Bad Blood (13 page)

‘I’m going vegetarian,’ Savage said.

Hours later, Savage and Calter took coffee from a machine and escaped into the grounds of the hospital. The grey concrete buildings rose to try and touch heaven, but that lay out of reach somewhere up in the blue sky, across which white clouds scudded in packs, racing to the horizon as the weather freshened. Neither detective spoke for a while as they strolled, sipping the scalding coffee. The post-mortem hadn’t been pleasant; not that any were, but this had been among the worst Savage had remembered, even though Owers had been no innocent victim. It had something to do with the size of the man, the sheer mass of flesh and bone and guts. Blubber, she had thought at one point, imagining Owers as a whale captured by an old ship, with Nesbit and the technician dressed as whalers and wielding cutting spades.

‘Sick,’ Calter said.

For a moment Savage thought Calter had read her mind and was censoring her. Then she realised Calter meant whoever had cut Owers’ hand off with an angle grinder.

‘Or a parent,’ Savage said, indicating a nearby bench they might sit on.

‘Are you talking personally, ma’am? You could do that?’ Calter sat next to Savage and took a gulp of coffee.

‘Yes.’ Not only
could
, Savage thought, remembering Matthew Harrison screaming as he burned to death in his car. A situation she should have rescued him from. ‘If someone hurt my kids, I would want to hurt them. A lot. It’s hard to explain, Jane, but having children turns you instantly from a bleeding-heart liberal to a hang ’em and flog ’em Tory. You’ll see.’

‘Well, I am not exactly a liberal to start with, so God knows where I’ll end up. Somewhere to the right of the Klu Klux Klan probably. Although without the racist bits, I hope.’ Calter shook her head and smiled. ‘But I’m not ready to have children yet. Haven’t done with the practice sessions.’

Which took them back to Calter’s plans for the weekend again. Savage couldn’t help but feel old and past it, thinking about the energy Calter was going to expend on the dance floor and in the bedroom. And the girl was also planning a long run, fitness fanatic as she was. The conversation ran dry when a middle-aged woman walked by, all skin and bones and no hair.

‘Christ,’ Calter whispered and raised a hand to point. ‘Life’s little pleasures, hey?’

Savage followed Calter’s finger. The woman clutched a fag in her shaking hand and brought it to her lips, drawing in the smoke, her eyes glazing for a moment with relief. Savage could only think of Owers again. Of how she would have killed him if one of her children had been assaulted.

‘I’m not sure the person who did Owers was a parent of a victim,’ she said.

‘Why not?’

‘It wouldn’t be enough. Not simply chopping off his hand. They would want to do more, to hurt him more.’

‘Really?’ Calter’s eyes widened, still not understanding.

‘Yes.’ Savage stared after the cancer patient, tried to imagine wielding the angle grinder, bringing the whirring disc down onto Franklin Owers’ wrist and watching the bits of flesh and bone fly out. ‘This was a message. Those weird black and white lines tell us that. If someone had wanted to punish Owers for what he had done the whole thing would have been over too quick. He wouldn’t have suffered enough. Not for me anyway.’

‘Glad you are on our side, ma’am.’ Calter half-smiled. ‘All things considered.’

Alec Jackman had lunch upstairs at the Bridge, the restaurant down at the marina at Mount Batten. His companion was one of Plymouth’s three members of parliament. The stupid one who looked like a prick. Nothing wrong with politicians – he was one himself of course – but this idiot hadn’t a clue. Jackman had wanted to use the meeting to elaborate on a scheme he had to develop an area of wasteland just upstream from the marina near the Laira Bridge, but the MP didn’t know one end of a regeneration strategy from another. Or his arse, most likely. Jackman had talked about cogs needing oiling, grants needing to find their way to the right people, but the man had looked blank, face creasing every time Jackman opened another mussel. It was as if he’d never done anything which required a little courage. Hence the ploughman’s, Jackman thought. A bit of lettuce and a hunk of cheese never caused anyone any offence. Probably a focus group thing, like the bottled water the guy had drunk with his meal. Wanker. At least his own food had been good, even if the conversation had been a waste of time.

With the MP gone to a tour of a nearby primary school, Jackman stepped out onto the balcony of the restaurant to make a call. He leant on the railings, taking in the rows of yachts and gazing across the water to the industrial wasteland of Cattedown. Huge storage tanks, prime waterfront wharves, light industrial units and vast warehouses. Someday it all had to go. That’s what the MP didn’t understand. Waterfront strategy. Turn the industrial land into a leisure and marine park, stick up some luxury apartments, and the city would reap the benefits. The payoff for Jackman would be handsome too.

He muttered another curse as his call connected and then he was asking the man on the end of the line if he’d heard the news.

‘Of course I fucking have,’ came the response. ‘And before you ask, I never knew he’d been up to his old tricks. If I had, the fat shit would have already been history.’

‘That’s not what worries me.’ Jackman shook his head. His associate always let his temper flare before he shone a light on the situation. Subtle, he didn’t do. ‘I want to know if he blabbed about anything. Money, quantities, dates.’

‘Listen here, mate, if I strapped
you
down and threatened to chop something off, your hand, maybe worse, you’d blab, wouldn’t you? But no, I don’t think we need to worry, Frankie didn’t have any information relating to the delivery.’

A couple emerged from the restaurant, hand-in-hand, to admire the view of the yachts, maybe to dream a little. Jackman paused and then moved away to the end of the balcony out of earshot.

‘You still there?’ Jackman spoke with a softer tone, aware of the anger his last line contained. ‘I need to know if we are still on. Because if we—’

‘We’re on. Why wouldn’t we be? This was some vigilante attack. The slob was killed because he was a paedo, not because he worked up a few spreadsheets for me. I doubt he was worried about my cash flow when he was offed.’

‘Just so you’re sure. I wouldn’t want to take any unnecessary risks. Not in my position.’

‘
Life’s
a risk, pal. You want out, I can arrange that.’

‘No, not out. Just …’ The couple had returned to the restaurant, the woman sniffing and wrinkling her nose. ‘Just be careful, OK?’

‘Careful is my middle name. How do you think I got to be so old and ugly?’

Jackman laughed and felt the mood mellow a little. Out in the deep water of the Plym a pilot boat zipped back and forth, shepherding a couple of yachts to the side so a large tanker coming up river could turn around and back up to a wharf.

‘You know a couple of days ago I mentioned I might have some good news?’ Jackman said.

‘You got it? The video?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well then, why are you worrying so much? We’re as good as fucking sorted.’

The call ended and Jackman stood for a moment. The tanker was turning now, great boils frothing around it, the water brown-grey with disturbed silt. He reached into his pocket for a pack of Rennies. The food had been good, but the mussels, mixed with a little too much wine, weren’t sitting easy in his stomach. He popped a tablet into his mouth, as he did so catching a whiff of sickly sweetness on the breeze. Something from the fish-processing plant across the water, something gone very bad.

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 17th January. 1.24 p.m.

Back at Crownhill, Savage and Calter went to the Major Crimes suite, where the gossip was all about some guy who’d been dumped at the doors to A&E.

‘Stark naked,’ Savage overheard Enders say to Denton. ‘With one of those rubber rings round his bollocks. You know, the type of thing they use to castrate lambs?’

‘Castrate lambs?’ Denton shook his head, mouth opening and his eyes dropping to his crotch. ‘You mean—’

‘Couple of lads went up there to take a statement, but the fellow wouldn’t talk. Personally I’d say it was a waste of time because I already know who did it.’

‘You do?’

‘All the evidence points to a certain female DC not a million miles from here.’ Enders looked across at Calter and winked.

‘I’d be careful,’ Calter said. ‘You’ll be giving me ideas.’

‘And the best bit,’ Enders continued after giving Calter a double take, ‘is the man’s name. Dewdney or something similar. Like the pasty company.’

‘Brilliant!’ Calter said. ‘How many testicles would it take to fill—’

Savage silenced Calter with a stare and then looked at Enders. ‘Update. Now.’

‘Simza’s parents, ma’am.’ Enders pointed at his screen. ‘Someone from
Brougham
spoke to them Tuesday and a local officer popped round with some pictures we sent up to the Somerset and Avon force. You said something about a meeting so I’ve arranged a visit last thing today. They’re up the other side of Weston-super-Mare. Bit of a trek I’m afraid.’

‘Anything else from the door-to-doors?’

‘Zilch. A couple of lads have gone to interview some of his clients but apart from them Owers didn’t seem to have contact with anyone except health professionals or members of the criminal justice system.’

‘OK,’ Savage said. ‘His caseworker is coming in later, so we’ll see what she says.’

‘She?’ Enders looked appalled. ‘What woman in their right mind would want to have anything to do with him after what he did to his first victim?’

Nicky Green was the woman.

When Savage and Enders arrived in the interview room she was eyeing the plate of digestives on the table in front of her, both hands wrapped around a mug of tea as if for warmth.

‘Don’t you have heating in this place?’ she asked.

‘Bloody finance people,’ Enders said and went over to the radiator and fiddled with the controls. ‘I swear they come round after we’ve all gone home and turn the heaters down to frost setting.’

If Savage had any preconceptions about social workers they were wiped clean by Nicky Green’s appearance and manner. She was neat and well-presented in a business suit, didn’t smell of garlic and the paper she’d brought with her to read was the
Daily Telegraph
and not the
Guardian
.

‘Ms Green?’ Savage said as she sat down, not quite certain they had the right person.

‘Yes. Call me Nicky.’ Long lashes fluttered over hazel eyes, her shoulder-length hair the same colour to a shade.

‘DI Charlotte Savage and DC Patrick Enders. You’re one of the registered MAPPA contacts for Franklin Owers?’

‘He was a client of mine. Level one. Poor bugger.’

‘You feel sorry for him?’

‘No, not really. Contrary to what you lot seem to believe, we don’t have a lot of sympathy for men who go around abusing young girls. It is simply a question of managing the situation. And I believe in this case we managed things rather well. Franklin was released several years ago and he’d stayed out of trouble ever since. Continual assessments, monitoring, evaluation. Those are not just words from some mission statement, they are part of the action plan prepared specifically for Franklin.’

‘We found some catalogues round his place. Young kids in swimwear, that sort of thing.’

‘Franklin had urges. Better he satisfied them by looking at a few pictures rather than out on the streets.’

‘So you didn’t know he had been hanging around the primary school round the corner from his flat?’

‘No, I didn’t, but if you got that information from the locals you’d do well to consider its veracity. Once people become aware of an offender they load all the evils of the world onto him. The story may be nothing more than local gossip.’

‘Maybe, but what isn’t local gossip is the body we found beneath the patio at his previous residence. A young girl. Six years old. If that’s “managing the situation rather well” then I think you are going to be looking for another job in the very near future.’

‘What? Are you saying …’ Nicky Green had lost her composure. Her face paled and the hands clasping her mug shook. She placed the mug down on the table, tea slopping out.

‘Simza Ellis,’ Enders said. ‘Went missing middle of last year.’

‘But that was …’ She opened the file in front of her. ‘Years after his release. I mean, there was no indication of anything amiss. How could we have been aware of his activities?’

‘Oh I don’t know,’ Savage said. ‘“Assessment, monitoring, evaluation”, something like that?’

‘Please, you don’t need to be flippant. If all the correct procedures have been followed and everything possible done to manage Owers then it was hardly our fault, and if she is the only one—’

‘It’s alright then, and nobody is to blame, nobody gets the sack?’ Savage shook her head and was about to say something else when she realised she was letting her emotions run away with her. She tried a more conciliatory tone. ‘Look, Nicky, I hope you are right, and Simza is the only victim. It might surprise you to discover that isn’t my concern. Her case is being dealt with by another team. For my sins I am trying to find out who killed Mr Owers. For that we need your help. We have no idea of his friends, acquaintances – professional or otherwise – nothing.’

‘But he didn’t know anyone. Apart from his clients, the ones he did accounts for. I assume you have details of those?’

‘Yes, thanks. There must be other people though. Are you saying he has lived all these years with no contact with anyone?’

‘Pretty much, yes. He sees me or another of my team once every three months and the psychiatrist once a month. There are other health workers too, but apart from those people he keeps himself to himself. Or rather he did. He told me life was better that way. Simpler.’

‘And he has never been anywhere in all that time? He’s never visited friends or family outside Plymouth?’

‘No. He went on holiday a few times. I think the last trip was back in the summer.’