Bad Blood (15 page)

‘Have this ’an all,’ one of the men said and the baseball bat smashed down again, catching Riley on the shoulder.

Now the men were up in the van too, pulling the doors shut and shouting ‘go, go’ to someone in the front. The van lurched backwards and forwards a couple of times, turning in the road, and then accelerated, the engine rough, the noise from the exhaust echoing against the bare interior.

Riley kept his head down near a wooden makeshift seat and reached into his jacket pocket for his phone. Calling wouldn’t do much good, they’d have the phone from him before anyone could answer. Instead, he tried to remember the sequence to access the call logs to retrieve the last number he’d dialled. He was pretty sure the number had been Julie’s. Menu, down, down, select, right, down, select? Was that the key sequence to bring up the number and open a new text message? He kept his hand in his pocket and pressed the keys. Each key press sounded a small beep, but although one of the men peered down, all Riley saw were teeth grinning in the passing headlights. Now, what message? A name, that’s what he needed to send. Seven letters and thank fuck he didn’t have predictive text switched on. He thought for a minute or two about the positioning of the keys and the number of times he would need to press each one to get the correct letter. Then he began to type the message: Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep …

‘What the hell are you playing at?’ The man lunged across and grabbed Riley’s arm. ‘He’s got something in his pocket!’

Riley pressed ‘send’ as the man wrenched his arm out. The phone slipped from his grasp and span across the floor, the green glow an easy target for the guy with the baseball bat. The bat crashed down on the phone, plastic splintering, pieces flying everywhere. Then the other man punched him hard in the face and the lights from passing vehicles seemed to slow, the rhythm winding down, that fan on the hotel ceiling spinning slower and slower. Julie was calling his name again, but this time the words were drawn out as if he was falling away from her: Darius … Darius … Darius.

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Friday 18th January. 9.05 a.m.

Friday morning and the front lawn sparkled, laced with silver frost, Savage thinking as she stepped out of the front door that she might have been a little presumptuous in heralding the arrival of spring. At the station, she caught Enders as he headed to the canteen for coffee and cake, gave him a ten pound note and told him to buy some sandwiches instead. He didn’t understand what she meant until she explained they were going to Cornwall to visit the caravan where Owers had stayed.

‘DCI Garrett, ma’am. Shouldn’t we let him know?’

‘No.’ Savage bundled him out of the door and headed across the car park towards their pool car. ‘This might be a long shot and I wouldn’t want him to squander his resources needlessly. Maybe the trip will turn out to be a waste of time.’

‘Right, ma’am,’ Enders said, shaking his head again. ‘So why are we bothering then?’

Savage held up her right hand, index finger pointing towards Enders, thumb pointing upwards.

‘Just get in the car and drive. And don’t even think of making a run for it.’

Enders laughed and bleeped the doors to the Ford Focus open, and before long they were cruising along the A38, heading down towards the Tamar Bridge and the crossing into Cornwall.

Savage explained how she wanted first dibs on the caravan because so far the Simza Ellis inquiry,
Brougham
, seemed to be taking precedence over
Corulus
, the inquiry into Owers’ death. If they let Garrett get to the caravan first, any evidence would be bagged up and out of their sight before they had a chance to even see it. Likely the place would be sealed off as well and they’d have to wait days to get their hands on anything.

An hour and a half later they were close to Falmouth, the satnav struggling to resolve the final part of their route. Savage peered at the piece of paper Nicky Green had given her and reached for the road atlas. Fifteen minutes and a few wrong turns later, they rolled into a farmyard not far from the village of Constantine.

The farmer turned out to be an old guy by the name of Williams. He walked with a stoop and the lines criss-crossing his weathered face put him at over eighty. Savage thought he should have retired at least a decade ago, but apart from the stoop he seemed fit and healthy enough. The man explained he was a tenant and had nowhere else to go. Besides which there wasn’t much left of the farmland now, just under thirty acres. The estate had been divided up when it had been sold off years ago. Most of the land had gone to neighbouring farmers and a nearby barn complex had been developed as a luxury residence. It had changed hands recently for over a million, the new owners, an expat and his Spanish wife, moving from abroad. The farmer rolled his eyes and said that sort of money for a couple of barns was crazy. His eyes glazed as he began to tell them about the days when the farm had been home to his herd of pedigree cows, and how that all came to an end with the foot-and-mouth epidemic back in two thousand and one.

‘That’s when things all went wrong.’ He turned his head towards a small meadow to one side of the farmhouse. ‘Piled up over yonder they were. Burning. Every last one of them.’

Savage followed the man’s gaze to a mound where the grass struggled to compete with a mass of nettles and thistles. It wasn’t hard to picture the scene, one repeated all over the country; the diggers scraping a hole, pushing the bodies in, the corpses smouldering, the smoke drifting.

Savage steered the conversation round to Franklin Owers. Had he visited here?

The farmer nodded, eyes still on the little field.

‘Last summer, I reckon. Stayed in the old caravan. Right state the place was in, but he didn’t seem to mind.’

‘It belonged to his parents, is that right?’

‘Parents?’ The eyes switched to Savage. ‘No, love. You’ve got that wrong. I used to rent the caravan out in the summers, and in the spring the shepherd who came for lambing lived there. When they rang I told them the accommodation wasn’t really suitable any more, but they didn’t seem to mind.’

They. Them. Social Services most likely. It sounded like Owers had spun Nicky Green’s colleagues a tale about his parents and they’d fallen for the story. In turn, Ms Green hadn’t told the truth either: no one had visited to check the place out, the risk assessment had been done on the phone, probably with a glance at a map for good measure. But why had Owers come here? Savage said she would like to inspect the caravan and the farmer pointed to an open gate where a track led away from the farm, disappearing down the curve of a hill.

‘Half a mile, but you’ll get down if you’re careful.’ The man raised a finger to his forehead and scratched. ‘Like I said, bit of a mess. If I’d known he was bringing his daughter I’d have tried to fix the bloody thing up.’

Daughter? Savage wanted to know more. She pulled out the picture of Simza. Might that be her?

‘Yes. I mean … I’m not sure. Is she his daughter? She looks a little like her but this one … I’ve seen her somewhere else. On the telly?’

On the telly sounded about right, Savage thought. Simza might not have got the attention she deserved from the authorities, but she’d have been all over the local media for a day or two. Williams would have been sitting in his parlour with the paper on the table and the TV on. The little girl’s face had screamed out ‘It’s me!’ but he hadn’t made the connection.

‘Quiet little thing she was,’ he said. ‘Is she coming again? Because if she is I’ll need to sort the caravan out. Did I mention it’s in a bit of a state?’

‘Yes, Mr Williams, you did,’ Savage said. ‘And no, she isn’t going to be coming here again.’

Williams nodded and then stared over at the little pasture once more, eyes gone, something like shell shock.

‘Pity,’ he said.

Nobody had been down to the caravan in a car for a long time and the centre of the grassy track was raised to such a degree that every bump meant a risk of grounding.

‘Easy,’ Savage said as a horrid grinding noise came from beneath them.

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Enders said, slowing the vehicle to a crawl. ‘This track was designed for Ford tractors, not a Ford Focus.’

The twin ruts weaved away down the slope towards a patch of gorse and Savage caught a waft of the sweet, syrupy flowers, well in bloom even though it was mid-winter. Beyond the gorse a straggle of stunted trees formed a small copse, and beyond that another field stretched down to a narrow strip of estuary. The water bristled with mini-whitecaps, whipped up by the same fresh breeze which carried the scent of the gorse to them.

‘Remote, ma’am. Nobody’s ever going to find the caravan by accident.’

The dark green and white hulk lay down near the gorse, a few metres from a cattle trough where, according to the farmer, Owers had got his water from. The caravan’s green sides and ends contrasted with a white band which ran all the way round. If caravans did go-faster stripes then that was what the white strip was. The roof had once been white too, but now appeared black with mould and whatever had fallen from the canopy of trees above. All the windows were intact, but at the rear end a panel of the green aluminium had curled away, spoiling the graceful curve that a designer must have once thought to be so modern. Brambles covered the towing end and only the handle which raised or lowered the dolly wheel stuck above the thorny vegetation. Beneath one of the windows in the side, an orange propane bottle had a dodgy-looking regulator attached to the top. A rubber hose rose from the corroded brass fittings and disappeared through a hole beneath the window frame. The two windows on the side of the caravan and the windows on the front and rear had venetian blinds and they hung down in the closed position.

Close to the caravan the track turned away and continued to the next field. Enders steered off the track and stopped, the car sliding on the grass.

‘Do you think we can get back?’ Savage turned and glanced up the slope. The hill appeared to be a lot steeper from the bottom.

‘Well, the farmer will be able to help if we can’t.’

They got out of the car and Savage surveyed the area. It was a long way to the farmyard and the coast path crossed the main estuary a mile or so away; the little tributary had no footpaths. If Simza had been here, no one but Mr Williams would have ever known about the little girl.

‘Ma’am?’ Enders had trudged across to the door and was fiddling with the handle. ‘It’s locked, but the metal is so corroded I reckon I can force the catch.’

‘Let me see.’ Savage walked over, looked at the lock and for a moment considered returning to the farmyard for a key, but then nodded to Enders. ‘Go on, do your worst.’

Enders grinned and picked up a large stone. He hefted it against the door handle and the aluminium buckled around the lock, flakes of paint falling off and fluttering to the ground. He dropped the stone and squeezed his fingers into the gap. With a sharp tug, the door came open.

A waft of damp and dank air overpowered the sweet smell from the nearby gorse. Inside, a thick layer of sludge lay on the floor and several strands of ivy had finessed their way past one window frame and were now struggling to gain purchase along the top of the kitchenette. The material on the cushions in the U-shaped dinette had split, revealing yellow foam inside, stained with patches of mould. A kettle stood on the gas stove and on the draining board a spoon poked from the top of a jar of Nescafé.

Enders moved to one side and let Savage clamber up into the caravan. The structure creaked and Enders stepped back and peered underneath.

‘You’re alright, ma’am. The tyres have gone flat but the thing is on blocks. I don’t think it is going to tip over, but I’d watch the floor.’

To her immediate right a concertina-type door stood half open. Behind the door a small cubicle contained a chemical toilet; the lid was open, but thankfully whatever had been in there had turned to soil. The cupboards beneath the cooker and sink were ajar and seemed to contain nothing but pots and pans. Savage went across to examine the wardrobe over by the dinette and to probe beneath the seat cushions. The bins beneath the seats were empty apart from a stack of newspapers and an ancient Boden For Kids catalogue. The wardrobe had a single item on a hanger, all yellow flowers on a white background, the flimsy material of the dress shimmering in the draught.

Enders gunned the car up the track while Savage followed on foot, Enders stopping the car at the top of the field to open a gate next to an old stone byre. The gable end stood facing her and as she climbed the hill a glint of sun on glass caught her attention. A window. Strange to have a glazed window in a barn, but maybe the farmer had once used the place as a holiday flat or something. The barn stood open on one side and contained some farm machinery: a red hay tedder with yellow spines, an old three-furrow plough and a transport box. At the other end some steps led up to a door which allowed access to the roof space.

She reached Enders and pointed at the steps. Then she climbed up them and tried the door. Locked. She peered in through the frosted glass. The interior seemed to be one huge room and light streamed in through the window at the far end.

Enders got out of the car and she shouted down to him to go and get the key. A few minutes later he returned.

‘Mission accomplished,’ he said, holding up a loop of string with a key on as he climbed the steps. ‘The farmer says he was doing the barn up to be a holiday flat, but he never finished the job. Apparently Owers asked to use the place to paint.’

Savage took the key from Enders and slotted it in the lock. She turned it and pushed the door open. Inside, the large area had been boxed out with chipboard. A couple of Velux windows allowed light to flood in through the sloping ceiling, and the big window in the far gable offered fine views out across the valley and beyond to the estuary. As she stepped into the room Savage tasted the air; hot, dry and dusty.

Down the far end a table stood to the right of the window, a chair pulled back from it. She looked again, shivering when she realised what the piece of furniture actually was. Not a table, a desk; an ancient, wooden desk with a flip-up lid and a hole, top right, for an inkwell.