and when he tried to speak he couldn’t. What he tried to say came out as an unintelligible hiss. He finally managed: ‘Oh dear God,’ his voice still a dry whisper.
He felt Al Hibbert’s supportive hand at his elbow. The sheriff said: ‘Easy, John. Take it easy.’
‘I’m OK,’ croaked Carver, his voice better but only just. Stronger still he said: ‘What the hell happened to him? It’s like… it’s like he’s been flayed…’
Northcote’s face was practically non-existent and there was virtually no skin and most of the lion’s mane had been torn off, scalping the man. There seemed to be no skin either on much of Northcote’s chest, from which Carver had tugged the sheet. It was flat, not a body shape at all, and there was a lot of bone and grey, slimed viscera.
‘The mower got him first, then the tractor,’ said Hibbert.
‘No,’ refused Carver. ‘It isn’t possible. I saw the rig. The mower blades were covered, shielded against just such an accident. If he fell backwards he wouldn’t have been cut… skinned like that. He’d have maybe broken an arm or a leg on the protective covering but that’s all. And going backwards would have taken him away from the tractor, when it tipped over, not underneath it…’
‘That’s what Pete and I thought at first,’ said Hibbert, nodding to Simpson on the other side of the slab. ‘We stayed up there past midnight last night: got engineers in. Here’s how we worked it out. George goes too close to the dip, throwing the tractor sideways. The force of it going tips the mowing rig, which runs on its own motor. When George hits it, it’s upside down, the blades going full belt. Does that to him. The mower is wider than the tractor that’s pulling it. For a moment or two – God knows how long – it prevents the tractor going right over but swings it back towards where George has been tossed…’
‘He would have most likely been dead by then… unconscious, certainly,’ broke in Simpson. Belatedly the medical examiner put the sheet back over the corpse. ‘This is an odd one, sure. But I get a dozen accidents like this every year, guys driving operating – machinery they’re not used to… something goes wrong… bang, they’re dead…’
‘The tractor is heavier than the rig, finally makes it give way… we’ve got photographs of how it bent, when it finally wasn’t able to stop it going right over,’ picked up Hibbert. ‘And when it goes, there’s George right under the whole fucking thing.’
The perfect murder, thought Carver: the absolute, totally unprovable, perfect murder. Once you’re in, there’s only one way out. Out like George, in front of him although covered again by an inadequate sheet. Skinned alive. Not actually alive. Skinned by being thrust in and out of the mower blades to an agonizingly slow death. Would he have told them: given them what they wanted? He would have screamed. Been demented. Carver went to Simpson. ‘Charlie Jamieson examined him, day before yesterday. Says his blood pressure was so high he could have had a heart attack.’
‘Charlie called me, at breakfast,’ said Simpson. ‘George’s readings were at record-book levels.’
Carver was sure he was snatching at straws but would have been glad of one no matter how slender. ‘Could he have had a stroke, because of it? Could that have been the reason he went too close to the dip and turned over?’
Both men – the sheriff and the examiner – looked emptily back at Carver. Hibbert said: ‘I’m sorry, John. I just can’t quite get your point…’
It was a point he couldn’t make, Carver realized. He felt physically encased, as if his ribcage was being crushed by his impotence like that of the man lying, flat-chested, on the metal table in front of him. ‘George knew his land: knew where he couldn’t take his rig. Knew how to handle it, too. There must have been a reason for his going too close this time.’ Why was he saying this? In front of a law officer! What self-justification was he trying to make, to absolve himself from the self-recrimination of not having tried to have George Northcote’s death properly investigated? Which he well knew couldn’t be properly investigated.
‘It happened because he knew his land so well,’ said Hibbert. ‘He wasn’t thinking, wasn’t taking enough care because he’d done it a hundred times before. All it needed was inches to make the mistake he made. The engineers we had up there last night are professionals. I’ll show you the photographs: the way they’re sure it happened.’
The way it had been intended to be worked out, thought Carver. ‘There going to be an inquest?’
‘Into what, John?’ demanded Hibbert. ‘There’s nothing officially to inquire into.’
Carver felt the impotent straight-jacketed constriction again. ‘I can go ahead with the funeral arrangements then?’
‘As and when you wish,’ assured Hibbert, as if he were giving away a raffle prize. ‘It’s gotta be a shock, John. Hang in there.’
Carver’s feeling now was of burning irritation at the filedaway cliches. ‘That’s what I’ll do, Al: hang in there.’ Hang in where, with whom?
Hibbert said: ‘I’m sorry but I officially need to hear the words. Is the body you’ve just seen that of George Northcote?’
Of course it was! But then again it wasn’t: wasn’t the bull-shouldered – most certainly not the bull-chested – lion’s-maned founder of the best known, most prestigious accountancy firm on Wall Street. ‘That’s the body of George Northcote.’
Hibbert said: ‘I hate this. Of all the things I have officially to do, I hate this the most.’
‘Me too,’ said Simpson.
‘I’m sorry to have put you through it,’ apologized Hibbert. ‘I tried to indicate last night…’
‘I know,’ stopped Carver. ‘It’s OK.’
‘We lost a good man here,’ said Simpson. ‘The best.’
‘That’s what he was,’ Hibbert hurried on. ‘The best. We’re sure as hell glad you and Jane are still here in the community, to carry on.’
Carry on what? wondered Carver. Near to cliche himself, he said: ‘We’re still here.’
‘How is Jane?’ asked Simpson. ‘Charlie told me there was pretty heavy shock.’
‘She was still sedated when I left,’ said Carver. ‘Charlie’s with her but I need to get back. Is there anything else?’
‘We’re through,’ declared Hibbert.
Simpson said: ‘I’ll tell my guys to expect a call from your funeral directors.’
‘It’ll come sometime today,’ promised Carver. An even-voiced, calm, conversational exchange, he thought. We’re talking about a murder, you fucking idiots! A murder committed by people professional enough to be able to skin a man alive but make it appear to these boondock boneheads a typical country mishap. I get a dozen accidents like this every year. Just another one of those accident stories, to go into the Litchfield folklore.
‘Anything I can do to help, John, you just call. That’s all it needs, a call.’
‘I appreciate that.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I know you do.’
The sheriff and the medical examiner both solicitously escorted Carver from the building and stood together as he drove away. Simpson said: ‘That guy’s suffering shock, just like his wife. Worse, maybe. His is delayed. It’ll properly hit him in a couple of days.’
‘I must admit I’ve never seen anyone quite so badly hurt as George from falling into mower blades,’ said Hibbert.
Simpson shook his head, a patronizing you-don’t-know gesture. ‘Happens all the time.’
Carver drove home by the longer, round-about route that took him by the bottom of the lake, a way they rarely used, intent upon landmarks when he approached Northcote’s estate and grunting with empty satisfaction when he identified what he was looking for. The hollow into which George Northcote had been tipped was invisible from the house but it was very much in view from this rarely used back road. In view and easily reached through the simple pale fencing. And from where he was standing the mow-line was distinctly marked, going from this boundary up the incline but stopping at the hollow into which it had tipped. Carver remembered quite clearly that when he’d been there the previous evening all the talk – all the indications – had been that the rig had come in the opposite direction, down the incline.
From the moment of entering financial journalism through a fluke of shall-I-shan’t-I timing, Alice Belling had recognized that the World Wide Web was the trampoline upon which to bounce anywhere she chose through cyberspace.
