Touch (2 page)

Savage got out of the car and retrieved her waterproofs from the boot, both jacket and trousers, since the rain was near horizontal. The jacket tried to become a kite before she managed to zip it up and pull up the hood, stuffing wayward strands of red hair in at the sides and pulling the cords tight around her face. She walked across the car park and ducked under the tape held up for her by one of the bobbies.

‘Morning, ma’am. You’ll find a grim business down there.’ The young officer’s face appeared pale and drained of colour. Savage wasn’t sure if that was because of the weather or what he had seen.

‘Thanks. Nice day, huh?’ Savage smiled at him. ‘Who’s attending?’

‘DI Davies.’ He spat the name as if he had dirt on his tongue. ‘TAG are here as well. D section. With their bloody big RIB.’

The Tactical Aid Group provided operational support, with D section responsible for the marine side of things. Inspector Nigel Frey led the team, and as an officer she rated him highly. Like Savage and her husband he was a keen sailor and they’d had many a battle out on the Sound, always resolved later over a pint. Pity about Davies though.

Savage nodded and walked down the path leading to the beach. Only it wasn’t really a beach, just a strip of wet, grey sand surrounded by jagged rocks and half-covered by seaweed and a few plastic bottles, soggy chip wrappings and other debris. Popular with locals in the summer, and on fine winter days a good spot for walking the dog, today the place was deserted.

She continued across the sand, dodging windblown balls of foam that rolled along like tumbleweed swept down the street in an old Western movie. On the other side of the beach she had to clamber up onto a plateau of rock. The seaweed, slime and the spray in the air made progress across the rock difficult and twice she had to drop to her hands and knees. Eventually she reached a finger of sand threading its way into the plateau from the sea. She jumped down off the rock and approached the four men standing in a group: DI Philip Davies, DC Little John Jackson – one of Davies’s cronies – and two white-suited CSI officers. Davies kept his back to her as she neared, a dig suggesting that even though he held the same rank as her he thought he was by far and away the superior detective. His attitude didn’t bother Savage. Silly little boys played silly little games, and games played with little boys were no fun and thus pretty pointless.

Davies turned in time so as not to appear too rude. He sneered at her from a rough, pocked face which had a nose that had been broken more than once.

‘Charlotte, dunno what you think you are doing here?’ He scratched at the two day stubble on his chin, grey like his hair, and shook his head. ‘This is murder. Not a few girls getting their knickers all soiled because they had a bit too much to drink and went home with the wrong guy.’

‘Cut the crap, Phil.’ Savage pushed past and looked into the sea where a couple of divers bobbed at the outer edge of a huge, rough chunk of concrete wall, a remnant of wartime defences. The waves here were smaller than back at the beach because a lee was formed by the Mewstone, a small island lying half a mile out to sea. At low tide the rocky ledges leading to the shore became exposed, providing some protection from the open ocean, but even so a heavy swell rocked the divers up and down and threatened to pulverise them against the concrete. Twenty metres offshore the dive support RIB manoeuvred back and forth holding station like a concerned mother hen. At the helm Nigel Frey raised one hand to wave at her. She waved back; the howling wind made conversation over that distance impossible.

Some sort of pipe, perhaps a metre in diameter, lay half-sunken in the churning water. It emerged from the concrete and ran out into the sea and the divers concentrated their efforts around its end. The swell covered and uncovered a submerged object trapped in the pipe, an expanse of black plastic and something pale, white and waterlogged.

‘Low tide,’ Davies explained. ‘A fisherman spotted her late last night. What the fuck they were doing fishing out here at that time in this weather I don’t know.’

‘Her?’

‘Can’t see now but a few minutes ago you could. Long hair, tits, or what remains of them.’

Jackson tried to emulate Davies’s sneer and muttered something that caused them both to laugh. Savage guessed what he had said was offensive, but a gust of wind snatched the words into the air.

‘Anyway they say she’s a woman,’ continued Davies, nodding at the divers. ‘And I don’t think she came down here for a picnic.’

One of the divers first swam and then walked to the shore where a CSI officer handed him some sort of tool resembling a giant pair of pliers. He waded back in and disappeared beneath the surface, bubbles of air rising round the pipe and the water boiling in response to unseen movement.

‘Huh?’ Savage turned to the guy who had produced the tool.

‘Bolt croppers,’ the man said. ‘She was wrapped in bin liners, bound with tape and then chained to the grating.’

‘Grating?’

‘There’s a metal grill back in the pipe. About a metre in. The body is well jammed in the pipe now the tide has turned.’

The diver surfaced and flung the tool back to the beach and he and his partner began to wrestle the body from the pipe entrance and towards the shore. Using each wave for assistance they half-swam and then half-waded, dragging the inert mass behind them.

‘Shit.’ Jackson swallowed hard and turned away for a moment. Davies just smirked.

Between the strips of black plastic and silver tape the body appeared to be in a considerable state of decay. Crabs or friction had torn away vast swathes of skin and only puffy and bloated patches remained. Where the skin should have been pieces of stringy flesh and muscle had gone white in the water the way a boil-in-the-bag fish changes colour when you cook it. Shrimps and lice crawled across limbs, and the rotten lips parted to reveal a manic smile.

The divers had the body in the shallows now and it lay face up, a mass of belly making it look like a stranded whale. As each wave came into the beach it moved in the water, the arms and legs rising and falling like a floundering swimmer captured in slow motion. Now Savage could tell the corpse belonged to a woman but it was difficult to know much else since the wrinkled skin gave no clue as to her age.

With some difficulty, the divers, along with the CSI officers, began to move the body out of the water and onto a waiting body bag. Savage stepped forward to make a closer inspection.

‘Jesus, look at the hole in her head!’ Jackson had moved closer too and Savage understood why he was regretting it. A lot of the hair on the scalp had gone and white bone was showing through. Just above the right temple was a neat, round hole about the size of a penny.

Savage noticed a flash of metal around the neck. A little cross on a silver chain. Blind faith had never appeared so pathetic, she thought.

‘Could you?’ she asked one of the white suited CSIs, pointing at the cross.

He bent over and held the cross in his gloved hand, turning it over to reveal an inscription.

‘RSO,’ the CSI said.

‘Rosina Salgado Olivárez,’ Savage said. ‘Our missing student.’

‘Bugger. Hardin will be livid,’ Davies grunted. He said nothing else. Just pulled his jacket collar up against the driving rain and stomped away, Jackson scampering after him like a terrier after its lowlife master.

Love. Harry didn’t understand why but he hadn’t ever got much of it. Not from his parents anyway. The pet cat had been shown more affection. He remembered his mother cooing and feeding the kitten tit-bits from the dinner table. It always got a stroke, even when naughty. Harry just got beaten. He loved the little tabby, but he felt angry when it competed with him for attention. So he strangled it. He buried the corpse in the garden, marking the grave with a brick. Months later, lonely and needing a cuddle, he lifted the brick and started to dig. He was surprised to find only the white bones of the skeleton remained. The cat’s flesh had decomposed, the animal’s soul seeping into the ether, forever beyond his reach. The discovery made Harry wonder how you preserved things, how you stopped the flesh you loved from rotting away. There didn’t seem to be anything in his life other than decay.

Me, Harry. Me.

Trinny.

Her voice snapped him out of his half-slumber and he sat bolt upright, confused for a moment. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, grasping at consciousness, trying to pull the tangled threads into some sort of order. A wan light slipped past the curtains and painted the room with the awful chill of reality.

Naughty Harry.

Yes, but there was no going back, not after what he had done to Trinny.

I didn’t mind, Harry. I love you, just like all those years ago
.

All those years ago back when he was a kid. There had always been a girl in the house to help out, a nanny or an au pair employed to do the chores his mother and father couldn’t be bothered with. Those girls had been the only ones who loved him. He was sure they guessed about his parents too, although they never said. In the mornings they held him and rocked him and dried his tears. In some small way that helped. Believing somebody cared made him feel he was worth something after all.

I still care, Harry. I really do.

Maybe they did care all those years ago, but they never stayed long. A few months at most and his father and his wandering hands became too much for them.

He was disgusting, Harry. Dirty!

So they left. Went. Decayed.

I left, Harry. Yes. But decayed? No. Never. You never forgot me and I never forgot you. I am still here, am I not?

Yes, Trinny was still here. Part of his collection. His growing collection.

Harry? I’m the one. You want me, not the others
.

True. He did want her. And he’d had her too. Many times. Not good. Not right. Shameful.

Shameful? Harry, you are wrong. Sex is beautiful. I mean the stuff you did to me last night... I loved everything. Every minute. Every inch!

Trinny’s words ended with a dirty cackle. This was bad. She had become too much of a handful, not like he expected her to be. He needed to deal with her once and for all. Trinny seemed to read his mind because her voice became serious with a scolding tone that sliced into his heart.

Harry, do you still love me? I mean like before, like back then?

He didn’t know. He clenched his teeth and tried to hold back the saliva building in his mouth. But he should know, shouldn’t he? It was his business to know. If he didn’t know something he got a little edgy, panic set in and he began to breathe too fast and he didn’t like that. He really didn’t like that.

Harry?

He swallowed the spit and mucus and sucked in air. In, out, in, out, in, out. Last night he had shut Trinny away. Downstairs. So he didn’t understand why she was still pestering him. She wasn’t the girl he was looking for because she was too dirty. She knew. He’d told her.

You did tell me. You called me a slut. And after you called me a slut you screwed me. How does that work?

He couldn’t explain. It was too complicated.

Complicated?

Yes. Complicated. Trinny wouldn’t be able to understand. Nobody understood. Nobody knew about being mad but him.

Yes Harry, you are mad. Not to mention bad and sad. You can’t go around–

Harry couldn’t stand the wittering any longer so he reached out and pressed the button on the clock radio next to his bed and Trinny’s voice vanished beneath the local station’s jingle. Top of the hour and the news. The usual regional mediocrity had been abandoned and the headline spewed out a tale of rape, violence and murder. The police had found a body of a woman down on Wembury Beach.

He turned off the radio. Fast. Not good. Not good at all.

Carmel, Harry! Carmel is back! Yuk! I bet she doesn’t look so pretty now.

Trinny sounded excited. Hysterical. But could it really be Carmel? Nausea began to rise within him like dirty water overflowing from a blocked toilet. He fought back the urge to vomit.

Carmel. You didn’t get her, did you? She is lost forever now. Decayed.

He ignored Trinny and wondered if the story signified something. Carmel back from the dead. Telling him he was on the right track, but also reminding him that Trinny didn’t compare to her. Couldn’t be the one.

Harry, what do you mean?

He’d kept her because he hoped she would change. She had been fun at first. Cute, lovely, bubbly. But now she went on yapping and nagging. And she was dirty. Very dirty. He had slapped her a couple of times, but it hadn’t made any difference. The simplest thing would be a clean break. Splitting up would be for the best. For both of them.

Harry! You bastard! I am your girl. Me. Not Carmel. She is dead. Rotting. Mitchell killed her. Remember?

Mitchell.

Harry didn’t like to hear that name. Not after what Mitchell had done to Carmel.

Mitchell was your friend!

Mitchell had once been his friend, true, although Harry didn’t really know what a friend was supposed to be like and he didn’t want to ask Mitchell straight out in case he had got it all wrong. Still, Mitchell had been good to him. Kind. He had told him to stop taking the pills.

Bad idea, Harry. Those pills kept you normal, didn’t they? Stopped you from seeing things?

Trinny’s tone of voice was mocking, but she was right. The pills kept him cocooned in his own little world. Snug. The pills stopped the voices too. Like the doctor said they would. But the clever doctor smiled with too many teeth and had an arrogant manner along with a flash car and a pretty secretary who wore a skirt just short enough so when she bent over you could see the tops of her stockings. Harry liked the skirt even as he despised the man.

Who is the dirty one now, Harry?

It was always the same way with women. When they dressed like dolls with flesh poking out his eyes went wandering. Still, no harm done, he only took a little peek, a brief gaze at something forbidden.