Chameleon's Shadow

‘Invite the lieutenant in, Nick. I’d hate Dr Jackson to think I inferred anything from Charles’s absence.’

Jackson gave an abrupt sigh. ‘He’s vomiting into a sick bag . . . and my car has a crumpled offside wing and a flat tyre,’ she said. ‘As things stand, I can’t change the wheel unless someone helps me lever out the wing. I’m running late, I don’t have time to wait for the AA, and I was hoping Derek would lend me a hand. I also need to report a damaged bollard fifty yards down the road that’s likely to cause an accident.’

‘All of which sounds right up our street,’ said Jones with a smile as he eased off his stool. ‘We’d better take a look, hadn’t we?’

Twenty-three

WHILE DI BEALE WENT to check on the bollard, the superintendent accompanied Jackson to the BMW, which was parked on a double yellow line beyond the Crown. The passenger door was open and Acland was sitting immobile in the seat, with his hands in his lap and his head pressed back. The fact that he’d put his jacket back on was of no interest to Jones, who was unaware that he’d ever taken it off, but Jackson noticed it.

She raised her voice unnecessarily. ‘Best I could do on the parking front, Superintendent Jones,’ she said loudly. ‘All the other spaces were taken.’

Jones watched the lieutenant’s head jerk away from the seat rest and turn to look at them, but the sudden movement set him heaving into the bag he was holding. There was no question he was ill. The undamaged areas of his face were deathly white, making the grafted skin of his tapering scar seem more prominent than usual, and his hands shook visibly as he lowered the bag into his lap when the bout of nausea ended.

Jones squatted in the open doorway to take a closer look. He thought he could make out areas of bruising around the young man’s jawline – a faint blue flush under the skin – although Acland’s growth of stubble created its own shadow. There was certainly no mistaking the diagonal weal of the seat belt on the left-hand side of the neck, or the raw split along his bottom lip where his teeth had sliced the flesh. ‘You seem to have come off rather worse than the doctor, Charles. She doesn’t have a mark on her.’

Jackson spoke before Acland could. ‘He didn’t know it was going to happen,’ she said, propping her hand on the side of the car and dropping to her haunches beside the superintendent. ‘He couldn’t see the bollard from where he was sitting.’

‘Have you called an ambulance?’

‘Not yet.’

Gingerly, Acland opened his mouth. ‘I don’t want an ambulance,’ he slurred. ‘It’s migraine.’

‘You look as though you could do with a hospital trip to me. What do you say, Doctor?’

Jackson addressed Acland direct. ‘I’d be happier if you went for an X-ray,’ she told him. ‘That was quite a bang you took to the side of your head. I’d hate to think there are any more fractures in that cheek of yours.’

His mouth lifted in a ghost of a smile. ‘Hardly felt it.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not taking you with me,’ she said firmly, as if to pre-empt any such request on his part. ‘The choice is a trolley in A&E or a bed here for the night . . . assuming Derek agrees to put you up. I can give you an anti-emetic before I go, and you can make your own way to the Bell in the morning. But I’ll have to tell Derek you’ll need watching. You understand that, don’t you?’

Acland nodded. ‘Nothing will happen.’ He drew a cross on his chest. ‘I promise.’

Jackson straightened abruptly, but Jones thought he saw annoyance – incomprehension? – in her face before she stepped back. ‘People can die from inhaling vomit,’ she said to neither in particular. ‘It’s important to keep an eye on them.’

‘You’re the expert,’ Jones remarked lightly, using the armrest on the door to push himself upright. ‘Shall we take a look at the wing?’

The damage wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. The collision had been absorbed by the BMW’s front offside impact unit, although it was clear that the side of the car had scraped along the bollard for several feet before Jackson managed to steer it free.

The bodywork was dented and scratched from the front wheel arch to the rear door, but to Jones’s eye the problems were cosmetic. The flat tyre was genuine, but he was highly doubtful that an untidy chassis would have prevented Jackson from changing the wheel.

‘You hit the kerb good and hard,’ he said, pointing to a four-inch distortion in the alloy rim. ‘A tyre can’t hold air when the rubber loses contact with the metal.’

Jackson took a breath. ‘I’m aware of that,’ she said, struggling to keep the irritation out of her voice.

Jones smiled. ‘Interesting accident, Doctor. The lieutenant has some strange injuries for an offside collision. Nearside or front-on, I might accept because of the seat-belt burn –’ he touched the left side of his own neck – ‘but offside? If the impact was hard enough, he should have spilled to the right.’

She shrugged. ‘I expect he did initially. I wasn’t looking. I was more interested in trying to control the car.’

‘Trying?’

‘Controlling the car,’ she corrected herself. ‘What I was trying to do was avoid the bollard.’

‘Naturally, but why were you driving towards it in the first place?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Doctor?’

‘Temporary loss of concentration,’ she said, ‘for which I hold my hands up. I was looking at Charles when I should have been looking at the road. I’ll inform my insurance company and the council that any damage to public property is my responsibility. Do you want me to take a breathalyser to prove that I was competent to drive?’