Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (13 page)

‘Too pushed?’ Savage sighed. Shook her head. ‘It bloody sounds like the case is an afterthought. Doesn’t really give me much confidence.’

‘Charlotte, I said this is important.’ Hardin reached down and pulled a file from the cardboard box. He placed the file on the desk. ‘And you’re the best person for the job. This is not a punishment.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Savage looked at the file. Operation
Curlew
. The words were stuck on the front of the folder, the print from an old dot matrix printer for God’s sake. ‘Anything else I should know?’

‘Just look through the file.’ Hardin glanced at his cup of dishwater. ‘And I’ll get us some better beverages, hey?’

Savage pulled the manila file across the desk and flicked open the cover. Her eyes were drawn to the top of the first sheet of paper. Two small mugshots had been stapled into the document. The colour in the pictures had all but leached away but the expressions on the faces were timeless. Two young boys, each grinning at the camera, the picture from a time when having your photograph taken was still an event, not simply an everyday occurrence.

She searched the page for a date, to see if her hypothesis was correct. Yes, the document had been marked January 1990, the time of an annual case review. She scanned the synopsis and discovered the original incident had taken place nearly a year and a half earlier, on 26th August 1988.

Now she settled down to read through the file. The case concerned the disappearance of two boys who’d been residents at Woodland Heights, a secure children’s home on the coast over near Salcombe. The two boys – Jason Caldwell and Liam Hayskith – had gone missing …

Jason and Liam?

The names jumped from the page, quickening her heart for a moment. As a coincidence the identical names seemed improbable and, whether happenstance or not, was cause for comment. Was this what had made Hardin react in such a strange way when the identity of the boy in the tunnel had been revealed?

Savage looked back at the photographs. Jason Caldwell was the lad on the left. Blond hair cut in a pudding-basin style, light blue eyes, and a smile which belied the fact he’d spent most of his childhood in care. Liam Hayskith’s smile was no less wide, but he had brown eyes and matching hair, the hair a mass of natural curls. She paused for a moment. Now she remembered the incident. She’d been at primary school back then and recalled some playground gossip, remembered too a warning from her mother to be careful. Never mind that the two boys were, in the terminology of the time, juvenile delinquents, and the initial suspicion was that they’d run away. Talk later was of somebody preying on young children, even that someone at the home might be involved.

Gossip. Suspicion. Rumour.

That’s all it was back then, but Savage wondered about the truth. Maria Heldon had told Savage there was no smoke without fire. Was that the case here?

She read on, working her way through the brief biographies of the boys and on to the summary of the case. The first inkling anything had been wrong was when Jason and Liam hadn’t come down to breakfast. A window in a storeroom had been found broken, although a forensic report seemed to cast some doubt on how and when that had happened, a finger of suspicion pointing to the caretaker. In the days following, there were some unconfirmed sightings across Devon, but nothing concrete. Staff were extensively interviewed and the rescue services conducted a three-day search of the coastline. There was evidence the boys might have been down at a nearby cove where several sets of footprints were discovered in the sand above the tideline, but nothing else was found and neither of the boys was ever seen again.

She moved on beyond the summary, working her way deeper into the document. All the pertinent facts were here: names, dates, places, key witnesses, details of events, analysis. She began to read some of the witness statements. The home had been run by a Mr Frank Parker and his wife, Deborah. The Parkers said they’d heard nothing in the night and Mr Parker surmised the boys had made good their escape in the small hours. In another statement, the housekeeper reported the disappearance of a large kitchen knife. Detectives concluded the missing boys had likely stolen the knife, possibly for protection on their travels. However, later on, the housekeeper had changed her mind, insisting the knife had been missing for months.

Savage read on through dozens of other statements, some from the other boys. One interviewing officer described one boy as reticent, another as nervous, but the overall impression seemed to be that the young residents of the home were obstructive and not at all helpful.

‘To put it bluntly,’ a statement from one of the staff members said, ‘they’re a bunch of wrong ’uns mixed up with worse ’uns with a topping of nasty little shits.’

Savage shook her head, not quite believing what she was reading. Today, thank God, police attitudes had changed. What back then may well have been viewed as obstructive behaviour would nowadays be interpreted quite differently. More probing questions would be asked. There’d been too many mistakes in the past not to investigate cases like this properly. With Operation
Yewtree
and the events in Rotherham, the police had become a little bit wiser.

Hardin returned a few minutes later, furnished with some proper coffees from the canteen. He leant back in his chair and stared at the wall.

‘Operation
Curlew
. Over twenty-five years ago it was. Half a lifetime for me.’ Hardin shook his head and then rocked forward and looked at Savage. ‘What do you think?’

‘The names, Jason and Liam, can’t be a coincidence. Is that why you want me to review the case?’

‘Yes. I don’t believe it’s chance the two boys we’re dealing with today are called Jason and Liam. I spoke with the Chief Constable a few minutes ago and she agrees. She wants to begin her watch with no skeletons in the closet.’

‘I thought you said this had nothing to do with Maria Heldon?’

‘It doesn’t, this is my decision. All Heldon said to me was she didn’t want anything swept under the carpet. In my mind that means you’re just the person for the job.’

Savage’s eyes were drawn again to the top sheet of paper in the open file. The photographs of the two young boys. They were either dead or living somewhere far away. The latter seemed unlikely after all these years. She looked back at Hardin. A crease had appeared on his brow and she noticed a slight shake of his hand as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips again.

‘But there’s more, sir,’ Savage said. ‘Isn’t there?’

‘That’s where it gets tricky, Charlotte.’ Hardin took a gulp of coffee and put the cup down. ‘And where it gets personal too.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘In 1988 I was a young PC over in Kingsbridge. I was there.’

‘You were part of Operation
Curlew
?’

‘Initially, yes. But only for one day. Something else came up and I was transferred to more pressing business.’ Hardin sat back again. He shook his head. ‘Charlotte, I need you to look into this, but I need you to be discreet. If anyone asks, just say there’s a review. That’s all they need to know.’

‘And what happens if I find out some uncomfortable truths?’ Savage pointed at the bundle of papers. ‘Because, to be honest, I think there was something missing from the investigation.’

‘Go on.’

‘The staff members’ statements appear to have been taken at face value. I don’t reckon that would happen today. I was just a child, but I remember there were rumours about the home and yet the possibility of abuse doesn’t seem to have been raised at all. According to the review, the home closed down following the incident and that seems to have put paid to any further work on the case. The boys were consigned to history, forgotten.’

‘Then I think it’s time we made amends, don’t you?’

Savage sighed and then reached for the file. She flipped the cover closed. She didn’t want this case. She wanted to be out there looking for Jason Hobb. Orders were orders though and there wasn’t much she could do about it.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said.

Chapter Twelve

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 22nd October. 1.00 p.m.

The skin, Riley knew, changed things completely. The finger bone had had him worried, but there may well have been a plausible explanation for it. Not so for a piece of skin the size of a large envelope which, according to Layton, had come from the back of somebody’s head. There seemed little doubt in Riley’s mind that a crime had taken place, but what crime? Murder, perhaps? Unlikely. Far more probable was grave robbery or failure to report a death. Serious crimes, yes, but victimless.

That left the actual writing on the skin. The text was unambiguous and disturbing: