Cut Dead (11 page)

You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.

Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?

But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.

A serious crime.

Which brings your mind back to the girl.

Verdict: guilty.

Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.

If she’s lucky she’ll be dead long before then.

Chapter Ten

Salcombe Primary School, Devon. Tuesday 17th June. 12.27 p.m.

Some sort of sports day was taking place at Salcombe Primary when Savage and Calter arrived. Children ran round the outside of a playing field practising for a relay race while teachers arranged chairs in a row at the edge. A voice croaked ‘one-two, one-two’ from a dodgy PA and a couple of parents arranged snacks on a trestle table. A handwritten sign gave prices: a cup of tea and a fairy cake for fifty pence.

In the school office the administrator seemed reluctant to give out any details about Mrs Glastone even after she had verified Savage’s credentials by calling Crownhill station.

‘Carol’s had a rough time of it,’ she said as she led them through to the next-door room. ‘I think you’d better speak to Mrs Cartwright. Mind you she’ll not have more than ten minutes. It’s our Olympics today.’

Savage was thinking of Jamie’s own sports day, coming up in a few weeks’ time. She hoped she’d be able to attend. Missing her children’s red letter days always pained her and, as she had told Pete many times when he’d been away from home, once they were gone they were gone.

Jenny Cartwright, a smart woman in her thirties who looked like she should be running a quoted company rather than a school, introduced herself as the Head of Teaching and Learning.

‘We’re an academy, see? A number of small schools in a federation. We pool resources and expertise. Share our experiences. There’s an executive head who runs everything across the federation.’

To Savage the set-up sounded like the sort of rubbish which could well find its way into the police force. But then again maybe it already had. The senior management were as removed from the day-to-day issues of policing as Jenny Cartwright’s boss was from dealing with a six-year-old who’d stumbled in the playground.

‘Carol Glastone,’ Savage said. ‘She’s a teaching assistant here, correct?’

‘Carol’s great. Really involved. Treats the school like family. She should be here this afternoon, actually.’ Jenny raised a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh my God, has something happened to her?’

‘No. We spoke to Carol this morning. We just wanted to confirm whether she was working last year around the twenty-first of June.’

‘She’s had quite a bit of time off recently. I’m sure we can check.’

Jenny got up from her desk and went through to the admin area. A couple of minutes later she was back with a large hardback record book.

‘As I say, she was ill at the start of this year, fell down the stairs at home and broke an arm, but last year …’ Jenny paused, fingers turning pages in the book. ‘Of course! Yes, she was working all through that week.’

‘You sure? There can be no mistake?’

‘No.’ Jenny closed the book. ‘Might I know why you’re asking? Is it for an alibi of some kind?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Savage said. ‘I can’t disclose that. What time does Carol usually work to … I mean, does she stay on at the end of the school day?’

‘She might if there is a staff meeting or something. For instance today many of us will stay behind afterwards clearing up. Usually we’ll be out of here by four.’

Savage nodded and turned to Calter. The DC made a mark in her notebook and then looked up at Savage as if to say ‘I told you so.’

‘OK, thank you, Jenny.’ Savage stood up and offered a hand.

‘But …’ Jenny glanced at Calter and then back to Savage. ‘I thought you might … perhaps …’

‘Yes?’

‘The husband. He … I don’t know how to say it. Maybe I’m being silly, Carol’s life is really none of my business, is it?’

‘This kind of thing is all of our business. I can tell you we’re aware of Carol’s domestic issues, but we can’t do anything until she makes a complaint.’

‘So the alibi wasn’t for Carol. It was for him.’

‘We just wanted to know at what times Carol would have arrived home on the days concerned last year. You’ve answered that. She was here all day and would have left for home around four.’

‘Home? No, you asked me whether she was working and then you went on to some more general point about what time we get out of school. Last year she and Mrs Williams took the Year Sixes down to St Ives for their residential. Carol wouldn’t have been at home at all that week.’

As they walked back to their car Calter apologised to Savage. Maybe Glastone was back in the frame after all.

‘But why if it’s him,’ Calter said, ‘has he started killing again? He doesn’t fit our profile of somebody who’s been out of action for some reason. Mr Glastone has been living and working in Salcombe the whole time.’

‘Carol Glastone?’

‘Hey?’

‘He got married to Carol Glastone two years ago. Maybe that has something to do with it.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, ma’am, should I decide to get hitched. Another reason not to if married life is going to turn your husband into a serial killer.’

‘So far, touch wood,’ Savage said, opening the car door and climbing in, ‘mine hasn’t yet.’

Devlyn Corran’s house lay on the edge of a lane about half a mile from the village of Dousland. The little cottage sat back from the road at the top of a steep, grassy bank. Riley and Enders parked alongside the bank behind a shiny new Mini and got out. Brick steps led up the bank to a plateau with a vegetable garden on one side and a small area of lawn on the other. A child’s swing hung from the branch of an old tree and the yellow seat moved in the wind. A pink and silver helium balloon tugged at its string trying to free itself from where it had been tied to the side of the porch and Riley could see a banner hanging in a downstairs window, gold lettering which read ‘Happy Fifth Birthday Emily’.

He pushed the gate open and reflected the day probably hadn’t been happy at all. Riley didn’t have kids so he had no idea if going ahead with the party would have been right or not. He wondered aloud to Enders what he would have done. Would he have continued with the celebration? Carried on as normal? Mrs Corran would have had a difficult time explaining to young Emily why Daddy wasn’t coming home.

‘Lies,’ Enders said. ‘When you’ve got kids you get used to making them. “TV’s not working”, “we can’t afford it”, “the sweet shop’s closed”. That’s apart from the Father Christmas, Tooth Fairy sort of bollocks. She’d have thought of something.’

‘Patrick?’ Riley gestured at a bedroom window where a streak of blonde hair and a tear-stained face poked from behind a curtain. ‘Must be the daughter.’

‘Heartbreaking, Darius. Heartbreaking.’

Mrs Corran answered the door and she’d been crying too. Without the tears her face would have been attractive, with full lips, a perfect nose and blue eyes framed with a mass of flaxen hair, but compared to her head the woman’s body seemed a little too slim and the black denim dress and black leggings she wore hung on her like clothes on a rail. She guided them into the front room where a large tropical fish tank and a big television jostled for primacy either side of a fireplace, the grate choked with soot and as cold as the atmosphere. The woman introduced herself as Cassie and gestured to the sofa. She asked the inevitable question, was there any news?

‘No, Cassie, I am afraid not,’ Riley said as he and Enders sat down.

‘Still no sign of his bike then? I mean if it had been an accident …’ Cassie went and stood by the fish tank. A vivid orange and white clownfish nosed against the glass and Cassie looked down, almost as if the fish would provide her with an answer.

‘We would have found his bike.’ Riley filled in the words, but didn’t mention anything about hit and run drivers being a bit more wised-up these days. Even to the extent where someone might pick a body up from the road and move it away from the scene. ‘I am keeping an open mind at the moment. This could be an accident, it could be something else.’

If the news provided any sort of comfort to Cassie it wasn’t evident from the tears which welled in her eyes.

‘You mean … he …’ Cassie’s voice trailed off again.

‘I know you’ve told the story to the officers who came yesterday, but I’d like to go over one or two areas again and get some more background information.’

‘OK.’ Cassie sounded unsure. She moved from the fish tank and perched on the edge of an armchair. ‘But I don’t know what else I can tell you. Devlyn went to work as usual Saturday night and never turned up Sunday morning.’

‘So there was nothing different you remember about Devlyn on Saturday? Nothing bothering him?’

‘He was a bit withdrawn, tired perhaps, but he got up lunch time and went fishing in the afternoon. Down to Bigbury-on-Sea, I think he said. Then he helped me with some of the things for the party, played with Emily and went off to work.’

‘And when did you realise he was missing?’

‘His shift was supposed to end at eight a.m., but sometimes he’ll stay on for a chat afterwards or maybe something will come up and he’ll need to work an extra hour to cover for an absence. By ten I thought something wasn’t quite right so I phoned the prison. They said he’d clocked off on time and someone had seen him getting on his bike. I gave it a little longer and then I put Emily in the car and we went looking for him. When I got back to the house an hour or so later I phoned you lot. Felt stupid at the time, as if I was causing a bother over nothing, but now …’

‘Usually people turn up after a few hours. We simply don’t have the resources to send officers out looking for everyone who goes missing. I understand the rescue group began their search late on Sunday afternoon?’

‘Yes. The ironic thing is Devlyn wanted to be a member, but he didn’t think he would be able to spare the time and being on call wouldn’t fit in with his job.’

Cassie’s eyes glazed and she turned her head towards the mantelpiece where a picture showed a figure in walking gear standing on a snow slope. The man’s bright red cagoule and over-trousers stood out against the white and he held a snowball in his right hand, making to throw it at the camera.

‘Is that Devlyn?’ Riley said.

‘Yes. In the Dales, Ingleborough. Before we had Emily. Years ago.’ Cassie looked away from the picture and down at the floor where specks of multi-coloured confetti were dotted across the white carpet. It appeared as if Emily had had some sort of party after all.

‘When Devlyn worked at Full Sutton?’

‘Yes. We loved our life up there with the moors and York and everything.’

‘So why did you leave?’

‘I … Devlyn …’ Cassie clasped her hands together, not in prayer but clenched in anger, the skin on the knuckles tightening to white over bone.

‘Cassie?’

‘Devlyn had an affair. Afterwards he was sorry about straying, they always are, aren’t they? He said he would never be unfaithful again and suggested we leave the area and move away. Far away. So here we are.’

‘So the reason was nothing to do with the prison or his work?’

‘No.’ Cassie paused for a moment and Riley thought she was going to say something else. Instead she leant forward and picked up some of the confetti from the floor. She stared at the pieces as they lay in her palm before raising her hand to her mouth and blowing hard. The confetti rose in the air and then fell to the floor in a flutter of pastel colours. ‘Happy ever after, isn’t that what they say? As long as you both shall live?’

Joanne Black and her farmworker, Jody, stood on the slab of concrete not far from the crime scene tent. A couple of CSIs were still working around the hole and when Joanne had come from the house she’d seen someone in the mobile incident room. Other than that most of the police had disappeared in search of lunch.

‘What’ll we say?’ Jody had asked as they walked down the track into the field. ‘I mean when they ask us why we’re down here.’

‘Farming, Jody,’ Joanne replied. ‘It’s what we do, remember?’

Once at the slab Joanne had waved her arms around, talked loudly about crop rotation, drill depth and spraying cycles. She’d pointed out various areas of the field, sounding exasperated as she worried about how they were going to clear up all the mess. Looked to the hedge. Wandered around.

When the CSIs had stopped paying attention, one bent to a trowel, the other operating some sort of probe, she’d confronted Jody.

‘It was here,’ she said. ‘A bungalow. I remember. Wood-panelled sides, asbestos roof, a little veranda.’

‘Yes.’ Jody peered down at his feet and pointed out a line of holes in the concrete. ‘All these, they’re from a shed we put up after the house was demolished. Lasted a couple of years but it got torn down in a storm. Cursed, your uncle said.’