A River of Bodies by Kevin Doyle

Author:Kevin Doyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd

16

A narrow lane left the main road near where Martin had crashed. Byrne pulled her car on to the verge at the junction and switched off the engine. It had rained earlier, just a drizzle, but it was clear again. They were about six kilometres from Kinsale.

‘Shall we?’ she asked.

They got out. Although it was late morning there was a steady flow of traffic in either direction. They walked a short distance uphill to where the crash had happened. Martin’s car had since been removed and, in the process, a number of trees had been cut down and almost all of the undergrowth in the immediate area removed. It was clear where exactly his car had left the road. In the daylight Noelie could better appreciate why the location was a known accident black spot. Coming from Cork, as Martin had been, the road was quite straight and level for more than a kilometre before suddenly dipping into a series of bends. Visibility to oncoming traffic wasn’t great in either direction.

However, Martin had been unlucky too. His car had left the road at the worst possible place – where the bend was at its sharpest and the protective boundary ditch close to non-existent. On the other side there was a hollow, a few metres deep, at the bottom of which a stream flowed. In other words, Martin’s car, as soon as it left the road, had plummeted to an abrupt and sudden halt. Earlier, on his way to meet Byrne, Noelie had received a new update: Martin had gone back into surgery for the third time in under two days.

Given the bends and location’s reputation it wasn’t unreasonable to think that Martin had simply lost control of his car, or that an oncoming car had unintentionally caused Martin to swerve and leave the road. It was, however, equally possible that Martin’s car had been deliberately forced off the road. If it had, then the operation would have needed military precision – the stretch of road where Martin had crashed didn’t exactly offer an attacker a surfeit of opportunity.

Noelie almost didn’t want to entertain this scenario – but in another sense it was almost impossible to avoid it. The problem was, Martin was the only person who knew the location of the digital backup copy of the double-8mm film. He was also their contact with Wikileaks. If their film ever did resurface at the whistle-blower site, they would have no way of finding out, or of accessing the communications. Seen in that context, Martin’s accident looked highly suspicious.

Byrne had walked on uphill to where the dip in the road began, a distance of about a hundred metres, where she seemed to be intermittently observing the traffic then checking her phone. Noelie wasn’t sure what she was doing or what was up with her. He usually found Byrne friendly, but on the drive to Kinsale she had hardly spoken, despite his repeated efforts to engage her in chit-chat. She had, of course, asked Noelie what had concerned him about Martin’s crash.

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