Whiplash

by Graham Ison

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Featuring the worldly wise DI Brock and his wry sidekick DS Poole When DI Brock is called to attend the scene of a traffic accident, he doesn't see how it's any of his business. But then it turns out the woman's body discovered in the ditch alongside the crashed car was not involved in the accident. What's more, the woman was naked and covered in vicious whip marks. Unpleasant as it might be, this is very definitely Brock's business.

Release date: July 1, 2004

Publisher: Severn House Publishers

Print pages: 240

Sample

I was not in the best of moods at being called out to a road traffic accident. At least, the phone call had implied that it was an accident, but I
later learned that the crew of the traffic car thought there was a bit more to it than a straightforward RTA. Or, to put it another way, they thought it was a bit ‘iffy’.

They’d sent for the ‘feet’ – as traffic officers are prone to call ordinary policemen – from the local nick, who in turn had called the CID. But the CID obviously
thought it came into the MTD category: much too difficult. The natural corollary to that was to send for the Serious Crime Group.

And, as I happened to be the next detective chief inspector on the list, it was me who was lumbered with it.

So, as it was a traffic unit that had called me – indirectly, of course – I thought it only proper that they should be saddled with the responsibility of getting me, as quickly as
possible, from my home in Wimbledon to Richmond Park, it being a sod of a journey during the morning rush hour. Or, for that matter, at any other time.

With the aid of flashing blue lights, a siren and a great deal of swearing and caustic comments from my highly skilled driver, I arrived at Pembroke Lodge – just inside the park’s
Richmond Gate – in record time. It did, however, cause me to reflect, once again, that I seem to be in the gravest danger of serious injury only when I am being conveyed anywhere by the
police.

The crime scene – for that, regrettably, is what it turned out to be – was crowded. Not with the general public, but with coppers. Three or four members of the Royal Parks
Constabulary, led by a sergeant, were standing around looking important. The traffic car that had been called by them was there, messing about with tape measures, watched by the crew of the
immediate-response car from Richmond nick, who, apart from admiring the scenery, appeared to be doing little else.

As I got out of the car, I was met by the local Metropolitan Police duty officer, an attractive lady inspector who looked young enough to be my daughter. God forbid that I should ever have
offspring who want to join the police!

‘Who’s in charge?’ I asked her, a question guaranteed to sort the women from the boys and girls.

‘Er, well, I suppose I am,’ said the inspector hesitantly, looking round to see if there was anyone else brave enough to take the risk. ‘From Tango Romeo,’ she added,
explaining in copper’s jargon that she was attached to Richmond police station. ‘And who are you?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Harry Brock, Serious Crime Group West. And what’s so special that my expertise is required to deal with a traffic accident?’

‘They’re not called accidents any more, sir,’ the inspector said smugly as she wrote down my name. ‘The Yard’s directed that they’re to be called collisions
from now on.’

Oh my God, the boy superintendents up at the dream factory have been at it again.

When the inspector had finished writing, she drew me gently to one side, some distance from the blue-clad onlookers. ‘I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated, sir,’ she
said.

‘Isn’t it always?’ I said, speaking rhetorically.

‘According to witnesses, sir, the vehicle was obliged to swerve to avoid a motorcyclist travelling in the opposite direction and on the wrong side of the road. It finished up down
there.’ The inspector gestured towards a dip in the ground, and then paused.

‘Do go on,’ I said. ‘I can hardly contain my excitement.’

‘The driver was rendered unconscious, sir, and, by the time he came round, police were already on scene.’

‘What police?’

‘The Parks Police, sir.’

‘I hope you’re going to get to the point of this, Inspector.’

‘The impact caused the front passenger door to fly open and the body of a young woman was thrown out. She’s dead, sir.’

‘You still haven’t convinced me that my presence here is a necessary charge on the police fund.’

‘She was naked, sir.’ The inspector smiled as if she had just scored match point in a hard-fought game of tennis. She looked the type to be terrifyingly good at tennis.

‘Oh, I see.’ Be fair, what the hell else could I say? ‘Have you questioned the driver of the vehicle?’

‘Briefly, sir. He denies all knowledge of the woman.’

‘Don’t blame him. I think I would in the circumstances.’ It is a fact of life that any man accused by the police of a public association with a dead, naked woman generally
denies knowing her. ‘So, how d’you know the woman was thrown out?’

The inspector paused long enough for me to know that she had jumped to a conclusion. ‘Well, I imagine that’s what happened, sir.’

I, too, paused. Long enough to let it sink in that she’d committed the police officer’s cardinal sin of supposition. ‘Have you called the pathologist, crime-scene examiners,
photographers . . .?’ Which she should have done anyway for a suspicious death.

‘No, sir. I called the local CID and they said they were calling you.’

And you promptly washed your hands of it. That was par for the course: when in trouble or in doubt, wave your arms and run about, but for God’s sake don’t do anything
useful. ‘Where is the driver of the vehicle?’

‘Gone to hospital. There didn’t seem much wrong with him, apart from a bang on the head, but best to be on the safe side, eh, sir?’

‘Oh, indeed. Very wise.’ I got the impression that this was an inspector who would always err on the side of safety. ‘He is under police guard, I presume? Being a
material witness, if not a suspect.’

‘Oh, I, well . . .’

‘Arrange it, Inspector, if you please.’ I was never happy at having to do other people’s work for them. ‘Immediately.’

‘Yes, sir.’ There was more dedicated scribbling on the clipboard, a PC was summoned and told to get to the hospital urgently. The inspector had the earnest look of someone who hoped
the driver hadn’t already discharged himself.

‘Has the vehicle been reported stolen, by any chance?’ I enquired blithely. Nothing like piling on the agony.

‘No, sir, we’ve checked.’ The inspector gave me another smug match-point smile.

‘I’d better have a look at the body, then,’ I said.

A Vauxhall, the front of which was now firmly attached to a tree, had veered off the road and down a slight incline that was just steep enough to shield all but its roof from the road and, more
importantly, as it transpired, the deceased’s body.

As the inspector had said, the victim was naked, but what she hadn’t mentioned, or perhaps had not noticed, were the marks across the dead woman’s back and buttocks: marks indicating
that she might have been beaten quite severely. There were also chafe marks on the wrists and ankles, and a broader one around the neck.

I made a decision, something that I do only if forced into it, like now, when confronted with prima facie evidence of a sex crime. ‘Well, it seems that I shall need a pathologist,
CSEs, photographers . . . the whole works. And I want this area cordoned off from there, all round there, to there.’ I indicated with a sweep of the hand exactly where I wanted the tapes to
be put.

The inspector wrote busily on her clipboard again before shouting to the crew of the immediate-response car to string out blue and white tapes around three or four conveniently sited trees.

‘And one other thing, Inspector . . .’ I said when she had finished her call to the police station.

‘Sir?’

‘Ask the nick to get on to Curtis Green. I want Detective Sergeant Poole down here like yesterday.’

‘Curtis Green, sir?’ The inspector raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Where’s that?’

Heaven forfend! ‘Curtis Green is where my office is . . . in Whitehall,’ I explained patiently. ‘It used to be called New Scotland Yard North before somebody decided
to move the Yard to Victoria Street. Doubtless before you were born,’ I added testily. I ask you, what chance do the public stand if the police don’t even known where Serious Crime
Group West has its office, and the responsibility for investigating all serious crimes from there to Hillingdon? Of which the naked lady was about to become the latest. ‘And where
are the witnesses?’

‘Witnesses, sir?’ The inspector looked up from her obsessive scribing.

‘You mentioned witnesses who saw the accident.’ I refused to go along with this nonsense of calling it a collision.

‘Oh yes. Actually, there was only the one, sir. The traffic officers took his statement and sent him on his way. Apparently he was already late for work.’

‘Oh dear! We can’t have him being late for work, can we? Tell me, during the brief moment he did grace police with his presence, did he say whether he saw the woman in the passenger
seat before the accident occurred?’

That disconcerted the inspector. ‘I’ll find out,’ she muttered, and beckoned to one of the white-capped traffic officers.

‘The only witness, sir,’ said the PC as he joined us, ‘was travelling behind Vehicle One—’

‘By which you mean that one?’ I gestured at the Vauxhall.

‘Yes, sir.’ The PC, an ambling sort of fellow in his forties, gave the impression of having seen it all, that there was now nothing left to surprise him. ‘It seems that a solo
motorcyclist came towards Vehicle One on the wrong side of the carriageway’ – policemen always call a road the carriageway – ‘and, in attempting to avoid him, he
went off the road and collided with a tree. Unfortunately the driver didn’t get the index mark of the motorcycle.’

‘How very remiss of him,’ I murmured.

‘Indeed, sir,’ said the traffic officer earnestly. I suppose that to him it was a serious failing on the part of a driver who was throwing his car all over the road in a desperate
attempt to avoid a collision himself, not to make a note of the number on the rear of a motorcycle vanishing at high speed in the opposite direction.

‘And I don’t suppose he was able to say how many people there were in the . . . er . . . in Vehicle One.’

‘No, sir.’

I moved closer to the body and confined my initial examination to placing a finger on the carotid artery, just to satisfy myself that the woman was dead. She was, but I’ve known coppers to
make mistakes before. Standing beside the body was a Royal Parks policeman, looking frighteningly officious.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Preserving the scene, sir.’ The constable drew himself briefly to attention.

‘Well, I’ve got a better idea. Rather than contaminating the scene any more than it’s been contaminated already, why don’t you go back up to the road and get that lot
moving before you have another accident on your hands?’ I waved at the two lines of cars that were crawling in opposite directions, the drivers peering out of their windows to see what the
police were doing. Presumably it added a little excitement to their usually mundane journey to work. And would give them something to talk about when they got there.

‘Morning, guv.’

I turned. Detective Sergeant Dave Poole was standing behind me, attired, as usual, in such a way as was unlikely to win him a best-dressed-man award. ‘How did you get here, Dave? Charter
the job’s helicopter, did you?’

‘No, sir.’ As usual my black sergeant ignored this lame attempt at humour. I knew he didn’t find it funny: he had called me ‘sir’. ‘I was in the office when
the original call came in, so I got straight down here. I thought you might need me.’

‘How very conceited of you.’

‘So, what have we got, guv?’

I outlined what was known so far and explained that we were awaiting the arrival of the pathologist and the rest of the circus that forms part of a suspicious-death enquiry.

‘Henry Mortlock’s on his way, guv, and the supporting cast should be here soon. I rang them before I left Curtis Green.’

‘Thank God someone’s got their act together,’ I said.

‘And who’s the dolly bird in the policeman’s costume, guv?’

‘That, Dave, is the duty officer.’

‘Blimey! She’s a bit of all right.’

‘I don’t think Madeleine would like that,’ I said.

Madeleine was Dave’s wife, a gorgeously petite principal ballet dancer who, it was rumoured, occasionally beat him up. Having met the girl, I had great difficulty in believing that
particular snippet of canteen scuttlebutt. She was a twenty-five-year-old, slender five-two of vibrant sex appeal, whereas Dave was six feet tall and fifteen stones of solid muscle.

I took one of Dave’s cigarettes and searched my pockets for my lighter.

‘I see you’re still giving up giving up, then,’ Dave said spitefully. He produced a box of matches, lit both our cigarettes and replaced the dead match in the box. Dave knew
all about scene contamination.

‘I will, one day,’ I said. I’d been trying to give up smoking for ages now, ever since a schoolmaster had caught me smoking behind the bike sheds and told me a horror story
about his brother dying of cancer.

Suddenly there was action. A couple of white vans containing the technicians of murder arrived, followed minutes later by a black car from which the portly figure of Dr Henry Mortlock
emerged.

‘Got some business for me, then, Harry?’ asked Mortlock, briskly rubbing his hands together as, doubtless, he calculated his call-out fee.

Mortlock, an exponent of a black humour that rivalled that of most detectives, strolled across to where the body lay and walked slowly round it. ‘Mmm!’ he said eventually.
‘Where did she come from?’

‘I was hoping you’d tell me, Henry.’

‘I’m a pathologist not a soothsayer, dear boy,’ said Mortlock, opening his bag of tricks and preparing himself for his preliminary examination. After a few minutes of medical
hocus-pocus, he stood up. ‘When did this accident occur, Harry?’

I glanced at the traffic-division PC. ‘Well?’

‘Zero–eight–zero–five, sir,’ said the PC after briefly consulting his clipboard.

‘That’s five past eight in English, Henry,’ I said.

Mortlock put his hands in his pockets. ‘The cadaver’s been here longer than that,’ he said. ‘At a guess I’d say at least twelve hours, maybe a touch
less.’

‘So, there was no chance that she was thrown out of the car . . .’

‘She may have been thrown out of a car,’ said Mortlock, ‘but not that one.’ He gestured towards the Vauxhall attached to the tree. ‘Not if that’s the
one that left the road at five past eight.’

The traffic-division officer looked disappointed and began to rewrite his report.

‘And the cause of death?’ I asked, knowing full well that I was not going to get a definitive answer.

Mortlock scoffed. ‘I’ll tell you that when I’ve done the post-mortem, Harry. Maybe.’

It was the reply I’d expected. ‘OK to shift the body?’

‘Sure. And get them to take it to Horseferry Road. I don’t like messing about in these local mortuaries. Incidentally, she appears to have been subjected to some physical
abuse.’

‘Yes, I noticed,’ I said.

As Mortlock departed, the photographers started to record the scene for posterity and, I hoped, for the Crown Court. A passing taxi driver, presumably thinking we were doing a fashion shoot,
shouted some obscene witticism and promptly had his name and address taken by a Royal Parks constable.

Finally, the crime-scene examiners, attired in white boiler suits and latex gloves, began the business of collecting such evidence as might eventually help me to discover who had murdered this
young woman if, in fact, she had been feloniously killed. But, at this stage, I have to say that accidental death did not look a promising option.

At last the white suits completed their examination of the scene. The body was removed, the tapes taken down; the car was winched on to a flatbed truck and Richmond Park resumed its normal
bucolic tranquillity. It was now eleven o’clock and Dave and I retired to the tea rooms in Pembroke Lodge for coffee and a discussion.

‘What d’you make of that lot then, guv?’ Dave nodded towards the window that faced the road near where our body had been found.

‘It’s obviously unconnected with the traffic accident,’ I said. ‘It looks as though some bastard ventured in here during the night and dumped her there.’

‘Park’s closed at night,’ said Dave helpfully.

‘As you’re obviously a parks expert and know about these things, find out at what time it was closed last night and when it opened this morning.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Dave scribbled a few lines in his pocket-book. ‘Anything else?’ He looked up expectantly.

‘Yes, get on to Mr Mead and ask him to liaise with the Parks Police to run a roadblock this evening and tomorrow morning – at all the gates – and question regular drivers as to
whether they saw anything suspicious.’

Contrary to television mythology, it isn’t just a DCI and his sidekick who investigate murders. There’s a whole team of detectives, fifteen at least. And Detective Inspector Frank
Mead, an ex-Flying Squad officer, was in charge of them. It was they who did all the mundane, but essential, legwork arising out of a murder enquiry.

And I was pretty sure that’s what I was dealing with.

Dave scribbled some more. ‘Be a waste of time,’ he said.

‘Yes, I know, Dave, but if we don’t do it, someone will ask why we didn’t. Like the Crown Prosecution Service or the judge or the commander.’ The commander, whose
distinguished career in the Uniform Branch had carefully skirted around crimes of any significance, had been placed in charge of Serious Crime Group West. I think it was someone’s idea of a
joke. Unfortunately, just because some administrative order had, theoretically, made him a detective, he thought he was one.

Dave finished his coffee, smoked one of my Marlboros and stood up. ‘Where to now, guv?’

‘The office, and we’ll wait until after lunch to go to Horseferry Road. It’ll give Henry time to assemble his tools. I hope you brought a car, because the bloody traffic lot
have long gone.’

Dave waved the car keys. ‘Of course, sir.’

He was calling me ‘sir’ again. He always did when I asked what he thought was a stupid question.

‘Ah, you’ve got here at last,’ said Henry Mortlock, glancing at his watch. ‘Now I can begin.’

‘It’s only two o’clock, Henry,’ I said. ‘And I have had a rather busy morning,’ I added caustically.

Mortlock ignored my attempt at sarcasm. ‘Time’s money, Harry.’ He strolled casually around the body, humming a theme from Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto –
which even I recognized, courtesy of Classic FM – before peering into the body’s mouth and carefully examining the teeth. Slowly he went over every part of the body from the top of the
head to the soles of the feet. He turned the body over and started again. All the time he spoke into the microphone that was suspended from the ceiling, commenting in detail about the marks on the
woman’s back, neck, wrists and ankles.

With a sigh, he turned the body over again, picked up a scalpel and began the ta. . .