Bad Blood (46 page)

The arm had pushed up through the mud, as if reaching out and upwards, trying to escape from entombment or maybe trying to cling onto the piece of clothing, the last vestiges of their dignity. Slimy water sloshed around the limb and nearby the round curve of a breast stuck out like an island on an ocean of grey. Joanne stared into the abyss, for all of a sudden that was what the hole was, and at the same time her hand groped in her coat pocket for her mobile. She pulled the phone out, a finger going to the keypad and pressing the number nine three times, and when a man with a calm voice answered she was surprised to find she responded in the same manner.

‘Police,’ she said.

And then she began to scream.

DI Charlotte Savage carried yet another plastic crate from the car into the house and through to the kitchen where her husband, Pete, was unpacking. She dumped the crate on the floor, and he looked over at her and shook his head.

‘One more and that’s it,’ Savage said, before turning and going back to the car.

The summer half-term holiday had turned into an ordeal after the weather had delivered nearly a week of blustery conditions. Sunshine and showers would have been OK had they remained at home, but instead they’d opted to have a week sailing. Their little boat was cosy with two, but cramped with four, and if you added in a good measure of rain, a moody teenager and a bored six-year-old the situation became untenable.

Pete had insisted on sailing east from Plymouth rather than begin the holiday with a beat into the wind, saying the weather was forecast to change, giving them an easy run home. On the way east they had stopped overnight at Salcombe and Dartmouth, ending their journey at Brixham. The rain had come then and the weather worsened as two lows in quick succession came from out of the west, the latter developing into a nasty gale. Because of time constraints they’d set out from Brixham as soon as the second low passed, intending to do the journey back to Plymouth in one hop. Once they had rounded Berry Head though the weather deteriorated and they put into Dartmouth again. A phone call home and Stefan came out in their car and swapped places with Savage and the kids, the idea being that Pete and him would bring the boat back whatever the conditions while Savage took the kids home. Stefan was the family’s unofficial au pair and a semi-professional sailor. With Pete having been twenty years in the Royal Navy – the last five as commander of a frigate – the two of them thought nothing of bringing the boat back to Plymouth in a near gale.

She’d waited for two hours down at the marina for them to arrive and eventually a call came through from Pete saying they were at the breakwater at the edge of Plymouth Sound. Twenty minutes later, Savage stood on the pontoon and took their lines, Jamie, her son, shouting to his dad that he didn’t look so clever. Stefan was grinning.

‘Remind me never to go to sea with him again.’ Pete pointed at Stefan. ‘He’s crazy.’

‘The trouble with you, you old softy,’ Stefan said, ‘is that you are used to wearing your carpet slippers when you helm a boat.’

‘The forecast said seven decreasing five or six,’ Pete said, as he repositioned a fender. ‘But it was a full gale force eight and the waves came up from the south out of nowhere.’

‘They look a bit bigger when you are looking up at them instead of down, don’t they?’ Stefan said, still smiling as he threw Savage another rope.

The call came at around seven that evening as she was clearing the last of the enormous spaghetti bolognese from her plate. The brusque tone of Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin rumbled down the line, his voice breaking up as he tried to find a signal for his mobile.

‘Three of them, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Three. Understand? Never seen anything like … don’t know how … need to try and …’

‘Sir?’

‘Bere Peninsula, Charlotte.’ The signal strong for a moment, Hardin’s voice clear. ‘Tavy View Farm. Nesbit is there, John Layton too, a whole contingent descending on the place, media as well. Bloody nightmare. Meet you in an hour, OK?’

Savage eased the car down the lane past a BBC outside-broadcast vehicle and a white van, nudged into a space behind the familiar shape of Layton’s Volvo, and killed the engine. The car settled into the soft verge, the rain glittering in the headlights before she switched them off too. A bang on the roof startled her and she looked through her window to see the bulky figure of DSupt Hardin standing alongside. He tapped on the glass and she lowered the window, Hardin bending to the opening and apologising for calling her out.

‘You know how it is, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘Thing like this needs quality officers on board. Can’t afford to muck this one up because it’s going to be something big. And I don’t mean in a good way, get my drift?’

‘Sir?’

‘Best see for yourself. Across the field. Hope you brought your wellies.’

Hardin stood and walked away, disappearing into the dark for a moment before he reached a circle of light where a uniformed officer in a yellow waterproof was arguing with a woman. Savage noted the little black on white letters on the woman’s jacket: BBC. Seemed like even the Beeb didn’t respect the right for privacy these days.

Savage got out of the car and put on waterproofs and then a white coverall. A pair of boots completed the outfit and she trudged down the lane to Hardin. Just next to the lights the rear doors on a police transit stood open. Inside, the interior resembled a mini-office and John Layton, their senior Crime Scene Investigator, sat at a desk with another officer. On a laptop in front of them a schematic drawing of some kind overlaid a large scale map of the area. Layton was shaking his head, fussing over some minuscule detail in his characteristic manner.

‘Charlotte,’ he said, noticing her for the first time. ‘Go and take a look.’

‘You sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure. The place is a complete mess already, nothing left to preserve. Besides, we’ve established a safe entry route. The field is too wet for my stepping plates, stupid little things are sinking right down into the mud, but we nicked a load of pallets from up in the farmyard and laid them down. Looks bloody stupid, but it was all I could think of. Got some proper walkways coming later, if we need them, but doing any type of fingertip search in this quagmire is going to be nigh on impossible. Here, sign yourself in. You’ll need this too.’

Layton handed her a torch and an electronic pad and she scrawled her name before turning away and walking past the van to a gateway. Another uniformed officer in bright waterproofs stood in the gateway, water running down off the peak of his hood and dripping onto his nose.

‘Evening, ma’am,’ he sniffed. ‘Nearly mid summer, so I heard. Reckon my calendar must have been printed wrong.’

Savage nodded and continued past, switching on the torch and finding and following a line of tape leading into the darkness. Several sets of footprints had filled with water and the torchlight picked out their muddied surface. In the distance something glowed white, almost welcoming in the way it provided a beacon to aim for.

Savage squelched on until she came to Layton’s makeshift stepping plates: a number of pallets laid in a line which curled away from the edge of the field and towards the white glow. Closer now, and Savage could see what she already knew: the glow came from a forensic shelter. White nylon with blue mudflaps at the base. The chug, chug, chug of a small generator didn’t blot out the noise of the pitter-patter of rain on the shelter’s fabric nor the low hum of conversation coming from within the tent.

A figure in a white coverall stood at the entrance and Savage recognised the wisp of blonde hair coming from beneath the hood as belonging to DC Jane Calter. She tapped the detective on the shoulder. Calter turned.

‘Hello, ma’am.’ Calter pointed to the centre of the tent. ‘Not my idea of a Friday night out to be honest.’

Savage peered in, shielding her eyes against the glare from the halogens, painful after the darkness. You could only call the excavation a pit, hole didn’t do the yawning void justice. One of Layton’s CSIs stood up to her neck in the pit, her PPE suit splattered grey-brown with gunge. Savage moved closer, realising as she did so that somebody else was down there. A face looked up at her, mud caked thick on grey eyebrows above little round glasses.

‘Charlotte.’ Andrew Nesbit, the pathologist, knelt at the bottom of the shaft. No jokes today. Face as grim as the weather. ‘Never a nice time, but this …’

Savage moved to the edge of the hole where scaffold boards had been placed around the top to stop the edges giving way. Nesbit’s arm gestured across the sludge and Savage breathed in hard at what she saw.

Three of them, Hardin had said. But the ‘them’ implied something you could recognise as human. Whatever was down there in the mud looked a long, long way from that.

‘Bodies only,’ Nesbit said. ‘No heads. And by the look of things on this first one, no genitals either.’

‘Christ,’ Savage heard herself mutter under her breath, not really knowing why. The reference to a higher being was futile. No God could exist in a world alongside this sort of horror. ‘Male? Female?’

‘All females I think and they’re …’

‘What?’

‘Markings, I guess. On one of them at least.’ Nesbit moved a hand down and wiped sludge away from one of the grey forms. ‘Cut lines. Dozens of the things.’

‘That killed them?’

‘No idea, not here. We’ll need to get them out to discover that, only …’

‘Only what?’

‘Nothing. I can’t be sure, not yet.’ Nesbit stood, shook his head and then moved to the aluminium ladder and began to clamber from the hole. ‘I do know one thing though.

‘Andrew?’ Savage cursed Nesbit, hoped he wasn’t playing games with her. ‘What is it?’

Nesbit stared down in to the mud, shook his head once more and then looked at Savage, something like desperation in his eyes. Then he seemed to get hold of himself. Smiled.

‘I’m getting too old for this, Charlotte. Much too old.’

Today the big knife is safe at home. You never take it with you on your missions. That would be much too dangerous. The knife has a mind of its own and can only be allowed to come out on one day a year. The Special Day. Not far off now. Not long to wait. There’s just the small matter of selecting your victim. Truth be told though this one, like all the others, selected herself. Free will. A wonderful thing. But people should use it wisely, make their choices with care. And accept the consequences of their decisions.

You watch as she steps out of her house, the blue gloss door swinging shut, closing on the life she led before. She turns to lock the deadlock. Click. Can’t be too careful these days. You like that. A sensible girl. Not that it makes any difference. Sensible or not, she’s yours and nothing anyone can do or say will make any difference.

At the curb she looks up the street and waves at a neighbour. Exchanges a greeting. An au revoir, she’d call it, being a French teacher. You’d call it a goodbye.

The little blue Toyota she gets into matches the colour of the front door. It’s a Yaris. 1.2 sixteen valve. List price nine five four nine. But you’d get it for a touch under seven K if you were prepared to haggle. The colour match is a nice touch, intentional or not. It’s little things like that which catch your attention. Simple things. Serendipity. Chance. These days so much else is too complicated to understand.

Like your dishwasher.

The thought comes to your mind even as you know you should be concentrating on the girl. Only you can’t now. Not when you are considering the dishwasher problem.

This morning you came down to breakfast to find the machine had gone wrong. You took a screwdriver to the rear and pulled the cover off, expecting to find a few tubes and a motor, something easy to fix.

No.

Microchips. And wire. Little incy wincy threads of blue and gold and red and black and green and yellow and purple weaving amongst white plastic actuator switches and shut-off valves. Pumps and control units, fuses and God-knows-what.

Except God doesn’t know. Not any more. That’s the problem.

Once he knew everything. Then man came along and took over God’s throne, claimed to know everything. Now nobody knows everything.

You called the dishwasher repair guy out to take a look. He knows dishwashers. What about TVs?

You asked him as he worked on the machine and he said ‘no, not TVs.’

His words worried you, but then you remembered you don’t have a TV. You never liked the way the bits of the picture fly through the air into the set. That means pieces of people’s bodies are passing through you. Not just their teeth and hair – the nice bits you see on the screen – but their shit and piss, their stomach contents. All of it has to come from the studio to your house and the thought of the stuff floating around your living room makes you gag.

‘Fridges?’ you said, swallowing a mouthful of spit.

‘Yes, fridges. Can find my way around a fridge. At least to grab a tinny or two.’

The way he smiled and then laughed you weren’t sure if he was joking or not. Hope not. You don’t like jokes. At least not ones like that.

‘Microwave ovens? Specifically a Zanussi nine hundred watt with browning control. The turntable doesn’t work.’

‘Not really, no.’

‘What about chainsaws? I’ve got a Stihl MS241. Eighteen inch blade. Runs but there is a lack of power when cutting through anything thicker than your arm.’

The dishwasher man didn’t answer, just gave you an odd look and put his tools away. Drew up an invoice which you paid in cash.

You looked at the invoice and noted the man’s address in case the machine went wrong again. The man left the house and got in a van with the registration WL63 DMR. Drove off.

The girl!

Now she’s driving off too, the blue Toyota disappearing round the corner.

That’s OK. Cars run on roads the way the electricity flows in wires inside the dishwasher. Each wire goes to the correct place and each road does too. The road you are interested in goes left at the end, then straight on through three sets of traffic lights. Third exit on the roundabout. First right, second left and pull up in the car park. Usually she takes the first bay next to the big metal bin unless the headmaster has decided to bring in something heavy in which case he parks there so he can unload. Then she’ll have a dilemma and might park in any one of the other forty-seven spaces. But you really don’t need to worry about that now.