CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  Anonymous was not something she’d ever be again, Joanne thought. Infamous more like. Once the news filtered out. Tongues wagging, curtains twitching, rumours spreading like foot rot in a flock of sheep.

  ‘So?’ Joanne whispered once they’d relocated. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Nothing, Joanne.’

  ‘You’ve been at the farm, what? – twenty years?’

  ‘Longer.’ Jody smiled. Shook his head, as if not quite believing the passage of time. ‘Twenty-five this August. Left school at sixteen and my dad said I had four weeks to find a job or else he’d find one for me. I was sweet on a girl up Calstock way so I spent the time chasing her instead of looking for work. First week in August Dad told me to come and see your uncle. Been here ever since.’

  ‘Well, Jody, I couldn’t have made the farm the success it is without your help.’

  ‘It was nothing.’ Jody smiled, winked and then took a sup of his beer. When he lowered the glass the jovial expression had gone. ‘But if you’re implying I know something about them people down in the hole then you’re wrong.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Well then, what are you on about?’

  Joanne stared at Jody for a moment. Held his eyes. Then she looked around. Dark wood, brass trinkets on the red walls, black and white photographs from pre-war Devon. Parts of the pub, she knew, even went back as far as Drake.

  ‘History. My uncle. Things which happened at the farm long before I took over.’ Joanne picked up her glass and drained the remaining beer in one. ‘That’s what I’m on about.’

  Savage didn’t catch up with the farmer until mid-afternoon. As they walked down to the crime scene together, she made a visual assessment of Joanne Black. In her early fifties, she had hair matching her name. Dark in thick strands, streaks of grey in there, but glamorous with it. The Hunter boots and stretch jeans helped, as did a figure kept in shape by manual work. The woman’s face wore the signs of days spent outside and under the sun but Savage thought the lines around her eyes showed far more character and beauty than the smooth glacial skin of a Photoshopped cover model ever would. She strode down the track, chatting to Savage about the farm. Casual and confident, but a hint of nervousness. Perhaps that was no more than to be expected.

  A couple of paces behind them DC Patrick Enders puffed along, unwrapping and eating a Mars Bar as he walked. How the young detective managed to retain his boyish good looks on the diet he ate, Savage had no idea. Maybe his wife ensured he ate healthily at home. Then again, the lad had three young kids. Savage knew from her own experiences that burgers and chips would appear more frequently on the menu than three-bean salads.

  As the three of them carried on down the track Joanne explained to Savage that the field had been used for silage, swedes and wheat over the past few years. However, the odd little corner formed by the river edge and the railway line as the embankment approached the bridge had always been left to scrub. The patch was not only tight to get the tractor in but there was also a spring which made the ground cut up something awful.

  The spring explained the need for the pump, and as they approached the tent the noise of the generator drifted across. They left the metal track, their feet sucking in the mud with every step until they reached the pallets. Joanne paused some way from the tent and turned to Savage.

  ‘They’re gone, right?’ she said. ‘I really don’t want to see anything like that ever again.’

  ‘Yes,’ Savage said. ‘The bodies were removed an hour or so ago.’

  Two CSIs were poking around in the nearby hedge, but there was nobody in the tent as Savage pushed the flap to one side.

  ‘We don’t need to go in. I just wanted you to see how big a hole had to be dug. It will give you some idea of the disturbance that must have made when the bodies were buried.’

  ‘Urgh, to think they’ve been there all the time.’ Joanne shook her head as she glanced into the tent, then turned away and looked back up the field to where they had come from. A number of police vehicles clustered in the farmyard, alongside a big green John Deere tractor. ‘But the distance. We’d never have heard anything at night and the scrub here would have shielded any digging from the eyes of whoever was working the field.’

  ‘Even high up in the tractor?’

  ‘With the mess you lot have made it’s hard to imagine what the ground was like.’ Joanne pointed over to the hedge. ‘See there. The nettles and brambles are almost head height.’

  ‘I guess it would also depend on the time of year, right?’ Savage said. ‘I mean, how often would you be driving past the corner?’

  ‘This has been down to winter wheat the last two years. We drill in the autumn. Then we spray several times and spread fertiliser too. That would be up until May or June. We harvest in August. But you’re too focused on the job in hand to be looking around you.’

  Savage did just that. Looked around. The hedge Joanne had pointed to was thorn, thick on the field side with brambles and nettles. Down at the bottom of the field the estuary mud came right up to the edge. At any other time than spring high tide access from the water would be near impossible. The fortnightly spring high tides in Plymouth occurred in the morning and evening. Meaning, Savage reckoned, that apart from in the depths of winter, it would be daylight at high tide. If the killer hadn’t come through the farmyard then the only other way in was to carry the bodies along the railway line. It would have been hard work, but flat.

  Savage nodded over at the track. Explained her thinking about the railway line to Enders.

  ‘What, risk getting electrocuted, ma’am?’ Enders said, the wrapper from his Mars Bar slipping from his hand. He bent to pick it up. ‘Or run over by a train?’

  ‘There are only a few a day,’ Joanne said. ‘None at night. And they’re diesels.’

  ‘So,’ Savage said, ‘someone could walk across the bridge or down from the village with no worries. They could have parked somewhere adjacent to the line and then climbed over the fence. After dark it would be unlikely they’d be spotted.’

  ‘But why me? Why my farm?’

  ‘There could be a reason, but maybe this just seemed like a good place.’

  ‘Fantastic.’ Joanne moved away from the tent and gazed across the field. ‘How long are you going to be here? I’ve got people in the holiday cottages from the middle of the week.’

  ‘You’ll have to put them off, I’m afraid. Sorry.’

  ‘Bugger.’ Joanne shook her head. ‘You must think me heartless, thinking about my own financial worries after what’s happened to those people.’

  ‘Not at all. After all, none of this is your fault and it must be hard—’

  ‘Being a woman? Would you say that if I was a man?’

  ‘No,’ Savage smiled, ‘but then your life wouldn’t be so hard, would it?’

  ‘It’s the attitude which gets me. I am not sure why a woman shouldn’t be able to drive a tractor or worm a cow. I’ll admit I leave banging in fence posts to Jody, but other than that I’m as good as the next.’ Joanne turned to Enders. ‘Dear Lord, listen to me, I sound like some ball-breaker from the last century.’

  ‘Don’t mind me.’ Enders raised his hands. ‘I’m only against feminists when they come armed with scissors.’

  ‘I’m not that type. Although I might make an exception for blokes who drop litter …’

  ‘Never again,’ Enders said as he fumbled in his pocket to check he still had the wrapper. ‘Promise.’

  Chapter Three

  Today the Big Knife is safe at home. You never take it with you on your reconnaissance missions. That would be much too dangerous. The knife has a mind of its own and can only be allowed to come out on one day a year. The Special Day. Not far off now. Not long to wait. There’s just the small matter of selecting your victim. Truth be told though, this one, like the others, selected herself. Free will. A wonderful thing. But people should use it wisely, make their choices with care. And accept the consequences of their decisions
.

  You watch as she steps out of her house. A lovely young woman. Slim, slight even. Long brown hair tied back. A white blouse hiding small breasts. A grey skirt hiding dirty secrets. The blue gloss door swinging shut, closing on the life she led before. She turns to lock the deadlock. Click. Can’t be too careful these days. Not that it makes any difference. She’s yours – and nothing anyone can do or say will make any difference. She made the only decision which matters years ago. No going back now.

  At the kerb she looks up the street and waves at a neighbour. Exchanges a greeting. An au revoir, she’d call it, being a French teacher. You’d call it a goodbye.

  The little blue Toyota she gets into matches the colour of the front door. It’s a Yaris. 1.2 sixteen valve. The colour match is a nice touch, intentional or not. It’s little things like that which catch your attention. Simple things. Serendipity. Chance. These days so much else is too complicated to understand.

  Like your dishwasher.

  The thought comes to your mind even as you know you should be concentrating on the girl. Only you can’t now. Not when you are considering the dishwasher problem.

  This morning you came down to breakfast to find the machine had gone wrong. You took a screwdriver to the rear and pulled the cover off, expecting to find a few tubes and a motor, something easy to fix.

  No.

  Microchips. And wire. Little incy-wincy threads of blue and gold and red and black and green and yellow and purple weaving amongst plastic actuator switches and shut-off valves. Pumps and control units, fuses and God-knows-what.

  Except God doesn’t know. Not anymore. That’s the problem.

  Once he knew everything. Then man came along and took over God’s throne, claimed to know everything. Now nobody knows everything.

  You called the dishwasher repair guy out to take a look. He knows dishwashers. What about TVs?

  You asked him as he worked on the machine and he said ‘No, not TVs.’

  His words worried you, but then you remembered you don’t have a TV. You never liked the way the bits of the picture fly through the air into the set. That means pieces of people’s bodies are passing through you. Not just their teeth and hair – the nice bits you see on the screen – but their shit and piss, their stomach contents. All of it has to come from the studio to your house and the thought of the stuff floating around your living room makes you gag.

  ‘Fridges?’ you said, swallowing a mouthful of spit.

  ‘Yes, fridges. Can find my way around a fridge. At least to grab a tinny or two.’

  The way he smiled and then laughed you weren’t sure if he was joking or not. Hope not. You don’t like jokes. At least, not ones like that.

  ‘Microwave ovens? Specifically a Zanussi nine hundred watt with browning control. The turntable doesn’t work.’

  ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘What about chainsaws? I’ve got a Stihl MS241. Eighteen-inch blade. Runs but there is a lack of power when cutting through anything thicker than your arm. Having to use my axe. And that’s not half as much fun.’

  The dishwasher man didn’t answer, just gave you an odd look and put his tools away. Drew up an invoice which you paid in cash.

  You looked at the invoice and noted the man’s address in case the machine went wrong again. The man left the house and got in a white Citroën Berlingo van with the registration WL63 DMR. Drove off. As the van pulled away, the wheels slipping on the white gravel, you saw it was a 1.6 HDi. 90 hp. Nice. Useful to have a van like that if you need to move something heavy around.

  The girl!

  She’s driving off too, the blue Toyota disappearing round the corner.

  That’s OK. Cars run on roads the way the electricity flows in wires inside the dishwasher. Each wire goes to the correct place and each road does too. The road you are interested in goes left at the end, then straight on through three sets of traffic lights. Third exit on the roundabout. First right, second left and pull up in the car park. Usually she takes the first bay next to the big metal bin, unless it’s taken. Then she’ll have a dilemma and might park in any one of the other fifty-seven spaces. But you really don’t need to worry about that now.

  No, you’ll see her again in a few days. Up close. And personal. Very personal.

  Chapter Four

  Nr Lee Moor, east of Plymouth, Devon. Monday 16th June. 8.37 a.m.

  No sign of yesterday’s sun, the air cold, the drizzle getting heavier by the minute. Covert ops, DS Darius Riley thought, meant sitting in a car, dry, if not warm, with a newspaper to read and food and drink on tap. Not this. Not freezing your nuts off on a summer’s day in wildest Devon.

  To his immediate left DI Frank Maynard sat grinning at him. The DI pulled the hood on his Berghaus up. Mumbled something about ‘the right equipment’, something else about ‘soft city boys’. The joke was wearing thin, but the fact Riley was both black and from London meant it was open season. In Maynard’s eyes, if you hadn’t grown up shagging sheep on Dartmoor then you were a ‘bloody foreigner’ and open to ridicule.

  Riley adjusted his position in an effort to make himself more comfortable. Difficult since he knelt in what he could only describe as a ditch, although Maynard had assured him the pile of stone and earth topped with scrub was in fact known as a Devon hedge. Whatever. The only good thing about the barrier was the cover it provided. Twenty metres farther along the hedge DI Phil Davies stood with a pair of binoculars peering through a gap in the vegetation, his grey hair wet and plastered to the top of his head like sticky rice. His stance suggested to Riley he wasn’t enjoying the outing much either. Chalk and cheese the pair of them, but Riley had to admit a certain grudging respect for Davies. Earlier in the year the DI had likely as not saved Riley’s skin, and although the task involved some very dodgy dealing, Riley owed the man. Even if Davies usually moved in circles something akin to the mud squelching beneath Riley’s knees – the murkiest depths of Plymouth’s underworld, a place of backroom bars, wraps handed over in alleyways and girls standing under street lamps waiting for their next trick. But at least there you stayed dry.

  Not here. Not on Operation Cowbell.

  No. Operation Cowbell meant getting cold, wet and miserable while waiting for people to turn up and buy illegal red diesel from some farmer who was just trying to scrape a living from a few hundred acres of poor quality land. True, the farmer, a man by the name of Tim McGann, had some connection to organised crime over in Exeter, but Riley thought the whole investigation would have been better left to Customs and Excise.

  A rustle came from Riley’s left and he turned to see Maynard unwrapping a foil package containing ham sandwiches. Maynard took one out and munched on the wholemeal bread. He’d not be happy either, Riley reflected. It wasn’t his idea to have Riley and Davies along; their assignment to the case was down to DSupt Hardin. Both Riley and Davies had been involved in a failed drugs operation and being shunted to the backwoods of Cowbell was punishment. Three months in and they’d identified a handful of farms selling diesel and recorded dozens of people buying. They’d trekked across muddy fields, staked out isolated barns, and visited parts of Devon and Cornwall so remote that to Riley’s mind they seemed like the wilds of America. They’d witnessed illegal activity, certainly. But was it worth the hours the team had spent compiling the information?

  Riley reached into his pocket for his own sustenance only to find the flapjack he’d brought along had got wet and crumbled into a thousand pieces. The mush now resembled porridge. In the back of Maynard’s car there was a bag containing Riley’s lunch – a triple cheese selection and a can of Coke purchased from the M&S close to the station – but the car was several fields away and he couldn’t see Maynard letting him off just yet.

  ‘How much longer, boss?’ Riley said. They’d been in the ditch since six-thirty and the only vehicle to come along the winding lane to the farm had been Postman Pat’s red van. ‘We’ve been watching McGann’s place for two days and not a snifter so far.’


  ‘Patience,’ Maynard said. ‘Don’t they teach you anything up at Hendon these days?’

  Riley shrugged his shoulders and was about to risk suggesting that when lunch time came they should adjourn to a nearby pub – if there was a nearby pub – when he felt the buzzing of his mobile. He pulled out the phone and squinted at the message.

  ‘Something’s come up, sir.’ Riley tried hard to suppress a smile as he read the text. ‘Missing person on Dartmoor. DC Enders is on his way and he’ll collect me from the bottom of the lane. Depending on how things work out I might not be back today.’

  Maynard screwed up the tin foil, put it carefully in his pocket and reached for his flask.

  ‘Pity,’ he said, smiling. ‘I was just about to pour you a cup of coffee.’

  Savage had woken to the radio.

  ‘The Candle Cake Killer …’

  BBC Devon were already using the name, despite the lack of any official confirmation. Callers to the station got the date thing too.

  ‘Five days,’ one said, anguish in her voice. ‘FIVE DAYS!’

  Somebody needed to put out a statement soon, Savage thought. Otherwise the media would be controlling the agenda from the get-go.

  Down in the kitchen she continued listening as she prepared breakfast. The station was running a morning special on the history of the case. A chance for listeners to catch up over their cornflakes. Pete hustled Samantha and Jamie to the table and tucked Jamie in. Not cornflakes: toast and Cheerios, fresh orange juice, strong coffee for Savage.

  ‘So?’ Pete said, buttering a piece of toast and gesturing at the radio with the knife. ‘This for real?’

  ‘Officially, no,’ Savage said. ‘But as you well know from your line of work since when has “officially” got anything to do with the truth?’

  Pete smiled. ‘Well, official or not, be careful, OK?’

  ‘Be careful?’ Savage went across and kissed Pete and the kids. ‘Makes a change that you’re the one who’s worrying.’