“No. He was on duty yesterday. Take Wilson. He’s not any worse. You can pick him up on the way. I’ll call him and get him out of bed.”
“All right, let it be Wilson. And get me someone from the lab also. Thomas would be best of all, do you hear? Oh, what the hell, let’s take the whole crew. And a doctor too. What about a doctor?”
“I already told you that they sent an ambulance. There’s probably a doctor there by now.”
“But I want one from the Yard, man, from the Yard! Not a healing doctor — just the opposite!”
“Right! I’ll take care of it. But you’d better hurry. As soon as I hang up I’m going to send the car.”
“Give me ten minutes.”
Gregory switched on the lamp. In the darkness, when the phone began ringing, he felt a tingling excitement, but the feeling had disappeared without a trace when he heard the duty officer’s first words. He ran to the window. It was still almost pitch-dark, but it had snowed during the night and the streets were covered with a layer of white. “Perfect,” he said to himself. He ran on tiptoe to the bathroom, guessing there’d be enough time for a shower before Thomas managed to pack up all his junk, and he wasn’t mistaken. When he walked out to the gate, wrapped in his raincoat with the collar pulled up around his neck, the car still hadn’t arrived. He glanced at his watch: nearly six o’clock. A moment or so later he heard the sound of a motor. It was a big, black Oldsmobile. Sergeant Calls was sitting behind the wheel, next to him Wilson, the photographer, and in the back seat two other men. The car was still moving when Gregory jumped in, slamming the door behind him, and with a jerk it accelerated to full speed, its headlights glimmering brightly.
Gregory was jammed into the back seat with Sorensen and Thomas.
“Do you have anything to drink?” he asked.
“There’s some coffee in a thermos next to the doctor,” said Calls from behind the wheel. He was speeding through the deserted streets at nearly seventy miles per hour, his siren howling. Gregory found the thermos, drained a full cup in one gulp, and passed it on to the others. The siren wailed in the night. This was the kind of ride Gregory loved. The headlights swept around the turns. It was gray everywhere, except for the white snow in the street.
“What happened out there?” Gregory asked. No one answered.
“The report came in from the local station,” said Calls after a moment.
“It seems that the guy on duty at the cemetery was pulled out from under a car by one of our motorcycle patrols. He had a broken head or something like that.”
“I see. What about the bodies?”
“The bodies?” Calls repeated slowly. “I guess they stayed there.”
“What do you mean ‘stayed there’?” Gregory asked, a little taken aback.
From the other side of the back seat, Thomas, the technical man, added a comment. “It looks like they scared the guy and he ran away.”
“We’ll see about that,” Gregory snarled. The Olds gave a loud roar as if it needed a new muffler. They were leaving the crowded buildings behind and approaching the suburbs. Near a big park they ran into a patch of fog. Calls slowed down, then stepped on the gas again when the fog cleared up. By the time they reached the outskirts of the city the traffic was beginning to get heavier: huge trailer trucks, brightly lit double-decker buses already crowded with commuters. Calls kept the siren blaring to clear the way.
“You didn’t get any sleep tonight, did you?” Gregory said to the doctor. Sorensen had dark circles under his eyes. He was slumped forward like a cripple.
“I went to bed around two o’clock. It’s always like this. And you can bet there won’t be anything for me to do when we get there.”
“We’d all rather be asleep,” said Gregory philosophically.
They raced through Fulham, slowed down just before the bridge, and crossed the Thames in a light fog. Below them the river was the color of lead. Some kind of small boat was passing by and they could hear the sound of a foghorn in the distance. A moment later a clump of trees on the bridge abutment was flashing by. Calls drove with great care. In fact, in Gregory’s opinion he was the Yard’s best driver.
“Does the Chief know yet?” Gregory didn’t direct the question to anyone in particular.
The answer came from Thomas, a short, vigorous man like the sergeant, but with a little mustache that made him look like a suburban hairdresser. “Yes, Allis was in touch with him. In fact, he gave all the orders.”
Gregory leaned forward. He was more comfortable that way, and he enjoyed watching the road through the space between the shoulders of the two men in the front seat. Passing trucks had tamped the wet snow on the pavement into a smooth crust, and he loved the way Calls took the curves, braking at the last minute as he raced into the turn, then, halfway around, stepping down on the gas and barreling ahead at full speed. Of course Calls never took a turn on two wheels — that would have been bad form for a police driver, except, perhaps, in unusual circumstances — but in any case, in snow like this you could end up in a ditch that way.
They were past Wimbledon already; the speedometer, oscillating gently, reached ninety, inched on toward one hundred, moved slightly backward, and, with a jiggle, again advanced, the needle making small jumps between the graduated points on the face of the gauge. Suddenly there was a big Buick in front of them. Calls honked his horn, but the other driver didn’t seem to hear. As they drew closer they could see a teddy bear dangling in the back window of the bright red sedan, and Gregory was reminded of the dream he’d had two days before. He smiled, experiencing a pleasant sense of strength and confidence.
Meanwhile, Calls caught up with the other car. When he was no more than fifteen feet behind it, he hit the switch and the siren emitted an earsplitting scream. The Buick braked violently, its rear wheels struggling for traction and splattering snow on their windshield; as it began to pull over the Buick skidded slightly in the deeper snow on the side of the road and its rear swung around toward the hood of the police car: a crash seemed inevitable, but Calls, giving the steering wheel a sharp, fast turn which threw them all to the right, speeded past. The shocked expression on the face of the young woman in the Buick remained with them even after they’d left the scene far behind. By the time it occurred to Gregory to look out the back window, she had managed to get back on the road again.
The fog began to lift and they found themselves in the middle of a snow-whitened plain. Here and there, almost vertical columns of smoke rose from the houses; the sky was so flat and still, so nondescript in color, that it was difficult to tell whether or not it was cloudy. Speeding through an interchange, their tires thumping nervously, they shot onto the expressway. Calls seemed to be drunk with power: crouching over the wheel, he pressed down even harder on the foot pedal; its engine roaring, the black sedan leaped forward at a hundred and ten miles per hour.
A town came into view in the distance, and Calls pulled over next to a road sign. Running off to the left of the expressway was a narrow road lined by a double row of old trees. About two hundred yards straight ahead, the expressway turned in the other direction. As soon as they stopped Gregory stood up — at least to the extent that standing was possible inside the car — and leaned forward to get a look at the map which the sergeant was spreading out on the wheel. They had to turn off to the left.
“Are we in Pickering yet?” asked Gregory. Calls was fiddling with the gearshift lever as if it were a toy.
“Another five miles.”
They followed the side road up a gently sloping hill, passing two or three long, barracks-style wooden buildings. As they reached the top of the incline the sun came out; the air, washed by the fog, was clean and sparkling, and it began to feel warmer. The whole town was spread out below them, the smoke from its chimneys turning pink in the bright sunlight. A narrow stream cut through the snow, leaving a twisting dark trail.
They drove on, crossing a small concrete bridge. On the other side, the figure of a helmeted constable, his overcoat reaching almost to his ankles, loomed before them, a red stop-disk in his hand. Calls stopped the car and rolled down his window.
“From here on you have to walk,” he informed his passengers, after exchanging a few words with the constable, then threw the car into gear and pulled over to the side of the road. They all got out. Everything seemed different now: white, quiet, peaceful; the first sign of the morning sun over the distant forest; the air crisp yet springlike. Globs of snow dropped onto the pavement from the overhanging branches of the chestnut trees along the road.
“Over there,” the constable said, pointing to where the road, curving gently, swung around the next hill. They stepped off the road onto a narrow footpath lined by white bushes, at the end of which they could see a brick roof. About three hundred paces straight ahead, a wrecked car was barely visible in the dark shadow cast by the trees.
