by Mark Sennen
‘Two armed officers will enter first,’ Frey said. ‘They will sweep and clear. Then the rest of us pile in en masse.’
‘We need to remember the house is a crime scene. If Harrison isn’t in there we want to keep the number of people entering the building to a minimum.’
‘Understood. But safety comes first. It is my call as to if and when you get in. Sorry, instructions from Hardin. He mentioned something about the Moor Vale incident.’ Frey’s tone came across as serious, but he was grinning at the same time. ‘If you ever fancy a change of career I am always looking for officers with a bit of backbone.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Savage smiled back. ‘Once is enough. I’m quite happy watching you guys from a safe distance.’
*
A safe distance equalled fifty metres up the street in an unmarked car. Savage, Riley and Enders waited in the darkness for the TAG team to appear. A few minutes earlier Enders had cruised the car past Harrison’s place. Even an estate agent would have been hard pushed to describe the property as anything other than grotty. Paint peeled from the window frames and the railings on the first floor balcony were rusty. On the front wall a hunk of plaster had fallen off and lay in pieces in the tiny garden. Alongside the rest of the street’s smart looking dwellings the house stuck out like a sore thumb.
‘The press will love this,’ Riley said. ‘Fit’s their stereotype perfectly.’
‘And if it doesn’t they will make it,’ Enders said.
Savage brooded, her own thoughts blocking out the chat of the other two officers. Had they missed something which might have led them here earlier? The house flagged Harrison up as different, but should someone else have spotted other things that might have drawn him to the attention of the authorities and prevented him being able to work at the nurseries? Savage didn’t know, but she reckoned she had done her best. In the end no one could expect more.
‘Ma’am?’ Enders nodded toward the house. The front door opened and light washed out onto the street. Two girls dressed for a night on the town tottered down the steps and walked along the road.
‘Students,’ Riley said. ‘Ground floor and basement are rented out. Harrison has his studio on the first floor, flat on the second and third.’
‘Nice looking tenants,’ Enders said as the girls breezed past the car, a whiff of perfume noticeable a few moments later. ‘Don’t suppose that is a coincidence. Whatever, they will be searching for new digs come tomorrow.’
‘Maybe your missus would be happy to give them a room, eh?’ Riley said.
‘Shut up, ladies,’ Savage said. ‘Here we go!’
The TAG van drove by and drew up alongside the curb in front of them. The rear doors opened and six men jumped out, Frey leading the way. Black clothing, body armour, SWAT team boots and guns. They jogged down the street to Harrison’s house. Two of the team now held the enforcer — a tubular steel battering ram — between them while a third peered through the letterbox. ‘Clear,’ he mouthed.
The two officers swung the ram and the door crashed open, splintering around the lock. Two more officers with weapons drawn now raced past and into the house. Savage heard muffled shouting from inside and the rest of the team rushed in.
‘OK, we’re on.’ Savage opened the door and got out of the car. As they walked down the street and neared the house they heard commotion from inside. A crash as an internal door caved in and a high-pitched warble sound from a burglar alarm. More shouting. Bodies thumping up and down stairs. Now doors were opening on houses either side and a couple of the TAG team were screaming at the residents to get back inside.
‘Give me CID any day,’ Enders said. ‘All this running around would leave me too knackered for anything.’
Frey appeared at the front door.
‘Clear so far. No lights evident on the inside so seems like he’s not around. Burglar alarm would indicate that as well. Give my lads another five minutes and then you can call your CSIs in.’ Frey indicated the white SOC van pulling over up the road. He grinned. ‘Methinks there will be plenty for them to get their teeth into.’
Layton climbed down from the van and began unloading gear from the back as Savage went over.
‘I want a quick search around inside,’ she said. ‘And then I will leave you to it.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ he said, shaking his head at the sight of the TAG team members leaving the building. ‘Honestly if you knew the pain that causes me. All those sweaty bodies clumping around over my lovely crime scene.’
‘Want me to get suited up?’
‘Ma’am, that would make my day. Your boys too, please.’
The three of them got into the garb Layton provided and padded into the house. They had the place to themselves now the TAG team had left and it was quiet.
The hallway had stairs that led up to Harrison’s studio and the flat above and Savage led the way.
‘Patrick, you take the studio. Darius and I will go to the flat. Prelim scout only. Leave the digging for Layton and his crew.’
The stairs and the studio area seemed neat and tidy. Bright white walls, cleanish. When they ascended the next set of stairs to the second floor flat that changed. A stale odour of sweat and unwashed clothes invaded Savage’s nostrils. Something else too.
‘Darius?’
‘Not sure, ma’am. Unpleasant anyway.’
The door to the flat led straight into the living area. A big bay window looked out to the Sound, lights sparkling in the distance across the water. In front of the window, but set back from the glass, three cameras on tripods reminded Savage of the Martian machines from the War of the Worlds. One camera had a long lens and pointed towards the Hoe. Savage went into the room, aware as she did so of something scattered over the floor.
‘Huh?’ Savage glanced down at her feet where sheets of paper overlapped each other, a white carpet made of A4.
Riley bent down and picked up one of the sheets.
‘Printouts, ma’am. Must be a computer somewhere.’
‘Interesting?’
‘Jesus, no. Sick. Ranting. Nonsense.’ Riley laid the piece of paper back where it came from.
‘OK,’ Savage said. ‘I wanted to examine those cameras, but I think I’ll leave it. Too much to disturb in here. Let’s check out the rest of the flat.’
On the same level a kitchen didn’t hold anything of interest. Old linoleum lay on the floor, sticky and smeared with grease and scraps, and a bin in the corner overflowed with fast food packaging. In stark contrast the stainless sink and chrome taps gleamed as if from a showroom and the gas hob was spotless. The black granite worktops looked clean too, but the inside of the fridge stank; a half-empty bottle of milk had gone sour.
‘Not much for us here. Let’s go upstairs.’
Savage led the way up to the next floor. A series of three rooms jigsawed themselves into the odd space. The master had a large double bed and inside the room a bad taste gagged at the back of Savage’s throat. Acrid, bitter, just plain off, she thought. Various items of clothing lay strewn around the floor and at the end of the bed two piles of white hand towels; one pile neatly folded, the other in a jumble.
‘Jesus wept,’ Riley poked the jumbled mess with his foot while covering his nose with his forearm. ‘This smells bloody disgusting.’
‘What is it?’
‘Semen I think, ma’am. The towels are absolutely saturated and the whole lot stinks as if it is rotting. Looks like he has been wanking for England.’
‘This is where we need DC Calter. I am sure she would be able to come up with something witty.’
‘”Come” being the operative word, ma’am.’
‘Quite.’ Savage turned and left the room. ‘Let’s move on, I promised Layton this would be a quick scan around.’
The next room was about half the size of the master and seemed to function as some kind of storage area. There were cardboard packing boxes, an old mattress on its side, a rolled up carpet, a computer base unit wi
th no monitor, no leads.
‘Layton will take care of sifting through this lot,’ Savage said, moving to the final room.
The door opened and when she flicked the light switch she knew at once they had hit gold. ‘Box room’ would have been an honest estate agent’s description for the space measured no bigger than Savage’s arm span. A large window overlooked the road, but you wouldn’t know it because the glass was covered with thick black paint and not a chink of light penetrated from the outside.
‘Darkroom?’ Riley said. ‘Once anyway.’
With the advent of digital photography the darkroom had become redundant, but it appeared as if Harrison had elected to keep the room sealed to the outside world for other reasons. Against one wall a small computer workstation had a printer shelf to one side, a base unit below and two large widescreen monitors on the desk. Apart from the space taken by the workstation the rest of the walls were covered in prints. A4 in size, each print overlapped the next and ran up the wall in a column reaching all the way to the ceiling with no space between each column. In fact, Savage noted the ceiling had been plastered with prints as well. The prints seemed to bear down on the room, compressing the space and threatening to bury them in an avalanche. Of girls. Savage recognised some shots Harrison must have taken in the nurseries he visited because the girls sat staid and starched in formal poses. However, most of the shots appeared candid, many taken from Harrison’s front room. They showed girls passing by on the street or sunbathing on the Hoe, unaware of Harrison’s long lens sucking them in.
Looking closer now Savage could see that dozens of the pictures had been annotated in black marker. An arrow drawn on pointing to a bra strap showing, a flash of panties, a glimpse of inner thigh, a trio of drunken girls staggering down the street with their breasts half hanging out. At the end of the arrow a word: ‘Slut?’, ‘Tart?’, ‘Whore?’, ‘Dirty?’
The words shocked her as much as the sheer number of images, but most of all she found herself shocked by the actual image content. These were ordinary girls Harrison had snapped outside his house and on the Hoe, not some fantasy from a magazine, but real. The message didn’t need much decoding in Savage’s mind. Out there, in the streets and the parks and the clubs flesh displayed itself, advertised the availability of easy sex and longed to be touched, to be consumed.
Savage saw Riley shifting his stance, his face grimacing at each new image.
‘Is that what you think? Those words?’ Savage said. ‘I mean “you” as in “men”?’
‘It’s not what we think rationally, ma’am, but maybe it’s how we think when we look. You are in a sweet shop, you expect the sweets to taste nice, right?’
‘And nice is slutty?’
‘Nice is available.’
‘But possibly not to Harrison.’
‘It could explain a lot.’
Savage examined the images for a second time. If so much unavailable flesh had flashed in front of Harrison perhaps frustration had made him go mad, but then again maybe the pictures on the wall comprised a mere sideshow and something deeper drove him to kill.
‘Ma’am?’
Riley pointed to a row of framed prints on the shelf above the printer. Rosina Salgado Olivarez, Kelly Donal, Simone Ashton and Alice Nash. They were formal pictures, each girl dressed in her nursery uniform, smiling and looking straight at the camera. Donal and Ashton can’t have realised their killer peered back through the lens at them.
On a higher shelf golden writing sparkled on a set of hardback notebooks. Four altogether, each with a girl’s name embossed in gold on the spine: Trinny, Lucy, Deborah and Katya. None of the names matched the victims nor any of the women on the mispers list.
Savage took the first book, the one with Trinny written on the spine. Inside narrow ruled lines were filled with an almost impenetrable scrawl in black ink. Harrison had never thought of using blotting paper and the resulting ink smudges everywhere made deciphering the writing even more difficult. She skimmed through the lines of facts and figures about Trinny, whoever she was. Height, weight, eye colour, those made sense, but the rest of the text just waffled. Page after page describing, in minute detail, Trinny’s clothing, her shopping habits, her food preferences. Then came other ramblings, Harrison’s explanation of the love he felt for Trinny, what he was going to do with and to her. Some of it was impassioned, half poetry, half florid prose, the rest was pornographic, sick. After thirty or so pages the writing ended with a single word on an otherwise blank page: ‘Sorry.’
Savage scanned back through the text. Who was Trinny? Might she be another victim they had yet to discover? Savage shuddered at the thought and skipped back through some more pages. Then she spotted it: an address.
‘Beacon Park. It’s Kelly Donal.’
‘Trinny is Kelly?’ asked Riley.
‘Yes.’ She handed the book to Riley. ‘Read the description of her, first page.’
‘My dream lovely dream with the long brown hair and that starched white shirt top buttons undone and those heaving breasts pushing outwards wishing to be free and in my hands hazel eyes with plucked eyebrows narrow lips and white teeth the cutest nose that can smell my desire you sweet for me alone and your young innocence that longs for the closeness of my lonely flesh with your purity wrapped around me so safely.’
‘You’ve seen the shots of Kelly? The description matches,’ Savage said.
‘Perfectly. Anyway the address says everything, ma’am. Congratulations.’
Savage nodded. ‘In the circumstances I am not celebrating. Especially since we have two big unanswered questions.’
‘Which are?’
‘Where is Harrison and where the hell is Alice Nash?’
Chapter 33
Penzance Police Station, Cornwall. Tuesday 9th November. 8.41 am
Tatershall slammed the phone down and thumped the desk. First thing Tuesday and the day turning crap already. He had called a certain DC Nikki Lees at Dartmouth nick and unhelpful appeared to be her middle name. Rude too, treating him like an out-of-town hillbilly deputy. She hadn’t known the owners of Netherston Cottage, hadn’t been willing to try and find out either and didn’t seem at all interested in his mispers.
‘Stupid idiots,’ Tatershall said to Simbeck. ‘A few boats, a bit of sun and some rich ponces flashing their money around and they think they are living in bloody Monaco. The likes of them are obviously too busy licking some yachtie’s arse to have time to bother with us thickos down here in Cornwall.’
‘A yacht, a bit of sun and a rich ponce would do me fine, boss,’ Simbeck said. ‘Even if I did have to lick his arse occasionally.’
Tatershall groaned at the thought and picked up a pad from his desk. Jottings, doodles and random thoughts covered the paper, all connected to the couple from St Ives. What had started out as another boring mispers inquiry had now begun to fascinate him. The couple weren’t the sort of people he would usually feel much empathy for. Incomers rankled with him and rich ones twice over, but something about the couple drew a strand of compassion from him. At first glance they appeared to be not so different from the hundreds of retirees Tatershall came across in his work. Yet they had got under his skin. The husband, a cancer patient with not much time left, his wife a painter of dull landscapes, nothing unique there. But when he had read the letter from the hospital and stared out of the big window across the bay some of the emptiness from their lives washed over him. The trawl through their papers that revealed little, the sterile paintings, the flat devoid of memories, the story spoke to Tatershall of a couple who didn’t want to look back but had nothing to look forward to either.
He had managed to find out that they originally came from near Plymouth, another Devon link. The wife had been born in a small village on Dartmoor where the couple had later married at the local church, but beyond those bare facts nothing. Without a trip across to Devon, he thought, he couldn’t proceed further, certainly not if the local police were going to be as obstinate as DC Lees.
Reviewing the notes on his pad again brought to his attention the one nugget of information of any use so far. The location of Netherston Cottage. The place had been easy to find. A quick Google had revealed the hamlet of Netherston buried in the deepest part of the South Hams, an area of Devon which lay to the south of Dartmoor and took in the coastline from Plymouth to Dartmouth. Examining the aerial photograph overlaid on the map and comparing the lie of the land with the image on the painting he was pretty sure he had identified the exact location. The cottage lay nestled up against a wood in a valley only accessible along a mile or so of track. Even compared with places he knew in Cornwall the location was remote. Was it possible his mispers were there? Considering the health of the husband and his need for regular drugs and treatment Tatershall could think of only one reason why they would be.
The thought depressed him some more. But kicking the idea around in his head the notion didn’t quite make sense. The couple had moved to St Ives presumably because they liked the area. The view from the big window in the flat suggested an appreciation of the scale and beauty of the landscape and the wife’s paintings, however bland, indicated some sort of affinity for the place too. The gallery gave them a social connection right into the heart of the town and meant they would be able to get help and support. Why choose to go to some isolated cottage to die? Even if the couple had planned some suicide pact it would have been just as easy to carry it out in their own home. Unless they needed help, of course.
From their enquiries they had discovered the couple had no close friends in the area and no immediate family either. Could that explain the need to return to Devon, the county where they were born? Tatershall had brought the cardboard box with all their papers back to the station and he had started to go through the material again. This time he took each piece of paper out, checking between sheets and making sure he wasn’t missing anything. The pile on the desk beside him grew until the entire contents of the box had been removed. He sighed, disappointed he had found nothing new, but satisfied he had done a thorough job. He started to put the pile back in the box when he noticed a piece of paper wedged under one of the flaps at the bottom. He lifted the flap and pulled out the page of an old newspaper, which had been folded several times. As he unfolded the newsprint another piece of paper fell out. It was a birth certificate. Tatershall smoothed the document on the desk in front of him and read the details.
