Touch (35 page)

‘Cosy.’

Savage pointed over to a steel wheeled table next to the bed. On a tray lay a weird metal device like a beak from a large seabird, about six inches long and with a sort of trigger grip at the bigger end. The stainless steel glinted under the harsh lights.

‘What the hell is that thing? A medieval torture device?’ Calter said.

‘A speculum.’

‘Ma’am, you know we shouldn’t be in here? Forensics.’

‘I want to follow Harrison.’ Savage pointed to the door on the other side of the room.

‘Ma’am, shouldn’t we wait for back up?’

‘What’s got into you, I thought you had a black belt in Jujitsu?’

‘I am giving it back. This just doesn’t feel right.’

‘Two words: Alice Nash.’

‘Bugger.’

Savage moved forward and reached the door. An inch open, a thin line of black revealing nothing about what lay on the other side. She pushed with her foot and the door swung wide. A humming filled the air now and some flickering neon lights glowed green, orange and red. Savage fumbled for a light switch.

The square room measured about four metres a side. Around the edge of the room several chest freezers stood against the walls and snake-like tails led from each to a jumble of adapters plugged into a socket on one wall. The freezers didn’t look like the sort you would have at home, they were bigger, more industrial, more clinical
.
One, two, three... six.

‘Bloody hell, ma’am,’ Calter whispered. ‘Are you thinking what I am thinking?’

‘I am thinking how many mispers we have who had connections to nurseries or were au pairs or childminders or babysitters.’

‘Exactly.’

Savage stepped over to the nearest of the freezers. A green neon light shone out from the handle. It was the locking type but the key was in the lock. She turned the key and the latch slid back. She grabbed the handle and heaved the lid up until it opened on the built-in springs. What the unit contained was unexpected and brought a gasp from Calter.

‘Ma’am, please tell me–’

‘No. It’s not.’

The freezer was filled with meat. Regular cuts of meat from the supermarket or a butcher. Savage had no idea what a human would be like cut up, but it wasn’t like this.

‘Look, half a lamb and a leg of beef. The beef has got a stamp on the side.’

Calter started to laugh her infectious giggle.

‘Thank God, I thought “Hannibal” for a moment.’

‘That’s a movie, Jane. This is Devon, cream teas and all that.’

‘Yeah? I hadn’t noticed.’

Savage brought the lid down and clicked the lock shut. The next freezer wasn’t switched on or locked. The lid swung up and a faint smell of disinfectant wafted out. The inside gleamed clean and bare.

‘Simone Ashton could have been in here. Or Kelly.’

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, boss. Gives me claustrophobia just looking.’

The next freezer had a red light that was blinking on and off. Savage moved closer and realised the temperature alert had triggered.

‘Something is wrong with this one.’

‘Not sure I want you to open it, all things considered.’

Savage ignored Calter and twisted the latching handle. She swung the lid open until it popped up.

‘Fuck, ma’am! The Nash girl!’

Up one end a naked body lay curled in a foetal position. A strong smell of burned out electrics mingled with a more unpleasant odour of urine. Savage leant in and more out of procedure than hope she searched for a pulse.

She touched the girl’s neck and felt a tingle in the end of her finger, a faint throb, throb, throb. Almost undetectable, but there.

‘She’s alive!’

*

A little later and Alice saw light, a brilliant white luminescence surrounding her which could only come from heaven. She could feel herself floating on a wave of warm air even though her skin bristled with cold.

As cold as death.

Someone was coming for her, an angel calling her name as she floated down the corridor of light.

‘Alice. Alice. Alice.’

Her mother, her face smiling and radiant, her hair a flash of vermillion, just as it had looked before she had got ill. Arms scooped her up and embraced her and it was like when she had fallen over as a kid and mum had held her so tightly that she had known through the pain and the tears that everything would be alright.

Netherston, South Hams, Devon. Tuesday 9th November. 12.30 pm

Savage heaved herself up and into the freezer, standing inside and bending down to scoop up the girl in her arms. The girl’s skin felt icy and there was no noticeable response as Savage struggled to lift her up over the lip of the freezer. Cradling Alice in her arms Savage bent her head to the girl’s face. A faint movement of air from the nostrils touched Savage’s cheek and she saw a tiny flicker from the eyelids.

‘Get upstairs and call for help!’ Savage said to Calter.

Calter was already on her way, sprinting through the door. Savage had an afterthought and yelled after her.

‘Make it an air ambulance!’

Seconds later she heard Enders clumping down the stairs and he came through the door and helped Savage with the girl. They carried her out into the main part of the cellar and up the stairs.

‘In here, ma’am!’

Calter was in the living room and had ripped some heavy velvet curtains down from the windows and was spreading them on some cushions on the floor.

‘How long?’ Savage asked as they lay the girl down and covered her.

‘Flight time seven minutes. That was two minutes ago.’

‘Seven!’

‘Yes, we got lucky. The helicopter was already airborne on its way back to Exeter.’

Savage thought that Alice Nash deserved a bit of a break, but it would take more than luck to pull her through. Calter had done a good job with the curtains, but they weren’t going to warm the girl up. Savage looked around for inspiration and noticed a wooden wheel-backed chair on the other side of the room. A couple of leather belts criss-crossed through the dowelling on the chair’s back and behind it on the floor Savage spotted a fan heater. It was angled up to point at the chair.

She went over and pulled the heater out, moving it across the room as far as the cable would allow. Then she switched the unit on and turned the heat setting to the highest possible.

‘He would tie them to the chair and heat them up? Is that some sort of torture?’ Calter wasn’t getting it.

‘Defrost,’ Savage said. ‘He’d get them out of the freezer, give them a bath and stick them there to dry and thaw out fully. Then he’d have sex with them.’

A rush of air washed over the girl now and Calter pulled the curtains to one side to let the warmth reach the skin. Savage knelt and felt the girl’s pulse again. It was weak and her breath was very shallow.

‘Right now would be a good time for the helicopter,’ Savage said.

On cue they heard the distant thump, thump, thump of the approaching aircraft and Enders went outside to signal to the crew. Savage looked at Alice Nash again. The helicopter noise was much louder now and the windows started to vibrate and the ground beneath her feet shook. Calter was shouting something, but Savage couldn’t make out what she was saying. Nor could she make out whether Alice’s chest was rising and falling any more. She touched the girl’s neck and now she was sure.

‘Defib!’ She screamed at Calter and began to perform CPR on the girl, counting aloud as she did so. ‘One, two, three, four...’

Calter rushed outside leaving Savage alone, the noise of the helicopter in her ears replaced by that roaring sound inside her head. The same noise she had heard in the hospital when Clarissa had died.

‘Twenty-nine, thirty.’

She bent down to give mouth-to-mouth and then resumed the CPR.

‘One, two...’

Then the paramedics were beside her, unpacking the defibrillator, readying drugs, one of them taking over the chest compressions. Calter helped her get to her feet.

‘They know what they are doing, ma’am.’

Savage nodded and sniffed, aware that she was crying.

‘My...’

‘I know, ma’am. You don’t need to say anything, I understand.’ Calter put her arm around her and the two of them went outside. The bright blue and red helicopter stood in a field to one side of the house, its blades rotating slowly. Enders was talking to the pilot. The black Mitsubishi Shogun had gone.

‘Jesus!’ Savage said, pulling herself together. ‘Where the hell is Harrison?’

*

Two hours later and the place was heaving. The Chief Constable had been onto one of his military chums and a team of engineers from the Royal Marines in Plymouth had erected a temporary bridge over the stream to allow vehicle access. John Layton and his CSIs had trundled across it in three white SOC vans and they had disappeared inside the house like kids eager to explore Santa’s grotto. Hardin had arrived along with Garrett, Davies and a car boot full of supplies purloined from the canteen.

‘An army marches on its stomach,’ Hardin said, mouth crammed full of sandwich, the diet abandoned in celebration. ‘We are going to be here for days so we have to keep morale up.’

Hardin had taken the last bacon butty so the rest of them got stuck into egg and cress and soggy cheese and tomato. Washed down with lukewarm coffee. Morale, at least where the late lunch was concerned, was tepid.

The air ambulance had long gone to be replaced by the yellow and blue air operations helicopter. It buzzed overhead, circling the valley taking pictures. Hardin asked about Alice Nash.

‘Just took a call from Derriford, sir,’ Savage said. ‘She is doing OK, all things considered.’

‘All things considered, I think you and your team deserve a bloody medal, Charlotte.’ Hardin wiped some ketchup from his chin and sucked it off his finger. ‘DC Enders for getting you here so quickly and you and DC Calter for tackling Harrison and saving Alice Nash’s life. Quick thinking to call the air ambulance too.’

‘Harrison got away, sir.’

‘Bah!’ Hardin dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand. ‘He hasn’t got anywhere to go now and every police force in the country is on the lookout for his car. We’ll have him before long.’

‘And then we’ll have some fun,’ Davies said, rubbing his hands together.

‘Quite,’ Hardin said. ‘Anyway, we have weathered the media storm and in the end the results show crime doesn’t pay. Mitchell, dead. Forester, dead. Richard Trent, banged up. Harrison soon to be apprehended. There have been victims, yes, but thank God there won’t be any more.’

Just then a movement at one of the upstairs windows caught Savage’s eye. It was John Layton. He was waving and fiddling with the latch, trying to open it. Finally he gave up and moved back from the window. The next thing the glass was shattering and he was shouting something about calling for an ambulance.

*

Layton had found them in the attic. A man and a woman in their seventies, half-naked, emaciated, the sort of thing you saw on the news when there was a famine somewhere. Or maybe in a documentary about the second world war where you got those flickering black and white images of the concentration camps after they had been liberated. Except this wasn’t on TV and it played before them in full colour.

Now the couple sat in the back of Hardin’s car wrapped in space blankets, the engine running, the heater going full blast. They had accepted water and sandwiches, only the man had wretched when he had tried to swallow his. The heavy chain that had been secured round their necks with padlocks had been removed. Layton had used a drill from his toolkit, the horrible screeching sound jarring Savage’s teeth as he worked on the locks. God knows what it had sounded like close up.

Savage, Hardin and Layton were standing some distance from the car, Hardin tapping his watch every minute, probably noting the response time for the ambulance.

‘Who the hell are they?’ Hardin said, as if their presence was an affront to the otherwise neat conclusion of the investigation.

‘They told me that they are Harrison’s parents, sir,’ Layton said.

‘What?’ Hardin puffed his cheeks out.

‘It fits, sir,’ Savage said. ‘It was DS Tatershall who called in the location of the cottage, remember? The parents were mispers from down in St Ives, Cornwall. They used to live here years ago before Harrison senior was convicted of abuse.’

‘I know where St bloody Ives is, thank you, Charlotte. What I want to ascertain is what the hell they are doing here?’

‘According to DS Tatershall the father has cancer.’ Savage glanced across to the car and lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he wanted to see his son again before he died?’

‘Fine. I can go with that. But why the fuck did Harrison chain them up in the attic and half-starve them to death? Jesus, have you seen them close up? They look like extras from some zombie movie.’

Hardin wasn’t big on sympathy, especially when it didn’t have tick-boxes alongside it. In this case Savage thought he was being harsh, but she said nothing. Instead she told him about the information Mrs Harbersher had given them and the planned liaison with the officers down in St Ives.

‘DS Riley is heading down there first thing tomorrow and he will find out everything they know. I will take DC Calter with me to the hospital tomorrow and we can get the full story from Alice Nash and the parents.’

‘Tomorrow? Can’t you...’ Hardin peered at the occupants of the car, gave an involuntary shudder and then corrected himself. ‘No, you are right. The state they are in it would be better to wait.’

It was getting gloomy now, dusk enveloping the valley, and when the ambulance arrived its light cast ghostly patterns amongst the trees, the shadows dancing like demons waiting to pounce. Hardin tapped his watch for the final time and muttered something about twenty-three minutes being bloody pathetic. Then he was all smiles for the paramedics, keen to get the old couple out of his car and into the ambulance so he could get away.

‘It’s my daughter’s birthday. She’s nineteen this week. Me and the wife are taking her out to dinner tonight. Late is not on the menu.’