KINDRED - Transmission 04
An apparent accident looks like something more.
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“Sodding rain.”
Brian Webster, recently reinstated full Inspector in the Hampshire Constabulary—probationary full Inspector—clutched his hot tea. The young constable who’d called him out to the scene of the accident stood to attention.
“It’s Constable Wright, Sir. Thank you for coming down this morning.”
Webster paused. Cast his eyes skyward in the hunt for any sign of a break in the low cloud. Then back down to the stretch of damp, potholed tarmac.
Traffic cones marked out an area of interest—police tape strung between them. Three squad cars silently flashed red and blue.
Webster squinted at the young copper.
“And when exactly did you say it happened?”
It was Saturday; and too early. His rank usually gave him the enviable perk of being able to sleep in on Saturday mornings.
Usually.
Wright brought a small pad up, checked his notes—more for show than anything else.
“Would have been early—before dawn and… certainly before the rush hour on Friday morning. But we weren’t alerted until earlier today, because—”
The young man took a few steps toward the edge of the roadway. A drop off into a verdant valley; a lazy stream meandering through tufts of bog-grass.
“…as you can see, the vehicle rolled down this slope here… to a point where it’s not visible from the roadway.”
He turned back to Webster.
“The only sign of the accident to passers-by would have been this break in the stone wall.”
The officer indicated the site where it looked like the RAF Dam Busters had worked their magic. An opening big enough for a large family car; or a mid-sized lorry. Stone shrapnel splayed either side of the breach left no doubt as to what had happened. Some accident.
“But no one called it in because these old things collapse often enough by themselves after a heavy frost—’round here in any case.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Webster approached the remains of the stone wall. He knelt and took a close look at some of the larger stones. Fresh stone chips and red paint scuffs.
He stood, stepped over the rubble and started picking his way down the slope. His thick rubber boots kept out the damp and cold, but he stepped with care. Irregular clods of turf were unearthed by the vehicle’s somersaulting bodywork—their dark, sodden undersides exposed to the air.
At the bottom of the slope, he approached the wreck. The constable followed closely behind. Webster circled it once, pausing a couple of times to examine a twisted roof pillar, a dented panel.
Little more than twenty-four hours had passed—Webster could almost hear the tortured metal moaning in complaint as the full weight of the large red SUV pressed down on the roof supports.
He moved closer, dropping to his knees. Hands well clear from disturbing anything, he craned his neck to get a good view inside the cabin.
The body of a large man. Bent unnaturally—limbs askew. Hanging like wet laundry from his still-clasped seatbelt. Webster cleared his throat. Leaned closer.
The man’s face. Specks of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Eyes wide—pleading.
Lifeless.
Webster’s throat tightened up. His vision started to go black.
Shit.
His heart was thumping. He brought his fist to his chest.
Dammit!
He struggled to his feet, and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He brought his breathing under control.
Webster steadied himself by leaning his elbow on the car’s red metallic flank. Every damn time.
When will it bloody end?
Three beats. His breath slowed. He opened his eyes, and pretended to examine the exposed underbody of the wreck.
“So, how would you describe the deceased?”
Webster avoided showing his face to his younger colleague. The young officer spoke over his shoulder.
“I, uh—I’d say he was a man in his late thirties… You know, with the receding hairline and all…”
Webster nodded. He turned to face the constable, raised his eyebrows. The young man glanced from Webster, to the wreck, and back to Webster.
“And, uh—he’s suffered severe head trauma, there’s some dried, matted blood in his hair. Oh, and his right arm shows multiple complex fractures and lacerations—I’d say that was due to the smashed driver’s-side window. And his face, well—it’s pretty messed up too…”
The constable trailed off. Webster held his professorial expression.
“…I’d say that’s about it. I mean, apart from the obvious internal trauma that he must have suffered, but the coroners will be sure to—”
Webster turned to face back up the grassy slope.
“Ok, that more or less describes where he ended up, Constable… uh…”
“Wright.”
“Constable Wright, yes—good work.”
Webster looked back at the constable. The young man’s expression was expectant, anxious. Webster narrowed his eyes and took a slow sip of tea.
“So—”
He cleared his throat.
“Basically, our subject crests the rise here at speed—”
Webster indicated the general direction of the roadway.
“...which also happens to be a sharp right-hand corner which he has clearly misjudged. Loses traction—and comes careening through the wall.”
Webster waved his arms through the air, tracing the car through its trajectory down the grassy slope. He dropped his hands to his sides and paused a moment. One corner of his mouth twitched upward.
“And then I guess those, erm—community defensive driving courses you and your friends give were no longer of any use to him.”
The constable stood motionless. Webster’s mouth relaxed, and he drew a long breath.
“A traffic accident, Wright. Tragic—but routine… So why exactly did I get out of bed this morning?”
Wright’s expression flickered, then held fast.
“There’s a… A couple of details, sir, that I feel I need to—bring to your attention. First of all, is this one.”
Webster raised his eyebrows and nodded.
The constable moved with more purpose, crouching down beside the stricken vehicle. He lifted his arm, indicating the space that would have been occupied by the rear passengers. There, poised neatly on the vehicle’s ceiling-lining that now served as the floor of the cabin, was a small black leather briefcase, open.
“It caught my eye because it looked a little—out of place...”
The constable continued, but Webster tuned out.
He got down on his haunches. He held his breath—avoiding the grisly sight in the front seat—and took a close look at the briefcase. The tumble-dryer environment of the somersaulting car could have snapped it open. But… the papers inside—although not in perfect order—were exactly that, inside.
Webster glanced around. No other papers strewn around inside—or outside the vehicle. He frowned.
It’s almost as if...
He leaned closer in. The damp from the frosty grass soaked into his trousers. There it was; scratches—clear abrasion marks near the locking mechanism. Evidence the case had been forcibly opened—either in the past or very recently.
“Have forensics been called?”
Constable Wright took a step closer.
“They’re—supposed to be here at, uh…Around now, I guess.”
Webster stood; turned towards the young man. Wright’s arms were now folded in front of his chest, his feet planted more surely. Webster looked at him a moment, and softened his tone a notch.
“So who is this guy? You’ve run all the usual checks, I assume?”
“Certainly sir, it appears that our subject is a certain... Alan Maddox.”
A knowing look—almost a wink. Webster grimaced. Lifted his eyebrows.
“Err… Alan Maddox is—was—the leading technological guru working with Campfyre. He was a bit of a local celebrity around these parts—a kind of home-grown hero, you know?”
“Hmph... And Campfyre is? Assume I know nothing...”
Wright made to open his mouth—but as Webster turned toward the grassy incline and started picking his way back up—he had to hurry to catch up.
“Campfyre—you know… the world’s largest online social network..?”
Webster furrowed his brow, a slight shake of the head. Then took another purposeful step up the slope.
“It’s a big deal; one of the world’s largest tech companies. Well, Maddox here was the founder—or, one of them… Along with Trent Robinson, who’s the current CEO. Those two they’d had—er… rather a complicated relationship over the years. Conflictual, you might say…”
Webster had reached the pile of stone rubble and was met with a small army of crime scene forensics and photography personnel. He smiled and nodded politely. The constable joined him back on the roadway.
“But… Everyone knows that the success of Campfyre is really due to Alan Maddox. He built the core technology behind it—ran much of it to this day.”
Webster paused.
With his gaze he followed the path the vehicle would have taken as it careened off the road. Telltale gouges in the grass and earth sliced over the shoulder of the roadway. Too little traction; too late.
The constable—pensive, silent—was continuing on up the roadway, in the direction from which the vehicle would have been travelling.
The Inspector took his time in following.
He paused again to examine the marks that the tyres had made on the road. It would have been wet at the time. It was still plenty damp. But he made out several unmistakably rubbery smears. The steering wheel would have been heaved to the right—the driver’s desperate attempt to steer the car through the bend.
He followed the marks for some twenty metres from the edge of the grass. They became less defined—less crisp—as the wheels approached a more straightened position. Disappearing altogether at the point where the driver would have just begun to turn the wheel.
At this point he stopped.
He was some thirty metres or so from the constable who himself also stopped, marking a specific spot.
Webster ignored his companion for a moment. He scrutinised where the marks finished. He was maybe twenty-five metres from the stone wall—but it was too close. The driver would have taken action earlier. Surely.
It was almost as if…
“He never even applied the brakes...”
Even with modern traction control, heavy braking takes a serious toll on cars’ tyres. There would be a mark—an obvious one.
There’s something wrong here.
Webster knelt, but was only left a moment before Wright addressed him—his voice bright.
“You might want to come over here, sir. This is the other thing I wanted to show you.”
Webster squinted, then stood and paced off in the direction of the young constable. By the time it took him to cover the forty steps, Wright was down on his knees and was indicating something on the roadway.
“This, the forensic guys tell me, is hydraulic fluid, of the kind usually used in vehicle braking and steering systems.”
Webster examined the small strip of translucent green fluid that had managed not to be disturbed by the traffic of the previous day. Then a stain extending in both directions away from this spot—indicating the full initial volume of fluid.
“Sir, the forensic guys say this could and often does come from the braking systems of trucks, especially poorly maintained ones. But what’s interesting here is the quantity. It looks like we have more than a litre, enough to empty out the entire braking system of a small to medium car.”
Sure enough, the stripe on the roadway pointed squarely in the direction of the now fifty-metre distant fissure in the dry stone wall.
The poor bastard must have been scared out of his wits.
Webster fixed the constable for a brief moment, then strode off back in the direction of the wreck with his voice trailing behind him.
“We’re going to have to take another look at that car—you coming?”
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