Authors: Mark Sennen
Cut Dead (27 page)
‘A VIP? How will I know?’
‘You’ll know. Possibly they might not even be a suspect, not related to the Corran investigation in any way, just somebody you come across in the course of your investigations. And if and when you
do
find such a person you’re to come to me, not Davies.’ Fox smiled and then pointed at the photo of Corran on the whiteboard. ‘See, there’s just a possibility this hit and run incident could be, ah, how shall I say it? – career changing?’
‘Sir?’
‘Promotion. Demotion. That sort of thing. Get my drift?’
Riley nodded, but Fox had already turned away and was walking towards the door, his message delivered.
You don’t do it all in one go. What would be the point of that? You like to take a break now and then. Give your victims time to think. At some point in the day you make yourself lunch. Cheese on toast. Four minutes and fifty-one seconds under the grill. A little Tabasco. Ground pepper. A sprinkle of oregano. A few hours later, it’s a snack. Those crumpets again. Marmite for you, jam for Mikey. A cup of tea. You sit in the kitchen and munch and slurp. Not long to go now, you think, sad that it will be over so soon.
Five minutes later and you’re back in the dining room and hard at work, the plastic sheeting swimming in blood and other fluids, the flash of the knife as you move it back and forth once more. Beside you, Mikey is grinning. It’s the grin of a man whose brain is barely more complicated than a cabbage, but the emotion behind the smile is pure.
As it would be.
Mikey doesn’t have the wit or intelligence to understand exactly the reasons you do what you do, but he enjoys the process nevertheless. Like you, he can see the beauty, the justice and the meaning in the patterns the knife weaves as it caresses and opens the skin. He understands the process is about pain, because he’s experienced his share too. He knows these few hours may stretch to a day or two, maybe even three with the strong ones, but they must stand in for years of misery, compressing all the horror into such a short space.
When the process is over, you never feel it is enough, but it has to do. Until the next time.
She’s done screaming now, done doing anything much except for the occasional gurgle or cough. She’ll be dead soon, but for now the blood still flows, oozing from the cuts, seeping from the wounds. The way you slipped from your mother’s own wound and found life. Or rather, life found you.
Mikey wouldn’t understand the symbolism. The only sort of symbol he understands is the stupid Apple logo on his phone which promises him mindless entertainment as he slides his fingers across the screen. He never gets bored, never tires of the games.
And neither do you.
The knife slits open another long gash, blood appearing moments later as if the blade is some sort of brush with a five -second delay. And really the knife is like a brush, you like an artist, the woman like a canvas. Only nobody gets to see your work except for Mikey, and he gets excited by a potato stamp painting.
You guess that must make you a true artist, not worried about the fame and fortune, not falling for the rubbish you see espoused in the papers by those egos who can serve up a plate of dog turds or a rotting fish and sell it for thousands. Your art must exist only in your own mind and, for a short while, in the mind of your victims.
Ephemeral. From the Greek. Meaning to last only one day.
Like this woman.
She’s dead now, Mikey’s grin changing to a frown, his eyes turning to you as a dog looks to his master.
‘Oh God,’ you say, moving to slump in a plastic-covered chair, aware of Mikey pawing at the body, aware he is clambering onto the table. ‘Awful. This is awful.’
But you know this is far, far worse than awful. It’s sickening, the scene an abomination, the whole process degrading, inhumane, beyond any sort of comprehension.
‘Clay, Mikey,’ you say, trying to focus. ‘We forgot the clay.’
Mikey’s not listening. He’s otherwise engaged.
You shake your head. You’ll shove some clay in later when Mikey’s had his fun, but for now you’re exhausted. Emotionally and physically. You wipe the knife on your trousers and get up and place the blade back in the display case. You’ll finish up tomorrow and for the next part of the job you need something a little less subtle than the knife.
Your felling axe should do.
Bovisand, Plymouth. Monday 23rd June. 7.50 a.m.
Monday. No news. As Savage made herself breakfast, the TV showed pictures of yesterday’s developments in the continuing hunt for Paula Rowland: soldiers yomping over Dartmoor checking bogs and mine workings; coastguard rescue teams walking the coastal path; house-to-house searches in parts of Plymouth; helicopters with thermal imaging equipment buzzing isolated villages; a group of vigilantes intent on carrying out unofficial investigations of their own.
‘Nutters,’ Pete said. ‘Why can’t they just let you do your job?’
‘The trouble is,’ Savage said, ‘we’re not doing it very well.’
‘Like us as parents.’ Pete pointed to the kitchen table where a mess of Cheerios and milk and half-eaten toast had been left by Samantha and Jamie. ‘A certain lack of discipline, methinks.’
Savage grabbed a dishcloth from the sink. Wondered if Pete was casting aspersions on her specifically. He seemed to read her mind, because he held up his hands.
‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘Takes two to tango. You were left holding the babies. But that’s par for the course when you fall for an incredibly good-looking, high-flying naval officer.’
Savage bundled the cloth and threw it across the room at Pete, just as Samantha came in from the hallway.
‘Mum! Dad!’ she said. ‘Are you fighting again?’
Again? Savage half-laughed, reassured Samantha everything was OK, and then told her to go and call Jamie so they could get off to school.
After she’d dropped off first Jamie and then Samantha, she drove out to Bere Ferrers. When the bad news about Phil Glastone had come through Hardin had insisted on a return to the farm. He’d spoken to a PolSA, the search adviser agreeing to set up a new sweep of the Bere Peninsula. Alongside the search there’d be a door-to-door blitz, repeating the one which had been done before Paula went missing.
When she arrived at the village the enquiry teams were just getting started and several officers stood in a group at one end of the main street, a DS allocating properties to be visited. Savage pulled up outside the farm where Enders stood at the gate, talking to another detective.
As she was getting out of her car she took a call from the officer who’d been interviewing Carol Glastone over at the Referral Centre. The medical evidence was strong, the officer said, and the statement Carol had given backed up the assault charges. Glastone had battered Carol and then raped her. Far from the first time it had happened. They’d be able to see him go down for that at least. At least? Savage wanted to know more.
‘The rest of the stuff,’ the woman said, ‘is, I’m afraid, total fiction. You remember Carol said her husband arrived home in the early hours, washed his clothes, acted suspicious? Well she’s retracted that part of her statement.’
Savage hung up. The conversation only served to confirm what they knew regarding Phil Glastone’s movements on the day Paula had gone missing. She walked across to Enders and told him.
‘She lied to you, ma’am,’ he said. ‘All the material we were going to use is gone.’
‘She partly lied,’ Savage said. ‘He
did
rape her. Kirsty Longworth had ended her affair with Glastone. She said they parted on good terms. Evidently not, because when he returned home he was in a foul mood. He beat Carol and assaulted her.’
‘You believe that?’
‘Yes. And I can understand why she lied as well. She wanted to dump her husband in it. She was probably worried her evidence alone wouldn’t see him put away. It will though, we’ll see to that. It’s just a shame she didn’t realise, because we’ve wasted time on this when we could have been trying to find Paula Rowland.’
‘So where do we go from here?’
‘God knows. This place, the farm, isn’t just a body dump. There are far more convenient places. I’m convinced there must be a reason the killer used the location. Something historical which could link in with Tavy View Farm.’
‘And Dr Wilson?’
‘Haven’t put it to him yet. We’ve got to hope the door-to-door teams come good.’
As it turned out hope was not enough. Come lunch time, with the search of the peninsula still taking place, it was apparent the DtoDs had produced nothing new. Back in the farmyard the PolSA talked about widening the parameters of the sweep but it was obvious the man wasn’t keen. The river was a natural boundary, he said, people over the border in Cornwall hardly knew of the existence of the village. Waste of resources.
‘Crap,’ Hardin said to Savage as the search adviser stepped away. ‘Eight teams, two up each one, scouring the peninsula and they don’t come up with anything. Quality officers, Charlotte. That’s what the force is lacking. You know I have to account for their time? And return on investment so far is zero.’
Savage wasn’t quite sure what Hardin had expected the local enquiry teams to produce, but then again she was as surprised as him that nothing of any value had turned up.
‘You can’t blame them, sir,’ Savage said. ‘If we don’t find anything then we can’t make things up.’
‘Sometimes, Charlotte, life would be a darn sight easier if we could.’ Hardin huffed to himself and shook his head. ‘We’re coming under a lot of pressure. The Chief Constable rang me this morning. Had the effrontery to ask if we needed any help.’
‘Additional resources?’
‘That would be fine, but no. What he was talking about was sending down some clowns from the Met. Can you imagine a load of city-boys out here?’ Hardin took his car keys out of his pocket. He turned to the farmyard gate. ‘First time they lost their mobile internet or they couldn’t find a latte within fifty metres they’d be panicking.’
Savage smiled to herself as Hardin strolled away, not at the image the DSupt had brought up, but rather the thought of a group of Met detectives slipping and sliding their way across the muddy fields of Tavy View Farm.
Riley arrived back at his flat a little after one. He’d done an early shift and now he was looking forward to an afternoon off. The Corran investigation was getting nowhere, Davies so far failing to turn up any information on the gun. Riley had been concentrating on finding more about Corran’s past life in York, but detective work by telephone was proving difficult. He’d try and get hold of the Governor at HMP Full Sutton, but if nothing came of that then it was looking as if someone was going to have to take a trip to the North East.
Julie was staying over and she was kissing him before he’d closed the front door. Then she was waving him into the living room as she ran to the kitchen.
The summer had arrived with a vengeance and the room was hot, just the hint of a breeze coming in through the doors to the balcony. Riley discarded his jacket, unbuttoned the top couple of buttons on his shirt and went out there, picking up a pad and pencil from the coffee table as he did so. Last night he’d been mulling over a few things to do with Corran’s hit and run when his mind had wandered again to the incident involving Clarissa Savage. Now Riley lowered himself into one of the recliners and with barely a glance out at the view, took up where he’d left off.
If, Riley thought, the official investigation into the death of Savage’s kid had failed to turn up anything, there were only two reasons. First, it was possible the evidence simply wasn’t there. Layton said the team had worked their butts off and yet they’d still found nothing. If that reason held then Riley would be able to do no better. Which meant he had to bank on the second reason: the evidence
was
there but the team hadn’t managed to unearth it. Riley drew a line on his pad and split it into a Y shape. The left-hand branch suggested evidence which was buried beyond the reach of the police. To get to that he’d need to explore avenues of dubious legality. Davies was the obvious answer. Down in the ditch. The right-hand branch, on the other hand, was more worrying. It represented evidence which
had
been found but which had been covered up.
Riley dropped his pencil down and leant back in his chair. Shook his head. Conspiracy theories weren’t really his thing. He closed his eyes and felt the sun hot on his face. There was a low hum of traffic noise, people down at street level talking, somewhere far off a helicopter chopping through the thick air. He opened his eyes, aware of how strong the sun was, aware too he needed to change out of his work clothes. He got up and went inside. The living room was dark, but Julie had flicked the TV on.
Spotlight
were showing the clip of Simon Fox at Sunday’s press conference.
We’re keeping calm, making rational decisions, we’ll get the killer in the end.
Except in the case of Clarissa Savage they hadn’t.
A chink-chink came from the kitchen. Julie preparing a jug of something. Water, rum, chunks of fresh pineapple, lemons. Ice cold. Unlike Simon Fox’s hand when he’d approached Riley in the crime suite after the conference.
All I’m saying is should a person of interest come onto your radar and that person is also, how shall I say it … a VIP? Then I want, if possible, to know of it first. Understood?
Riley shook his head. He was making the same mistakes a novice investigator would. He was linking two situations which had similar appearances but with entirely different contexts.
Julie came through from the kitchen with two tall glasses on a tray. She’d discarded her dress and now wore a bikini, a sheen of moisture from suntan lotion on her skin. Riley looked at her. Realised how much he adored this woman, with her smile, her curves, her easy manner.