TOUCH: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel
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The dog yapped and panted. Now they were moving Isaacs didn’t feel too bad either. He hated having to fix things because there were always two constants in any job he had to do: never enough time and never enough money. Earlier in the day the big Ford had got a puncture because the previous repair had been a bodge job rather than a new tyre. And now his neighbour, Peter Wright, had been on the phone to tell him he’d seen a couple of Isaacs’s heifers pushing their way through the fence at the bottom of Little Acre. Isaacs had spent a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to start the Landrover which meant that the heifers had plenty of time to frolic in the winter wheat, ruining the freshly sown crop and trampling pounds off his bottom line. Which in the grand circle of life meant the next puncture repair would be yet another bodge and he’d never be able to afford a new Landrover.
His ongoing problems reminded him of an old song, ‘There’s a Hole in My Bucket’, and he began to hum the tune to himself as his Landrover bounced along the lane down towards Little Acre.
‘—dear Liza, dear Liza.’ Liza in his case was Sandra and she was always nagging at him to sell up and get out. They weren’t getting any younger were they, so what was the reason for carrying on? Since the house, barns and land must be worth well over a million there wasn’t a good one. If they sold up they could buy a little place somewhere and stick the majority of the money in the bank. They would be able to take holidays in the sun, treat their grandchildren with more than just love and reward themselves for years of hard work. They’d never have to worry again.
‘Bugger that, eh?’ Isaacs said to the dog.
Stubbornness was one trait all farmers shared and Isaacs wasn’t going to give up just yet. His mum and dad had both worked the land until it had them beat. Now Mum tottered around some nursing home with only dribble and memories for company, and Dad lay six foot under in the local churchyard. He owed it to his parents to carry on while he could. If one of his sons had been interested things might have been different, but no, they were too clever for that. Off to university and no stopping them either. Still, they couldn’t be blamed. Who in their right minds would put up with what he had to endure?
He stopped the Landrover at the gate to Little Acre and got out. Down past the water trough several of the heifers were pushing against the fence. A whole section had given up the ghost and left a bloody big hole. The buggers were walking back and forth between Little Acre and the wheat without a by-your-leave or a ‘Thank you Mr Isaacs for feeding us.’
Isaacs undid the gate, swung it open, got back in and ripped into the field. Brakes, out, close gate, in, foot to floor, the vehicle skidding sideways for a moment before the chunky tyres got a grip and the Landrover shot across the grass. Several of the heifers had seen him coming and, thinking they were in for some extra feed, they began to trot towards him. He whacked on the anchors a few yards from them and the vehicle slid to a halt. Then he jumped out, grabbed a piece of black plastic pipe from behind the seat and rushed at the bemused animals.
‘Get the hell out of there!’ He thwacked the pipe against his wellies and it made a satisfying sound and the rest of the herd moved away from the gap. Isaacs could now see that a ten-yard section of the fence had been flattened. Three stakes had been knocked over and the netting and barbed wire had been pulled down too. The mess was a morning’s work to fix.
He sighed and walked through the gap into the corn field to round up any of the heifers still in there. Then he spotted the tracks.
Some bastard had driven into the field, the tyres crushing the green shoots and compacting the seedbed. Hang on. Some bastard had driven through the fence into the field. Then something about the gate to the lane struck him. The chain and padlock hadn’t been there. In his rush to get into the field he’d failed to spot they were missing. A few months ago he had taken the precaution of securing all the gates to his land after a spate of rustling saw a couple of neighbours losing some stock. Fat lot of good it had done by the looks of things.
Two sets of tracks led into the field, curved to the left and ran down the edge. From the way the new green shoots were bent over it was obvious that one set marked the outward journey and one the same vehicle returning. Isaacs swore extreme vengeance on the perpetrators and stumbled into the field to look down the tramlines the tracks had made.
Thwack.
The pipe thudded into his welly again. A lone heifer who decided to see if Isaacs needed any help had second thoughts and skipped back into Little Acre. Isaacs stared at her for a moment to make sure she had got the message that he wasn’t standing for any trouble today and then plodded off along the boundary of the corn field to see where the tracks led.
They went down the field’s gentle slope towards the copse at the bottom, always keeping close to the edge and making light work of the heavy soil. Isaacs reckoned that this and the tyre size made it probable it was a 4x4 some kids had nicked from a rich townie. Maybe there was a sort of perverse justice in the world after all. The tracks stopped at the bottom of the field next to the copse and Isaacs saw the vehicle had turned round by reversing into a patch of scrub in the corner and had then gone back the way it had come. Strange. It didn’t seem like the driving style of some drugged-up hooligans from a sink estate. On the other hand maybe they were so tanked up with cheap cider that they couldn’t drive fast.
He peered into the woodland where the last of the day’s light dappled patches of soft, green grass. A couple of years ago he had some pheasants in there. Was it possible someone had hoped to get a few birds? They were pretty ill-informed if that was the case. Still, it might be worth taking a look to make sure of things.
The rickety stile creaked as he climbed over it and Isaacs followed the narrow path that wound into the shadows. For a moment he felt uneasy. He wasn’t sure why and he tried to put the feeling from his mind; it was stupid, he’d been down this way hundreds of times. As a kid he’d played here, built dens and won fantastic battles against the Germans or the Indians. Later on as a young man, he’d taken a neighbour’s daughter here and they had got sweet on an old blanket. He was already engaged to Sandra then. And it had happened again, with others, after they were married too. In more recent years he’d raised pheasants down here, stalked foxes, thinned out some trees. So it was stupid. There was nothing here to be scared of. Despite that he wished he had his gun with him, but it was locked away in a cabinet back at the farmhouse. Once he had always kept it in the Landrover, ready to take care of a stray dog or to bag a rabbit for the pot. Bloody bureaucrats and their rules, they simply couldn’t stop meddling.
He shook his head to clear the ridiculous thoughts from his mind and followed the path for thirty yards or so to where it led into a glade at the centre of which some lilies were trying hard to cling to their beauty. Isaacs stopped and breathed in the air. Closed his eyes and breathed again. Sweet smells, earthy smells, and then he remembered the neighbour’s daughter on the blanket, her mild protestations, her ‘no’ which meant ‘yes’. It was all so long ago now, yet the memory was still clear. And he realised why. There weren’t many memories worth recalling anymore.
He opened his eyes and sighed. As he turned to go something caught his eye. Something in the long grass on the far side of the clearing. He stopped and stared and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lying in the grass in among the dying nettles and brambles was a young girl. A shaft of light shimmered down through the misty air and illuminated her. Brown hair, angel face, a white cotton sheet covering her body. Isaacs gasped in a lungful of air and then put his hand to his mouth and let the air escape. He moved one step forward. A twig cracked under his right foot. The girl didn’t move. He edged closer across the mossy glade and now he noticed her eyes were shut. Closer still and he could see her full lips parted in a half-smile that made his insides go all light and tingly. She was beautiful, so very, very, beautiful.
He stood over her now and still she didn’t wake. He realised he was still holding the plastic pipe and now he used it to probe the white sheet.
‘Excuse me, er, miss?’ he said, but got no response. He hooked the edge of the sheet with the pipe and pulled it down, sweeping the covering from her body. Golden skin, white bra and panties, nothing else. Legs long and not too thin, round hips, curvy waist, pert breasts. In his younger days Isaacs and his mates had a word for girls like this. The word was ripe.
There was still no reaction from the girl and she lay still, an object of perfection frozen in time. He poked her again. Nothing. A slow chill began to creep across his shoulders and down through his chest. He stuck out his foot and pushed it against the girl’s arm. It moved in response and fell back.
Isaacs chucked the pipe away into the bushes and knelt beside the girl. He put the back of his hand over the girl’s face. No breath. He looked down at her chest. No rise and fall. He moved his hand down there and placed it over her left breast. No heartbeat. He slipped it inside her bra, cupping the breast in his hand. Still nothing.
The breast was cold, but the round fullness hit him like a sudden white heat. He pulled his hand back. The sensation shocked him, set off a troubled train of thought in his head, the pleasing beginnings of an erection in his trousers. He glanced around the clearing, and beyond into the depths of the copse. There was nobody. Nobody to tell. He reached out and touched the girl again. She was like ice. Cold, but pure. Then, without knowing quite why, Isaacs bent over and kissed the girl on the lips.
Chapter Five
Barbican Leisure Park, Plymouth. Tuesday 26th October. 10.47 am
The glitter balls sent light spinning round the room, the patterns morphing as they swept over the floor and walls. Calter and Enders bopped in the centre of the empty dance floor to an old Police number, the club manager’s idea of a joke, while Savage skirted the edge making notes.
It was Tuesday morning and the three of them were checking out clubs in preparation for Hardin’s Big Night Out operation and so far they’d done the White Rabbit on Breton Side and Annabel’s next to the marina. Now their focus had turned to Oceana, a huge club situated on the Barbican Leisure Complex along with a multiplex and a Pizza Hut. The club had several different themed rooms and right now they were in an area that mimicked a seventies New York disco, complete with flashing multi-coloured floor panels and a mirrored ceiling. Savage had pages of notes covering exits, vantage points, possible numbers of clubbers and anything else she thought might be of use for the undercover officers who would be on the ground come Saturday night. Even so the venue would be a nightmare to cover, what with the separate dance floors, booths and private rooms.
At this time of the morning with the venues empty, they all had the same sterile atmosphere. Savage had to remind herself it was the clubbers who made a venue, the ‘in crowd’ who gave a place its unique vibe. She thought, rather wistfully, that she hadn’t been part of any sort of vibe for a good number of years. With that in mind she beckoned Calter over.
‘What sort of people come here then?’ she asked.
‘Kids, ma’am. Fifteen-year-old girls trying to pass for eighteen. Eighteen-year-old boys trying to look older than their mates so they can snare one of those girls. A few older guys ogling the goods. It’s that sort of place.’
‘You’ve been here?’
‘Once or twice when everywhere else has been full or when I have been too drunk to be sensible.’
‘Well, snared is a good word, Jane. Both Sally Becker and Tayla Patterson were enticed from this club. Looking around though I’m wondering how.’
‘It’s like the other venues, ma’am. You wouldn’t believe the place when full. The club is heaving. Anything could happen.’
‘Yes, but someone couldn’t be dragged out could they? The door staff would notice at least.’
‘They are more concerned with stopping people coming in than worrying about who is leaving, and if someone looks drunk or ill and about to throw up then I would imagine they would be only too pleased to see them go.’
The CCTV from the camera at the entrance had shown Sally Becker looking ill. She had left alone, staggering down the pavement, pissed out of her brain, whereas Tayla Patterson had been with a man wearing a hoodie who had almost had to carry her away. The bouncers hadn’t remembered the couple, but then why should they? They would shepherd a thousand drunken people in and out of the club every weekend. A half-comatose girl being helped, or even coaxed, to the exit by a guy was nothing out of the ordinary. It went with the territory. Most of the girls would wake up the next morning with a bad head and some would have regrets, maybe even require a visit to the doctor for a pill. The victims in operation Leash came home with rope burns on their wrists and the rest of their lives to try to work out ‘why me?’
‘Ma’am?’ Enders. He had glided over the dance floor to Savage and Calter in a pale imitation of John Travolta. ‘You coming out clubbing with us Saturday?’
‘Don’t be daft. Those days are over. At least in this sort of place. I’ll be attending tea dances before too long. Us oldies, and by that I mean anyone over thirty, will be walking the streets while you’re busy enjoying yourselves.’
‘Well, what about a quick one now, right here, you and me?’
‘Message in a Bottle’, the Police number, had ended and ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ echoed from the speakers. Savage smiled, another joke from the manager.
‘A quick what, Constable?’
Savage never got an answer because her mobile rang. Hardin. He wanted her to return to the station. No explanation. Just get back. Fast.
Savage left Calter and Enders to scout the rest of the clubs on their list and returned to Crownhill. Hardin was waiting in his office, impatient but wearing a mood of quiet seriousness instead of anger. The frown creasing his forehead and narrowing his eyes made her suspect the worst and she was right.
The body of another girl had been found at Malstead Down, a village on the edge of Dartmoor, some twenty-five miles east of Plymouth. She was naked and had been left in a small wood and the corpse showed signs of sexual interference. Hardin had recounted the facts as if he was telling her about a stolen vehicle.
‘Malstead Down. Not right in the village, but nearby. Close enough to make me worried.’
‘Worried?’
‘The Chief Constable’s mother-in-law lives in the area.’
‘Not Jean Sotherwell, the dog mess woman?’
‘Yes.’
Hardin’s mouth drooped, but Savage couldn’t stifle a half-smile. The Dog Shit Bitch, as she had become known, had provided the lower ranks with much amusement a couple of years ago. She had managed to manipulate the local papers and TV stations and mobilise what, at times, seemed like half the force on a crackdown on dog fouling in Devon beauty spots. Simon Fox – the CC – and his immediate subordinates had jumped on command. It had been quite a sight. This was altogether more serious, but Hardin was taking no chances.
‘I don’t want the media stirred up on this one if it turns out to be a murder. Lord knows where it may lead. They are going to link the killing with the Plymouth rapes and that will cause us all sorts of problems.’ Hardin gnawed on his liquorice stick. ‘I want you out at the scene pronto. My eyes and ears. You’ve got sensitivity. Some of the others think the word means a type of high-grade cannabis.’
Savage didn’t know whether to be offended or pleased.
‘What about Leash?’ Savage asked. ‘With the Olivárez body turning up I feel we are getting somewhere.’
Hardin shook his head. Leash would continue, of course, and he would need everybody come Saturday night, but a third of the team were going to be seconded to the new inquiry.
‘Zebo is the name. I will be pressing to get this ramped up, especially if it does turn out it is a sexual crime. We will be drafting in some of the local boys who have a better knowledge of the area, but the inquiry is to be based here at Major Crimes.’
Savage nodded. Hardin was under a lot of pressure, and if the Malstead body proved to be yet another sex crime he was right, the media would have a field day.
The morning had started out fine, but the rain soon pushed in from the west and by the time Savage set off for Malstead it was torrential. The journey took her to the east, first crossing the Plym where the estuary sliced through acres of mud, a few lonely bait diggers braving the elements in search of lug. Then up onto the A38 where the spray from the heavy lorries made the weather seem all the worse. As she headed along the dual carriageway, Dartmoor rose to her left, a foreboding presence at the best of times. Now, with low cloud scudding over the tors and shadows coalescing in the valleys, the moor appeared as dank and dismal as ever. Savage had history with the place and the two of them had never made up. Never would either.
The little village lay up in the hills not far from Widecombe in the Moor. At Buckfastleigh Savage turned off the A38 and negotiated a maze of lanes that became smaller and more winding as she climbed onto the edge of the moor. Only a few patches of the purple heather bloom remained and the procession of cars, to be found clogging roads all over Devon during the tourist season, was absent. For that reason Savage was driving a little too fast, a fact she had cause to regret when at one T-junction she turned left and had to drive into the hedge as a tractor bounced past, its driver laughing at her as he went by. The car had a couple of fresh scratches, but no other damage and Savage resumed her journey at a slower pace. Half a mile farther on a sign on a neat and well-trimmed verge announced she had arrived. A collection of houses you would be hard pushed to call a hamlet, let alone a village, hugged a small green with a single tree in its centre. At the far end a church lay nestled up against the open hillside. A noticeboard with the name St Michael’s on proclaimed ‘Jesus Loves You’. That was as maybe, but in the wet the building loomed grey and grim; the last sort of place you would go for solace. To the right of the church a uniformed officer stood blocking a narrow lane that wound its way along the edge of the moor. Savage slowed the car, lowered the window and showed her warrant card. The officer bent over.
‘Carry on along here, ma’am. After a mile or so you’ll get to a lay-by where you can park.’
Savage thanked the officer and drove on. To the left the moor towered upward, disappearing into mist and cloud. To the right a patchwork of fields cascaded downward to meet a line of trees marking a river. Beyond the trees the fields grew larger and Savage guessed the river marked the boundary between a small farm and a bigger one. A mile farther on several vehicles were pulled off the road on a grassy verge. She parked the car and struggled into her waterproof jacket, recalling Hardin’s parting words to her.
‘Charlotte, I don’t need to tell you these are disturbing times. With these rapes, the Olivárez murder and now this. I want you to go softly softly on this one because believe me we are already up to our necks in the brown stuff. One wrong step and we might slip under. All of us.’
Hardin’s words seemed appropriate as she stepped out of the car into a squelch of mud. The rain poured down and the cloud seemed even lower, threatening to engulf her in its chilly grip. All around, the hedgerows and trees were fading to brown and up on the moor the bracken had turned a light tan colour. Winter was coming, a cold and harsh one, if you believed the forecasters. Savage shivered at the thought. She didn’t like the winter with its short days and long, dark nights. With Pete away life became difficult. The children went stir-crazy if they couldn’t be outside, and even with Stefan to help out they were a handful. After they had gone to bed for the night Savage should have been able to relax, but she rarely could. She either had stacks of paperwork to complete or, worse, nothing to do but think. And that wasn’t relaxing at all. In a month or so though life would change for the better: In December Stefan would be returning to his family in Sweden for Christmas, like he always did. But Pete was due back end of November. Touch wood.
The door of the car parked in front opened and a young man in his late twenties got out. Tall and athletic with gelled blond hair that shook off the rain like a duck’s back, he stuck out a hand, his big, friendly smile concealing the reason they were both here.
‘DC Craig Newlyn, ma’am. Totnes. I think you’ll find the whole thing a little confusing.’
‘Morning, Constable. Who discovered the body?’
‘Found by a local farmer,’ Newlyn said. ‘He spotted the tracks in his field, figured they belonged to poachers or vandals, went down to investigate and bingo. Name of Gordon Isaacs. He owns the land around here. His farm is along the road a bit, up on the left.’
‘What time?’ asked Savage.
‘Last night. Only he didn’t alert us until this morning, said he had work to do.’
‘What? Well that’s not a good start.’ Savage glanced back up the lane where the tower of St Michael’s poked up through the mist. ‘We will need to get statements from everybody in the village ASAP. TIE and all that.’ Trace, Interview and Eliminate. Unlike when an incident occurred back in the city, the task didn’t appear too arduous out here. With just a handful of houses in the village and everybody knowing everybody else it wouldn’t be hard to collect statements and cross-reference them.
‘We have got a couple of extra bods coming from Totnes, should be arriving soon.’
‘Good stuff.’
‘Ma’am, are you the SIO on this one?’
‘No, that will be Detective Superintendent Hardin. I’m here for a first look. We’ve got a lot on our plates back in Plymouth.’
‘So I’ve been reading,’ Newlyn said.
‘Yes, well, you know. Hardin is on his knees and praying this one can be cleared up without any fuss.’
‘I don’t think so, ma’am. Not from what I have seen.’
Savage shook her head. If possible she wanted to get to the scene, have a quick scout around and return to operation Leash. She didn’t want to consider the alternative right now.
She let Newlyn get back in his car out of the rain and walked up the lane to where a white van straddled the tarmac, parked slap bang in the middle of the road as if acting as a windbreak. Behind the vehicle the crime scene manager was a guy she recognised but couldn’t place and he clung to a large umbrella in the gusting wind. The rain slashed down as determined as ever and neither the van nor the brolly were doing much of a job protecting a white-suited CSI kneeling on the verge in a gateway. The officer had placed a tape measure on the ground alongside some tyre impressions and footprints and was in the process of taking a couple of photographs. Next to the gate a section of fence had been removed to allow access without having to go through the original entrance. A line of blue and white tape snaked across the ground and led down the side of a grassy field marking out a path along which they could walk without disturbing potential evidence.
‘John Layton,’ the man held out his free hand as Savage approached. Layton was mid-thirties. Dark hair poked from beneath the brim of a Tilley hat and framed an angular face with an aquiline nose. The hat dripped water onto a tan-coloured Columbo-style raincoat. He pulled the scene log from a coat pocket for Savage to sign. ‘Hardin said he was sending you.’