Cut Dead (30 page)

‘You can say that again.’

Savage found Pete in the living room, charts of the coast of Brittany spread over the floor.

‘The summer holidays. Guernsey, Jersey, St-Malo and then work our way westwards,’ Pete said without looking up. ‘If the weather’s suitable, the Îles Chausey before St-Malo. What do you think?’

The trip looked like too much work for Savage, especially considering it was only a week or so since they’d scuttled back from Brixham. She guessed for Pete the hard work was the point. A busman’s holiday for a bus driver who no longer drove a bus. Savage touched him on the shoulder affectionately and explained she needed to go out. Pete nodded, but he was already engrossed in a Channel Islands pilot book as she left the room.

An hour and a half later and she drove into the farmyard at Tavy View Farm and parked next to the green tractor. Joanne Black opened the front door and shouted through the rain, asking if she wanted a cup of coffee. Savage said she’d call in on her way back.

There was no sign of Wilson, but then Savage remembered he had a 4x4. Maybe he’d driven down the metal track.

She pulled on her waterproof coat, stuck a torch in one pocket and grabbed her wellies from the boot. Then she set off on the trek to the scene.

The clouds had lowered even farther since she left home, dark shapes scudding in. Although sunset wasn’t for another hour and a half, the lights down in Plymouth were visible across the water, twinkling in the rain. She trudged down the track and across the field. The white forensic shelter stood down the far end, sheltering the hole, but no light emanated from within. There was no sign of Wilson’s car either. By the time she reached the tent the rain had begun to get heavier, the sky darker.

She peeled back the door of the tent and secured the tie. The generator, pump and lights had been removed and inside, water lapped the sides of the hole a metre or so from the top edge. Without the pump to remove the runoff from the rain the hole had half-filled, the water brown and opaque.

Layton had said something about keeping the area protected for a few days in case they needed to do any more analysis, but Savage couldn’t see what else might be gleaned from the mess. The ground penetrating radar and additional aerial shots suggested they’d pretty much got the excavation right; there were no more bodies.

She turned from the tent and looked down to the estuary and Plymouth again. The lights glowed brighter now, presaging an early dusk. Where the hell was Wilson? She took out her phone, but saw there was no signal. She tapped in a text message, pressed ‘send’ and held the phone in the air. There was a beep as the message found a stray carrier and zipped off into the ether. A minute or so later her phone vibrated. Savage peered at the screen. A reply from Wilson.

Emergency consultation with patient. Have to cancel. Tried to phone. Sorry.

Damn.

Savage shoved the phone in her pocket and gazed around at the tent and its surroundings. Wondered if she could do anything useful here. Now she was alone perhaps she could take a moment to get into the mindset of the killer. Night was coming. This could be just the sort of time of day the killer would have carried the bodies over the railway bridge and put them in the hole.

Layton’s stepping plates had been removed after an extensive fingertip search had taken place, and a thick gloop of mud surrounded the scene. The CSIs had walked everywhere but as Savage moved around the outside of the tent she saw a distinct set of footprints leading down towards the railway line. They appeared recent, the rain only just beginning to fill the imprints with water. Savage moved closer and now she could see there were
two
sets of prints: one coming and one going.

She crouched next to one. The print was large and from the simple pattern looked like a wellington boot. The footprints led up and into the tent.

A nosey parker walking on the railway line?

Savage went back to the tent. The prints went right to the edge of the hole. Somebody had stood there. Could that person conceivably be the killer returning to the crime scene? Wilson had hinted at such a scenario. Had he been correct?

The light had begun to leach from the sky and now the line of trees marking the railway stood black against the background of the city. Savage took out her torch and flicked it on. The weak beam flashed around the inside of the tent as she checked to see if anything had been disturbed. No. Whoever had been this way recently had done no more than stand and stare.

She flashed the light down into the hole. The white light from the torch made the water resemble insipid tea. She swung the beam around, absently playing it back and forth across the surface. In the water something twinkled in the beam. She held the torch steady. Something metal-like, shiny. Something the person had dropped.

Thinking the object might be an item as innocent as a piece of silver foil – wrapping from a sweet or the innards of a cigarette packet perhaps – she looked around for something to hook it out with. Propped in one corner of the tent were a number of plastic measuring poles which had been used to demarcate areas of the search and provide sightings for the surveying equipment Layton had used. She grabbed a pole and lowered it down to the water. She wouldn’t be able to hook the item out, but moving the pole around might reveal what the thing was and whether it was worthy of further investigation. Holding the pole with one hand and the torch with the other didn’t make for a very accurate touch and as she pushed, the shiny object sank beneath the water.

Sod it.

Savage knelt in the mud, her knees sinking into the soggy ground. She placed the torch to one side, aiming the beam across the hole. With both hands she lowered the pole once again and stirred the water. The pole met resistance and she applied leverage, moving something beneath the water.

There. A twinkle in the torchlight. She leant forward for a better look, aware she could topple over. Not a piece of foil; something sparkling, much more precious than a discarded wrapper. A ring. On a finger, attached to a hand, the arm disappearing into the sludge.

Fuck!

Savage rolled back from the edge, sliding over in the mud and scrabbling for the torch. She grasped at the side of the tent, hauling herself upright and then leaning forward again, aiming the torch down into the water.

Did she imagine that? Were the situation and darkness playing tricks on her mind?

No. The torchlight picked out the fingers of the hand, white against the brown water. A left hand. A silver ring on the third finger, the sparkle of diamonds announcing a wedding which would never take place.

Paula Rowland.

Savage pushed herself to her feet and plunged out of the tent into the murk, aware of a rumble from down the field. Lights coming across the bridge. A train. Catterly-dum, catterly-dum, catterly-dum. The train reached her side of the bridge and slowed as the lead carriage hit the curve and the climb up to Bere Ferrers station. The noise had at first reassured her, something ordinary to bring her out of the nightmare. But as the carriages rumbled past in front of her, the interiors lit up, she saw there was nobody on board, like the thing was some demonic ghost train on a journey to hell.

She shivered, aware of the mud and wet creeping through her clothes. She needed to go back to the farm and call for help. The area had to be secured as soon as possible and that included stopping trains from going across the bridge. As she turned away, the last carriage passed below her. She saw a figure at the trackside, the shape silhouetted against the white of a window. Somebody standing, facing her way.

Watching.

The scene flicked off as the lights from the train passed by and the figure was lost against the dark embankment.

Savage began to move down towards the railway line but then stopped, sense taking hold. She turned and began to run up to the farm.

‘Déjà vu,’ Layton said as he climbed out of his Volvo, looked around the farmyard and then glanced at the sky. ‘It’s even bloody raining again.’

‘Sorry to do this to you, John. Tonight’s your dance night, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Layton shrugged, turned towards the back of the car, almost as if he was embarrassed to be caught enjoying himself. He opened the tailgate and pulled out a white suit. ‘Back to earth with a bump, but nights like this make you realise there’s always some bugger worse off than yourself.’

Paula Rowland was very much worse off. It was unlikely, given the circumstances, that they’d have found her alive, but while there was no body a tiny piece of hope remained. The hand rising from the sludge, the diamonds mocking mortality as they continued to sparkle, put paid to that.

‘How are we going to get her out?’ Savage asked.

‘D Section. Inspector Frey’s sending a couple of lads. Should be here in a few minutes.’

In fact it was thirty minutes before D Section’s van arrived. Another twenty for two men to get into their drysuits and squelch down to the scene along with Layton, Savage and three more CSIs.

They opened the door on the far side of the tent so as to preserve what was left of the trail. Layton hung a powerful lantern from one of the roof poles and then he edged round the hole and covered a couple of the footprints at the other entrance with little cloche-like domes to protect them.

‘Make sure you get the right ones,’ Savage said.

‘Not much chance of me getting it wrong,’ Layton said. ‘Dunlop size twelve. I reckon they’re the same ones which shed those dried bits of mud we found on Paula Rowland’s floor. Clunkers, anyway.’

‘Clunkers?’ Savage said.

‘Big feet. Big load too, the way the prints have such deep indentations.’

‘Somebody carrying the body then.’

‘Yes. Huge compared to your dainty little things.’

Savage looked down at her feet, which she didn’t exactly consider dainty, and then asked Layton about possible forensic from the mystery man.

‘Difficult to get up here from the railway line without getting filthy,’ he said, looking down at his own wellingtons where mud had worked its way past the tops and up the legs of his white suit. ‘Especially if you’re carrying a body. The man’s clothing will be filthy and he’ll carry the dirt into his car. If he drove down the track on the other side of the bridge there’ll be mud on the tyres as well, gunge under the wheel arches.’

One of the men from D Section lowered a small aluminium ladder down into the hole and clambered down, dropping into the water which came up to his waist. There was no sign of the girl, but Savage pointed across to the far side.

‘The body’s over there.’

The diver waded through the water, hands outstretched, feeling beneath the surface.

‘Here she is,’ he said, lifting a pale arm from the water, the diamonds glittering again.

The other diver jumped down into the hole, sending water splashing up. Savage looked at Layton, wondering if they should be a bit more careful.

‘No worries,’ Layton said. ‘She was dumped here. Literally. The sooner we get the body out of the water the more chance of preserving any evidence on her. We’ll get something from the footprints, maybe down on the railway line.’

‘A squad car blocked the end of the track soon after I called in, but they saw nothing.’

‘I’ll get over there later and see about tyre impressions. For now let’s concentrate on this.’

The two divers lifted the corpse until the body floated on the water, gently cradling the girl, almost like some sort of baptism. Only you couldn’t sprinkle water on Paula’s forehead because her head was missing, just a couple of inches of vertebrae poking from the pulp of the neck. Like the other bodies, cut lines criss-crossed the torso, but this time there was a vivid contrast between the pale skin and the flesh below. The girl had been alive only a day or so ago.

The men hoisted the body to shoulder height and rolled her up onto the edge of the pit where the CSIs had laid out a body bag. Layton moved across and prodded the skin with a blue-gloved finger.

‘She’s not been in the water for more than an hour or so.’ He turned to Savage. ‘I guess you’re a witness. Whoever was down on the railway line dumped the body. Congratulations, you’ve seen the Candle Cake Killer.’

Savage had known that already, but Layton’s words chilled her. Not only had she seen the killer, he’d seen her too.

Dr Wilson arrived at the farm as the clock was pushing up to midnight.

‘Unbelievable,’ he said, fiddling with his coat as he tried to loosen the zip in the fuggy warmth of the incident room van. ‘To return to the scene, even though there was a chance of being caught. I only wish I had been there with you. Maybe we could have given chase.’

The phrase sounded antiquated to Savage, like something Sherlock Holmes would have said as he charged over Dartmoor after the hound. Wilson’s take on the Candle Cake Killer seemed to be that the investigation was a game. She wondered if he inhabited some sort of fantasy world – possibly gleaned from his time in America – where the profiler was at the centre of things, the rest of the team hanging on his every word.

The three of them – Savage, Hardin and Wilson – sat in the van listening to the rain drum on the roof. Hardin had summoned the psychologist to the scene, wanting Wilson to see the recent developments ASAP. He also wanted to know where the hell Wilson’s report was. ‘The bloody fucking profile’ as he put it. Events, Wilson said, had delayed his analysis. The baby rabbit on the barbecue and now the killer’s return to the farm to dump a body meant a re-evaluation. He’d work something up, he promised. Anything, Hardin said, anything to help.

Which was where they were now.

‘Unbelievable,’ Wilson said again. ‘Classic serial killer behaviour is to revisit the scene, maybe use the same dumping ground over and over. But I’ve never heard of one doing so after the site has been compromised. The fact he has suggests an audacity beyond anything I have seen, here or in my time at Quantico.’

Hardin shook his head. Savage knew his love of the States extended about a mile west of Land’s End. US policing he thought abysmal. Quantico, he’d joked to Savage some days before, sounded like a cut-price supermarket, and was about as useful to British detective work.