Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (25 page)

Riley said nothing. Hardin didn’t understand that being crazy and clever were by no means mutually exclusive.

‘Now then, you’ve done well, Darius. Commendable work. However, from here on in I need a senior officer up front. The Taser suggests to me a link with organised crime and that, as you know, is DI Phil Davies’ area of expertise. He’s going to be taking over up front. Now, where are we with this? I want to know what you’ve got, however slim. Leads, suspects, witnesses.’

The assignment of Davies to the SIO role was disappointing but expected. A high-profile case like this was never going to be led by a detective sergeant. Still, he could earn himself some brownie points by showing the DSupt the progress the investigation had made so far. He peered down at the notes he’d prepared and began to fill Hardin in. He went through all the preliminary details and then told him about the first raft and their meeting with Dan Phillips over at Jennycliff. It was Phillips, he explained, who’d alerted them to the disappearance of Tim Benedict and the fact there might be a link between Sleet, the raft and Benedict. Hardin was unimpressed.

‘Toerag.’ Hardin jabbed a finger at Riley. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows more about this than he’s telling. Sounds a bit unlikely he just came on the names like that.’

‘Phillips has a nose like a sewer rat,’ Riley said. ‘I can well believe he did.’

‘Well.’ Hardin paused and then changed tack. He pointed at the map on the wall, his finger aimed at the patch of sea south of the Erme estuary. ‘I get the torture of the mannequin, but what’s with the raft? And also, where the hell’s Perry Sleet?’

Riley shrugged his shoulders. His notes had nothing in them which might help answer Hardin’s question. ‘To be honest, sir, I’ve no idea. I’m hoping we’ll get some forensic evidence from the Benedict crime scene.’

‘Hope, Sergeant Riley, is something we resort to when we’re desperate.’ Hardin leant forward. Sneered. ‘Now, please tell me we’re not desperate?’

To Savage’s immense disappointment, Monday had seen no new developments in the
Lacuna/Curlew
case. The CSI team at Woodland Heights had pretty much concluded and Layton had produced a brief written report. First thing Tuesday, Savage sat in her office with a cup of coffee and digested the bad news: the ground physics had come up negative and, short of demolishing the entire structure, there was nothing more to be found in the house. If she wanted to, Savage could meet him there at noon, by which time he’d be finishing up.

The morning squad meeting was short but not sweet. Hardin was annoyed by the lack of progress and took his frustration out on the
Lacuna
team. Savage could see the pressure was getting to him. One high-profile op was bad enough, but Devon and Cornwall Police now had two headline-making cases to deal with.

‘We’ve got until the weekend,’ Hardin said, as he wrapped the meeting up. ‘After then, Maria Heldon is going to send in her pretty boys from Exeter to help us. You know, the ones who think officers west of the moor smell of either a herd of sheep or a bag of kippers and enjoy fucking either.’

Hardin’s remarks were greeted with a roar and Savage smiled to herself. At the last moment the DSupt had turned the bollocking into a pep talk. If anyone needed an incentive – which they shouldn’t – the thought of interference from force HQ at Middlemoor would provide them with one.

After giving her own briefing, which focused on the importance of finding Ned Stone, Savage headed over to Woodland Heights to liaise with John Layton. When she arrived, she found him standing next to his old Volvo, a Tupperware box of sandwiches sitting on the roof.

‘Bit behind schedule, Charlotte,’ Layton said as he peeled the lid from the box. ‘Down to yesterday’s discovery on the Erme. Never seen anything like it. The bloke had been tortured and then dumped in a wheelie bin, the bin hoisted onto a raft. I think the aim was for the whole caboodle to float out to sea. What the poor fellow had done to deserve such a thing, I’ve no idea. The only silver lining is he’s still alive. Just.’

Savage nodded. ‘I’m worried Hardin’s going to prioritise that investigation over this one.’

‘Might do,’ Layton said, extracting a thick wholemeal sandwich from his box. He waved the sandwich at the home. ‘But time’s on your side. The case has taken the best part of thirty years to get this far, another month or two won’t make any difference.’

‘Not to Jason Caldwell, no, but to the other Jason it will. Time isn’t on his side at all and I don’t want to think what his kidnapper might be doing to the boy.’

‘Crazy fucker.’ Layton took a bite of his sandwich. ‘I’m glad you understand these nutters, Charlotte, because I confess I don’t.’

‘I don’t know what’s going on here either.’ Savage turned towards the house. ‘Which is why I really needed you to find something in there which can help. Anything.’

‘I see.’ Layton followed her gaze. ‘Well, we’ve done the cellar and stripped some of the floorboards up. Plus we’ve managed to get behind all the panelling in the loft. And the GPR operative’s been over the garden and car park. I’ll take you inside and show you what we’ve been up to, but I’m sorry to say we’ve scored a blank so far.’

‘Shit.’

‘Yes, shit.’ Layton nodded and then looked away from the house towards the coast. ‘To be honest, why would you put something in the home when you’ve got all this around? And I’m sorry, but we can’t start digging up the surrounding countryside. I wish I could be more positive.’

‘You do your best, John. You always do.’

Layton reached into the car and picked up his Tilley hat from the front seat. Plonked the hat on his head. ‘Let’s hope that’s enough, hey?’

Within the hour the Benedict case
had burgeoned
into something resembling a serious investigation. The operation had a name –
Caldera
– and the team had grown to include a receiver, a document manager, indexers, several DCs and various ancillary staff. There had also been a promise from Hardin that they wouldn’t have to fight for resources with
Lacuna
.

‘You know Hardin,’ Enders said to Riley as together they supervised the initial set-up of the incident room paraphernalia under the watchful eye of the operation’s SIO, DI Davies. ‘For every column inch of front-page news, we get an extra officer. Slip to the inside pages and we’ll be lucky to retain a three-legged police dog and a PCSO.’

The chance of the story dropping from the front pages became minimal when they received the bad news mid-morning: Benedict had passed away despite the sterling efforts of the ICU team.

‘Blood loss,’ the consultant said when Riley spoke to him on the phone. ‘And the shock. The body can only take so much, see? Although many of the injuries were superficial, put together they amounted to more than he could take. I counted thirty-seven different puncture points on his torso alone.’

‘Made by?’

‘No idea. You’ll have to ask the pathologist. Benedict’s on his way down there now.’

No, Riley thought as he hung up, Benedict wasn’t on his way anywhere. A husk which once contained him was heading down to the mortuary, sure, but the real Benedict had either ceased to exist or was in a better place. Riley wondered if death had come any easier to the man, seeing as he was a vicar. Perhaps his belief had faltered at the last minute.

The notion was a depressing one, but when he put the options to Enders, hoping he might make a joke of it, the DC wasn’t much help.

‘Not necessarily a better place, sir,’ he said. ‘Tim Benedict might be going to hell for all we know.’

‘Hell? He’s a vicar, don’t they get a VIP service?’

‘Depends. Say he’s done something to deserve this. Say him and Sleet are mixed up in some funny business.’

‘Funny business? What are you talking about, Patrick? We’ve nothing to link the two men and I fail to see what sort of business could justify torturing Benedict and chopping him up.’

‘Well, there’s one thing I can think of.’ Enders nodded his head over towards where several members of the
Lacuna
team were standing round a whiteboard. ‘Abuse. Kiddie fiddling. Child pornography. I’d say that would justify topping Benedict.’

‘He’s a member of the clergy for God’s sake!’

‘My point exactly.’

‘You’re jumping to conclusions with no good evidence.’

‘Still, don’t you think it might be a good idea to get Benedict and Sleet’s computers in to Hi-Tech Crimes? Wouldn’t take Doug Hamill more than an hour or two and then we’d know.’

Riley sighed. ‘OK. Just to keep you happy. Get on to that PC Sidwell and ask him to send Benedict’s laptop down here. And then you’re coming with me to Derriford. We’ve got to pay our respects.’

‘Hey?’

‘The last rites. Tim Benedict’s post-mortem.’

Layton’s tour of the house convinced Savage that Woodland Heights had given up all its secrets and any further work would be pointless. She drove away from the place feeling dejected. Forensic evidence in both the
Lacuna
and
Curlew
investigations had been in short supply, neither having provided a decisive lead which could take them to the killer or killers. Finding Ned Stone was now the top priority. When she got back to the station, she’d suggest to Hardin that they needed to pile all their available resources into tracking him down.

In Bolberry she turned left and headed parallel with the coast towards Hope Cove. DC Calter was down in the village with two local officers, going door to door trying to jog old memories. Savage had arranged to rendezvous with Calter at the pub for a quick lunch and afterwards she fancied a walk on the beach to clear her head.

The lane left the village and threaded between tall hedges. The car crested a small rise, off to the left open fields rolling to the coast. Savage pulled the car to the side of the road and into a gateway, intending to take one last glance at Woodland Heights from a distance. She got out of the car and moved to the gate. The home lay a mile away across the fields and she realised she was looking at the rear of the house. The other night her assailant had jumped from a window into the backyard and he’d have run across fields to the west. She traced an imaginary line away from the house until her eyes came to a small clump of trees and scrub surrounded by farmland, perhaps half a mile distant. Had the man gone to ground there? Was it even possible he’d run on past, ending up at Parker’s house?

Savage remembered Parker. He used a stick and had appeared frail. She couldn’t see him being able to shimmy down a drainpipe and sprint across open countryside.

She climbed over the gate and began to walk across the fields towards the wood, her mind working overtime. The concrete in the cellar had been laid in 1988, just over two months after the disappearance of the boys. Recently, the cellar had been disturbed and human remains removed. Yet at some date between the boys going missing and the date written in the concrete, a body or bodies had been brought to the cellar after having been hidden somewhere else first.

She reached a hedge with a fence, the fence topped with barbed wire. She scouted to the right until she came to an open gate. Beyond, a field of corn stubble stretched to the wood. Was it possible the remains had been hidden there and brought back once the initial search had finished?

Five minutes later she stood under a huge oak at the edge of the copse where a broken fence marked the boundary. Within lay a dense thicket of hazel coppice, gangly ash trees, small pines and a mass of brambles and other scrub plants. In the field a stiff breeze had been sweeping across from the south-west. Here nothing moved, the tangle so impenetrable it shielded what was within from the rest of the world.

For a moment she paused, enjoying the peace and solitude. The week since the inquest into the death of Simon Fox had flown by and she’d barely had a minute to reflect on the outcome. Nor had she spent much time with Pete and the children, something she had promised herself she’d do once the inquest was done and dusted. Work had, as usual, got in the way. Damn it, she thought, life passed so quickly. It seemed only yesterday that Clarissa and Samantha were starting school. Now Jamie himself was in primary school and Samantha three years into secondary. Her daughter was a typical teenager: moody, headstrong, reactive. There were days when anything Savage or Pete said seemed to cause her great consternation. And yet, Savage reflected, her own behaviour at that age had been similar. ‘I blame your family’s hair,’ Pete often joked. ‘Red and fiery and does exactly what it says on the tin.’

Savage smiled and then blinked herself back into the present. She stepped over the broken fence and moved into the wood. She wondered if any reports of the searches from years ago remained in the files. Even if the reports were there, she doubted if exact details had been logged. Still, the woodland would have been searched, she thought.

The copse covered an area about the size of a couple of football pitches. She could call out a police search advisor and a search team, but it hardly seemed worth the bother. In half an hour she could quarter the woodland and satisfy herself there was nothing here.

Ten minutes later, on her hands and knees as she crawled beneath the bough of a fallen beech, she realised she’d vastly underestimated the time needed. She pushed herself up from the ground and ran a hand through her hair. A couple of leaves and a twig tumbled to the ground. She peered down to where the twig lay at right angles across a small depression. She bent to get a closer look. Not a depression, a trail.

A little way to her right, the trail skirted a patch of brambles. She straightened. The track had probably been made by rabbits or pheasants. Still, it might make her progress a little easier, might even lead to the edge of the wood where she could reconsider whether to continue the search.

She followed the trail to the brambles and beyond to where it wound into a stand of hazel. An animal had been digging at the base of the hazel and a scattering of rabbit droppings on the fresh soil hinted at the culprit. Savage moved forward and then looked down to where a pristine Mars bar wrapper sat plumb centre on the rabbit’s spoil heap. She bent and pinched the wrapper between her fingernails so as not to touch the surface, and lifted it to her nose. The chocolate smell was distinct. Somebody had been here recently.