Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (23 page)

Perry, it seemed, had let me down.

A few days later I summoned up the courage to speak to the new curate. He comes to the home and runs a Sunday school. There’s a short service and then the boys have to study the Bible. Mr Benedict always seemed like a nice man to me, so on Sunday, as he was leaving, I followed him as he went down the front steps. I walked with him across the fields and as we strolled I told him about Bentley.

He was very concerned. At the gate he said the matter was extremely serious and he would talk to me on the following Sunday. The week went by and after Sunday school was over I once again walked with Mr Benedict. He said he’d thought long and hard about the matter. He’d even approached the bishop. I could see he was uneasy and somewhat reticent. When I pressed him as to what to do, he told me the solution was to pray. I was to pray for myself and all the boys and to pray for Bentley and Mother and Father too. My prayers would be answered, he assured me. It might take some time, but God would see to it that everything turned out OK in the end.

So I tried praying, honestly I did. I prayed in the evening before I went to bed. I prayed in the morning when I woke. I prayed in break time when I was at school. I ended up praying ALL THE BLOODY TIME! Not one prayer was answered. Every weekend Jason was being dragged down to the cellar with Bentley. Either God wasn’t listening or He didn’t care.

By this time I was exasperated. Then, this morning, I saw a bicycle parked at the bottom of the front steps. I recognised the bike as belonging to a local policeman, PC Hardin. It turned out he’d come because of some minor incident in the village. For a moment I thought to speak to him exactly as I’d spoken to Tim Benedict. Then I remembered the caning. If Father found out, the ten strokes a day would be nothing. I needed to try another way.

In the dining room in our private apartment there’s a display of photographs relating to the home. The day Bentley came for that first visit. Some pictures of various old boys. One of Father shaking hands with some local dignitary. The photographs are in a glass display cabinet above the sideboard. Mother insisted on the cabinet because there are dozens of photos and she was fed up of them cluttering up the room. The one of Bentley standing on the front steps isn’t the only one of him. There’s another taken in the little snug. Bentley and Father sitting in armchairs. I think Mother must have taken the picture. You’d think with the things Bentley has done Father would remove all evidence of the man, especially such a personal picture. But Father’s vain. He hates Bentley but he likes the kudos the man has. Besides, this particular photograph is tucked round the back. I expect my parents have quite forgotten it’s there.

I went to the dining room and retrieved the photograph. On the back I wrote one word: ‘HELP’. Then I took the picture and slipped it under the mudguard of the policeman’s bicycle.

It’s late now. Past midnight. I’m writing this beneath the covers using my little torch for light. For the first time in a long while I’m hopeful. You see, I think PC Hardin’s a good man. He talks to the boys here as if he cares. Once he gave us an interesting lecture all about police work, about how crimes are solved. At the end of the lecture he told us how he wanted to become a detective.

Well, now’s his chance.

The Shepherd isn’t happy. After singing Psalm 23 to Benedict he’d headed outside to get some fresh air, leaving the altar working away. A nearby tor had been tempting and he’d walked and clambered his way up, kneeling at the very top and raising his face towards heaven where the stars shone with a brilliance like diamonds. He prayed for guidance and then went back to the farmyard, got in his car and drove home, leaving Benedict in the arms of God.

He’d slept fitfully, a bad dream troubling his sleep.

In the morning, upon returning to the barn, he’d realised why. The altar had stopped working. The nightmare had been a message from God telling him something was wrong.

Now, the Shepherd stands next to the stainless steel table and stares down at Tim Benedict. The man is still alive when he should be lifeless and long dead. His body is a mess of cuts and drill holes. Blood is oozing from a dozen wounds. Yet he is still breathing.

A miracle.

That’s all it can be, the Shepherd thinks. Then he looks up at the gantry overhead. A broken belt hangs loose. The belt has fallen and jammed in one of the hydraulic rams. The machine has shut itself down to prevent further damage.

Not a miracle, a malfunction.

For a moment the Shepherd wonders about fixing the belt and starting all over again. But that wouldn’t be what God wanted, would it? God had seen fit to allow the belt to break. God had stopped the machine. God had sent a message to the Shepherd in the form of a bad dream. God had forgiven Benedict.

Now the Shepherd is confused. Forgiveness isn’t something he’s factored into his plans. People need to be punished.

The man with the skull
…

Yes, of course. Forgiveness for the boy who digs in the grubby soil would be unthinkable.

The Shepherd sighs. This isn’t what he wants at all. Still, if God has willed it, who is he to argue?

He shakes his head and begins to tidy up. He releases the manacles holding Benedict’s arms and legs. Then he goes over to the far side of the room where there is a large green council bin. He wheels the bin across to one side of the table. There’s a gurgle from Benedict as the Shepherd heaves the body into the bin. The body goes in head first, but the man’s shoulders are too wide. Where the bin narrows about halfway down, the body becomes jammed. The Shepherd tips the bin back and forth in the hope the sheer weight of the body will cause it to sink down further.

The Shepherd steps back. The scene is faintly ridiculous. The legs are poking out from the top of the bin, the left hanging one way and the right the other. This won’t do. He needs to transport the body to the sea. He looks around and spots a number of heavy fence posts leaning against the back wall of the barn. He goes across, selects the meatiest, and returns to the bin. He clambers up onto the altar and then begins to use the post as a battering ram.

Benedict gurgles again as the Shepherd bashes down with the fence post, pounding the body until bit by bit he pushes the whole bloody pulp down into the bin.

There, job done. God may have seen fit to stop the machine halfway through the cycle, but, the Shepherd thinks, justice has still been well and truly served.

Chapter Twenty-One

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Monday 26th October. 9.21 a.m.

Monday morning and Riley was wondering how much longer he’d have to spend on the Sleet/Benedict case. Both men were missing, sure, but there’d been no new developments over the weekend. The Taser confetti at Benedict’s house and on the road near Sleet’s car suggested a crime had been committed, but there was little else. Nothing had come from the forensic analysis of the car nor the search of the surrounding moorland. He’d had a preliminary response from Taser International in the US, but even that wasn’t good news: the original purchaser had sold the weapon on several years ago and it didn’t appear to have been re-registered. The paper trail was dead. With that avenue of investigation closed, was there enough evidence to continue to investigate? So far his lurid thoughts on the journey back from North Devon had proved unfounded and the threatened violence implied by the disfigured mannequin didn’t appear to have been carried out.

As he sat at his desk staring at his screen, Riley allowed his mind to wander. Up to now they’d had a couple of lucky strokes on the case: Phillips miraculously spotting that Tim Benedict’s and Perry Sleet’s initials matched the ones on the box on the raft; his own realisation about the vacuum cleaner and the good fortune the machine hadn’t been emptied. Luck, though, could only get you so far; what they desperately needed was a decent lead. And a decent lead, short of tracing the mysterious Sarah, felt a very long way off.

He glanced across to where Gareth Collier was badgering the two young DCs working on the pet grooming parlour drugs investigation. Riley wanted to get back to the case. That was a chance to bash some lowlifes and, just possibly, take out one or two of the main dealers too. He pushed himself to his feet, intent on having a word with the office manager. He’d suggest spending the rest of the day on the Sleet and Benedict case and then shelving it.

Riley went over to Collier and was about to interject when Enders came through the double doors at speed. He narrowly avoided colliding with DC Calter who was carrying three cups of coffee across the room.

‘Steady, tiger,’ Calter said. ‘I paid good money for these.’

‘Tim Benedict!’ Enders shouted across to Riley, almost breathless. ‘He’s turned up.’

‘Where?’ Riley said.

‘The River Erme. You know, up from Mothecombe Beach?’

Riley shook his head. He didn’t know. It was left to Enders to explain the river lay a little way west of Bigbury-on-Sea, a few miles south of the town of Modbury.

‘There’s a long lane which leads from the village of Holbeton down to the estuary. The estate manager for the Flete Estate spotted a car parked near the bottom. He didn’t recognise the car so went to check. He walked down to the water and saw a raft with a bloke in a ski mask doing something with a wheelie bin.’

‘A raft?’

‘Yes.’

‘So Dan Phillips was right.’

‘Yes. Anyway, the estate manager figured somebody was fly-tipping, so he shouted out. The man ran off, so the manager investigated the wheelie bin. Would you believe, Benedict was inside?’

‘
Inside?
’ Riley shook his head, not liking where this was going. ‘Are you telling me he’s dead?’

‘No, sir.’ Enders cast a glance heavenward. ‘He’s critically ill, but by some miracle he’s still alive.’

‘Still alive’ was a relative term. Tim Benedict had been rushed to Derriford Hospital and was now in the ICU.

‘Not surprised he needs intensive care,’ Enders said as Riley drove them east towards the Erme estuary. ‘He was head down in the bin and half drowned in his own blood.’

‘What?’ Riley took his eyes from the road just long enough to stare at Enders, but the DC shrugged. Said he didn’t know any more than what he’d been told.

‘Here!’ Enders gestured off the main road as they came up fast on a turning, a little lodge house on the right. ‘Holbeton’s that way.’

They turned off and followed a tortuous route up a hill and through patches of woodland and lanes with high banks and gnarly old hedges. Then they slowed and entered a pretty village with a pub and a post office and not much else. They took a lane which passed between thatched cottages and the village primary school. Once they were out of the village, Riley pressed his foot down again even though the road narrowed further. The lane wound this way and that down a valley and into woodland, the first sign they might be approaching the estuary, a huge bed of rushes on their left.

Riley slowed as they approached a gate in the road, a sign on a fence to one side warning the area beyond was a private estate. In a pull-in sat a pickup truck, a patrol car and John Layton’s Volvo. Two uniformed officers were standing with a man in a green Barbour.

Riley stopped the car and got out. Layton had already gone on down to the scene, one of the officers explained.

‘Quite a sight.’ The officer nodded to the man in the Barbour. ‘As Mr Johnson here will tell you.’

Johnson, the man in the Barbour, was mid-fifties with a weathered face, bushy eyebrows and a calm manner. Beneath the coat he wore a chunky sweater, combat trousers and stout boots. Every now and then he stomped one or other of his feet down in the mud to emphasise a point.

‘Adam,’ he said, extending a hand to Riley. ‘Estate manager.’

Riley shook the man’s hand. ‘Sorry to make you go through it again, but can you tell me what you found?’

‘Eight this morning I was doing my regular round. See, I like to take a circuitous route into the estate office and check everything looks OK. Anyway, I’d come down from Holbeton – the way you just did – and was about to turn north up the estuary when I spotted a car parked just beyond the gate here. By rights it shouldn’t have been there so I thought I’d take a look. I walked down towards the water and on the foreshore I spotted this bloody great contraption on top of which was this bloke in a ski mask wrestling with a wheelie bin. Never seen anything like it.’

‘So what did you do then?’

‘First thing I thought was this idiot was dumping something. Fly-tipping. I ran along the track and shouted at him. As soon as he heard me he jumped off the platform and began running towards me with this thing in his hand. A Taser, I think you call it. I know a thing or two about weapons and I knew the Taser didn’t have a great range so I left the track and went a little way into the woods. He ran past me to his car. I gave chase, but he drove off. Didn’t think there was much point in following in my vehicle so I went back to the water to see what was in the bin. Soon as I saw the guy inside, I ran back to my car and used one of the estate walkie-talkies to call the office and told them to phone for an ambulance. No mobile coverage down here, see?’ Johnson shook his head. ‘Then I went back to the bin. Christ, I wish I hadn’t. That poor bloke. He was making this goddamn awful wheezing sound but I couldn’t do anything for him but wait until the ambulance came.’

Johnson shook his head again, stomped his feet and stared down at the ground. Riley thanked the man and told him he could go. Somebody would take a full statement later.

‘One other thing,’ Johnson said, stopping halfway to his pickup. ‘Not sure if it’s relevant or not, but while I was waiting for the ambulance I was standing up on the raft. I could see a couple of hundred yards downstream and there was this pot boat drifting about in the deeper water. Little fifteen-footer with a small cuddy and a load of dan buoys sticking up at the back, a rough-looking chap with a beard and a roll-neck fisherman’s sweater just standing and staring at me.’