Touch (17 page)

With renewed vigour Harry sprinted the remaining distance and reached the second fissure. He stopped with hands on hips for a moment, panting.

‘Harry!’ Mitchell’s voice rung out, echoing off the rocky cliffs. ‘Down here!’

Harry took a deep breath and jumped down onto the sand and headed seawards.

‘Quickly!’

Harry raced along the sand, half-groping in the dark, afraid he might trip and smash his head on a rock. Then a bright light in his eyes blinded him for a moment as Mitchell pointed a beam from a torch at him. Right in his face. The girl cowered against a boulder, knees drawn up to her chin and Mitchell stood over her, one hand clamped on her shoulder.

‘The trouble is she knows Richard, Harry. And now she knows you too, doesn’t she? Recognises you from when you first met her.’ Mitchell shook his head. ‘Hold her down.’

The words froze Harry, grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed hard. He stood motionless as Mitchell seized the girl and threw her to the sand.

‘What are you going to do, Harry? Phone the police? You get too pushy with some real cute pussy and this is the result. What do you think the police will say when they find out about all those girls you have been following around town? And all those pictures? Tut, tut, tut. I think they will call the doctors, don’t you?’

‘Can’t we just–’

‘What? Ask her if she will forgive us?’

The torch beam left Harry and shone down on the girl. Her face was poking out from behind her knees, the sack hood missing, her nightdress torn. With her long, dark hair and light brown skin the likeness to Carmel was frightening and Carmel had been special to him. Very special.

‘Can’t we take her somewhere? Talk about this. Work something out.’ Harry couldn’t find the right words, but he knew he wanted to help Carmel, to try and save her from Mitchell. Perhaps she would be grateful. Perhaps they could even be together.

‘OK, Harry, you win.’ Mitchell looked resigned. ‘Hold her, will you, while I find my phone to call an ambulance.’

Harry took Mitchell’s place, holding the girl’s left arm and thinking this was the first time he had touched her. Mitchell took something from the grab bag, some sort of medical device, metallic, cylindrical. Not like a phone at all.

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Just something to put her to sleep so we can deal with her.’

At the word ‘sleep’ the girl struggled once more and Mitchell screamed at Harry to hold her.

Then Mitchell had the thing against the girl’s head and there was a loud bang. The head jerked back and blood sprayed out, bubbling over Harry’s hands and arms, warm and sticky. There was a burnt smell like a kid’s cap gun, only a kid’s cap gun never busted someone’s head like that.

‘Fucking hell!’ Harry was up on his feet, stumbling backwards, unable to take his eyes from the horror.

Blood was still spurting out, cascading over Mitchell, over the stones, the girl’s body was shaking and quivering and then all of a sudden she was silent and still, only the distant sound of the waves washing over the rocks in the gloom.

‘Shit,’ Mitchell smiled and got up and wiped his hands on his jacket. ‘Didn’t think it was going to be quite as much fun as that!’

Harry turned from Mitchell and ran into the blackness.

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 28th October. 2.38 pm

Hardin must have got indigestion from too much liquorice because he had been in a foul mood when Savage told him about Alice Nash, threatening to skin the officers who failed to follow up on the Donal case. Thank goodness those responsible weren’t on her team because those picked out for the Hardin treatment would get pissed on and the splashback would hit anybody within range. With the metaphor stuck in her mind she went for lunch, unsurprised when she found she didn’t fancy much apart from a pastry and coffee. She finished off the pastry in record time and took the coffee back to the incident room. The heating had been turned up and a distinct fug hung in the air. Officers bustled to and fro in shirtsleeves, oblivious to the weather worsening outside the windows, and the place felt like a haven from the brewing storm. DS Collier sat in front of a terminal showing Calter some reports of various sightings of Forester. The two of them looked an unlikely pair with the sergeant’s greying military-style hair and shirt and tie contrasting with Calter’s bouncy shoulder-length bob and casual outfit of distressed jeans and tight top. Collier had collated all the statements and they pointed to Forester disappearing sometime in early August. He had started to tell Savage about cross referencing the dates with the bank and mobile records when DC Enders called across from his desk with a flush of excitement on his face.

‘Ma’am, phone call for you. A guy with some information. Won’t give his name and won’t speak to anyone but you.’ Enders indicated a phone near where she was standing. ‘Line one.’

The whole room fell silent as Savage moved to the desk, plucked up the handset and punched a key.

‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage speaking, who is this please?’

A pause before a voice came on the line. A man’s voice, but muffled and quiet, a whisper almost. Maybe he was holding something over the mouthpiece?

‘It’s about Forester. I have some information. He murdered the girl. Poisoned her. You wouldn’t know from looking, but he killed her. From the inside out.’

‘Could I have your name please?’

‘No. I am not telling you that.’

‘Anything you say will be treated in the strictest confidence, but if you do not want to give your name that is fine.’

‘Good. Because I am not going to.’ Another pause. ‘You sail boats don’t you?’

‘Pardon?’ Despite the warmth of the room a cold chill slid over her for a second. Then she remembered the newspaper story about her and Pete again, the one Nesbit had mentioned. She continued. ‘Yes, when I get the chance.’

Silence. Savage sensed the man was waiting for something more, some elaboration and if she didn’t oblige the call would be over.

‘I sail a Westerly out of Plymouth, a little family boat, mostly coastal pottering, but we go down to the Isles of Scilly occasionally, across to the Channel Islands and Brittany if we have the time.’ Savage waited a moment. ‘You said you had some information about David Forester?’

‘Zero five zero degrees, thirty-seven point four five minutes north. Zero, zero, three degrees, fifty-nine point six one minutes west.’

Savage motioned to Calter, waving her towards the terminal on the desk as she scratched the numbers down on a pad.

‘Can you repeat that please?’

Then nothing but dead air and the sound of the caller hanging up leaving Savage repeating the numbers aloud and cross checking with what she had written.

‘Google this,’ Savage said, handing Calter the piece of paper. ‘Lat long.’

‘Sorry, ma’am?’ Calter crooked her head on one side and squinted at Savage’s writing.

‘The caller gave me those, a latitude longitude plot supposedly pointing to where Forester is hiding. Put it into Google Maps and we might just have a result.’

‘The position is on Dartmoor, ma’am.’ Enders, beaming and pleased with himself.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Well, it’s a bit, um, embarrassing. A little like trainspotting.’ The pleased look had turned sheepish, Enders staring at the desk.

‘What is?’

‘Me and the wife, we are into a bit of letterboxing.’

‘I am assuming this letterboxing is not some sex game involving post office uniforms and boxing gloves?’

‘No,’ Enders laughed. ‘All over Dartmoor are little boxes hidden in out of the way places and the idea is to visit them all. A bit like Munroe bagging.’

Savage had heard of Munroe bagging. It was something to do with trying to climb as many Scottish mountains as possible.

‘We do the modern version of letterboxing, called geocaching. The kids love the adventure and anticipation. We use a GPS to navigate our way to a spot where something has been hidden. Doesn’t take long before those numbers, the lat long coordinates, become real in your mind. I couldn’t tell you exactly where they point to, but the location is somewhere on the northern part of the moor, well away from civilisation.’ Enders stopped, as if aware of the implications of what he was saying.

‘He’s right, ma’am!’ Calter was at the computer. She had brought up a satellite image of Dartmoor and a little icon marked the position she had plotted into the search box.

Savage checked the coordinates Calter had entered with the ones she had written down. They matched.

‘It is in the middle of nowhere,’ she said.

‘Not only in the middle of nowhere, ma’am,’ Enders said, ‘there is
nothing
there.’

Calter clicked the mouse and the image zoomed in. Now they could see open moor. A couple of rock outcrops, some bog, a leat weaving along the contours, clumps of heather, patterns in the ground caused by winter run off; nothing else. No road, no buildings, no trees, just empty and desolate moorland.

No one said anything and Savage shivered again, aware of the rain and hail that had begun to spatter on the windows. Calter broke the silence in her own inimitable way.

‘What the fuck would anybody in their right mind be doing out there?’

*

The street lamps burned orange against a sky darker than it should have been at four o’clock in the afternoon and heavy rain slashed from the clouds. Their vehicle ripped through the floods and even before leaving the outskirts of the city Savage had decided that commandeering one of Traffic’s Landrover Discoverys, complete with an experienced driver, had been a good move. Rivers of water poured across the roads creating huge puddles everywhere and daylight seemed almost a memory. Cars ahead of them moved into the gutters, diving out of the way of the strobing lights and siren. Savage gripped the armrests, eyes front watching the road. Calter and Enders larked around in the back, the two of them behaving like children on a day out.

‘Be falling as sleet up on the moor,’ Enders said, sounding excited. ‘If not snow.’

‘Like this sort of weather, do you?’ Savage asked.

‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, ma’am, only the wrong sort of clothing. Something like that.’

It took twenty minutes to get out of Plymouth, along the A386 and onto the B3212 that led across the moor towards Princetown. Sleet was falling now, reducing visibility to a few car lengths and slowing their speed to little more than a crawl. The sleet swirled around in the wind and every now and then the Landrover would be bludgeoned by an extra strong gust that threatened to overturn them. The driver peered forward, concentrating hard and fighting to keep the vehicle on the road.

At Princetown their headlights reflected on the fluorescent strip on an otherwise invisible white Defender parked by the side of the road. The vehicle’s siren blooped out a greeting and Savage spotted the Dartmoor Rescue Group logo on the side. She had phoned ahead and requested their services to guide them onto the remote part of the moor. Enders seemed offended, insisting he knew about search and rescue, but Savage pointed out he wasn’t leading a summer letterboxing expedition with the family and they needed all the help they could get. Besides which the team had search dogs that might prove extremely useful.

‘Are we looking for a body, ma’am?’ Enders had gone serious and stopped larking about.

‘No idea. But who in their right minds would be up on the moor in this kind of weather?’

‘Unless they had a death wish.’ Calter, the fun gone out of her too.

‘That’s what I am worried about.’

They pulled up and Savage got out, battling to open the door against the gale. She struggled into her waterproof jacket, cursing as a hank of hair blew across her face and got caught in the zip. A big man, the sort you would want on your side in a drug’s bust, climbed down from the rescue team’s Landrover and strode over to Savage. The wind flattened his waterproof gear against his body, but he seemed unaffected by the weather. He offered his hand.

‘Callum Campbell,’ he said in a Scottish accent, his clear blue eyes holding her gaze a split second longer than was comfortable.

‘Thanks for meeting us.’ Savage handed him the GPS coordinates. ‘We are looking for someone at this location.’

Campbell returned to his vehicle and retrieved a handheld GPS. The unit had a little screen with a map, and once he had entered the coordinates he tapped the display and shook his head.

‘Nothing out there but lousy weather and a few stupid sheep.’

‘We know. Why do you think we called you?’

‘Aye. Best get moving before this lot turns to snow.’ He gestured at the sleet, turned to walk back to his vehicle, but then stopped and shouted over his shoulder.

‘Are we looking for a live one?’

Savage hesitated, the informant hadn’t specified anything, only that the information concerned Forester. The whole thing could turn out to be a wild goose chase.

‘We are not even sure what we are looking for.’

‘No problem, I’ll alert the guys and gals. No sense in busting our guts or risking our limbs if there isn’t someone alive out there.’

They left Princetown in convoy with the rescue team leading the way. Sunset had long gone and the weather showed no sign of letting up. Warm air blew from the car’s heater ducts and Savage stared through the side window and wondered what it would be like to be lost out on the moor in the blackness.

Five miles north east of Princetown Campbell’s Landrover turned off the road and onto a rough track. Savage’s driver muttered a ‘bloody hell’ and followed. The vehicles lurched along, bouncing over exposed rock and crashing into potholes, progress slowed to not much more than walking pace, limited now by the terrain rather than the visibility. Through the windscreen in the headlights Savage caught a glimpse of a few clumps of heather and scrub and beyond the nothingness of the whiteout.

She estimated that they were averaging only about ten miles an hour and after some thirty minutes the rescue vehicle stopped. Campbell got out and came back to speak to them. Savage sat on the sheltered side of the Landrover so she rolled her window down. Campbell poked his head into the fug.