From the images of Savannah Harbourn’s car on the news, the make and model of the vehicle were unrecognizable. The engine had been driven back into the front seat, a four-door car reduced in length by half. It was no surprise the driver had been killed.
A more recent model would have had airbags, but they were unlikely to have saved anyone with crushed legs and severe chest or head trauma.
In spite of Savannah’s broken arm, Anya refused to accept this could have been an accident.
Unable to sleep, at first hint of daylight she drove to the crash site. Turning into the road on which Savannah died gave her an eerie feeling.
Parkland lined with trees was on one side, with a school the length of the block on the other. No wonder there were no witnesses to the crash. At night, the area would have been deserted save for passing traffic.
Round a bend, black skid marks were visible on the opposite side of the road. Twenty meters long, they veered to the left on a verge, then disappeared.
This is where Savannah had been killed.
School didn’t start for at least two hours, so Anya parked her car and crossed the now quiet road. She walked down the small dip to where the Colt had hit the tree outside the park, a distance of only ten meters from the road. The trunk showed little damage apart from an indentation around hip level.
Even at low speed the Colt would have been crumpled on impact with an immovable object. The surrounding ground had been disturbed by the accident squad, ambulances and police. The foliage had all but been destroyed.
At the base of the tree sat two bunches of flowers. One, daffodils; and the other, plastic poinsettias, the type that are all over gift shops before Christmas. She photographed them with her phone and bent down to see if either had cards attached.
The daffodils had a letter wrapped in cellophane.
I’m so sorry. I finally understand, and forgive you.
No more pain or hurt.
You can rest in peace now you are free.
White light forever, Violet.
Anya had to admire Violet Yardley. Despite being raped by Savannah’s brothers and not being helped by the person she considered her best friend-after the ordeal, Violet could forgive. Anya doubted if she were capable of being that generous in similar circumstances.
The plastic poinsettias had one printed word on a card. WHY?
The flowers could have been placed there by anyone, family or friends, even a child. Presumably plastic flowers were meant to last as a permanent reminder of what had occurred, but the base of the tree wasn’t visible from the road. The solo word was haunting.
Anya couldn’t get the same question out of her mind. She checked the GPS on her mobile and plotted the route between the elderly couple’s home where Savannah boarded and the Harbourn family home. They were only eight streets away.
Back in her car, Anya followed the route to the Harbourn home. Turning right at a set of lights, she noticed broken orange plastic, again on the opposite side of the road. She pulled over outside a house and parked. The pieces didn’t look as though they had been run over, and may have been fresh.
She called Kate, who was already up. “I’m near last night’s accident site and I think she could have been rear-ended at a set of lights about a kilometer away. It could explain why she was speeding.”
Kate was silent for a few seconds. “If she were rear-ended, she’d be more likely to stop because it wasn’t her fault. She was caught speeding so we know how fast she was traveling. Even you said she had a broken arm, which was an accident just waiting to happen.”
“I understand that, but bear with me a moment. What if she were being pursued? Was anyone else photographed speeding at the same time?”
“Unless you can find someone who saw the accident, there’s nothing to suggest anyone else was involved. The squad was all over this last night. There was only one set of skid marks. One car. Hell, maybe the one responsible Harbourn tried to avoid hitting an animal and crashed.”
“Fine.” Anya felt anger rise. This was a woman who had been assaulted, feared for her life and was now dead. How difficult was this to understand? She took a deep breath. Getting angry with Kate wouldn’t help. “Can you just check if there was any recent damage to the back right of her car? Please. This girl was terrified, and for good reason. On a busy night, even the squad could have missed this.”
More silence.
“I’ll make a call and get back to you.”
Anya performed a U-turn, pulling up short of the intersection with her hazard lights on. Morning traffic began to flow, and cars moved around hers without too much inconvenience. She then stood on the footpath, waiting. After honked horns and a few words of abuse as irritated commuters passed, the only person to offer assistance was a tow-truck driver. She politely declined. This was clearly not a place to break down if you wanted a good samaritan’s assistance.
Minutes later, the phone rang. It was Kate’s number. “You were right. There was damage, but without any glass or plastic on the road, it was assumed it had happened before the crash. The old, ‘You know what women are like in car parks’ line.”
“Thanks for this.” There could have been another car involved with Savannah’s last night.
“I’ll get the accident guys back, but in the meantime can you secure the scene?”
“Already done,” Anya announced as another motorist hurled abuse through his window. She gave Kate the intersection location and didn’t have to wait long.
Detective Sergeant Owen Hollis, head of the accident investigation unit, was the first to arrive, in a police van. He immediately introduced himself and donned a lime-green fluorescent vest.
“Thanks for the call. The rest of the unit is at a pile-up on the M4. They’re still trying to evacuate the injured.”
He shook hands with the sort of grip that almost invited an arm wrestle. There was no hint of resentment at being recalled. Despite accident investigation detectives dealing with death, they tended to behave differently from their Homicide colleagues. They had to be more relaxed about getting forensic evidence at scenes. Often they worked in the midst of a main road while peak-hour traffic still had to flow, or while storms raged around and over them. It made survival sense to be less obsessive about protecting the scene.
Hollis had already placed detour signs at the end of the street to divert traffic to the next set of lights. He pulled out a camera and photographed the plastic on the road. He then removed a tape measure and began recording distances of the broken plastic from the curb, to the middle of the road, and to the line that stopped traffic at the lights.
He squatted to take a closer look at the plastic. “It’s an indicator light, and we’ve got part of a headlight as well. And here,” he pulled out a thin metal spatula and collected something small, “flecks of white paint. We can compare them to any found on the Colt and see if these two did collide.”
There didn’t seem to be enough plastic to go on. Anya wondered what the chances were of being able to connect them to a specific car. “Is there enough of any of the damaged lights to work out a make and model?”
He methodically collected each tiny fragment in an evidence bag. “Never underestimate the power of sticky tape. You’d be surprised how much detail these tiny bits can reveal.” He looked up. “Three-D jigsaw puzzles are my specialty.”
Kate pulled up behind them in her unmarked car, with Shaun Wheeler. This time the junior officer had full color in his cheeks and was chewing gum.
“What have you got?” Kate asked.
“There was definitely a collision-the paint’s fresh. I’ll see what I can put together. There was some damage to the back rear end of the Colt, so we’ll see if we get a match.” He glanced up at the red-light camera to their left. “Worth checking that one, too. If your driver was pushed through the light, or took off after being hit.”
Kate nodded a look of approval. “Call me as soon as you know anything.”
The accident investigator saluted. “You’ll be the first. I’ll start working on these as soon I get back to the office.”
The detectives left and Anya remained behind.
“I’m about to review the crash site if you’d like to come along,” Hollis said. “Don’t get to see forensic physicians that often on this job, and a second pair of eyes is always better than one.”
“I wouldn’t mind. The driver who died had been recently assaulted and had reason to fear for her safety. If I can help, I’d like to.”
He opened the van passenger side door and handed her the original reports submitted by the uniformed police who were first on the scene. “Just need to collect the detour signs and we’ll be on our way. I’ll follow if you like.”
Anya returned to her car and read the forms while she waited. Portions of the information were missing, due to absence of witness statements. Weather and terrain conditions were unremarkable and unlikely to have contributed to the smash. Being a single-vehicle accident, most of the form’s sections were irrelevant. It was designed as a onesize fits all approach and intended for use in court and insurance claims.
They provided no information she didn’t already know, apart from the year of the car’s manufacture-1988. That meant no airbags or power steering, which would have made controlling the vehicle in an emergency more difficult, especially with a broken arm. She couldn’t imagine why Savannah had chosen to drive that night, at that time, with the fractured, unplastered arm.
Unless she had gone back to the family home to make sure her younger sisters were fed and safely in bed.
The police van appeared behind, and she led the way. About fifty meters from the site, Hollis stopped and switched on a POLICE ALERT flashing sign on his roof. He placed a series of emergency cones along the road, and gave Anya a fluorescent protective vest when she met him halfway.
“The skid marks are recorded as twenty meters long, but that’s only the visible ones.”
Anya didn’t know there were more than one type. “How can you differentiate between marks that are and aren’t visible?”
He took photos of the unmarked road from various angles and again laid out a distance-designed tape measure. Anya had no idea what he was documenting.
“There is always a shadow skid. Skid marks happen when the driver brakes hard and the tires stop rotating. They start light and typically get darker as the skid progresses, until the car stops. It also takes time for the tire to heat up enough against the road to leave visible marks. With sudden braking, the wheels begin to slow and don’t lock up the instant the brakes are applied. That’s when very faint shadow marks appear, before the black skid marks.”
“But do they help determine the speed or if the car was forced to change direction, say by being bumped or forced off the road by another car?”
“If the car had anti-lock brakes, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The problem is that when the wheels lock, it’s impossible to steer. But if the car were hit by something else, it could have forced a change in direction. In this case, however, the skid marks are all in a straight line. Looks like the driver braked, locked the wheels and couldn’t steer around the bend and so ran off the verge, down into the tree. Pretty straightforward.”
A furniture truck drove around them and Anya felt the gust of wind. She instinctively turned her back to avoid the dust in her face. Hollis did the same.
“In terms of speed,” he continued, “there is a multitude of variables to factor into calculations. Things like road surface, level, defects, drag factors, wind conditions. If you’re wondering about the speed of impact in this instance, it could have been as little as forty miles an hour, the limit for this particular road.”
Anya was aware that even speeds that low could be fatal, particularly when small cars hit solid objects like trees. If only more people understood that.
A car sped past, clearly exceeding the speed limit.
The question that remained in Anya’s mind was, why did Savannah brake that hard, fifty meters back, on a straight stretch of road?
There had to be another car on the road with her. The fragments of plastic had to hold the key to who ran into her before she crashed.