Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (38 page)

For a moment Savage thought her fellow detectives might repeat Hardin’s staccato outburst as a sort of weird war cry or football chant, but they didn’t. Instead, there was a moment’s silence before everyone began talking again.

Collier spotted Savage and sidled over. ‘What do you reckon then, ma’am?’ he said over the noise. ‘What the hell is this raft guy up to?’

‘Gareth, my head’s still spinning. I’m trying to work out the implications.’

‘Me too, but I’m thinking this is a process. It started with a demonstration – the raft at Jennycliff. The mannequin had been mutilated and clues had been left in the box. Namely the skin and the bone. There were also several sets of initials carved into the arm of the dummy which matched those of Tim Benedict, Perry Sleet and Brenden Parker. They’re all being made to pay for something which happened back in 1988 when the three of them were associated with the children’s home.’

‘But there were four sets of initials, yes?’

‘Yup. TB, PS, CH and BP.’

Savage nodded slowly, thinking for a moment. Then she pulled out her phone and accessed her text messages. She highlighted one she’d received the previous evening and showed Collier.

Urgent. Call me now. CH.

‘CH?’ Collier said. ‘Who was that from?’

‘Him.’ Savage turned and looked across the room to where the DSupt was in conversation with John Layton. ‘Conrad Hardin.’

After the briefing, Savage tried to speak to Hardin about her worries. The DSupt was having none of it. He was a target, he said, sure, but what did that matter in the grand scheme of things? The boys were the issue. The boys in the past and the boys in the present. Nothing should divert their attention from that.

Exasperated, she left Collier to deal discreetly with sorting out some protection for Hardin and his immediate family and headed for her office. She sat and stared at her terminal screen where she had a mass of documents open. Maps, crime reports, suspect profiles, press stories from way back. Despite the optimism engendered earlier by John Layton’s hard work, she remained pessimistic. She tried to cling onto some sort of hope the situation would end well, that they’d find Jason Hobb, but the longer he remained missing, the more that seemed an unlikely outcome.

She pulled up a map screen and panned around. Zoomed in on a couple of places. She had no idea what she was looking for. Inspiration. A miracle. Some sort of handle on where Brenden Parker might have hidden the boy.

‘Ma’am?’ A young DC she didn’t know knocked and peered round the door. ‘There’s a bloke for you. Some sort of bearded tramp in a coat. Smells of fish. Refuses to speak to anyone but you. Says it’s important. I’ve put him in a room downstairs.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Savage nodded, only half listening, her mind still on the search for Jason. ‘OK, thanks.’

Downstairs, she found her visitor in an interview room, the stench of fish apparent as she opened the door. As the DC had said, the man wore a huge black coat and had a full beard which covered every inch of the bottom half of his face. He sat on one side of a desk, a mug of tea in his huge hands, a plate in front of him containing nothing aside from a few biscuit crumbs.

It was the guy from the houseboat over at Torpoint, Larry something.

‘Mr …’ Savage couldn’t remember the man’s surname.

‘Told you afore, Larry’s the name. Larry Lobster.’

‘Larry, yes.’ Savage moved over to the desk and sat. Close to, the stench was awful. Fish, diesel and bilge water over a hint of tobacco. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Seen you guys out looking for the lad,’ Larry said. ‘Dartmoor. The coast. The estuaries. Some crazy fucker’s got you lot all stoked up like a lobby stuck in a pot, hasn’t he? Can’t find the way out, can you? Trapped.’

‘Jason?’ Savage tried to breathe through her mouth. ‘Do you know something?’

‘Tides is what I know.’ Larry put the mug down and raised a hand to his head. Tapped his right temple. ‘That first raft. The one found over at Jennycliff. I’ve been working these waters for years and I tell you it likely came from the River Erme.’

‘It could have come from anywhere, Larry,’ Savage said, thinking the man had picked up the location from the news reports on the second raft, the one with Tim Benedict on. ‘Besides, the Erme is ten miles to the east. I can’t see the raft having drifted all that way. It’s an interesting theory, but—’

‘Not a theory, fact.’ Larry reached for the mug again and took a gulp, drops of tea left in his beard when he put the mug down. ‘One of my buoys gets cut by a passing yacht, I know exactly where to find it. Eddies, currents, rips, tidal streams. They push back and forth, this way and that. Appears random, but in the end those oceanwhatnofors can map them years in advance. And the second raft, that
was
on the Erme, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, but the man didn’t manage to launch it. He’d spent so long assembling the pieces that he ran out of time and the craft became marooned on a sandbar.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

‘Mr … Larry. I’m sure you mean well, but we’re pushed here today.’ Savage tried to be polite, but she needed to get shot of Larry and get back to work. Quite why he’d come in, she didn’t know. Perhaps he was lonely. ‘Jason Hobb is our concern now, not the tides.’

‘Sure he is, girl, but you’re looking not listening. Trapped, I said. Like the boy. The lobster, you see. The poor fellow sniffs some bait and then takes a wrong turn. Tries to back up, only the way a pot works he can’t find the exit. Lobster pot one minute, cooking pot the next.’

‘Larry, if you’ve got some information then please stop talking in riddles. Otherwise I could put you in contact with social services, sort you out some help. You shouldn’t be living out on that—’

‘Fuck social services! Bunch of tossers, the lot of them. And it’s not me who needs help, you do.’

‘Me?’

‘Hot water getting hotter. Cooking you up so you’re nice and tender.’

‘Larry, I—’

‘THE BOY! JASON!’ Larry swept his arm across the table, catching the mug and sending it flying. The mug tumbled to the floor and smashed into several pieces, tea splashing everywhere. Larry shook his head and wrinkled his nose. ‘Sorry. Tryin’ to tell you, aren’t I? I can get you out of the pot. I know where he is.’

Savage stared at Larry. Took in the black coat smeared with fish oil. The full beard. The right hand – the one with no thumb and the crab claw fingers which scissored back and forth. How could this man possibly know anything about Jason unless he’d been directly involved in his disappearance?

Larry blinked at her and his eyes sparkled like silver sand at the bottom of a rock pool.

‘Tell me,’ she said, all of a sudden beyond caring where the information came from.

‘That bloke wasn’t launching the raft when he got caught Monday morning. He was trying to retrieve it.’

‘Retrieve it?’

‘Yes. See, he’d launched it from farther up the river in the middle of the night. With all this rain the water was plenty high enough. He hoped the raft would come down and meet the tide and be carried off. Only there wasn’t enough height in the tide and the raft got stuck on a sandbar. When he was discovered, he was down there taking the thing apart, not putting it together.’

‘So how does this help us find Jason?’

‘The raft was launched from the Erme for a reason, and that’s because of what’s upstream. See, Brenden’s mother’s there.’

‘Brenden’s mother? You mean Deborah Parker? We understood she was dead.’

‘Alive or dead she’s the key.’

‘How do you—?’

‘I know, that’s all. You don’t need the whys or wherefores. You just need to find a way out of the pot, understand?’ Larry pushed himself up from the chair. ‘He was mad Brenden, back then when we was kids. Weird like his dad. Reckon, from what he’s been up to recently with them boys, he ain’t improved much either.’

‘Larry.’ Savage stood too. ‘You stay right there. We need to get a statement.’

‘I’m not staying anywhere.’ Larry shuffled to the door. ‘I’ve told you all I know. The mother, understand? I’ll be on my boat if you needs me.’

The fisherman slipped into the corridor, leaving Savage staring at the broken cup, the pieces surrounded by a puddle of steaming tea. Brenden Parker, she remembered, had sought comfort from the warmth of a silver teapot which had belonged to his mother. At the time, they hadn’t realised she’d died nor did they know the story behind her relationship to Brenden.

That was it. Savage turned and dashed from the room. Half a minute later and she was in the crime suite confronting Collier.

‘Deborah Parker. Frank Parker’s first wife and Brenden Parker’s mother,’ she said.

‘Who?’ Collier raised a marker pen in defence. He turned to his whiteboard and examined a list of names. ‘Not on the radar.’

‘No, because she’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Collier shook his head. ‘So where are you going with this? Ghosts?’

‘No, Deborah Parker’s not coming back.’ Savage pointed to a map on another board. ‘But it’s what she left behind I’m interested in.’

Savage explained to Collier what she wanted and went to find Calter. Five minutes later and she returned with the DC in tow.

‘Well?’

‘I’m confused,’ Collier said, waving a piece of paper at Savage. ‘I can’t find a record of Deborah Parker’s death, but I’ve got her address. She lives over in the countryside near Modbury.’

‘Lives?’ Savage took the address. ‘That can’t be right. We found a condolence card at Brenden Parker’s house.’

‘Whatever. The property’s right on the Erme, upstream from where the second raft was found.’

‘Find a car,’ she said, turning to Calter and shooing her from the room. ‘We need the PolSA, a search team, John Layton and his CSIs. Alert the air ambulance too, we might need a medevac.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ Calter had already pulled out her phone and she was punching numbers as they ran down the corridor.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Near Modbury, South Hams, Devon. Thursday 29th October. 12.38 p.m.

They sped along the A38, Savage topping a ton for most of the way. After the dual carriageway they had no option but to take minor roads and progress was torturous. While Savage concentrated on keeping the car on the road, Calter made call after call on her phone.

Near Modbury, Savage turned off onto a tiny lane which climbed a hillside before dropping down a steep hill.

‘Here, ma’am,’ Calter said.

Savage slewed the car round and took a track which led through a couple of fields towards a large house. Behind the house a field ran down to a line of trees, the blue of the River Erme beyond.

The place may have once been home to a local doctor or solicitor, Savage thought. Now it lay abandoned, broken glass in the windows, a full-length veranda partly collapsed at one end, an old rocking chair next to a small cast-iron table sheltering under the porch.

They bounced down the track and pulled up in front of the house. An iron fence ran around a small plot, the grass long and almost waist-high. To the back, a paddock lay thick with docks and nettles and off to one side sat an orchard with wiry apple trees badly in need of pruning.

‘The drawing showed a box buried in the earth, so check the grounds first.’ Savage leapt out of the car as they stopped. ‘Come on.’

She ran up to the gate and pushed it open. A stone paved path hugged the right-hand side of the house. She went along the path, Calter close behind.

‘You reckon he’s here then? Jason?’ Calter said.

‘Got to be.’

They rounded the house and crossed through an area of long grass to the orchard. A post and rail fence surrounded the trees and a gate stood open to the plot. In places, the grass had been trampled. Someone had been here recently.

‘There!’ Savage said, pointing to an area of disturbed ground, a pile of soil still dark brown with moisture. She moved across to the pile and felt a sudden lurch in her stomach when she saw the hole alongside. ‘He was in here.’

She stared down into the hole. The sides plunged down through the dark earth and at the bottom sat a large box perhaps a metre or so wide by two long and maybe a metre or so deep.

‘The lid, ma’am,’ Calter said, pointing to a large sheet of plywood on one side of the spoil heap. Next to the plywood lay a short section of tubing, something like a drainpipe. ‘Jesus, I can’t imagine what it must have been like trapped down there. Horrible.’

Savage nodded. Several cans of Coke and the wrappers from numerous packets of biscuits and chocolate bars had been pushed into a corner. To one side of the box, fresh soil showed through a rough opening in the plywood.

‘But where is he now?’ Savage peered closer. The opening led through to a neighbouring hole, narrower than the first. In the bottom, Savage could see the outline of a wooden coffin, the lid splintered and pulled aside, a plain wooden cross thrown down on top.

‘Ma’am?’ Calter stood alongside Savage. ‘If Jason was in the first hole, who or what was in this one?’

‘No idea, but the hole was dug today as well.’ She pointed at the spoil heap and then scanned the orchard. The rest of the grass was long and untrampled. ‘There’s nothing out here, let’s try the house.’

Back round the front, Calter stopped as she stepped onto the veranda. She knelt on the wooden boards.

‘Blood, ma’am.’ The DC pointed to several dark splotches near the front door. ‘Fresh, by the look of it.’

‘OK,’ Savage said. ‘Let’s see what we can find inside.’

Calter nodded, stood, and reached for the door handle.

‘Gloves!’ Savage said, reaching into her own pocket and pulling out a pair. ‘Here, have these.’

‘Thanks.’ Calter took the gloves and put them on. Then she reached for the door handle once more, turned it, and pushed the door open.

A narrow hall stretched away in front of them, a door to the right and left. A staircase ran up to the first floor on one side of the passageway. Calter moved into the house and Savage followed. The draught from the open door had disturbed a layer of dust on the floor and motes swirled in the air. There was something else in the air too. Steam, drifting from the rear of the house.