Already Dead(73)

‘That’s probably why the price of shopping has been going up so much,’ said Fry.

He looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Never mind, sir.’

‘I see. Well, the big companies like supermarkets have policies for this sort of thing. If a customer reports an injury in one of their stores they offer a small amount of compensation – a discount on the next purchase, a few points on a loyalty card. You see, they rely on members of the public not being aware of the amount of compensation they might get or the right steps to take at the time, such as getting the names of witnesses. Those sort of cases can be a waste of time for us. But smaller companies are a different matter.’

‘Why so?’

‘They’re not used to it. When they get an incident, their staff often don’t know what to do. And they tend to get worried about the potential damage to their reputation, which makes them more willing to settle without a court hearing.’

Fry looked at the photos again. She remembered thinking how painful they looked. They’d given her the impression Turner might have been tortured before he died.

‘But you said yourself these are minor injuries,’ she said. ‘And paintballs are just gelatin capsules, surely?’

‘Yes, we did a little bit of research when Mr Turner came to us, of course.’ He referred to a note in the file. ‘It seems paintballs consist of a gelatin shell containing mostly polyethylene glycol and dye. They’re designed to break on impact. Even the dye washes out of most clothes. But when fired from a gun – more properly known as a marker, I believe – paintballs may travel at speeds up to three hundred feet per second. As you can imagine, they have the potential to cause considerable damage to a human target, depending on the velocity and angle and the particular part of the body they hit.’

‘What exactly happened to Mr Turner, then?’

Chadburn adjusted his glasses. A small trickle of sweat had run down his forehead on to the centre of the frame and he dabbed it from the lens.

‘Well, as you may know, these paintballing sessions were part of a team building weekend organised by his employers, Prospectus Assurance. There had been other activities during the weekend, which might not be of any relevance to you.’

‘Role playing, blind driving, motivational talks.’

‘Just so.’ The solicitor gave her a rather sad smile. ‘Legal practices like ours never go in for that sort of thing. The older partners would be horrified. But I sometimes think it’s rather a pity.’

‘I don’t think it’s all that much fun,’ said Fry.

‘No?’ Chadburn looked disappointed. ‘Ah well, on to the paintballing. In his statement to us, Mr Turner described how the staff at the adventure centre split his party from Prospectus Assurance into two teams. They explained that the objective of the game was to capture the other team’s flag without getting hit by a paintball. Anyone hit is effectively out of the game, I understand. If you get shot, you’re … Well, you’re…’

‘Dead,’ said Fry.

He cleared his throat. ‘Precisely. Dead. Well, then they were given safety goggles and loaded guns. In the first game, a gun misfired and a paintball hit Mr Turner in the, er … crotch area.’

‘The crotch area?’ repeated Fry.

‘Yes, erm … the crotch area. A largely unprotected part of the body, you understand.’

‘And that was an accident?’

‘According to my client.’

Fry didn’t need to wonder for very long why there was no photograph of that particular injury. Even Glen Turner wouldn’t have wanted his mother taking pictures of his genitals. Perhaps he hadn’t mentioned that shot to her. It was the sort of thing he could only share with his doctor or his lawyer.

‘Go on,’ she said.

‘Well, Mr Turner told me that this injury was particularly painful. And he admitted that … well, he gave expression to the pain rather loudly, I gather.’

‘He …? Oh, you mean he screamed.’

‘Ah. Yes.’

Fry nodded. She could imagine how that would have gone down with Turner’s colleagues. There was nothing like someone else’s discomfort for causing hilarity. She hardly had to ask the rest of the story. By screaming like a girl the first time he was hit, Glen Turner had made himself the preferred target for every trigger-happy employee on the paintballing field.

‘And it seems in the next game my client took several hits, some of them at point blank range,’ said Chadburn. ‘One shot hit him on his uncovered neck and others hit him in the side, on his back and on his stomach. At first he thought his neck was actually bleeding, but it was just the oily paint running down his skin. The bruises stung for hours afterwards, he said. But when he complained the other players just laughed at him and said he should think of them as battle wounds.’