Bad Blood (25 page)

‘Alright sweetheart?’ The voice came from a man who had lumbered out from behind the cabin. He was in his fifties, body gone to seed, face seen better days considering his nose was covered with some sort of splint and he had one black eye. He was pulling the fly on his trousers up with his left hand, the right one encased in white, a bandage wrapped around two of the fingers. He grimaced at Savage when her eyes dropped to his crotch for a moment. ‘What you looking at?’

‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you to shake?’ Savage nodded down at the man’s jeans where a line of dark ran from mid-thigh to knee.

‘I had a bit of an accident, OK, my lover? If you fancy rubbing some cream on I’m all yours.’ The man began to unzip his jeans, reaching in with his hand.

‘It’s not lover, thank you.’ Savage pulled out her ID. ‘DI Charlotte Savage, Plymouth CID.’

‘Shit.’ The man stopped and zipped himself up. He stomped round to the office front, shaking his head as he opened the door. ‘When I was up at the hospital I told your lads I wasn’t going to press charges so what’s your game, girl? Is this a fucking honeytrap?’

‘Honey is for bees. I’d need something else round here wouldn’t I, Mr …?’

‘Sorry? Oh, name’s Dowdney. But you can call me Dave.’ Dowdney smiled. ‘All my friends do.’

‘Dowdney?’ Savage recalled Enders larking around a few days ago. Something about Dewdney pasties and a castration game gone wrong. ‘As in you were at A&E last week?’

‘Yes. I just said so.’ Dowdney stared down at his feet, the bravado gone. ‘I thought that’s what you’d come about.’

‘No, Mr Dowdney. I’m not interested in what happened. I wanted a word about a driver of yours, a Mrs Lynn Towner.’

‘Fucking hell, what’s she gone and done now? Another prang?’

‘Is she prone to accidents?’ Savage said, looking over to three parked taxis, one of which had a big dent in the nearside wing.

‘Yeah.’ Dowdney followed Savage’s gaze and gritted his teeth. ‘That’s one she did a couple of weeks ago. Wouldn’t have minded, except she lied about it. Told me somebody bumped her in the Marsh Mills Sainsbury’s car park, but I checked the satnav and she’d been over in Cornwall to St Austell and beyond. Wasn’t even on company business. She still owes me for one she had before Christmas too.’

‘Why keep her on if she is such a bad driver?

‘Oh, you know …’

‘No, Mr Dowdney, I don’t know. That’s why I am asking.’

‘Well, I feel sorry for her. Hard to find a job these days, especially when you are a fifty-something woman. Look, can you get to the point because I haven’t got all day to stand around exchanging witty banter.’

‘Pickups. Do you make a note of them?’

‘Course I do. Otherwise I’d be getting ripped off by my drivers left, right and up the arse.’

‘Last Friday. 5.30 a.m. early morning ride to Exeter Airport. I would imagine the customer booked the pickup.’

‘Right.’ Dowdney paused, flinched, and then raised a hand to scratch at the splint on his nose. ‘You’d better come into the office.’ Dowdney opened the door into the Portakabin, stepped up and went in. Savage followed.

Up one end a teenage girl with blonde hair, a bare midriff and painted-on-jeans sat at a workstation. She wore a headset with a swivel down microphone and was fiddling with a mobile.

‘Don’t overwork yourself will you, Elina,’ Dowdney said.

The girl glanced up but didn’t say anything. The screen in front of her flashed and she began speaking, Savage recognising the Eastern-European accent as the one she’d heard on the phone earlier.

‘Moor to Shore, door to door, where to please?’ Her fingers moved from the phone pad to the keyboard.

‘All logged, see?’ Dowdney said. ‘Let’s go into my office, we can access the data from my machine. If one of our drivers made the pickup it will be on the system.’

At the other end of the main area a door led into a small room. A table stood up against the window and a laptop sat in the centre surrounded by paper. Away from the window a leather sofa had a white duvet and pillow piled up one end. Savage wondered if one of the reasons Lynn Towner had been kept on could have anything to do with the cosy sleeping arrangements.

‘Sometimes I work late,’ Dowdney said, noticing Savage’s interest. ‘Easier to stay over than tramp back home in the early hours.’ Dowdney turned back to the desk and began to access the logs. ‘5.30 a.m. Last Friday?’

Savage moved over and stood at Dowdney’s shoulder. A calendar flashed back through the days as Dowdney clicked.

‘No, nothing. You must be mistaken. Are you sure of the date?’

‘Yes.’ Savage nodded back towards the office. ‘Elina, when I rang this morning she told me Lynn Towner did the pickup. She got that information from somewhere. Now there’s no record. Why’s that?’

‘No idea.’ Dowdney followed Savage’s gaze. Scowled. ‘Maybe someone deleted the record accidentally.’

‘I see.’ Savage turned back to the screen. ‘We found a business card alongside a promotional leaflet. Your company. Would the person who deleted the record by any chance be you, Mr Dowdney?’

Another pause, the only sound the clatter of the keyboard from the next room and then a nervous cough from Dowdney.

‘Look, OK, I’ll come clean.’ Dowdney held his hands out and shrugged his shoulders. ‘I thought there might be trouble. Elina said the police had called and, well, Lynn’s always scraping her car. I just wanted to do her a favour.’

‘Where is Lynn Towner now?’

‘Hang on.’ Dowdney reached for the mouse and clicked a couple of times. ‘She’s not working at the moment, but she comes on duty at one. That’s about thirty minutes from now.’

‘Wait there.’ Savage moved out of the office and went outside where she phoned Calter. After a brief conversation she went back inside.

‘Book her for me,’ she said to Dowdney. ‘Towner. Pickup at the main railway station, destination Exeter Airport. Two passengers. Name of Calter.’

‘Hey?’

‘Just do it. And I’m listening. One hint to her that anything is amiss and what happened to take you to the hospital last week will be the least of your worries.’

Lynn Towner’s green and blue taxi swung into the waiting area in front of Plymouth’s mainline station some thirty-five minutes later. Calter and Enders had been hanging around outside and they approached the car, opened the doors and got in, Calter in the front, Enders in the back.

‘Exeter Airport?’ Towner said and Calter nodded. Towner looked around at Enders. ‘No luggage?’

‘Travelling light,’ Calter said and Towner shrugged and pulled away.

‘What time is your flight? Could be a bit of traffic around.’

‘We’ve allowed plenty of time,’ Enders said.

Towner was a big woman, having strong features and a curvy figure. Given her age – early fifties Calter guessed – round suited her. Twenty or thirty years ago she would have been turning heads everywhere she went, but now the gloss had gone. It wasn’t her age, there was something else, an edge in her voice and a certain inflection in her mannerisms which suggested a life turned sour.

Towner headed out of the station, through town and soon they were speeding up the slip onto the A38, Towner cutting out from behind a lorry and crossing the chevrons before the slip had joined the main road. As they sped along the dual carriageway Towner fiddled with the satnav, paying scant attention to lane discipline.

‘You go to the airport often?’ Enders said from the back. ‘Only it’s not hard to find.’

‘Two or three times a week, so I know where it is right enough. Other routes I have trouble with. Short-term memory loss.’ Towner chuckled to herself. ‘Not great for a taxi driver, is it? Thing is, my usual car’s off the road and I can’t quite get to grips with the controls on this unit. Just wanted it on in case of traffic.’

‘I think you took a mate of mine to the airport a few days ago. Black guy? You would have picked him up here in Plymouth. He was heading for the Caribbean. Lucky bugger.’

‘Might have.’ Towner turned to look back at Enders, taking a little too long for Calter’s liking. ‘Can’t say I remember him though.’

‘Can’t remember a black guy?’ Calter said. ‘Strange, because I don’t suppose you get too many round here.’

‘Funny thing is,’ Enders continued, ‘I haven’t heard a thing from him. Bastard’s probably sunning himself amongst a load of babes and has completely forgotten about his mates back in rainy old Devon. What do you think?’

‘No idea.’ Towner stared straight ahead and the speed of the car increased, as if she was trying to get the journey over as quickly as possible.

‘No rush, Mrs Towner,’ Calter said. ‘We’ve got plenty of time. As long as you can manage to remember the route.’

‘What the hell is this about and how do you know my name?’ Towner gripped the steering wheel, knuckles white. She swerved out into the outside lane to overtake a lorry, pulling in front of another car. The driver leant on his horn and shouted silent words through his windscreen at them.

‘Take it easy, Lynn,’ Calter said. ‘We simply want to find out what happened to a mate of ours. You see, we know he isn’t sunning himself on a beach in the Caribbean. We also know that you did give him a ride but that you never took him to the airport.’

‘Fuck it!’ Towner pushed her foot to the floor and the taxi increased its speed again.

‘Steady!’ The dial on the dashboard was nudging ninety. Calter reached into her jacket and pulled out her ID. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Let’s just pull over at the next lay-by and we can have a talk.’

Towner glanced at the ID and then wrenched the wheel to the left. The car swerved into the nearside lane, cutting up a Tesco lorry. An airhorn blared and the taxi hit the curb and lurched onto the verge. Calter’s head smacked into the ceiling and she was aware of Enders bouncing across the back seat. They ploughed through a mass of saplings, Towner stamping on the brake. The car went sideways for a moment, slewing in some mud and slowing until it bumped back onto the road and jolted to a halt, facing the wrong way half across the nearside lane.

Towner opened the door as the taxi stopped and Calter reached across to try to grab her arm. The woman wrenched free from Calter’s grip, leapt out and ran away from the car. There was the sound of rubber squealing on tarmac and then a thud. Calter saw something flying into the air and landing in the road as she heard the airhorn again, aware of a huge mass of jack-knifed truck swinging across the carriageway, the lorry sliding down towards the taxi.

The prospect of a late lunch at home with Pete faded when Hardin asked her to come to the Theatre Royal’s Mezz restaurant. An odd place to meet, Savage thought, but Hardin had been insistent. He needed to be in town anyway, he said, wanted the latest on Riley, the lowdown on Fallon and where Savage had got to with Redmond’s daughter. Oh, and he was bloody famished too.

Hardin sat over by a window, gazing out at the buses queuing on Royal Parade. He had a pint of bitter on the table in front of him and when he saw Savage approach he slid the glass to one side, hiding it behind the fold of a menu.

‘Only the second this week, but don’t tell my GP,’ Hardin said. He looked around as if his doctor might be dining in the very room. ‘And I’ve opted for the handmade beefburger with extra cheese and bacon. Plus chips.’

Savage smiled to herself and decided to only have a starter of some soup and bread, but she joined Hardin in a drink and ordered a bottle of Stella.

‘Riley,’ Hardin said. ‘Any news?’

Hardin’s expression was downbeat, lacking the anxiety Savage would have expected. Almost as if he knew Riley’s fate.

‘Sir, is there something you should be telling me? You don’t seem that bothered Riley’s gone missing.’

‘Hey?’ Hardin had reached out for his beer, but now he stopped. ‘Now look here, Charlotte, we don’t all have to wear our hearts on our sleeves. In fact it might be better for everyone if some people kept their emotions in check a little more.’

‘Sir, I only—’

‘Fuck it, Charlotte,’ Hardin raised a hand and wagged his finger. ‘You haven’t got a monopoly on feelings. You think the rest of us don’t care? I wouldn’t be in this job if I didn’t care and the day I
do
stop caring I’ll resign. All that feminine-intuition-different-way-of-doing-things rubbish. You’re nothing special, understand? Bloody women.’

‘I hardly think the fact that I’m—’

‘Shut it.’ Hardin glared at Savage and reached for his drink again. He took a long slurp of his beer and placed the glass back behind the menu. He paused, bit his lip and then looked off into the middle distance. ‘Do you remember a lad by the name of Gareth Malms? He was a PC in Manchester when I was first on the beat up there. Not a mate, but I knew him. Went missing while on patrol one Saturday lunchtime. We pulled all the stops. Massive search. Dogs, helicopters, army. Nothing until the following Tuesday when we found him. No happy ending, he was dead. From his injuries it was apparent he’d been tortured for several hours before he died. We reckoned it was retaliation for a crackdown on dealing in the area, but no one ever went down for his murder.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

The food arrived before Hardin could say anything, but as the waitress placed the plates down he smiled.

‘Accepted,’ he said as the waitress left them. ‘But don’t ever let me hear crap like that from you again, OK?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Believe me, I’m as vexed and upset about Riley as you are, but there’s stuff going on you know nothing about. You do your job and I’ll do mine.’

Savage wanted to ask Hardin what he meant, but given his outburst she decided not to. Instead she filled him in on Dave Dowdney and told him that Calter and Enders were currently on the way to Exeter in Lynn Towner’s taxi. The interview would be conducted en route.

‘What?’ Hardin’s fork stopped mid-air on the way to his mouth. ‘Is that … wise? More importantly, did you do a risk assessment?’

Savage admitted she hadn’t done a risk assessment. It hadn’t entered her mind. She’d simply thought the ploy was a good way to catch Towner out, especially if Calter and Enders made her take the route she had driven after she picked Riley up.

Hardin shook his head, but moved on, segueing into a conversation about Vanessa Liston without explanation. Was the girl going to help? Did she know anything about her old man’s activities? What chance she would be able to tell them about the time of the pickup so they could move on Fallon and bring
Sternway
to a conclusion?