn’t mean we can’t have a few drinks here to celebrate. Sergeant Gehrer, my deputy, is celebrating too. He finishes his time tomorrow. His successor – chap called Lotier – will be there. You’ll get a chance to meet him. You, too, Daniel. The Chief’s promised to look in.’
‘Goriot’s trying to shove his oar in,’ Pel said.
Madame Pel, who was seated at her desk busy with her accounts, looked up, her eyes amused. She wasn’t very worried about Goriot. After a year or two of marriage, she knew her Evariste Clovis Désiré enough to believe he could handle Goriot and several more like him if necessary. There wasn’t much of him but she would have backed him against Goriot any day, even with an uncle who was a senator.
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ve done it already. I told him to get lost.’
Madame smiled. ‘I thought you might,’ she said.
Pel sat back. He liked to see Madame handling her money. She did it expertly and with a quiet confidence that reassured him. The days when he had expected a poverty-stricken old age had gone. With the skill she showed over finance, he felt he might manage now, if he were careful, to survive in reasonable comfort to the end of his days.
‘He tries to interfere with Darcy,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you’ll persuade him not to.’
Pel picked up the paper. It was Le Bien Public. The headline concerned the supermarket hold-up and his face was plastered all over the front page.
‘Why is it I always look as if I’d been struck by lightning?’ he mused.
‘Oh, you don’t,’ Madame said. ‘You’re really very handsome.’
It was balm to Pel’s heart. ‘I am?’
‘Of course.’ Madame didn’t really think so but she knew Pel liked a little flattery now and again and she was more than prepared to offer it. She knew he was good at his job – one of the best – and that policemen were always underpaid for what they did, and was more than prepared to make up for it by dishing out soft words.
She began to put her account books away, singing to herself as she did so.
Où est donc l’évêque d’Odon?
Il est parti à Loudon
Manger du pudding.
Dong et dang et ding.
Il est parti à Lou-don.
‘Where do you find them?’ Pel asked wonderingly.
‘My Great-Aunt Jeanne used to sing them to me when I was a little girl.’
‘Which one was Great-Aunt Jeanne?’
‘She died last year. She left me some money.’ Madame spoke as if it would have been odd for someone in her family not to leave her money.
Under the circumstances, Pel felt they ought to be able to eat out. He decided on the Relais St-Armand and pretended it was because that was where he had first met Madame. Actually it was because they served excellent andouillettes, the chitterling sausages of the region, with a chablis that took the roof off your mouth. Madame wasn’t fooled for a minute.
The place was full and she glanced around her, interested – not only as a woman but also as the owner of a business concerned with women – in what people were wearing and how they had their hair done. Near the window, half hidden from Pel by a wilting palm, was a woman in a red polka-dotted dress. The lights were low but he could see she was a big woman with blond hair. Accompanying her was a man who seemed to have been chosen to match her in every department. He had his back to Pel but he was large with powerful shoulders, good features and strong dark hair that curled round his ears. Madame was watching them closely.
‘Something of interest?’ Pel asked.
Madame smiled. ‘Only the dress,’ she said. ‘It’s one of ours. An exclusive model. She looks well in it. She has one of our handbags, too.’ She smiled again. ‘In fact, she has one of our hair styles. It was done by Sylvie Goss and I can recognise her work anywhere.’
Returning home, they watched opera on television. Pel didn’t go much on opera on television. In fact, he didn’t go much on anything on television. During the days when he had had only Madame Routy to keep him company, he had endured night after night of it with the volume turned up from Loud to Unbelievable. But his wife liked music so he sat through it patiently, dozing at intervals, watched fondly by his wife who knew his views.
The opera went on later than they expected and Pel was just doing what he called his exercises before getting into bed when the telephone rang. Pel’s exercises wouldn’t have strained an eighty-year-old but at the sound of the bell he was only too happy to pause, his knees bent and his arms outstretched as though he were about to take off and loop the loop.
Madame watched him cheerfully. She had long been aware that she was married to an oddity who would probably descend into raving eccentricity as he grew older. But she felt she could cope and was always delighted.
Pel was staring hostilely at the telephone as though he expected it to explode. Frowning, he rose and snatched at it. It was Darcy.
‘Thought you’d like to know, patron,’ he said. ‘There’s been a body found on the motorway. Near Mailly-les-Temps.’
‘Murder?’ Pel asked.
‘Could be. Cruising patrol car found him.’
‘I’d better come.’
As he put the telephone down, Madame Pel looked up. ‘You’ve got to go out?’ she said.
‘Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t want to.’
‘Don’t be silly. Of course you do.’
Amusement bright in her eyes, Madame put her spectacles on to see him better. Pel had often felt that, but for feminine vanity and her dislike of being seen in spectacles, he might never have got her to the altar. God knew, in spite of what she said, he was no Adonis and he could only put it down to the fact that she hadn’t been able to see him properly.
‘You love your work,’ she said. ‘It comes first and I come second.’
‘Never!’
‘But yes. If I died or disappeared, you’d mourn me, I suppose, but you’d still go on catching criminals. But if you were to be told tomorrow you had to give up police work, you’d die.’
There was no answer because it was true. ‘That’s not fair,’ Pel said.
Madame smiled. ‘Go on. Off you go. Take your warm coat. It’s cold. And don’t forget your cigarettes.’
Pel managed to look shamefaced. ‘I gave them up,’ he said.
‘But now you’ve started again.’
‘You knew?’
‘Of course.’
At the door, she handed him a small leather-covered pocket flask. ‘Brandy,’ she said. ‘Against the cold air.’
‘It’ll give me indigestion.’
‘Indigestion’s better than pneumonia.
Darcy was waiting for him at the Hôtel de Police and they drove off together.
‘Everybody’s been called out,’ Darcy said. ‘Forensic. Fingerprints. Doc Minet’s deputy, Doctor Cham. Minet’s in bed with influenza. There’s a lot of it about.’
‘I think I’ve got it.’
Darcy grinned. If there was anything about, Pel immediately assumed he was about to die of it.
‘Cham’s bright,’ he observed. ‘I expect he’ll take Minet’s place when he retires.’
‘Everything’s changing,’ Darcy agreed. ‘Judge Polverari’s relief’s arrived. The Palais de Justice told me.’
‘Anybody we know?’
‘Name of Castéou. Claudie Darel got the name from that barrister she’s going around with – Bruno Lucas. I expect she’ll be the next to go.’ Darcy suddenly realised he sounded like Pel. Having for years listened to Pel being Pel and finding it amusing, he was alarmed to discover he was becoming like him. Good God, he thought, perhaps it goes with the job.
‘Goriot was at Talant,’ Pel said. ‘Trying to worm his way in.’
‘He seems round the bend a bit these days,’ Darcy said. ‘He was always a bit self-important, with that great-uncle of his. Since he got blown up in the Impasse Tarien he’s become worse. He’s started demanding his old team back.’
Pel snorted. ‘All his old team but Aimedieu were killed, chiefly because Goriot didn’t think ahead.’
‘The Chief’s assigned him Aimedieu,’ Darcy said.
‘What?’ Pel nearly went through the roof of the car. Despite his choirboy face, Aimedieu had become one of his best men.
‘Aimedieu’s furious,’ Darcy said.
‘I’ll bet he is.’
‘The Chief says it’s only temporary. Aimedieu’s afraid it won’t be.’
‘So am I. We need Aimedieu. He’s bright.’
‘Bright enough not to be attached to Goriot. Goriot’s going to be a nuisance.’
‘Goriot was always a nuisance.’
Darcy said nothing for a moment. ‘He tried to bring a charge against Philippe Duche,’ he said eventually. ‘Said one of his trucks had faulty brakes. It was nonsense. Pomereu, of Traffic, was furious. It’s his department, not Goriot’s.’
‘I think Goriot’s got it in for Duche.’
‘He’s got it in for me, too, patron,’ Darcy said. ‘Been having words with him?’
‘Not pleasant ones. I think he’d like my job.’
‘He’s got a hope.’
‘He’s senior, patron. By many years.’
‘That’s because he stuck at inspector. You won’t.’
‘I think Judge Brisard’s ganging up with him.’
Pel frowned. Judge Brisard was one of the examining magistrates. He was young, aggressive, and anathema to Pel. He and Pel had disliked each other from the day they had met. Brisard was tall and plump, with a big behind and hips like a woman. He had a nice line in family togetherness which Pel knew was phoney because he had learned that Brisard kept a policeman’s widow down the motorway in Beaune.
‘You’ve never quarrelled with Brisard, have you?’ he asked.
‘You have, patron,’ Darcy said. ‘And anything they can lay on me reflects on you. Goriot’s also got Senator Forton behind him, remember.’
Since Senator Forton spent most of his time in Paris, Pel couldn’t imagine what he could possibly know about Burgundy. As different from the areas that surrounded it as chalk was from cheese, it was noted for its courage, character and strength, and had defied the French kings and produced Vercingetorix and Philip the Bold. It had even produced Evariste Clovis Désiré Pel.
He sighed. Office politics were always with them. There were always men who relied more on being noticed by their superiors than on what they achieved, pushy men who manoeuvred rather than worked their way to the top. They occurred in every office where people operated in groups.
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to work with him. It’s a measure of a man’s fitness for the top jobs that he can work with someone he doesn’t like.’
Darcy grinned. Pel had never made concessions to anyone.
Because of the hour, it was quiet and only one car passed them, going at a speed well above the regulation. On the south-bound carriageway near Mailly-des-Temps they began to see warning cones on the road and signs indicating that the inside track was closed.
Finally, they began to see the flashing lights of police vehicles and eventually came to an area where the three tracks had been cut to one. The other two tracks had been blocked off and cars and vans were parked to force any traffic that appeared away from the scene. Policemen with handlamps were there to wave vehicles down but, at that hour, the motorway was empty.
On the northbound carriageway there was a single ‘whoosh’ as a late car hurtled past. A police van, its engine running, had its lights directed across a huddle of men in the roadway. Among them, close to the verge, they could see the body.
Doctor Cham was bent over it. He looked like a studious hen, tall and thin with glasses, a high forehead and an Adam’s apple that went up and down in his long neck like a yo-yo. He looked up as Pel and Darcy appeared alongside him, his spectacles reflecting the flashing lights of the police vehicles.
‘Looks like an ordinary accident,’ he said. ‘Hit and run perhaps. Severe head injuries. Both legs broken. That’s at first glance.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’ll be more specific when I examine him on the slab.’
It was something Pel had to accept. A car, slowed by the waving torches of police, growled impatiently past, the beams of its headlights probing the darkness like lances.
‘Any indication who he is?’
‘None. Pockets seem to be empty.’
‘People don’t empty their pockets to go wandering along the motorway in the dark.’
‘They probably do if they’re drunk.’
‘Was he drunk?’
‘He’d been drinking. You can smell it. Whisky. I can check the amount later.’
‘Fingerprints been taken?’
Prélat, the Fingerprints expert, standing just beyond the glow of lights, shook his head. ‘Not yet, patron.’
‘Age?’
‘Sixty-five to seventy,’ Cham said. ‘About that. Probably senile. He must have been a bit confused. His waistcoat’s inside out and unbuttoned. His shirt and jacket are buttoned in the wrong holes. He’s not wearing socks. I’d say he was old and perhaps ill. But he was tall and I imagine good-looking when he was young. I reckon we should be looking for somebody’s elderly father.’
What they’d found seemed to be an accident and accidents weren’t Pel’s line of business. They belonged to Inspector Pomereu, of Traffic, who turned up just as Pel was preparing to leave.
‘I’ll look after the details, patron,’ Darcy offered. ‘You take my car. I’ll get a lift back with someone.’
But Pel was reluctant to leave and stood watching as the tape measures came out and distances were set down; as photographs were taken; as Cham stared up and down the motorway, deep in thought, making calculations in his mind.
‘What sort of vehicle are we looking for?’ Pomereu asked.
‘Squarish bonnet, judging by the injuries,’ Cham said. ‘He’s been hit on the head by something with a corner to it and then again by something long and narrow. One of those arms that hold protruding rear mirrors on trucks, perhaps? So it was a heavy vehicle, but not so heavy it couldn’t go fast. Not a truck, I’d say.’
The radio in Darcy’s car began to squawk. He leaned over and spoke into the microphone. Slamming it back into place, he crossed to where Pel was standing, huddled in his coat against the wind and the rain.
‘Another raid by the Tuaregs, patron. All night garage at Saint-Blas. That’s just north of here. It could have been them who did this – in a hurry, heading down the motorway to make their getaway.’
The wind dropped during the night, and the next morning was bright but cold enough for Pel to look like a polar bear wearing woollies. He already had Cham’s description of the victim of the motorway. It had been on his desk when he arrived. ‘Height – one hundred and eighty centimetres. Slightly built. Age sixty-five to seventy. Thinning grey hair. Blue eyes. False teeth. Narrow nose. Appendicitis scar. Arthritis in joints.’
It was difficult to know which of the two cases that had come up to go for first – the hit and run or the hold-up at Talant – so they left Cham to complete his checks on the motorway victim and went to Talant.
As the manager of the supermarket had suggested, Madame Folieux, the old lady whose car had been almost run down, was able to tell them nothing.
‘It was a car like mine,’ she said.
‘What sort have you got?’
‘I don’t know. My son bought it for me. He had to go to North Africa for a year on business, so he put me on the telephone and bought me a television and a new car.’
‘What sort is it, Nosjean?’ Pel said.
Nosjean grinned. It was a tiny Peugeot 205.
‘Well, it was the same colour,’ she said.
The car used in the raid on the all-night garage at St-Blas had been found abandoned at Goray just off the motorway. There it was, a Peugeot 604, standing in the square underneath the trees.
‘Get anything from it?’ Pel asked.
‘A lot of fingerprints, patron,’ Prélat said. ‘But it’s my guess they all belong to the owner and his family. There are too many for them to belong to the Tuaregs.’
‘Whose is the car?’
It turned out to belong to an architect in Dijon and it had been stolen from outside his office in the Rue Général Leclerc. It was undamaged.
‘Village cop found it,’ Nosjean reported. ‘From what Cham said, I’d have expected smashed headlights, a dent or two, a spot of blood. But there’s nothing. It’s clean. It wasn’t the car that killed the old boy at Mailly-les-Temps. Prélat says there are marks that indicate they were using gloves.’
‘That fits with what the girl at Talant said. How about the till there? Did he find anything?’
‘A single print. But badly smudged. I’ve put it into the computer but I don’t expect anything. I feel certain they’re youngsters and new to the game, though it’s only a hunch.’
Pel nodded. He had a great respect for hunches when they came from someone as bright as Nosjean.
‘It looks as though we’ve got to think again about the old boy on the motorway,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if Cham’s come up with anything new.’
Cham had.
When Pel arrived in his office, he was just taking off his coat. He had been down the motorway again to look at the scene of the previous night’s incident.
‘What were you expecting to find?’ Pel asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Cham shrugged. ‘Something, perhaps.’
‘Isn’t that Forensic’s job?’
Cham smiled. ‘Probably it is. But two heads are always better than one.’
‘Find anything?’
‘I don’t know. There wasn’t much blood. I noticed that last night. That’s why I went to have another look. There should have been some and I’d have expected to see signs of smearing if he’d been dragged or flung along the road for instance. Something like that. I’d have expected to find traces.’
‘What’s all this leading to?’
‘Not to. From. It’s leading from the way I’ve been thinking. I’m having second thoughts. He was hit by something, that’s a fact. I found tiny fragments of glass embedded in his scalp. That indicates headlights. His skull was fractured. He also had two broken legs. I’d have expected more if he’d been hit by a fast-moving car. Broken shoulders. Broken neck. Heavy grazings on the face. After all, a fast-moving car hitting a man would break bones to start with, then there would be more broken when he hit the road after being flung into the air. There would also be multiple grazing and contusions.’
‘And there aren’t any?’
‘Nothing that would fit with a fast-moving car hitting him. There was one other thing. As I’ve said, he had two broken legs. Both tibiae. And both in the same place. And that’s odd. You’d expect in a hit and run for them to be broken in different places. But they weren’t. I think his legs had been run over.’
‘Run over?’
‘One of his shoes was wrenched off – it’s disappeared – but there are also tyre marks on his trousers. Below the knee. I’ll let you have photographs. I think you can identify the type of tyre even.’
Pel frowned. ‘How does a hit and run driver manage to run over a man’s legs? They usually knock them flying.’
‘I don’t think now it was a hit and run,’ Cham said doggedly. ‘He was run over by a car, certainly, but he must have already been lying in the road. Drunk, perhaps? He had a fair percentage of alcohol in him and he smelled of whisky. His hair especially. Why his hair? You don’t imbibe it through the ear. But he hadn’t drunk enormously. Enough to make him sloshed but not enough to be paralytic. Certainly not as much as I’d have expected. Do you want the exact amount?’
‘In the report.’ Pel didn’t believe in clouding his thinking by having too many details too early in a case.
‘There were also traces of nembutal in the stomach. Sleeping tablets, I expect. You’re not supposed to take those with alcohol but old people sometimes do. They take them and forget what they’ve done and take another. That’s probably what he did. It would be enough to make him confused. It begins to look as if he was staggering about and fell down and was hit by a car, but though his legs were broken they weren’t compound fractures. There was no perforation of the flesh by splintered bone, which I’d have expected if he’d been hit by a fast-moving car. There was one other thing: when we removed his clothes, we found he wasn’t wearing underwear. No vest. No underpants. Just shirt, trousers, waistcoat and jacket. All with empty pockets. Shirt and jacket buttoned up wrongly, waistcoat unbuttoned and inside out. No socks. One shoe.’
‘Any laundry-marks on his shirt?’
‘No. None. He either did his own laundry or took it to a laundrette.’
‘Unless some neighbour did it for him. Go on.’
‘Suit – good quality. You can tell by the finish. It wasn’t off the peg at Nouvelles Galeries. It was made by a good tailor. Probably in Paris.’
‘How do you know it was probably from Paris?’
‘When I qualified, my father took me to his tailor and had me a suit made. It was a wonderful suit. Cost him a fortune. I dropped a tin of paint down it decorating my house when I got married six months later. Ruined it.’
‘Did it have the tailor’s name in it?’
‘Of course it did.’
‘Not yours, the man on the motorway’s.’
‘Oh! It had had one but it had obviously come away. The remains of the stitching were there. It was an old suit. A very old suit.’
‘So what we’ve got is a man of sixty-five to seventy who could afford – once upon a time, anyway – to wear good suits, probably made in Paris.’
‘That’s about it. He must have driven to where he was found, too, so his car’s around somewhere, waiting to be picked up. Where he was found isn’t near anywhere. It’s between Mailly-les-Temps on one side of the motorway and Ponchet on the other. But not near enough to either for him to have walked from one of them – staggered would be nearer, because he appeared to have been drinking a lot. Perhaps he found he was too drunk to drive and decided to leave his car and walk it off.’
‘Where to?’
‘To wherever he was going.’
‘Nothing at all in his pockets to indicate who he was?’
‘No.’ Cham frowned. ‘Just a one-franc piece, a few centimes, a dirty handkerchief, and inside the lining of a jacket pocket a bent card which indicated he was a member of the Club Atlantique de Royan.’
‘Club Atlantique de Royan? That’s on the east coast and miles away. It sounds like one of these summer things where they get people doing exercises on the beach. It won’t be going at this time of the year.’
‘It looks like an old card.’
‘Plastic?’
‘Yes.’
‘Any fingerprints?’
‘Prélat says a few. But they’re smeared, and one on top of another. He picked up two. Both the same. They’re the dead man’s. I suspect it’s one he used some time when he was on holiday and it was tucked away in the lining and was overlooked when his pockets were emptied – deliberately in my view.’
‘Is there a name on it? These clubs usually demand the owner signs them, like banker’s cards.’
‘There’s no signature on this one. But there is a number – 579.’
‘Any year?’
‘No year. It’ll mean looking up number 579 for a few years back.’
‘Charming.’ Pel sighed. ‘Well, we’ll check. We’ll check at Mailly-les-Temps too. It’s the nearest place. He might have done his drinking there and wandered off in a stupor. Perhaps his home was the other side of the motorway and he was drunk enough not to worry about crossing it.’
‘There’s just one more thing,’ Cham said. ‘If he was lying flat in the road – as he must have been to get his legs smashed as they were, how did he get the head injuries?’
‘Could the car that ran over his legs have thrown him up underneath? So that his head came into contact with the underside? It might have, if it were travelling fast.’
Cham frowned. ‘In that case, I’d have expected to find oil in the wound,’ he said. ‘Grease. Dried mud. The sort of things you get from under a car. There was nothing to indicate that was what happened. There were two indentations in the skull. Something more solid than a glass headlight hit him, something hard and heavy. Then something else like an attachment on a car. Yet there are no flakes of paint around the wound as I’d have expected.'
Yet’ – Cham frowned, puzzled – ‘there were slivers of glass as if he had been caught by the headlights or the windscreen. The injuries just don’t seem to match up. And why no underwear or socks?’
‘We’ll get the local radio to put out a story. We’ll need to know if anybody saw this type lying in the road. There couldn’t have been many cars at that time of night but somebody might have spotted him.’
‘I’ll bet we don’t get much,’ Cham said heavily. ‘If somebody did see him, they’d ignore him. They’d think he was a dummy shoved into the road by a hold-up merchant to persuade someone to stop so he could step out from the darkness and stick a pistol up their nose. Or they’d think he was a drunk, and who’d want to pick up a drunk? When you’d got him in the car he’d want to start a fight with you or be sick all over the back seat.’
Pel sighed. It was true enough. You didn’t normally find people lying around on a motorway, except when there’d been a million-car pile-up in the fog and then you found you were knee deep in stiffs.