Cut Dead (45 page)

The vehicle slowed at the entrance to the car park and pulled in. Fallon got out of the Range Rover, paused next to Savage’s car and then took something from his pocket.

Mikey was only a hundred metres away now, but Savage stood out from the rock and shouted at Fallon. She put her arms above her head and waved. Fallon turned, as if he’d heard her, and then he was slumping onto the bonnet of the MG, sliding down to the ground. A second later came the retort of the rifle.

That was why Ronald hadn’t been shooting at her. He’d seen Fallon’s car approaching and lined up his shot.

Mikey was just thirty metres away now. Savage could hear the grunts he was making as he sucked air in and out. She turned away and continued to climb to the next tor.

‘Guuurrrlll!’ came the cry from Mikey. ‘You killed Peter!’

Strictly speaking, Savage thought, that wasn’t true, but she didn’t want to stop and argue the point. She reached the top of the tor and clambered round to one side, making sure to keep plenty of rock between herself and Ronald. She took out her phone again. Yes! Three bars on the signal indicator. She touched the screen to bring up the number pad. Nothing. She tapped again. Still the phone didn’t respond, the display frozen. She turned the phone over in her hand. The back plate had a long scourge down one side. It must have been damaged when she fell over.

‘Fuck!’ Savage said the word aloud and then stumbled away, wondering what lay to the north, other than miles of open moorland.

She almost tripped over the walker sitting in the lee of the tor. He’d spread a mat out to sit on and was eating the last of his sandwiches leaning against his rucksack.

‘Hey?’ The man pushed himself to his feet. He stared at Savage and then looked at her knee. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Police.’ Savage fumbled in her coat and pulled out her warrant card. The man looked bemused. ‘Have you got a phone?’

‘What? I don’t—’ He stared past Savage, mouth dropping open.

‘Guuurrrlll!’ Mikey lumbered into view, the knife held forwards. ‘You killed Peter!’

‘Jesus!’ The man was on his feet now and he grabbed his hiking pole and thrust it towards Mikey. ‘Get away, you awful man, get away.’

The action was ineffectual and Mikey’s free hand shot forwards and snatched the pole. For a second the walker held on and the two of them were engaged in a mad comedy tug of war. Then the pole buckled and snapped and the man was left holding a short piece of aluminium about twenty centimetres long.

‘Come on!’ Savage grabbed the man’s arm to pull him away. ‘Run!’

The man stared down at the useless piece of metal in his hand and then Mikey was lunging in at the man’s neck with the knife. The man clutched at the weapon, hands shredding on the blade. Next he was falling backwards, Mikey on top of him, twisting the knife in at the man’s throat, blood splashing out onto the ancient granite.

Savage stepped back and stumbled on the man’s rucksack. Mikey was sitting astride the man now, sweeping the knife up and down, slicing through the poor guy’s clothing. Swish, swish, swish. The knife moved in a definite rhythm, as if Mikey was repeating some sort of pattern. For a moment he seemed to have forgotten about Savage and was absorbed in his new task. Beneath him the man’s chest was now a mess of ripped clothing and blood. Then Mikey stopped cutting and looked up.

‘Arrrggghhh!’ He leapt to his feet. ‘You killed Peter!’

Savage turned and began to run away from the tor and into the depths of the moor where the light was disappearing fast, the mist and rain adding to the gloom. She came to a small grassy col and then descended to a stretch of terrain with nothing but tall bracken and rock. Behind her she could hear Mikey roaring in anger.

Savage ran on, following a little sheep track through the dense bracken, the fronds reaching to neck height. Then she was slipping over, grasping at the bracken stems as her feet fell away from under her, some sort of chasm opening up beneath. She stuck out a foot and braced on the edge of the hole, felt the bracken cut her hands, but hung on.

Black gaped beneath her feet, the darkness below absolute.

A mineshaft.

She scrambled back up the side and rolled away, crawling into the undergrowth and lying still. From down the sheep path came the sound of voices. Mikey and Ronald. Savage groped around in the dead bracken and moss and uncovered a fist-sized lump of rock.

‘Where gurl?’ Mikey said, lumbering into view. ‘She killed Peter.’

‘I know, Mikey, I know. We’ll get her, don’t worry.’ Ronald followed a few paces behind, the rifle slung over his shoulder. He stopped alongside Mikey at the hole. ‘There, look. She’s gone down the bloody mineshaft!’

Savage peeked from behind a frond. Ronald pointed down at the mess her feet had made at the edge of the hole.

‘Haaalooo!’ Ronald cupped his hands and shouted down, leaning over to peer into the dark.

‘Guuurrrlll!’ Mikey roared.

‘Careful, Mikey. Not too close. You know how dangerous mines can be.’

‘Gurl down there?’ Mikey said.

‘I wonder …’ Ronald turned half away from the shaft, his eyes scanning the bracken.

Savage leapt up and at the same time threw the rock. It arced through the air and struck Ronald on the cheek. He thrust an arm up and flailed, knocking Mikey. The giant staggered for a moment and then lost his footing, slipping over the edge of the hole and sliding from view.

‘You bitch!’ Ronald turned, unhitched the rifle from his shoulder. ‘You’re going to pay for that!’

‘Ronnie!’ A hand scrabbled at the top of the hole, fingers clawing at the loose rock and earth. ‘Help me!’

Ronald turned back, for a moment unsure. Then he was kneeling, lowering the rifle so Mikey could grab hold of it. Mikey’s fingers grasped the barrel and Ronald pulled back, both hands on the stock, straining with the weight, all his will concentrated on the task in hand.

Savage crept forward just as Mikey’s head popped over the edge, black eyes meeting Savage’s.

‘Behind you!’ Mikey screamed. ‘Guuurrrlll!’

Ronald began to turn and as he did so he lost his balance, the weight of Mikey pulling him over. He toppled sideways and down, Mikey slipping away too, the sound of the pair of them crashing into the side of the shaft some way down. Then silence for a moment, before a thud and a long, low wail of a roar from Mikey. Nothing from Ronald, but the shouting from Mikey going on and on, his voice echoing into the still Dartmoor air.

‘Guuurrrlll! You killed Peter! You killed Ronnie! You killed my brothers!’

Savage backed away from the hole, heart beating. She was aware in the now near-dark of torchlight sweeping back and forth, people shouting, figures approaching. Emerging from the gloom came a tall, handsome man, his voice floating out, the Scottish accent one of the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard.

‘DI Charlotte Savage,’ Callum Campbell said, pointing down at her flats as he approached. ‘What have I told you lot about wearing proper footwear?’

Epilogue

Two weeks later

Riley’s call had come on a Sunday morning, cryptic, but when he’d mentioned Kenny Fallon she’d known what it was all about. Now she waited for Riley by the ruined building at the top of Burgh Island. There were tourists everywhere on the little lump of green, hundreds of them, but their presence didn’t detract from the panoramic view. To seaward a blue-green canvas dotted with white sails; in the other direction the stretch of sand separating the island from the coast; beyond the sand Bigbury-on-Sea, the car park there rammed with cars, the beaches packed.

Savage turned back to the sea and the yachts. A few weeks ago she and Pete had been out there, gliding east towards Salcombe with the wind and tide in their favour. Many tides had come and gone since then, Savage thought. Much water.

Radial
was drawing to a conclusion, just a stack of paperwork to finish now, the remaining loose ends all wrapped up.

Devlyn Corran, the team surmised, had met Ronald Wilson up at Full Sutton prison and when he transferred to Devon he’d encountered Peter Wilson over at HMP Channings Wood. Wilson was a common surname – which was the reason the twins were given it as part of their new identity – but of course Peter and Ronald were identical twins. True, Ronald wore a full beard, his hair loose and unkempt whereas Peter had short hair and was clean-shaven. Nevertheless, Corran would have been alerted by the name to underlying similarities in the two men’s appearances and guessed that they were related. He must have wondered why Peter Wilson made no mention of his brother. Corran had probably trailed Peter to the clay pits and discovered Ronald was living there. The team believed that at first Corran might not have known the brothers were the Candle Cake Killers – the blackmail was simply about Corran threatening to reveal Ronald, a serial rapist, as Wilson’s brother:
I know who you are
. Maybe later, when Corran did some detective work of his own, he’d got an inkling of who he was dealing with.

Mikey, the man with learning difficulties – or as Savage had labelled him ‘the nutter’ – was now in a secure mental hospital where the doctors said he was claiming to be the twins’ younger brother. A DNA test disproved that, but who he was or where he came from was a mystery. As far as anyone could tell the man had been living rough on the streets of Plymouth and the twins had taken him in and cared for him. As an act of compassion it was a strange twist which didn’t fit with the brothers’ cruelty and callousness towards their victims.

‘Charlotte?’

Savage turned to see Riley standing a couple of paces behind her, his breathing quickened by the walk to the top of the island. Riley gestured away from the building and the throng of tourists and they strolled off the path and towards the cliffs. There was no fence, just a sheer drop, dozens of metres, the sea crashing into rocks below, white foam surging back and forth.

‘Why here, Darius?’ Savage said. ‘Bit off the beaten track for you, isn’t it?’

‘Julie, ma’am. Wanted a trip out. I came here with Patrick the other week and thought the Pilchard Inn would be a nice spot for a bite to eat. She’s down there now, nursing a beer. I told her I’d be fifteen minutes, no more.’

‘I see.’ Savage noted the way Riley had first used ‘Charlotte’ and then ‘ma’am’; felt a tinge of regret he wasn’t alone. ‘Well?’

Riley nodded and took something from his pocket. He stared at the piece of folded paper sitting between his thumb and forefinger, the edges fluttering in the breeze. Savage felt her heart rate rise. If Riley opened his fingers the paper would be blown away, carried on the wind over the cliffs and out to sea.

‘Down to me, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Kenny Fallon being incapacitated.’

Fallon was still in hospital. He’d taken the bullet from Ronald in the shoulder. Painful, but he’d been able to use his mobile to summon help. Fallon had called her from his bed a few days after it was all over. He’d suggested she speak to Riley.

Time and help, Fallon had told her. Now Savage knew what he meant by the help at least.

‘You didn’t have to, Darius. Help me, I mean.’

‘I know, ma’am. Fallon was going to give you the registration number of the Impreza up on the moor, you to do the work from there. In the end I looked it up myself. Thought I might as well finish the job. The car’s changed owners a couple of times since of course, but the name you need is on here. As for helping … Well it seemed the right thing to do.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Savage paused. The right thing to do. ‘Give it to me, Darius.’

‘Is that an order, ma’am?’

‘No. Off-duty. It’s a request from one friend to another.’

‘Thing is, ma’am, I don’t know if you want to know. I can’t see the information helping much.’ Riley closed his hand around the paper. ‘Could be torture.’

‘Torture is what I’ve been feeling for the past four years. My little girl taken from me. Someone out there, guilty, but enjoying their life scot-free. Absolved of having to face up to their responsibilities, while my family suffers.’

‘But you can’t just take the law into your own hands.’

‘That’s for me to decide.’ Savage moved closer to Riley. Lowered her voice. ‘Look, your Julie. Are you telling me if somebody hurt her you’d trust the system to get her justice? Come on, Darius. We see it every week. Lives ruined on the one side and some scrote getting off with a laughable sentence on the other. No way you’d stand by on the sidelines.’

‘No, you’re right, ma’am,’ Riley said, eyes narrowing. ‘I’d want to avenge whatever wrong had been done.’

‘So what’s the problem? Just give me the name.’

‘But I’m part of this now, aren’t I? I tracked down the guy. The name didn’t come to me by accident.’

‘You should’ve thought of that before you got involved.’ Savage shrugged. ‘But by all means refuse to give me the name if that’s the way you feel. Now I know it can be done I’ll work out who the person is for myself. I’ll ask Fallon.’

‘Like I said, Fallon doesn’t know. Doesn’t
want
to know either.’

‘Fine. Report the matter in the usual way if you feel obliged to. Whatever happens, I’m going to get justice for Clarissa.’

Riley sighed. Looked down at his fist. Then he passed the scrap of paper across.

Savage took the paper and held it for a moment. Could see her hand shaking. Was Riley correct? Did she really want to know?

Yes, of course she did.

She walked away from Riley, putting a few paces between them, and then turned her back. She unfolded the paper and read the scrawl of biro.

Owen

The name meant nothing to her. She half turned towards Riley and gave him a stare. Opened her mouth to speak but, still puzzled by the name, said nothing.

‘Told you, ma’am,’ Riley said. ‘Better not to have known.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Savage said. ‘Is Owen a first name or surname? I don’t know anyone called that.’

‘No?’ Riley walked over to Savage and took the piece of paper from her hand. He held the paper up in the air and released it. For a second the paper hung there before being taken by the up-draught. It spiralled into the air and was then sucked out seaward, disappearing against the bright sky.