Bad Blood (4 page)

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
’s
special 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.’

Mount Edgcumbe, Plymouth. Monday 14th January. 12.21 p.m.

Later, Riley and Kemp went into the Edgcumbe Arms and ordered lunch, Kemp going for a beef stew, Riley choosing the Thai sweet chilli chicken. Two beers as well, Kemp laughing at Riley’s lager top as he supped his bitter.

‘How did you come to be down here then?’ Kemp said, polishing off the mushroom sauce with the last of his new potatoes. ‘I mean …’

‘You mean because I’m black?’

‘Well, not exactly wall-to-wall diversity in this part of the world, is it? And your accent, posh, educated, but London in there somewhere. South of the river?’

‘Good, Marty. Postcode?’

‘Given enough time I can come up with the colour of your first fuck’s knickers. Still thinking about my original question though. Why?’

‘Nosey, aren’t you?’ Riley said, taking a mouthful of noodles before considering his answer. ‘Let’s just say circumstances.’

‘Oh, those. Plenty of the buggers around. Work related?’

‘Yeah, work related.’

‘Enough said. I’ll not intrude on your misery any further.’ Kemp took a drink of his beer. ‘You settled down here? Got a girlfriend? Plans?’

‘Yes,’ Riley said, thinking of Julie Meadows, the woman he’d met a couple of months ago and had been seeing ever since. Julie worked for NeatStreet, a charity dealing with deprived youngsters on some of Plymouth’s worst estates, and at the tail end of last year she’d wangled him into taking a group of boys from North Prospect up to London to watch his beloved Chelsea play. From that day on he’d been smitten. Now he was unable to prevent a smile forming and, embarrassed, he looked away and out through the pub window. On the far bank of the river Plymouth shone gold in the light from the low winter sun. He turned back to Kemp. ‘For the first time in a long time I suppose I do feel settled. I guess it’s not having to do what you do any more. You know, undercover. I’m not sure I could deal with the crap any more, the fear. Getting settled is easier now I’m away from all that.’

‘Here,’ Kemp reached into his jacket, pulled out his wallet and slipped it across to Riley. ‘My little girl.’

‘Thought you were offering to pay for a moment there.’ Riley opened the wallet, saw the smile before anything else, then the blonde hair and the blue eyes.

‘Elsie. She’s eight. Keeps me grounded. Her and her mother. Trouble, both of them. Trouble you get to love.’

‘Elsie. That in real life?’

‘Not the name, but the picture, yes. Makes it easier to play the part, doesn’t it?’

Easier to play the part, Riley thought, his mind slipping back to his time in London again. Sometimes playing the part was all too easy. You forgot who you were in real life, you went native. And when that happened the inevitable followed: circumstances. He shook his head as he passed the wallet back to Kemp, and bent to his food again.

After the meal they went back outside so Kemp could have another smoke. They watched as a tiny sailing yacht nosed its way out from the Mayflower Marina and into the main channel, one of thousands of boats of all sizes that used Plymouth Sound as a base.

‘If Gavin Redmond had kept a low profile, stuck to something like that, we might never have known.’ Kemp waved his cigarette at the boat. ‘It’s those bloody gin palaces. You can smell the illegality in the fumes whenever one passes. From Russian oligarchs to small-time dodgy car ringers, they all want the same thing: a tanned blonde and a penis substitute.’

As if in response to Kemp’s statement, a loud parp from an airhorn caused them both to look to their right. The sailing boat was drifting in the channel as the skipper fought with a line which trailed behind the boat. Blue language drifted across the water and Riley guessed the rope may have fouled the prop. The horn came from a large motor boat, forty foot or more, moving up the main river and into the pool. On the flybridge a man gestured at the little boat and it wasn’t the friendly greeting of one seafarer to another.

‘Talk of the devil.’ Kemp turned away from the water and leant on the railings, his back to the action. ‘That’s Redmond.’

‘He’s got other things to worry about than spotting us,’ Riley said as the motor boat spurted forward, lifting its nose and sweeping round the sailing boat. A large bow wave washed across and rocked the little yacht and the man hung onto the backstay for balance. He returned Redmond’s gesture with interest, the single finger held aloft followed by a string of obscenities.

A rigid inflatable boat appeared from between the pontoons with two Mayflower staff on board. They nosed up to the yacht and began to guide the disabled vessel back to the marina.

‘Cocky fucker, isn’t he?’ Riley said.

‘All on the surface,’ Kemp said, watching as the white hulk of Redmond’s boat glided up the pool to the Tamar Yacht pontoons, leaving behind a swirling vortex of water. ‘Underneath he can barely hold it together. The business is on the rocks – excuse the pun – and Kenny Fallon has him by the bollocks.’

With the boat gone, Kemp turned to Riley, hand outstretched.

‘Well, I’m off, back up the motorway. Pity I won’t be here for the bust, but Mr Kemp needs to stay low in case he’s needed again. I’ll be seeing you. In court, I hope. When it’s all over we’ll have some more beers and you can introduce me to your girl. She must be sweet if she can make you smile like you did just now.’

He shook Riley’s hand and walked away without looking back, disappearing round the corner of the pub and into another life.

‘Cocky fucker,’ Riley said again.

Durnford Street was in the Stonehouse area of the city, on an odd-shaped piece of land reached by an isthmus running between the ferry terminal and the Royal Marine Barracks on one side and a creek on the other. Surrounded by water on three sides, and accessible only across the isthmus, the location had risen in affluence relative to the rest of Stonehouse. The latter had acquired a reputation for vice, hardly helped by the presence of Union Street and its array of nightclubs at its centre.

‘We’re too late,’ Savage said to Calter as they parked up.

They got out of the car and approached the imposing terrace of four-storey houses. At number one twenty-three a young woman stood holding a baby. She was talking to Dan Phillips, the
Herald
’s crime reporter, while a photographer took shots of the next door property, where someone had spray-painted the immaculate gloss-white door with the vivid red words ‘Paedos rot in hell’.

‘Detective Inspector?’ Phillips turned and came down the steps, blocking her way along the pavement to one twenty-one. Pinprick eyes scanned her face trying to read her mind from her expression. ‘A child’s body is found under a patio and next, the police are visiting the house of a certain Mr Franklin Owers. According to my sources he’s a known paedophile. Anything to say on the matter?’