Книга - BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel
Mark Sennen


‘We’re going to find them, sort them, pay them back …’DI Charlotte Savage is back chasing a killer with a very personal grudge …Part thriller, part police procedural, a must-read for fans of Mark Billingham and Chris Carter.When the body of a six-year-old girl is found buried beneath a patio, nobody is surprised when a local paedophile is murdered shortly afterwards. But when a member of DI Charlotte Savage’s team is abducted and several men are executed in cold blood it becomes apparent that there’s a psychopath on the loose with no mercy for his victims …It becomes clear that the killer isn’t selecting his victims at random and soon Savage is in a race against time to stop him. But what if this man has a message for Charlotte herself? One she won’t forget in a hurry. It’s payback time. Deadly payback time.









MARK SENNEN

Bad Blood










Copyright (#ulink_7d995b5b-76c6-5fd5-93e0-183a9a1a1cfc)


AVON

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Copyright © Mark Sennen 2013

Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.



Source ISBN: 9780007518166

Ebook Edition © 2013 ISBN: 9780007518180

Version: 2015-04-16




Dedication (#ulink_bc9afd71-9d97-593f-84fd-6bb7e951f96e)


For Gitte. Thank you!


Table of Contents

Cover (#uf81d679d-8786-511b-b3b7-97c9079f19c9)

Title Page (#ubb09fd73-f322-5db5-994e-486ec1570608)

Copyright (#u241c98b9-92b0-5cd4-86ee-3c2b7405b73f)

Dedication (#u3243e1a7-955e-5b47-af22-5a88194f834e)

Prologue (#ua132a4c3-5abe-5864-9278-ce2ebc9031a9)

Chapter One (#ud70385bc-a5fc-55d9-b54d-daab0e96ff5e)

Chapter Two (#u553172d6-8387-5e7e-9e39-31d0416dd724)

Chapter Three (#uad8058f3-49aa-5831-a380-e3695bdd829b)

Chapter Four (#ud4db4f2c-cf55-59d4-ad24-becf2f7d5886)

Chapter Five (#u80a10d9a-d81b-5060-a5fe-5ae235bbee83)

Chapter Six (#uc0427c3c-680c-57f2-85ee-af0c8efda6f0)

Chapter Seven (#uc5248810-3bef-59f9-b024-42f06129ce2b)

Chapter Eight (#u5f6225f1-5781-5630-b3d1-0938638b9c44)

Chapter Nine (#u353069e8-b145-5b61-967c-2d172b6521d2)

Chapter Ten (#u36bd0814-e8e3-5c60-967a-1ef78fdc5bd7)

Chapter Eleven (#ued81b2a4-0a6b-53cb-80b6-b10bcafe18e0)

Chapter Twelve (#uf5f471b8-6d14-5a53-9ac3-a96c56a43a48)

Chapter Thirteen (#u29261596-1c32-5698-a2db-21d86218d641)

Chapter Fourteen (#u150b472c-9e47-5ef6-a568-d88869d5db42)

Chapter Fifteen (#ude4015bc-4edb-5dcb-abd9-d219a70b682f)

Chapter Sixteen (#ub78d0593-38de-59bb-87ec-5691d9a20510)

Chapter Seventeen (#u2bea7150-c354-5aa5-bd7f-5cc93d0ea6a8)

Chapter Eighteen (#uf6df5fa7-fac4-5dc6-819b-20c790141b3f)

Chapter Nineteen (#ufaed508e-42e9-5c48-8569-1c948a0e0e86)

Chapter Twenty (#uc7299ca7-b418-5303-bed0-cf0118d014bf)

Chapter Twenty-One (#u94431387-6126-55d7-80cc-ac4e227045a4)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#u019bc237-37d5-5222-aaf5-0da1689019c7)

Chapter Twenty-Three (#u1f709cbf-fb05-560c-a060-8313583dcccf)

Chapter Twenty-Four (#u7cfb8b3a-db76-5120-a39e-35e8221751ff)

Chapter Twenty-Five (#ua02eacd7-922d-5ca9-b9d0-0aa199572429)

Chapter Twenty-Six (#u3e69e728-4d3d-56d9-9086-101f334fc41c)

Chapter Twenty-Seven (#u2cd0ee6b-b6ac-5980-a9e8-da05c1a43eb5)

Chapter Twenty-Eight (#uf0236085-36a4-513c-abb4-358c9ae252eb)

Chapter Twenty-Nine (#ua64fefc0-37de-5116-b070-0a4d8d4a9340)

Chapter Thirty (#uccdea2ac-1eec-5bf8-9d6f-3da9f894dde5)

Chapter Thirty-One (#uaf3afc9f-5e38-5987-afe3-5317032e68a4)

Chapter Thirty-Two (#uce9cf84d-eb7b-5357-8bd7-78df2446c6cd)

Chapter Thirty-Three (#u4ef03fed-39ff-5816-809f-26a692d61625)

Chapter Thirty-Four (#u2d4c01e0-d391-5537-838f-8658898b65a8)

Afterwards (#u78585134-7bc3-50a2-87bd-98c099922be6)

Keep Reading (#u616a50d5-c741-54a5-9d41-01e9f47d4470)

Acknowledgements (#u3e56306d-1cc7-593d-97d0-434ae4cd661f)

About the Author (#u3884db03-7b80-53f5-8c1c-698617fce906)

Also by Mark Sennen (#uf81a0e81-db35-50fb-a157-3ba2ec6bce54)

About the Publisher (#ude55e389-b3e6-5449-8e90-9deb93c88bb8)




Prologue (#ulink_457c0357-e15e-5058-8f0e-87aff7ec9b13)


The pain always came when Ricky Budgeon least expected it. Right now a wave swept from within and hit him between the eyes like a needle pushing hard into the bridge of his nose. He put his hands up and gripped his scalp, pulling and clawing at the burning sensation which spread across his forehead to his temples. The last attack had had him writhing on the floor, but this time the jabbing ceased after a few seconds and he merely needed to steady himself. He moved his hands from his head, clasped them tight around the cool metal bar of the gate, and stared across the field into the night.

A scan had showed nothing but the old scarring, afterwards the doctor muttering reassuring words about migraine and mentioning therapy, maybe acupuncture.

Crap.

The idiots must have missed whatever was in there that was causing him such misery. Some sort of mutation of the cells, a cancer or a tumour, the latter growing fat on bad memories, enmity and bitterness.

When the doctor disagreed with his self-diagnosis and said surgery was out of the question he’d thought of taking a drill to his own skull, imagined placing the bit against his head and pressing the trigger. The whine of the motor would come first, followed by agony as the drill ripped into skin and bone. Then the spinning metal would seek out the tumour and chew it to a pulp. The pain would be gone forever. He had even gone so far as to go to his workshop and set up the equipment. With the drill in its stand all he had to do was press the switch, put his head beneath the bit and pull down on the lever. Eventually he had decided against it. Whatever the thing was inside his head frightened him, but it motivated him too. Remove the pain, and what would drive him forwards?

Budgeon stood in the darkness, gulping air and then biting his lip until he tasted blood. The throbbing in his head subsided and ebbed away. He bent and picked up his fag: a half-smoked roll-up, dropped as the agony had come on. Drawing on the cigarette, he looked out again and took in the landscape spread before him.

Close at hand, the hedges and trees appeared black against the sky. In a nearby field, the occasional sheep bleated, and from a copse off to his right the hoot of an owl rang out. But beyond the empty countryside lay the city, a corona of brightness where a thousand glittering lights promised excitement and danger, their individual pinpricks of heat coalescing like a mass of stars at the centre of a distant galaxy. Moving outward from the core, white dots crawled between avenues of static orange; cars heading for the soft radiance of the suburbs and home.

A twinge in his forehead caused him to screw his eyes shut.

Home.

He opened his eyes again and took another drag from the roll-up, pinching the end between the tips of his thumb and forefinger so he could extract every last piece of worth without burning himself. The way he had smoked in prison.

Years ago, before he had gone down, he’d had friends in the city. Friends who’d grown up on the same street as him. As kids they’d pinched sweets from the same shop and sworn at the same old ladies whose flowerbeds they trampled across. Later on, as young men, they’d thrown bricks at the same police cars, shared the same prison cells and sworn vengeance on the same enemies. They’d been like brothers, the three of them. Blood brothers.

Those days seemed so long ago now. As if someone else had lived the time for him.

Budgeon took a final drag from his fag and then dropped the butt to the floor, stamping the orange glow into the mud.

Everything had been fine until she came along.

Why did it always come down to a woman? Almost biblical. Garden of fucking Eden and all that shit.

In the end, he had been the lucky one, sliding around on silk sheets, relishing how sweet she tasted, promising her everything. But afterwards, as they shared a cigarette, he realised things weren’t going to be the same. Not with the others wanting her too.

He shook his head and took one last look at the distant lights, before moving back to the van and clambering in. The thin, pale man in the driver’s seat grunted and asked him if he was ready to go.

Was he? Peering down on the city and reminiscing about his childhood, thinking about the group of them as little boys, without a care in the world, had made him reconsider for a moment. Now, as the warmth of the van slipped around him, he felt cocooned and cut off from everything but those memories. He could easily get misty-eyed again. Half a lifetime later perhaps it was time to forgive and forget, move on.

An ache flickered across his brow.

No, life didn’t reward that kind of thinking. He’d gone soft over the girl and when his guard had been down he’d been betrayed. There were rules, unwritten maybe, but rules all the same. If you broke them, you paid; and some debts took more than money to settle.

Much more.

Of course he was ready to go. And the sooner they got the show on the road, the better.




Chapter One (#ulink_4f80eae9-1c49-5009-94d1-765906af1af6)


Nr Bovisand, Plymouth. Sunday 13th January. 4.05 p.m.

The noise carried through to Savage in the kitchen. Laughter. Samantha and Jamie’s high-pitched squeals layered over her husband’s voice as he sang an inane song in a mock-Swedish accent. The cause of the frivolity was Stefan, the family’s unofficial au pair, who had just returned from his home country laden with chocolates for the kids and two matching sets of stupid-looking knitted gloves and hats for Savage and Pete. Pete had shoved the hat down on his head, pointed out the window at the daffodils in the garden, and teased Stefan about being a little late with the winter gear. Stefan responded in kind, putting on a thick West Country drawl, muttering something about pilchards.

Savage had retreated to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, thinking Pete was right about the change of season. Mid-January, Christmas not much more than a few weeks ago, and already the east side of their garden a swath of gold, ochre and lemon. Other changes too: Pete returning from deployment at the back end of November, after nearly nine months away.

The celebrations had run on into the Christmas period, resulting in one long spell of parties, relatives, more parties and more relatives. Now the holiday season was over Savage was pleased for life to settle down a little. Pleased too that spring had arrived early in Devon. The forecasters had spoken of a hard winter, but despite some snow in November, so far they had got it wrong. Out of the kitchen window the sun hung low in the sky, a cool yellow rather than the deep red of a summer sunset. Below the sun the Sound lay placid, only a hint of a swell disturbing the surface. A yacht, black against the light, motored in past the eastern end of the breakwater. The crew on the yacht waved to a trio of dinghy sailors struggling to catch a zephyr to take them home before the chill of nightfall. Last night the frost had returned, but the first two weeks of January had been unseasonably warm, pushing the temperatures close to the mid-teens. Weather more suited to t-shirts than to a gift of hats and gloves.

A couple of days earlier Savage had received an altogether different type of Christmas present. One of the best ever, although Pete hadn’t seen it that way. He told her in the kitchen, as she prepared a pizza, her hands floured with dough. The news stunned her and she could hardly take his words in.

‘Scrapped?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Pete said. ‘Decommissioned. Mothballed. Sold off. Cut up and made into ploughshares for all I know. Seems as if I’m to be based ashore now. For good. Bloody stupid cuts.’ Pete’s face looked ashen and his eyes brimmed with emotion.

‘I’m sorry.’ Even as she said the words she knew she wasn’t. Pete might be losing his ship but for the past fifteen years and more she had lost her husband – and the kids their dad – for months and months on end. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known what she was getting herself into when they got married, but back then heart very definitely ruled head, and the day-to-day practicalities of juggling a job and young children appeared to be years off. Pretty soon though, the twins, Samantha and Clarissa, had come along, unplanned, and in her mid-twenties she’d found herself with two babies and an absent father. Later she’d had Jamie and then the tragedy of Clarissa’s death to cope with, Pete around for what seemed like mere fleeting moments.

‘You’re not,’ Pete said.

‘No.’ Savage moved over and hugged him, pressing her face into his neck and kissing him, aware of her floury hands making prints on his jumper. ‘I’m sad for you, of course, sad for your crew too, but I’m not sorry. Have you known long?’

‘Before the last voyage I got an inkling of what might happen. At least the old girl went on a grand final trip.’

Pete had taken the frigate on a circumnavigation of South America, cruising down to the Falklands, through the Straits of Magellan and up the Pacific coast of Chile, using the Panama Canal to get back to the Atlantic. Before that the ship had been on patrol in the Gulf and seen action in Pirate Alley. As with every warship returning to Devonport after active service, she had steamed into the Sound to a hero’s welcome, although one unnoticed by anyone living outside the city.

Now, as Savage poured water into the big blue teapot, she felt a warmth from knowing Pete would be in Plymouth and bound to a desk for the foreseeable future. With a more normal job perhaps they could have some sort of existence like a normal family. For years she’d coped on her own, but combining her job and home life was almost impossible. Having her and Pete’s parents living close by helped, and more recently they’d employed Stefan. It still wasn’t easy though, and with Jamie being six and Samantha thirteen, there was hardly ever a time when she could relax.

The steam from the pot curled upwards and she chinked the lid in place, watching the final wisp of vapour dissipate, along with her thoughts, as the phone rang. DC Patrick Enders calling from Major Crimes.

‘Don’t you ever have days off, Patrick?’ Savage said.

‘It’s the overtime, ma’am. Worth its weight. If there’s any available I snap it up. I can always take a day off in the week when the kids are at school. So much more peaceful.’

Enders was late twenties, already with three children and a mortgage and designs on a four-bedroomed place in Mannamead where his family could spread out. But then, Savage thought, when she’d been that age she’d had the same aspirations. When the twins were born, she and Pete had been lucky enough to find a large wreck of a house on the coast, before prices sky rocketed and such properties became unaffordable to all but the very few.

‘Well, what can I do for you?’ Savage said. ‘I’m just about to sit down with my own kids and have cake and tea so you had better not have something for me.’

‘No, just a reminder, ma’am. The DSupt says not to forget about the Sternway meeting tomorrow. He’s sending you a bunch of stuff, so check your email.’

‘Great,’ Savage said, without much enthusiasm. She already had a mountain of papers to read concerning Operation Sternway – the force’s long-term drugs operation – but she promised Enders she would check her email, hung up, and gave a silent ‘thank you’ that she didn’t have to rush out. The irony, given her recent talk to Pete about how much his job had taken over his life, wouldn’t be welcomed.

The call from Enders reminded her there was other paperwork to complete too: notes for an upcoming PSD inquiry. The Professional Standards Department wanted to know why she had left the scene of a car accident in which a man had been killed. No matter that the man had been a serial killer who had tried to abduct her own daughter Samantha, Standards wanted answers. Over Christmas and New Year she had pushed all thoughts of the inquiry to the back of her mind, but now, with the interview looming, she knew she needed to spend time preparing.

Savage sighed and then went back to the living room, to find Stefan teaching the kids some toilet humour. The scatological references sounded twice as funny in Swedish and soon all five of them were conversing in a mixture of languages, interspersed with prolonged periods of giggling. Savage turned from the mayhem and looked out through the big window. Shadows crept across the lawn, painting black shapes on the grass which glistened with silver moisture in the fading light. Beyond the garden, the cliff fell away to a mirror which stretched to the horizon where the sun was just kissing the sea, somewhere out past Edison Rocks. Sunday afternoon bliss.




Chapter Two (#ulink_c16e8bec-cf6c-5bf6-8165-056437b6438f)


Efford, Plymouth. Monday 14th January. 8.35 a.m.

On any other Monday, the three builders cradling mugs of steaming tea and sitting on the low brick wall outside seventy-five Lester Close might well have been discussing the weekend’s footie. Plymouth had gone down three-nil at home and the handful of points the team had collected in their last ten games wasn’t enough to appease the fans. A demo had been arranged and there were calls to sack the manager, the players, the board, the boot boy, anyone who could conceivably be to blame for the team’s recent abject performance.

On any other Monday.

Jed Rammel was the oldest of the three – twenty years the oldest – and he’d never seen anything like it. Except, of course, when he’d been over in Iraq, but that was different. You expected things like that there. Not here, not on a Monday morning when all you’d come to do was dig up somebody’s back yard to put some concrete footings in, preparatory work for a new conservatory. Jed guessed the owner would be cancelling the work now. Nobody in their right mind would want to be sitting out the back any more. Lying bathed in sunlight, relaxing, dreaming, and sipping a beer. Thinking about what had once been buried there. Give over.

Jed scratched his head, slurped another gulp of tea, tried to forget the toothy smile showing from behind the dried-up lips, and those empty eye sockets which seemed to be staring right out at him.

They’d started that morning at seven-thirty, with barely enough light to work by. Carted picks, crowbars, sledgehammers and shovels round the back. Jed had checked the instructions and marked out the limits of where they were to dig with lines of chalk powder and a couple of stakes. Young Ryan had first dibs, lifting the broken paving slabs with the edge of his pickaxe and then going ten-to-the-dozen with the crowbar on the old concrete beneath.

Youth, Jed had thought, all now-now-now, no care for the future. And so it proved. Ten minutes later and Ryan was knackered, so Jed and Barry took over, breaking the concrete while Ryan shovelled the residue out the way.

They’d found the bones of a small dog soon after. Nothing to get excited about, Jed said, even as Ryan began to lark around. The larking ended when they found the box nearby. Plastic, buried in the soil under the layer of concrete about two feet from the dog. Jed wondered if the thing wasn’t some sort of drainage sump, but when they took off the lid and saw the contents they realised it wasn’t. They’d thought the thing inside was a doll at first. A big doll, sure, but a doll nonetheless. Jed’s granddaughter had one, a large, lifelike thing he and the wife had bought the kid the Christmas before last. But no, it wasn’t a doll. They’d realised that when Ryan’s spade pierced a hole in the chest where he poked it. Crackled like parchment the skin had, and through the split the three of them had seen the bones of the ribcage.

Definitely not a doll.

Jed sipped his tea again. Thought about Iraq. About things he’d never told his workmates, nor his wife. Things he’d only shared with the men he’d served with. The type of horror he’d thought belonged thousands of miles away, in another country.

‘Losing three-nil,’ Ryan said. ‘At home. You can hardly fucking believe it, can you?’

No, Jed thought, you couldn’t.

Savage drove into the car park at Crownhill Police Station a little after eight fifty-five to see DC Jane Calter jogging over, her breath steaming out in the cold air. She pulled the passenger door open and collapsed in the front seat.

‘Off to a property in Efford, ma’am. Right next to the cemetery. Handy, because there’s a body under the patio. And I’m not joking. Wish I was.’

‘Who’s in charge?’ Savage said.

‘DCI Garrett.’ Calter raised a hand and thumbed in the direction of the station. ‘He’s inside sorting things. We’re to get over to the scene right away.’

‘Right,’ Savage said. ‘You sure you’re OK? You don’t look so good.’

‘Bad weekend, ma’am.’

‘Oh?’

‘Brilliant, I mean.’ Calter pulled the sun visor down to shield her eyes from the glare as they headed back towards town, the sun still low in the south-east. ‘Too much booze, not enough sleep. I never learn.’

The DC leant back in her seat and ran both hands through her blonde bob, pulling at a couple of tangles and squinting at the vanity mirror on the back of the visor.

‘I barely managed a shower this morning, let alone a hair wash, and these clothes are the first ones that fell out of the wardrobe.’ Calter indicated her rather crumpled grey skirt and jacket.

‘I hope you didn’t get into too much trouble.’

‘No,’ Calter grinned, ‘unfortunately not. But I am seeing him again next week.’

As they drove to Efford Calter sat quietly, fumbling once in a pocket for some painkillers, dry-swallowing them and then closing her eyes. Only a dozen years or so difference in their respective ages, Savage thought, but Calter’s lifestyle was a world away from her own. Not that she was beyond getting drunk herself, having a good time, partying – Christmas being a case in point. But there was always the knowledge that the next morning any hangover would be punctuated by a seven o’clock visit from Jamie wanting to be up and at the world, Samantha needing a lift somewhere, and Pete feigning his own hangover as near life-threatening.

Efford was an innocuous part of Plymouth sandwiched between the A38 and the Plym estuary. A mixture of older social housing, now mostly owner-occupied, and some newer but smaller properties, made the place out to be working class. Really though, Savage thought as they negotiated streets still busy with school-run traffic, you couldn’t tell any more.

The web of crescents and avenues which made up the area was interspersed with plenty of green space, the largest being the twenty-acre cemetery which Lester Close backed on to. The close itself had been cordoned off, already a number of people hanging round the junction with the main road. Heads turned as Savage was waved through and drove into the close. The road rose in a gentle slope, the houses on each side post-war semi-detached, pebble-dashed, and featuring uPVC windows with net curtains. The front gardens, neat little patches of lawn, with a shrub or two for good measure.

‘Pleasant,’ Calter said, opening her eyes, ‘but I’m more of a penthouse flat type of girl myself.’

‘Rich, is he?’

‘Forces.’

‘Don’t go there,’ Savage said, smiling. ‘And as you know I speak from experience.’

Calter laughed as they reached the far end of the narrow cul-de-sac, where a patrol car on the left hand side marked the property; a house in need of some TLC, the front garden full of clutter stripped from inside. Behind the patrol car a Volvo estate straddled the kerb, the rear door up, a jumble of plastic containers and toolboxes crammed in the back.

‘Layton,’ Savage said. ‘The sooner he gets to a scene the happier he is.’

John Layton was their senior CSI and where crime scenes were concerned he could be labelled a misanthrope, believing only himself and his team had any right to be present and hating all other invaders. Especially interfering detectives. Savage got out and retrieved her protective clothing from the boot.

‘You might as well start with them, Jane,’ Savage said, pointing to the builders sitting on the front garden wall as she suited up. ‘I’ll risk Layton’s wrath.’

At the house, the youngest of the builders nodded a greeting as Savage went down the passage to the side. The other two stared into their mugs, one of them shaking his head and muttering something under his breath.

Round the back, a patio stretched the width of the plot. Or rather, it once had, because one end was now a mass of broken slabs and concrete, the spoil from a large hole creeping across the postage-stamp-sized lawn beyond. Beside the hole, Layton and Andrew Nesbit, the pathologist, knelt, peering down into the mud. Layton stood up as Savage neared, tipped his battered Tilley back with the finger of a blue-gloved hand and pointed at the brown goo.

‘Bloody mess.’ Layton scratched his roman nose with the back of his hand and shook his head. ‘Builders don’t wear ballet shoes, do they?’

Nesbit glanced round and smiled, his eyes sparkling behind his half-round glasses. He raised his bushy eyebrows, looked at Layton and then turned back to the hole.

‘Mondays, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘What is it about Mondays?’

Savage walked over and peered at the puddle forming down in the excavation, a grey sludge-like liquid which oozed from the surrounding soil.

‘The thing on the right is a dog,’ Layton said. ‘The builders found the animal first. But that wasn’t why they called us.’

Savage could see a set of tiny bones and a pointed skull. A leather collar had rotted to almost nothing but the buckle and a little brass name tag. Next to the skeleton, a large translucent plastic storage box, the kind you shoved under the bed or stacked up in the garage full of junk, lay close to the concrete foundations for the boundary wall. A snap-on lid concealed the contents, something pale and indistinct pushing up against one side, promising nightmares for weeks to come.

‘According to the ID disc the dog’s name is Florence,’ Layton said. ‘Don’t know if she is named after the place or the character from the Magic Roundabout. Whatever, I’d say the animal was buried a good few years ago. The crate was probably only buried within the last few months.’

‘The lid?’ Savage asked.

‘The builders removed the top of the box. I put it back so the photographer could take some pictures. Andrew?’

Nesbit reached down, long fingers inside his nitrile gloves feeling around the edge of the lid, clicking the plastic back, lifting it off.

Savage gasped at the tangle of flesh and bones inside, the tiny hands clutching at a red house-brick, the torso curled round in the box, foetal-like. The child’s skull had plenty of skin left on, hair twisted in long, curly strands, teeth bared in a mocking grin. The flesh on the limbs and body hung loose, looking stiff and like starched clothing or light brown paper. The child was naked, but there was a bundle of rags up one end of the box. That fact alone spoke volumes to Savage. It was unlikely this was a terrible accident, somebody trying to cover up an RTC for instance; not when the infant had been stripped. She considered the skin again, which was the colour and consistency of filo pastry. The corpse reminded her of mummies she had seen in a museum and she said as much.

‘Desiccated,’ Nesbit said. ‘The body was kept somewhere hot and dry after death and that caused the effect you are looking at.’

‘So how long?’

‘Very difficult to know at this stage. Maybe we will find some entomology or something else organic to help us establish the time of death. All I can tell you for sure is that she was buried here a good while later.’

‘She?’ Nesbit’s confirmation of the gender chilled Savage; not that ‘he’ would have been any less horrific. It was the fact an identity was now beginning to take form, a life created from the sad heap of skin and bone. Something solid to mourn over. Something solid to try and seek justice for. If possible.

‘The hair looks like a girl’s, and then there’s that,’ Nesbit pointed down to one side of the plastic box next to the rags. A patch of pink flashed out, vivid and incongruous alongside the bone and flesh. ‘It’s a trainer. I didn’t want to disturb anything too much, but I managed to note the size. Twelve. Children’s that is.’

Twelve. Which would mean the child would be half that: five, six or seven. Savage peered down again at the body in its makeshift plastic coffin. Once the girl would have snuggled up to her mummy or daddy, perhaps clutched a teddy to her for comfort as she fell to dreaming. Now she only had a brick to cuddle.

‘We’ll move the box and all to Derriford,’ Nesbit said, standing and nodding to the two mortuary technicians who had come round the corner of the house. ‘It will save disturbing her. Better that way.’

‘Yes, better,’ Savage said, wondering how anything could be much worse.

When Savage went back round to the front of the house, she found Calter doing her best to intervene in an argument between one of the builders and a young man in a smart suit.

‘Mr Evershed, ma’am,’ Calter said, and then nodded to a little way down the road, where a heavily-pregnant woman was leaning against a big BMW with a high-end paint job and a massive spoiler on the rear. ‘And his wife.’

Evershed couldn’t have been more than early twenties. He had close-cropped dark hair and a brash suit with lapels which were too wide. His wrist bore a chunky watch, gold like his cufflinks. He gave little more than a flick of the head to acknowledge Savage as Calter introduced her.

Calter explained that Mr and Mrs Evershed were the owners of number seventy-five. They had bought the property only a month ago with the intention of renovating, but hadn’t yet moved in.

‘Waiting until the sprog is born,’ Evershed said, turning to Savage now. ‘Once that’s out the way I’ll be free to deal with this. We’ll do the place up, add fifty K to the value, sell it on and move up. Easy money.’

‘So you were getting some work done before you moved in?’ Savage asked.

‘That’s just the point.’ Evershed raised an accusing finger at the builder. Bared his teeth like a dog. ‘I don’t know what the hell these cowboys are doing here. I never asked them to do any work. First thing I know about it is when I get a call from our new next-door neighbour saying there’s a police car parked out front. As far as I am concerned these idiots are bloody trespassing on private property and you should arrest them for criminal damage.’

‘And?’ Savage turned to the builder, a man in his fifties, weary, as if he’d seen it all.

‘Don’t blame me.’ The man held one hand up and then reached into the breast pocket of his donkey jacket, pulled out a little spiral-bound notepad and showed the booklet to Savage. ‘Job’s down on my worksheet. Number seventy-five Lester Close. Pull up old patio slabs and remove soil and rubble. Dig holes for footings and lay concrete in preparation for new conservatory. Boss fixed us up with it Friday. Short notice, like, but he said it was an urgent job. We had to be in and out by the end of today.’

‘Well you’ve got the wrong address, haven’t you?’ Evershed said, jabbing his finger again. ‘So I suggest you call your boss and tell him he’s cocked up. Then you can go round the back and clear up whatever mess you’ve made.’

‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid,’ Savage said. ‘Not for a day or two at least. The whole of this property is now a crime scene.’

‘What?You’re joking, right?’

‘Sorry, no.’ Savage closed her eyes for a second and wondered how to explain about the little girl. She decided something approaching the truth was best. ‘We’ve found the body of a child beneath the patio.’

Evershed’s wife had walked up from the car and now she reached out for her husband, grasping for his arm with one hand, the other moving to her swollen belly.

‘Nightmare,’ Evershed said, shaking his head and wondering aloud about the resale value of the place.

Ten minutes later he was still talking figures as he ducked into his car. His wife stood on the other side of the vehicle for a moment, looking first at the house, then Savage, and then staring far into the distance at something beyond the rooftops at the end of the street. She got in, the door clunking shut with a noise which had a finality about it, Savage thinking about endings in her own life too.




Chapter Three (#ulink_763f0c72-8668-54ca-9029-cdcd43b34085)


Mount Edgcumbe, Plymouth. Monday 14th January. 11.30 a.m.

‘Ready to say goodbye to Martin Kemp then?’ DS Darius Riley said, leaning against the railings and gazing across the river Tamar. Drake’s Island and Plymouth Sound lay to the right, the Torpoint chain ferries and the dockyards to the left. Just behind the two men, a black flag with a white cross hung limply from a flagpole next to the Edgcumbe Arms. The flag was there to remind anyone, should they need reminding, that they were standing on Cornish soil, another county from that which lay across the water. For some, it was another country.

For a moment Riley’s companion said nothing, his eyes focusing on a patch of water midstream where a buoy, stationary against the tidal flow, had created a downstream eddy. Small pieces of flotsam swirled into the centre of the eddy and disappeared beneath the surface.

‘Yes. Just a little joke that. Something to add a bit of flavour, a name to hang a conversation around, should I ever need to. But you can still call me Marty. If it helps.’

The man pulled a packet of cigarettes from his leather jacket and offered Riley one.

‘No thanks … Marty.’ Riley shook his head and smiled as the man lit up. Since their last meeting just before Christmas, Kemp’s hair had changed somehow, losing the greasy blackness and taking on a cleaner sheen. The clothing was more subtle now as well; no longer the flashy suit, the bracelet on the wrist, the rings on his fingers, instead just a plain leather jacket worn over a sweatshirt and jeans. Riley had been there, done it himself, knew about the little details which made for a convincing act. And Kemp’s act was good. Very good. It had to be, because one slip and not only would the whole of Operation Sternway be jeopardised, but the man’s life would be in danger as well. Riley was all too aware of that aspect of undercover work, having been on the wrong side of a beating when he’d been in London.

He had handled Kemp for the past couple of months, always meeting the man well away from Plymouth, usually at an anonymous pub or roadside café, but now Kemp’s time was over and the officer could let the mask slip a little before returning to his own force. Riley knew Kemp was based in the North West, but he didn’t know the name of the force, nor did he have any idea of the man’s real identity. ‘Better that way,’ Kemp had said when they first met, and Riley agreed. If he’d been half as cautious as Kemp then maybe he’d still have been on the Met, still ducking and diving in his old haunts, playing the game. Instead he’d been transferred away.

‘Best for you, Riley. We can’t be too careful,’ his boss had said, placing a little too much emphasis on the word ‘careful’. And ‘best for you’ meant best for the rest of them, the team he’d let down. It had been tough at first, moving to what his old friends would have described as the back of beyond. Now though, after more than a year down in Devon, he’d settled in. And getting the chance to put his old skills to use on a case like the one he was working on with Kemp was a real bonus.

Riley watched as a light wind began to ruffle the ebbing tide, throwing up little wavelets as the water slipped out of the river and eased its way past the Mayflower Marina, the surface roughing up in the narrows between Royal William Yard and Mount Edgcumbe. He had come across on the Cremyll ferry, Kemp arriving in his car from the Cornish side. The ferry was mid stream now, heading back across the quarter-mile stretch of water to Devon, the steep landing ramp Riley had jumped down onto lengthening by the minute as the tide fell away, swathes of mud either side exposed to the attentions of numerous gulls.

‘There, it’s up the top of the creek.’ Riley pointed across the river to a sliver of water which snaked between the marina and the stone quays of Royal William Yard. ‘Beyond the Princess Yachts’ hangar. Tamar Yachts is the one with the green roof. Considering what they do the business couldn’t be better positioned.’

‘Nice to put a face to a name,’ Kemp said. ‘During my trips down here I stayed away from the place deliberately.’

Riley had been over at Tamar Yachts back in the autumn and had interviewed the owner and a number of employees. The visit had been unrelated to Operation Sternway, at the time Riley not even realising the place was under surveillance. He had been impressed with the set-up, the way Tamar retro fitted kit to luxury motor yachts, exactly the kind of boats which the Princess factory produced. Given a tour of a huge gin palace – now to be equipped with the latest radar, communications hardware and security systems – Riley had calculated how long he’d have to save to afford such a beast, shaking his head when he realised retirement would loom long before he reached the sum required. To his uneducated eye the business seemed on a sound footing, with half a dozen craft in for antifouling or engine maintenance and a number of charter boats bobbing alongside a pontoon, prepped and ready for corporate days out.

‘Bizarre,’ Riley said, thinking aloud. ‘I still can’t get my head around it. When I was there everything seemed above board.’

‘They always do. That’s the point.’

It turned out that Gavin Redmond, the managing director of Tamar Yachts, was anything but above board. Discrepancies in his financial affairs had led to the tax authorities alerting police to the possibility that the business might be washing drugs money through its books. The economic crime section of Major Crimes soon realised what Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs had not: Tamar Yachts not only provided a means for money laundering, it was also the perfect cover for a smuggling operation. Proving it was another matter entirely. Which was where Kemp came in.

Kemp had spent the previous eighteen months inveigling his way into the Plymouth underworld, playing a Scouse drug dealer keen to find new supplies. He’d spent tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money convincing local middlemen he was genuine, all the time waiting for the big fish to take the bait. The big fish being a villain named Kenny Fallon, who just happened to own fifty per cent of Redmond’s business.

Depending on how you viewed him, Fallon was either a visionary property developer, entrepreneur and investor with a knack of always being in phase with the market, or a lowlife scum who funded his legitimate businesses with a web of illegal activities ranging from protection rackets to scams to drugs. Every city had a Kenny Fallon, a piece of dirt that somehow managed to climb from the gutter and establish itself as the kingpin. The skill they all shared was to stay one step removed from the dodgy activities and hold the shit they dealt with at arm’s length. Fallon achieved that through a mixture of shrewd decision-making and creative accounting. So far neither the police nor HMRC had managed to make the necessary connections to trap him.

‘We’ll get him,’ Kemp said, almost as if he’d read Riley’s mind. ‘The delivery is due soon. A big one, according to my contact. He’ll text me, we swoop, Fallon goes down. Fairytale ending.’

‘Can we trust your contact though? When push comes to shove will he come good?’

‘He wants out, doesn’t he? He either helps us …’ Kemp scuffed his foot on the ground, kicking a small stone out through the railings. The stone hit the mud, sending little splatters of liquid out around it. ‘Or he’s a dead man.’

An hour later and the owner of the building company turned up at Lester Close. Peter Serling drove an immaculate bright red Audi TT with plastic covers on the seats, the material crackling as he eased his bulky frame out of the vehicle to speak to Savage. If the car was an unusual choice of transport for a builder, the man’s attire wasn’t; he wore a lumberjack shirt, a dusty fleece, jeans and tan boots. Specks of sawdust clung to scraggy brown hair and white paint flecks on the back of his hands contrasted with a healthy tan. Serling apologised for not arriving sooner, explaining he’d been up on a roof without his phone.

‘Susie from the office had to drive round and get me. Right state she were in. Can’t say I blame her, if what she told me is true. I nearly fell off the roof when she shouted the news up. I’m hoping she got the wrong end of the stick and there’s another explanation.’

Savage said there wasn’t and asked about the mix-up. Had his men got the wrong address?

‘No, love.’ Serling looked over to the house where two CSIs were carrying a large box of equipment round to the rear. ‘I was here last week speaking to Mr Evershed. Went into the back garden and he explained exactly what he wanted doing. He’d been let down by another builder, apparently, and needed some groundwork done quick in preparation for a conservatory. The company were coming to erect it later this week and he’d told them the patio would be cleared and the area readied in time.’

‘Mr Evershed denies that,’ Savage said. ‘He says he never asked you to do any work. In fact he denies even knowing you.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Considering what my lads have found.’

‘And you’re positive there couldn’t have been some mistake?’

‘Yes.’ Serling closed his eyes and kept them shut. ‘There’s a patio round the back. Stretches the width of the plot. Kitchen door’s pale green with a glass panel, in need of a paint. I noticed some rising damp to the right of the kitchen window, probably caused by the downpipe from the guttering not discharging into the drain properly. I asked Mr Evershed if he wanted me to fix it. He said “no”, he was quite capable of doing that himself. He said he would have lifted the patio slabs, but at his age he needed to start to take it easy. I said “me too” and we had a laugh about that.’

‘At his age? What sort of age would that be?’ Savage replied.

‘Hey?’ Serling opened his eyes. ‘About mine. Mid-forties. Looked pretty fit to me. Short and stocky, not much hair, but plenty of muscles, not running to fat like most of the rest of the world.’

‘What about payment? Contact details?’

‘He gave me a mobile number and he paid cash, upfront.’

‘Isn’t that unusual these days?’

‘Yeah,’ Serling smiled. ‘But not without some advantages.’

‘Tax?’

‘Yes. Forget I told you.’ Serling raised a hand and brushed his hair. A few pieces of sawdust fell on to his shoulder like flakes of oversized dandruff. ‘Mr Evershed said he was going to be away for a while and thought it best to settle up beforehand. Seven fifty in an envelope. He said he was trusting me and that I wasn’t to mess him around. The job had to be done Monday, come rain or shine. Well, I thought, for seven fifty you could add in hell or high water too.’

‘Wasn’t it over the odds? Seven hundred and fifty?’

‘Yes. Although to be fair it was going to take my lads all day to lift the slabs and dig out to the required depth.’

‘Have you still got the envelope or the money?’

‘What? You want it back?’

‘For fingerprints. You’ll get a receipt.’

‘Yes. It’s at home.’ Serling smiled again. ‘I wasn’t going to bank it, was I?’

Savage thanked Serling and directed Calter to go with him, retrieve the money and take a full statement. Then she went back to the rear of the house where the entire panoply of police resources were now in evidence. Three of Layton’s team of CSIs were working on excavating the rest of the patio, carting barrow-loads of soil round to the front of the house where they were sieved into a skip. A photographer recorded any item recovered as it was removed and an exhibits officer bagged and catalogued those of interest. Away from the patio a woman pushed what looked like a small grass mower back and forth over the lawn.

‘Ground-penetrating radar,’ Layton said when Savage asked. ‘Should tell us if anything else is buried there. Let’s hope she’s wasting her time.’

‘And inside?’

‘We’ll see.’ Layton turned to look at the house. ‘The place is due for a refurb which means, luckily, the decor hasn’t been touched for years. We should be able to ascertain if anything has been disturbed recently. And before you ask, no, nothing in the loft. Thank God.’

DCI Mike Garrett turned up an hour later, looking, as always, as if he had arrived direct from an upmarket tailor. Not so much as a piece of fluff on the dark surface of his suit, his shirt brilliant white, the collar starched, tie perfect, Garrett’s hair not far off the colour of the shirt. Unblemished was a moniker which could be applied to the older detective’s career too. He had taken a while to climb to the rank of Chief Inspector but had done so without stepping on toes, without getting his fingers dirty. Colleagues respected him and he was well-liked among all ranks. Sometimes though, Savage found him a little too stuffy.

Once Garret had clambered into his protective clothing, he came round to the back armed with a friendly greeting and a name for the operation.

‘Brougham,’ he said, as he stood over the hole, gazing down at the rubble. The plastic crate and its contents had gone, accompanied to the morgue by Nesbit and Layton, but several numbered markers lay scattered around, and Garrett’s eyes moved from one to another as if he was playing a perverse game of join the dots. ‘I’m Senior Investigating Officer,’ he said to Savage, ‘you’re my deputy. As you can imagine, Hardin wants a quick result on this one. Have you seen the Herald’sspecial on their website?’

‘No.’ Savage shook her head. She hadn’t seen the local paper’s website but she guessed the media would be one reason Hardin had made Garrett Senior Investigating Officer. Garrett wasn’t exactly media-savvy, but he played with a straight bat and had the appropriate gravitas. And then there were those suits he wore: black with no colour. The murder of a child – if that was what this was – had to be handled differently. A soft tone, but serious, determined and with a get-the-bastard-whatever-it-takes attitude.

‘Cromwell Street is what they are saying. House of Horrors. That sort of thing. Someone spotted the plastic box being loaded into the mortuary van. Body parts being the inference.’

‘Layton doesn’t think there are any more.’

‘Really?’ Garrett looked up to the lawn where the GPR operative was packing away her equipment, then turned to Savage and arched an eyebrow. ‘I hope he’s bloody right. If he is we might just keep the national media away from this one. Have you traced the previous occupier yet?’

Savage told Garrett what she knew from Mr Evershed and his wife. Prior to their purchase the house had been a rental property. The landlord, fed up with ongoing repairs, had been wanting to get the house off his hands. The couple had no idea who the last tenant was, but they knew the name of the letting agency.

‘Dream Lets,’ Savage said. ‘It’s just round the corner, top of Efford Road. I’ve been leaving messages on their phone for the last couple of hours. Nobody has got back to me yet. I’m going up there now.’

‘Dream Lets?’ Garrett said, glancing up at the brown pebble-dash house and then back to the hole where the bones of the dog poked out of the sludge. ‘Do you think we should do them under the Trade Descriptions Act?’

Dream Lets sat above a bookmakers’ at the top of Efford Road. The location didn’t do much to lend any credence to the salubrious name, nor did the young woman smoking a cigarette next to the agency’s entrance. Short skirt, big tattoo on a bare calf above a gold ankle chain and blonde hair from a bottle, with four weeks’ worth of dark roots showing. She glanced over as Savage and Calter approached, hacked out a globule of phlegm and then flicked the cigarette butt to the floor before opening the door and going inside.

Savage caught the door before it closed and she and Calter followed the woman up some stairs to a small office, where a handwritten notice on one wall announced what was obviously the agency motto: ‘We Let, No Sweat.’ The woman didn’t seem to be surprised to be followed and she manoeuvred her large frame in past a filing cabinet and a bookshelf. She plonked herself down at a desk, scrabbling amongst a mess of papers and folders until she found a biro.

‘Alright?’ she said. ‘What can I do for you ladies?’

The voice, low and coarse, came from a forty-a-day habit. Savage reflected sadly that the woman wasn’t much more than a girl and probably no older than Calter.

‘Seventy-five Lester Close,’ Savage said, pulling out her warrant card. ‘We know the property was one of yours until recently and we’d like a list of the previous tenants.’

‘Is there a problem?’ The woman ruffled the mess on the desk again before retrieving a folder from an ocean of manila. She lifted the flap and extracted a single sheet.

‘You could say that.’

‘Right. A problem.’ The woman paused, but when Savage didn’t fill in the dead air she peered down at the piece of paper for a moment before continuing. The way she scrutinised the few lines of type on the page it almost seemed as if she was translating the text from ancient Egyptian. After half a minute she continued. ‘Mr Franklin Owers was the last tenant before the property was sold. He’d been there for a number of years. I remember he wasn’t best pleased to be leaving, but the owner was looking to make a few quid before the market tumbled again.’

‘Do you have a forwarding address?’

‘Mr Owers is still one of ours. Unfortunately.’ The woman grimaced, and then realising Savage didn’t get her joke she added: ‘He rents a property over in Stonehouse, on Durnford Street. One twenty-one B.’

The woman scribbled on a piece of scrap paper and handed it to Savage. Savage passed the slip across to Calter, who took out her phone and left the room.

‘Is there a problem?’ The same words, but this time a quiver in amongst the gruffness. ‘Only maybe I should inform my boss. If you could just tell me what this is all about?’

‘Your tenant did some building work at the property in Lester Close. In the garden.’

‘Did he? They’re not supposed to you know, not without permission. Anything like that has to be authorised, otherwise we can get into all sorts of legal difficulties. The tenant can create a right mess and eventually their DIY efforts come back to haunt us. Is that what has happened?’

‘Haunt you?’ Savage said. ‘Yes, you could say so.’

‘Well, are you going to tell me the details?’

‘No. Do you have a spare key for the Durnford Street property by any chance?’

‘Would it help? You know, keep things quiet?’

‘It might,’ Savage said, knowing nothing would keep what she had seen at Lester Close quiet.

The woman reached across to a cupboard, and opened the door to reveal a pegboard with dozens of keys hanging on numbered hooks. She thought for a moment and then grabbed a set and handed them over, her eyes still asking for more.

‘Watch the news tonight.’ Savage turned and opened the door to leave. ‘Spotlight if you’re lucky. News at Ten if not. Thanks for your help.’

Downstairs Calter stood talking into her phone, nodding every so often as she paced back and forth in front of the bookies. She ended the call and then told Savage what she knew.

‘Franklin Owers has got previous, ma’am. He did seven years for sexual activity with a child. A six-year-old. Spent time up at Full Sutton. You know, where they keep the real nutters. It was a while ago though, he was out a few years back. On the sex offenders’ register for life, of course. Apparently his MAPPA status was downgraded to level one several years ago.’

Savage nodded. MAPPA stood for Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements. Any sex offender had a long list of people involved in their life on the outside, with everyone from probation officers and social workers to housing and health professionals having a say in managing the offender’s activities. The idea was to share resources and information across agencies. Savage suspected a by-product was the ease with which the buck could be passed along the line.

‘We’d better get over to his place now,’ Savage said, glancing up at the window of Dream Lets. The agent stood gazing down at them, a sliver of black pressed against one ear and an unlit cigarette in her other hand. ‘Before anyone else gets wind of the story.’





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