CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  Savage followed Hardin’s gaze. Dan Phillips, the Herald’s crime reporter, stood on the other side of the road next to a BBC woman and a cameraman. Phillips could smell a story like a shark scenting blood from five miles off. Right now the Candle Cake Killer was the biggest thing he’d worked on. He’d be hoping it could be his passport to the big time. Phillips raised a hand, waved and then walked across.

  ‘Shit,’ Savage said and moved towards the reporter, putting on her best smile. ‘Dan. As always, a real pleasure.’

  ‘You reckon you’ve got him then?’ Phillips said, gesturing to the block of flats, his little eyes dithering back and forth. ‘Must admit I’m a little disappointed. I was hoping for a house of horrors. An Ed Gein Psycho sort of place.’

  ‘We’ve got nothing yet.’

  ‘Name of Graham Bunce, I understand. Interesting.’ Phillips smiled, the grin hiding something. ‘Former member of the armed forces. Never would have thought it.’

  ‘He’s got a conviction for assault.’

  ‘Yes, I know. He’s also got a CGC.’

  ‘CGC?’ Savage struggled to resolve the letters into some kind of meaning. The police and criminal justice system was filled with so much jargon it was almost impossible to keep up with every new acronym. She gave up. ‘What’s that then?’

  ‘The Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. Second only to the Victoria Cross in terms of decorations for bravery in the face of the enemy.’

  Nothing to do with criminal justice then, Savage thought. It did though begin to help them build a picture of the man. She glanced over at the flat. Layton and the other CSIs were working at the front door, Layton dusting the letterbox while the other two quartered the landing area. They’d be inside soon. Checking the bedroom. She wondered whether she needed to have words before they got that far.

  ‘Still,’ Phillips said. ‘It just goes to show you never can tell. Family man too. Divorced, but with four kids. One’s got a heart condition. I’m a bit offended you don’t know that, seeing as the Herald ran a campaign to raise money for the little boy. Bunce and a couple of other ex-marines did the South West Coast Path with full military kit. All six hundred miles of it. Did you know if you do the whole route the total height climbed is over four times that of Everest?’

  Savage shook her head and began to move away. She definitely needed to have words with Layton.

  ‘Parasite,’ Hardin said as she returned. ‘What’s he waiting for, feeding time at the zoo?’

  Hardin was mixing his metaphors, but Savage ignored him and went straight into the information Phillips had provided.

  ‘Military honour?’ Hardin said. ‘Doesn’t prove a thing. In fact somebody inclined to do something crazy in battle could be exactly the kind of person to do something crazy in civvy street. Anyway, let’s just wait and see what Layton manages to turn up.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Savage said, putting a hand behind her back and crossing her fingers.

  Come Friday morning, Paula Rowland had scolded herself. She’d woken to the gleam of the knife on the bedside table, light from a gap in the curtains reflecting off the shiny surface and into her eyes. She was still alive. Not, as feared, murdered by a sexual pervert during the night. She went downstairs and hurried the knife away into the kitchen drawer, dismissing the fact the little barbecue on the patio had tumbled over as the work of nothing more demonic than the pesky neighbourhood cat.

  Later though, leaving the school for a crafty fag and strolling round nearby Penlee Gardens with her friend Cath, she was sure she saw a man staring at her from across the grass. She was about to point him out to Cath but when she tapped her friend on the shoulder he’d gone.

  When, at four – no drink tonight – she walked home through Central Park, she saw him again, sure this time it was the same man as earlier, maybe as the night before. Once inside she dialled the non-emergency police number and explained what had happened, surprised to find a sympathetic ear on the end of the line and even more surprised by the knock at the door just thirty minutes later.

  The two uniformed officers – one male, one female – tried to reassure her. There were extra patrols planned for the next few days to deal with the threat from the Candle Cake Killer. They’d call round a couple of times, reroute a car to pass by in the night. Then they checked her door and window locks and gave her an attack alarm.

  ‘Anything at all,’ the male officer said as they left, ‘any hint of him, you call triple nine. I’d try not to worry yourself though, love.’

  Easier said than done, Paula thought, as she closed the door, bolted it, then went to retrieve the knife from the kitchen.

  Back at Crownhill late afternoon Savage waited on Layton’s search of the flat. She told Enders to do some more research into Graham Bunce in the expectation of a result from the CSI.

  ‘No car, ma’am,’ Enders said after he’d made a couple of phone calls and spent a few minutes logged into the Police National Computer. ‘At least, not registered to him. Does make it difficult to see how he could have accomplished the abductions.’

  ‘He could have borrowed one,’ Savage said. ‘And maybe he did have a car back at the time of the first killings.’

  ‘Possible. I’m also trying to get his service record, but the Navy are being a bit cagey about the whole thing.’

  ‘Did you tell them why you want it?’

  ‘No. Thought I’d better not. Might make them even more reticent.’ Enders glanced up at Savage for a moment and then tapped the screen. Bunce’s address sat dead centre. ‘Going back to the car problem, ma’am. Even if he did have the use of one, where did he take the women? Can’t see him killing them in his maisonette. For a start he’d have a job getting them inside without anyone seeing.’

  ‘Good point. I’ll get the local enquiry teams to consider that when they do the door-to-doors. We’ll need to get the lowdown on his friends, places he visited, hobbies which might take him to specific locations. Hiking, fishing, sailing. Maybe, like Glastone, he has a boat.’

  ‘He lives in a poxy maisonette above a shop, ma’am. Can’t see him owning a gin palace.’

  ‘Not a gin palace, no. Perhaps a little workboat, something he could go upriver in. Maybe to Tavy View farm.’

  Savage looked over to the map on the whiteboard. The railway line theory was all very well but the wide expanse of blue on the map which ran down from the Bere Peninsula suggested other possibilities. The estuary linked the peninsula with Plymouth and a boat moored in a dozen places around the Sound could reach the farm in half an hour or so. There was the issue of the tide times – access over the mud at low tide would be near impossible – but perhaps they needed to do more work on it. She went to a nearby terminal and brought up some tide tables, but before she’d got very far DC Calter entered the crime suite, her bag in hand, about to wrap up for the day. She came across and peered over Enders’ shoulder.

  ‘Graham Bunce,’ she said. ‘What’s your interest?’

  ‘Interest?’ Enders said. ‘Haven’t you heard, he’s up for the Candle Cake Killings.’

  ‘What?’ Calter appeared shocked for a moment and then burst out laughing. ‘I’m assuming this is some kind of gag or wind-up. I ran the half marathon alongside him a couple of years ago.’

  ‘And that makes him innocent, does it?’ Enders said.

  Calter shook her head and tried to suppress a giggle.

  ‘Jane?’ Savage said. ‘This isn’t a laughing matter, so please enlighten us as to what’s so funny. Graham Bunce is a suspect, but if you know a reason why he shouldn’t be then out with it.’

  ‘Why he shouldn’t be?’ Calter said. ‘Couldn’t be, more like.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Here.’ Calter moved to Enders’ terminal and leant over in front of him. She brought up a browser and did a search. ‘That’s the reason.’

  Savage peered at the screen. Calter had selected a page from the Herald’s website. It was the piece Phillips had been talking about, the six-hundred-mile wa
lk around the coast path. There was a picture of Bunce flanked by his two colleagues. Enders read the introduction.

  ‘Graham Bunce today completed his marathon walk around the coasts of Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, raising upwards of fifty thousand pounds for heart charities. Graham served in Afghanistan until he was wounded in action. Registered blind, he completed the walk with the help of two friends from Four Two Commando …’

  ‘Shit,’ Savage said. ‘Bloody Dan Phillips. He knew this all along and never said anything to me.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ Enders said. ‘What I don’t understand is, if he’s blind, how come the thugs went after him?’

  ‘He’s actually partially sighted,’ Calter said. ‘Very limited vision, but you wouldn’t necessarily know from watching him.’

  ‘What were the candles for then?’ Enders said. ‘He had a chocolate cake and the candles in his carrier bag.’

  ‘He’s got four kids,’ Calter said. ‘It’s not beyond the realms of possibility one of them has a birthday coming up, is it?’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Savage said, feeling nauseous as she moved across the room to a phone. ‘The DSupt is going to go through the roof.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Calter nodded towards the door. ‘Too late.’

  Hardin stood at the entrance to the crime suite, red-faced, holding a sheet of paper.

  ‘You know the source I have at the Herald?’ he said, holding up the sheet. ‘Well, he just sent me this.’

  Savage wanted to hold her head in her hands, to dissolve into the ground, anything but look at the headline. She forced herself to read it.

  Blind Man’s Bluff the text said. Below the headline, the subheading didn’t help much either: Police Finger Sightless War Hero For Cake Killings.

  ‘This is not what I’d call bloody good policing,’ Hardin said. ‘More like a farce. We’re in danger of losing the entire city. The media strategy’s blown. Who’s going to listen to our advice when this is the rubbish we come up with? Dan Phillips has made us a laughing stock.’ Hardin contemplated the sheet of paper for a moment and then crumpled it up. ‘I’m off home to get a few hours’ rest, because tomorrow is going to be a long day.’

  With that, Hardin turned and left.

  ‘The longest day,’ Savage said. ‘God help us.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Everything is planned and ready. Every last detail taken care of. The plastic is down, some in the back of the car as well. Then there is the extra food you’ve got in because you don’t need to be worrying about popping out for a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. Not when there is work to do.

  And there’ll be plenty of that. Not to mention the cleaning up afterwards.

  Strewth.

  Scrape, lift, sling. Scrape, lift, sling.

  You’ve put Mikey back on the gravel job and he’s going at it like crazy out there, filling a barrow every few minutes and ferrying the heavy load across the yard where he dumps it. The pile on the left gets ever smaller, the one on the right bigger. The other day you were worried about him getting worn out, but the energy the lad has is frightening. Ten minutes doing this will curb some of his unhealthy exuberance. You can just stand here and watch. You’ve been doing that for years. Like a disembodied spirit you’ve been looking down on your life, interested only in the journey, never the destination.

  Mummy got sliced up near the beginning and Daddy killed himself in prison soon after.

  Which was when you figured the rest of the route wasn’t going to be on any fucking satnav. Not that the demonic things had been invented back then. And even if you’d had a map showing you the way you doubt it would have kept you out of trouble, out of the nick.

  Fifteen years.

  You were supposed to rehabilitate in there. Learn your lesson. Get help. All you ended up doing was brooding. Working out who the hell was to blame. Pretty bloody obvious that.

  ‘Prison is like being inside the womb,’ you said to a probation officer soon after release. ‘When you’re in there you’re just waiting until the day you are kicked out, naked, screaming and unable to care for yourself. Unable to control yourself.’

  The man nodded and you continued.

  ‘Sometimes I think it would be better if I went back inside.’

  The man nodded again, said something about you losing your parents. Difficult to come to terms with.

  Difficult to come to terms with? Daddy slicing up Mummy with the Big Knife and then killing himself? You don’t know anything about the problems of the man’s other clients but if they are worse than yours you’d sure like to hear of them.

  Fifteen minutes into the session and you get up and leave, the soles of your shoes clicking on the polished floor, the sound echoing through the room like a slow handclap.

  Worth every penny, these fucking do-gooders.

  Scrape, lift, sling. Scrape, lift, sling.

  You tap on the window and make a sign of forking something into your mouth. Mikey turns and nods, holds his thumbs up and then returns to his job.

  Scrape, lift, sling. Scrape, lift, sling.

  You go to the kitchen and grab a couple of tins of beans from the pantry, open them, pour them into a dish and place them in the microwave.

  The Zanussi nine hundred watt with the dodgy turntable. The one the dishwasher man didn’t know how to repair.

  Why is it, you think, as you pop a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster, that nobody knows anything about stuff these days?

  The thought makes you feel physically sick. The complexity of everything. It’s what did for Mummy. Not a microwave oven of course, but a conventional one. She dialled up one hundred and eighty degrees centigrade and set the timer for twenty-five minutes, as she must have done countless times before. Only she hadn’t reckoned on you and your brother. You watched her blow up balloons for the celebration in the dining room for a while, but then the pair of you returned to the kitchen and peered through the glass at the cake. Bored of the slow motion miracle taking place within you began to fiddle with the controls on the oven. You rotated the dials and pressed the buttons.

  Beeeeeep.

  ‘Done already?’

  In came Mummy. The cake looked perfect, but Mummy forgot to check inside. She should have used a knife, then Daddy wouldn’t have had to.

  You shiver as you set the timer on the microwave for sixty seconds. Every time you use an electrical device it’s a pact with the devil himself.

  Back at the dining room window while you wait for the beans to heat and the toast to pop things are simpler.

  Scrape, lift, sling. Scrape, lift, sling.

  You stare at the pile of gravel in the yard. Wonder if you might just get Mikey to move it all back again tomorrow.

  But no, you think as you return to the kitchen. Tomorrow you’re going to be busy. Very busy. Tomorrow’s the Special Day.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bovisand, Plymouth. Saturday 21st June. 7.35 a.m.

  The longest day dawned still, hot and humid. The sea beyond the cliffs at the bottom of Savage’s garden spread like a huge mirror, stretching all the way across Plymouth Sound to Cornwall. Boats glided through the still water, leaving ‘V’ trails behind them. Was it her imagination or were there more craft than usual for a Saturday in June? Were people heading out to sea in search of a better life? A life beyond the reach of the Candle Cake Killer?

  Down in the kitchen Savage turned on the radio. BBC Devon was wall-to-wall. A phone-in filled with people panicking, berating the police, threatening to kill anybody who crossed their thresholds. The presenter was doing his best to raise the temperature to boiling point and beyond, while at the same time trying to display a BBC-style tone of reassurance. The leader of the council came on and issued a ‘keep calm and carry on’ message only to be followed by a contradictory statement from the deputy leader, her old enemy Alec Jackman.

  ‘Anybody comes through the door of my house today and they are as good as dead.’

  ‘You don’t mean th
at, Mr Jackman?’ the presenter said.

  ‘Yes I do. I’ve got a baseball bat and an old speargun ready and waiting and I urge every other citizen to similarly prepare themselves. Let’s reclaim the streets and make sure this city stays safe.’

  ‘That’s quite a—’

  The phone rang and Savage turned the volume down and answered.

  ‘You listening, Charlotte? To the radio?’ Hardin. From the sound of him, like a bear who’d not slept a wink. ‘That man is a bloody disgrace. I’ve a good mind to send a couple of officers round to arrest him for incitement.’

  ‘Jackman?’

  ‘Idiot.’

  ‘You can’t blame anyone for wanting to defend themselves.’

  ‘Trouble we don’t need, Charlotte. Mark my words. You saw what happened when those thugs mistook Graham Bunce for the killer. The chap’s lucky to be alive. If the general public take Councillor Jackman’s advice the day will be taken up with us running from one 999 call to another. It’ll be war. Now, on another matter, Glastone. You’re over there today, right? Keeping an eye on him?’

  Savage said she was. Two detectives from Dartmouth had done the early morning session and she’d be relieving them later.

  ‘Good,’ Hardin said. ‘Stick to him like a limpet. Wherever he goes you go, but give him space, OK? Enough rope to hang himself, if you get my drift.’

  ‘How am I—’ The line went dead and Savage shook her head. Limpet? Enough rope? The two tactics were incompatible.

  She took the MG into work, thinking that once again it was definitely a hood-down, wind in the hair kind of day. As she drove the coast road she could see that out in the Sound there were more boats than ever, the anchorages at Mount Edgcumbe and Cawsand Bay rammed with yachts and motorboats. She hadn’t been imagining it earlier. And from the traffic she experienced on the way to Crownhill, the exodus wasn’t confined to the water either. The routes out of the city were nose-to-tail with cars and the danger of a road-rage incident, fuelled by the heat and the tension, was rising.