Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (16 page)

Out to sea a yacht rolled in the heavy swell as the crew worked their way downwind towards Salcombe, while closer to shore a pot boat headed in the opposite direction, a column of gulls wheeling in the air above, the solitary fisherman aboard well wrapped up against the weather.

The two boys had gone missing in August. The water temperature would have been around seventeen degrees. Not the Arctic, sure, but survival time would have been only a few hours and that was without factoring into account the boys’ ability to stay afloat in what, according to the report, had been a rough sea. Was Elijah Samuel correct? Had they made some sort of suicide pact and waded out into the ocean under a night sky? If they had, then why hadn’t the bodies been found? Of course tidal currents may have taken them far along the coast, but it seemed unlikely to Savage that nothing would ever have turned up. Plus there was the message inscribed in the bed frame to consider. That suggested a very different story to the one Samuel had told her.

She walked out to where the surf was gliding over the sand. A wave rushed in and Savage had to skip back a few paces. Her footprints filled with water and the outlines softened. She had a sudden notion. Memories of Jason Caldwell and Liam Hayskith had faded in the same way. Blurred at first and then ultimately wiped from the surface by time. They’d left nothing behind but marks in the damp sand, soon washed away. Dying young, they’d never got the chance to grow to adults nor to make anything of their lives or to have children. It was the same with her daughter, Clarissa, she thought. Her footprints only existed in a few people’s memories and one day they’d be gone forever.

Savage shook her head, frustrated and angry. This was why she should be part of the
Lacuna
investigation and not on some wild goose chase. Caldwell and Hayskith were long past saving, but Jason Hobb was another matter.

She turned to go. As she wheeled around she glanced at the marks she had made on the beach. Another set of prints bisected her own and ran parallel to the tideline. They led to one side of the cove and disappeared into the water, as if the person had rounded the rocks and was now trapped in the next bay by the rising tide. Savage’s heart quickened for a moment, but then she saw a figure standing on the cliff side, as if they’d clambered up from the sea. Savage stared hard at the figure, the shape black against the sky, features indistinct. A man though, she thought. Thin, definitely not the bulky form of Elijah Samuel. And he was watching her.

For several seconds nothing happened. Then the man raised a hand as if in greeting before moving away up the slope and disappearing over a ridge. Savage turned and raced up the beach. She stumbled across the seaweed and then went through the narrow gap to the coast path. She began to run up the hill, but within seconds her lungs were bursting and her legs depleted of energy. It was no good, he was too far away, too high up. Savage stopped with her hands on her hips, breathing hard, wondering exactly what she’d seen, what the mysterious man had been up to.

Jason had no way of keeping track of the time. Day and night went unnoticed. The only thing which marked the passage of the hours was the occasional sound of a car coming and going. At some point – two days, perhaps three days after he’d first been taken – the stone up top scraped once more and the voice called down.

‘Oh, Jason, are you down there?’ A glimmer of light came down the tube. ‘I’m up here with my old pal Smirker. We’re both hoping you’ll become my old friend too. You see, I’m all alone these days and Smirker isn’t really much company. To be honest, he doesn’t do any more than listen.’

Jason kept still. Perhaps if he pretended to be dead the man would open the box to see what was going on.

‘Jason, come on now. You’re really not being any more entertaining than Smirker. It’s most disappointing. Especially as I’ve brought you some more presents. There are some breakfast bars and a pasty. Oh, and several cans of cola.’

Jason bit his lip. He
was
so thirsty and his stomach hadn’t stopped rumbling for hours. The last Mars bar had gone ages ago and if he didn’t get something to eat soon he was sure he’d pass out.

‘Oh, Jason! You’ve got ten seconds to say something otherwise I’m off. One, two, three, four …’

Jason hugged his knees to his chest and let out a low moan.

‘… eight, nine, t—’

‘Stop! Please! I’ll be your friend, just give me something to drink.’

‘Good boy.’ A bag rustled at the end of the tube and then a cascade of chocolate bars slid out. ‘Mind your head, I’m dropping down some cans and a bottle of water.’

Jason moved out the way as the cans clattered down the tube. He grabbed one and popped the ring pull, a huge
fizz
coming as the sticky liquid sprayed everywhere. He put the can to his lips and gulped.

‘Now then, I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself and then you’ll do the same, OK?’

‘OK,’ Jason spluttered between mouthfuls of cola.

‘Great!’ There was a pause and then the voice lowered to a whisper. ‘Do you keep a diary, Jason? You know when I was a lad, I did!’

Chapter Fourteen

It’s Friday and Bentley’s here again. He arrived as dusk fell on a balmy evening. We’d been playing footie out the back, all of us. Mother’s away somewhere for the weekend and I’d assumed she was up in London with Bentley. Her absence meant Father was in a good mood and he let all the boys stay up late. But then we spotted the car. Father came roaring out of the house and ordered us inside. He told me to go to my room. Once there, I peeked out the window and saw him meet Bentley at the bottom of the steps. Father seemed angry and I heard him raise his voice. Bentley just shrugged his shoulders and a thin smile graced his lips. He said something I couldn’t hear and then the two of them came inside, Bentley first and then Father following, his head bowed.

I waited a while and then crept from my room. Along the hallway the door to our apartment stood open and I could hear voices echoing from downstairs: my father and the caretaker, one of the other night workers as well. I went to the rear of the house. There’s a sash window on the landing and just outside the window a cast-iron drainpipe. I eased up the window and clambered out onto the sill. I shimmied down the pipe as I’d done many times before, and a few seconds later I was standing in the concrete yard outside the kitchen.

The kitchen was dark, but through the window I could see a rectangle of light. The cellar door stood open. The cellar is where Father takes boys for punishment, but I’d just heard Father talking. I moved round the house, away from the kitchen, to the yard at the back. I knelt down on the ground next to where an airbrick provides a view of the cellar. When I peered in I saw Bentley! And, beneath him on the bed, a boy.

Bentley had removed his belt and wrapped it around the boy’s neck. He rode him as if he was atop a horse, the belt like reins. As the boy struggled, he twisted and pulled until the boy became still. Then he released the pressure until the boy moved again. He repeated the procedure over and over as he took his pleasure. Struggle. Pull. Comply. Release. Struggle. Pull. Comply. Release.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t look away from the appalling tableau. Bentley resembled a white rhinoceros. Black hairs on a white scaly skin. Great folds around his waist. He snorted and growled and then he was done. He collapsed on the bed for a moment before heaving himself off. The boy sobbed and rolled into a ball and for the first time I noticed the blond hair.

Jason!

The Shepherd returns to the barn to check on his captives. His car pulls up in front of the gates and he unlocks the padlock securing the heavy chain. He squelches through the mud and across to the stone steps. He stands for a moment. To the right is a boarded-up farmhouse in need of serious renovation. To the left, beyond a stone wall, the moor heaves its way to the horizon in great rolls of green and brown.

He shrugs and climbs the steps. A sliding metal door is secured by another padlock. He unlocks the door, opens it and steps inside. There’s a corridor with white walls and a concrete floor. On the ceiling, fluorescent tubes provide illumination. Electric cables run in armoured trunking and near ceiling height a ventilation tube hangs down. At first sight the place resembles an intensive pig or poultry unit, maybe a slaughterhouse.

At the end of the corridor there’s a small hallway. A passage leads deeper into the building to a further sliding door. He gazes down the corridor and through the door to where a vast chamber opens out. In the centre stands the altar, complete with its array of blades and hydraulic rams and wires. Airlines run up to a welded gantry above and connect to brass control valves. To the casual observer the altar looks like something from a meat processing unit, but, the Shepherd thinks wryly, it’s unlikely the machine would pass a health and safety inspection.

He turns to where there are two more doors. Behind each door is a tiny cell. Exposed blockwork. Two paces by one. The floors are concrete with a thin scattering of straw. Light comes from a mesh-covered bulkhead fitting. The Shepherd moves to the left-hand door. There’s a little pop-hole and he slides it to one side and peers in. An old man is curled on the floor shivering with either cold or fear. A light knocking on the door brings no response.

He steps across to the next cell and looks in there too. Perry Sleet is sitting with his back against the rear wall, but as the pop-hole opens he springs to his feet.

‘What the hell is going on?’ Sleet yells at the door. ‘I don’t know what your game is, but you’re fucking crazy. Let me outta here!’

‘This is not a game and I am far from crazy,’ the Shepherd says. ‘Don’t waste your energy trying to escape. Better to pray for forgiveness. I know I have.’

‘Look, I’ve got money. Savings. Cash if you take me to a hole in the wall. You can have it. I’ve got an ISA with near thirty K in. It’s yours. All of it.’

‘Money means nothing,’ the Shepherd says flatly. ‘You cannot buy the gift of God. Money is the root of all evils.’

‘Who the fuck are you?’ Sleet stands in the centre of the tiny cell. ‘At least tell me that.’

‘My name is not important, but with my help you will come to know the love of God.’

The Shepherd flips the pop-hole down and shakes his head. Like the other man, Sleet doesn’t yet realise what he’s done. Soon, however, they will both understand the extent of their guilt. And soon they will be made to pay.

Chapter Fifteen

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Friday 23rd October. 9.07 a.m.

First thing Friday morning found Savage sitting in her office surrounded by several cardboard boxes. While she’d been out on Thursday afternoon the boxes had been retrieved from the document store. Back in the eighties some of the material had been put on the nascent Police National Computer, but most had not. Sorting through this lot, she thought, would take half a lifetime. And what was she likely to find that others had missed?

She decided to start with a list of the primary witnesses and soon found a familiar name: Elijah Samuel. He turned out to have been a resident at Woodland Heights in the early eighties and then, bizarrely, considering the abuse he’d talked of, had been employed as the home’s caretaker. Fast forward to the present and he now owned the place. Back when the boys had gone missing he’d been interviewed three times and on each occasion he’d come out with the same story. The one about the boys going down to Soar Mill Cove and swimming out to sea. Savage flicked through the statements from the other boys. None of them mentioned the suicide pact which Samuel said Jason and Liam had made. Perhaps they’d only told Samuel. Or perhaps the pact was a fiction created so Samuel could rationalise the situation.

After an hour or so she took a break, grabbing some coffee from the canteen. Other officers she knew nodded at her in passing but appeared too busy to talk.
Lacuna
was being ramped up and additional resources deployed, the team now working flat out to ensure no stone was left unturned in the hunt for Liam Clough’s killer. Still, no one was holding out much hope of finding Jason Hobb alive.

Savage took her coffee to the crime suite. Over at the whiteboards, DCI Garrett was nodding sagely as Collier explained something. Garrett fiddled with a piece of grey hair which had settled on his lapel, concerned about the blemish on his immaculate suit. He was a detective from another era, Savage thought. Past it. She had nothing against his age, but his methods were stuck in a straitjacket every bit as constraining as the collar on his pristine shirt. In the last few months he’d been a time-server, counting down the days until he received his pension. Savage wondered if she’d be as disillusioned after thirty years’ service.

She drank her coffee and then crushed the paper cup and threw it in a nearby bin. She was pissed off. However much Hardin had stressed the importance of the
Curlew
case review, it was as nothing compared to the urgency of
Lacuna
. The link between the cases could at best be tenuous, at worst the fact the names were the same just a sick coincidence. If there was a serial killer out there she should be the one trying to catch him. Garrett didn’t have the feel for this type of case. He was as rule-bound as Hardin.
Lacuna
was all about getting into the mindset of a deranged beast and Garrett didn’t have a clue about how to do that.

She returned to her office and began to work through the witness statements once more. Woodland Heights had been run by Mr Frank Parker and his wife, Deborah. They had lived in and made use of a self-contained apartment within the house. The Parkers had a thirteen-year-old son who lived with them and there was Samuel – the caretaker – and two schoolmasters. There was also a housekeeper – Miss Edith Bickell – who came in to cook and clean. Both Samuel and the schoolmasters had lived in a shared house in a nearby village. If foul play had been involved in the disappearance of the two boys then one or more of these people knew about it.