by Mark Sennen
‘Never mind,’ Riley said. ‘It’s one for the canteen. The lads at the station will be joking about this for months.’
He looked down at the raft. The structure had been painstakingly constructed with dados and lap joints on the subframe, the pieces of plywood on the top had had the edges rounded over and the surface given a coat of wood stain. Somebody had spent time and money on building the thing.
‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to,’ Enders said, following Riley’s line of thinking. ‘Unless the raft is some sort of publicity stunt.’
‘Publicity?’
‘Yeah. A promo for a soft drink or a movie.’ Enders gestured at the structure beneath his feet. ‘You set this lot up and hope someone might film a video which will go viral and get hundreds of thousands of views. Isn’t that how it works?’
Riley had no idea. Since Julie had moved in there hadn’t been much time for movies.
‘I’m right, sir.’ Enders had picked up the disembodied arm and was running a finger up and down one side. ‘There’s a message engraved here, look.’
Enders held out the arm. Hundreds of little indentations peppered the surface and spelt out a sequence of letters:
TB/PS/CH/BP
‘A game, I reckon. Xbox, PlayStation, that sort of thing. This is a code. Maybe it’s a set of keystrokes to a secret level or an Easter egg.’
Riley looked down at the rest of the mannequin. Perhaps the raft had been constructed in a special-effects workshop. That could explain the high-quality joinery.
‘Where’s the press then?’ Riley said. ‘And why here, why not somewhere a bit more glamorous? Seems to me if this was a clever publicity stunt then the budget’s been wasted.’
‘Someone got their timing wrong. Couldn’t read a tide table.’ Enders dropped the arm back into the box with a clatter and patted Riley on the back. ‘You know, London types.’
‘Very funny, Patrick.’
‘They’ve probably chartered a big motorboat and are waiting out at sea with a bunch of journos and hampers full of hospitality food and plenty of booze.’
‘Well I hope they brought enough to last them a while because they’ll be waiting a long time.’
‘Are we going to impound the raft then?’
‘No, that’s not our job. We’ll leave it to the coastguard or the harbour master or whoever’s supposed to deal with this type of thing. Come on, Patrick, we’ve got better things to do with our time.’
‘Hang on, sir.’ Enders was peering down at the arm he’d just dropped. Something had fallen from the hollow interior. He bent and picked the item up. ‘More trickery?’
Enders showed Riley a cylindrical aluminium tube around six inches long. A rubber bung had been pushed in at each end. Enders began to ease the bung from one end of the tube. The bung popped out and Enders tipped the tube slightly. A small piece of rolled parchment fell out and into the box, something wrapped inside.
‘What’s that?’ Riley moved closer. The parchment was stiff and translucent, a scrawl of ink on the uneven surface. ‘Unroll it, Patrick.’
Enders reached for the roll and gently teased it open. Wrapped within was a small piece of something like china or white plastic.
‘God-bod Biblical stuff,’ Enders said, peering down at the writing. ‘Hellfire and damnation. Sinners will burn in the fires of hell sort of thing. Me being a good Catholic boy, I should recognise exactly where in the Bible this comes from, but I don’t.’
‘What’s the white thing?’ Riley asked.
Enders picked up the object and let the parchment fall back into the box. ‘Looks like porcelain or some kind of fine china.’
Riley stared at the parchment as the light material rocked back and forth in the wind. Was this part of the publicity stunt? If so, they’d certainly made an effort with the paper prop. The piece of broken china was another matter.
‘Nothing else in the tube then?’ Riley asked. Enders picked up the tube and stared inside. He shook his head. Riley pulled out his phone and held it out level in front of him. ‘Put the piece of china on there, would you? I want to look at it more closely.’
Enders placed the little white object on the glass screen and Riley held the phone up close to his eyes. The surface wasn’t uniform, nor was the shape. It was around half an inch long and bulbous at each end.
‘This isn’t china,’ Riley said. He gestured at the item. ‘It’s a piece of bone.’
The water was creeping round the edge of the houseboat when Savage arrived. A series of scaffold boards had been fixed to uprights sunk deep in the mud and rope hung between the uprights to provide some sort of notional security. She placed a foot onto the first board, feeling the wood strain beneath her, and walked out to the boat. ‘Boat’ was rather a grand title for what amounted to a bodge job of plywood, old window frames and off-cut timber. Beneath the superstructure lay the remnants of an ancient barge, black with layer upon layer of a tar-like antifoul. The boat didn’t look seaworthy and Savage doubted it could get anywhere under its own power. Likely as not this would be the barge’s last resting place and when the owner was dead or gone the boat would rot down to the frame in the same way as the one along the shore had.
She stepped onto the deck. In front of her, a regular house door in white PVC plastic and glass stood incongruously between two pieces of salvaged teak. She was about to knock on the glass when she saw something move at the far end of the boat. Somebody was back there.
‘Hello?’ she said.
The figure glanced up for a moment before disappearing from view. Savage edged along the side deck until she came to what she guessed must be the stern. Lobster pots and crab creels lay strewn about a large platform. To one side a dozen marker buoys stood in a jumble amid a nest of rope, their flags fluttering in the wind. Nearby there was a stack of white crates and a figure in a huge black cloak was sorting crabs from one crate to another. An unlit wooden pipe stuck out from a full beard.
‘If you’re after a lobby, you’re out of luck,’ the man said, the pipe jerking up and down as he spoke. ‘Shrimps I’ve got, or else one of these nice spiders.’
‘Police, Mr …?’ Savage moved from her precarious position on the side deck and onto the rear platform. ‘Just a few questions.’
‘Larry.’ Larry laughed to himself and then held out a huge spider crab towards Savage. The legs wiggled helplessly in the air while the claws snapped open and shut, searching for something to clamp onto. ‘Larry the Lobster.’
‘Detective Inspector …’ Savage leant back, avoiding the creature as Larry moved the crab nearer to her face. ‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage. We’re investigating the disappearance of a young boy. He was out digging bait next to the wreck.’
‘Gone under, has he? Should have learnt to read the tide tables. Can’t help idiots, I’m afraid.’
‘We believe he made it back to the shore. We found his bucket. We also found a pipe out in the mud.’ Savage pointed at Larry’s mouth. ‘You’re a pipe smoker.’
‘When I can afford it. And yes, I lost one out there the other day.’ Larry shook his head and then sneered. ‘You think I’ve got him, do you? Down below confined in a giant creel with the others?’
‘Larry, this isn’t a joking matter. The boy is eleven years old. He’s a kid.’
‘When I was only a couple of years older, I was working for a living out on the blue.’ Larry held up his right hand and Savage saw it had only fingers, no thumb. ‘That was how I lost this. Caught on a trolling hook as the line went over the transom. Right into the bone. Wireline it was, so the skipper had no choice but to cut my thumb off, else I’d have been dragged down to the deeps.’ Larry turned to the crate of spider crabs. ‘That lot would have been eating me, instead of the other way round.’
‘He was out there late yesterday afternoon. Some time about five or six o’clock. Did you see him?’
‘Seen nothing. Around then I was probably cooking my tea.’
‘We have a couple of wi
tnesses who saw him hanging around on the shore near here.’
‘Really?’ Larry’s voice was deadpan, wholly disinterested. ‘Told you, I saw nothing.’
‘Here.’ Savage reached into her jacket and pulled out the misper leaflet she had of Jason. ‘This is the lad. Maybe you didn’t see him yesterday, but can you tell me if you recognise him? His name’s Jason.’
Larry held out his hand, the one with no thumb, his first two fingers open like scissors in a rock-paper-scissors game. The fingers clamped shut on the picture. Like crab claws, Savage thought.
‘Jason you say? Interesting.’ Larry stared down at the image as if the name would allow him access to some secret hidden in the ink. ‘Jason. I have seen him before, but I didn’t know his name, more’s the pity.’
‘When did you last see him?’
‘I swapped some bait he dug for a couple of crabs. Some time a few weeks ago. Maybe before that too. Good lad from what I remember. Polite.’
‘He came here? Onto your boat?’
‘Yeah. Stood right where you’re standing now.’ Larry smiled and then glanced down at the deck. A pile of fish guts sat near a pool of blood up against a hatch in the deck. Larry nodded at the hatch. ‘I invited him in for a cuppa, but the lad said no. Was something in his eyes. I didn’t push it. People talk, love, don’t they? A man and a young boy? Doesn’t bear thinking about what folks would say. Mind you, when folks do talk, you lot don’t do anything, do you?’
‘What are you getting at, Larry? Do you know something?’
‘Lass, I know a whole lot more than I’m telling, but not about the boy. Seen this sort of thing afore, years ago, but nobody believed anyone then. I’d be looking closer to home if I were you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was unhappy. I told you, I could see it in his eyes. Deep down.’
‘Thanks for the advice.’ Savage turned to go. She didn’t need help from a crazy old fisherman turned psychologist. His pipe may well have been found out near the wreck, but the man knew nothing. ‘If you think of anything else give us a call. The number’s below the photo.’
‘No good to me, love,’ Larry said. ‘I ain’t got no phone. If I need to, I’ll come in and see you, right?’
‘Yes,’ Savage said, visualising a horde of spider crabs crawling over the desks in the crime suite. ‘You do that.’
Pete was doing his impression of a pizza chef as Savage came into the kitchen at a little after six thirty, a sing-song of mock-Italian words in a heavy accent accompanying his antics. Jamie, Savage’s seven-year-old son, laughed uncontrollably as a circle of dough spun in the air, flying dangerously close to the ceiling.
‘Mamma mia, Mummy’s home!’ Pete said as the pizza base fell just beyond his reach and folded into a pile on the floor. ‘Shit.’
‘Daddy swore, Mummy!’ Jamie said. ‘He used the S word.’
‘He said “shovel it”, sweetheart.’ Savage walked over to Pete and cast him a stern look. ‘As in shovel the pizza off the floor.’
‘He didn’t! He said sh …’ Jamie paused. ‘You know. The same as the C word.’
‘The C word?’ Savage stared at Jamie, thinking that having a fourteen-year-old sister wasn’t altogether a good thing for the lad. ‘Spell it.’
‘C. R. A. P.’
‘Oh.’ Savage stood next to her husband and stared down at the mess on the floor. ‘Well I’m sure I don’t know that C word or the S word, but I do know I’m hungry.’
‘There’s more.’ Pete pointed to a large mixing bowl containing a huge hunk of dough. ‘Might even be enough for you too.’
‘Thanks. I do live here.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Pete switched his focus to the radio. ‘But I heard on the news a kid had gone missing. Didn’t realise you’d be back.’
‘Yes.’ Savage looked across to Jamie. He was already bored of the conversation and his head was deep in a Beano annual. ‘An eleven-year-old.’
‘Suspicious?’
Savage sighed. ‘The kid regularly plays truant and the mother’s got a violent partner. Plus she didn’t seem to think it worth telling us he’d gone missing last night until this morning. So yes, deeply worrying.’
Pete put his arm out and held Savage around the waist. He glanced over to Jamie. ‘Well, you’re home now. Let’s have something to eat and a drink and you can forget all about it for a few hours, can’t you?’
Savage half turned to the window. A reflection of their little family tableau shone back at her. She refocused and stared beyond the pane to where the lights of Plymouth flared in the growing darkness across the inky black water. Jason Hobb was out there somewhere. Face down in the cold sea. Battered to death by his mother’s boyfriend. Abducted by some pervert. Or perhaps, as she’d said to DC Calter, the boy had just run off and tomorrow he’d turn up, safe and sound and everyone would live happily ever after.
‘Forget about it?’ Savage said. ‘Yes, of course I can.’
Chapter Six
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Wednesday 21st October. 9.22 a.m.
Wednesday morning and there was still no sign of Jason Hobb. The door-to-door officers had come back empty-handed and the various search and rescue teams were winding down their operations. There was as yet no evidence a crime had been committed but everyone involved was becoming increasingly worried.
The first piece of good news came at ten o’clock. Ned Stone, the mother’s boyfriend, had been located. Apparently he was back at his digs in Devonport. A ground-floor bedsit on Clarence Place. Savage grabbed DC Calter and they headed over there and rendezvoused with a local PC.
‘Spotted his car, ma’am,’ the woman said. She beamed at Savage, pleased with herself. ‘Wasn’t there when we went round late last night nor first thing this morning.’
‘Well done,’ Savage said as they strolled up the narrow pavement. ‘And you think he’s in?’
‘I stood to one side of the window. There’s a telly on full blast.’
Savage nodded and slowed as they reached a dark blue door. ‘This it?’
‘Yes.’ The PC pointed across the street to a battered red Corsa. ‘And that’s his car. As I said, it wasn’t here earlier and there was no answer when we knocked.’
‘So he’s been away.’ It was a statement, not a question. Savage didn’t need to bring up the obvious implication.
‘Told you, ma’am,’ Calter said, moving forward. ‘Let’s get in there and find out what he knows.’
‘Yes.’ Savage put a hand out. ‘But we play it straight, OK?’
They approached the door and Savage enquired about other exits. Not from the bedsit, the PC said. Savage looked at the three bell pushes to the right of the door. Flats one, two and three. She pushed the button for number three and then, after there was no reply, number two. Almost immediately there was a sound, somebody descending the stairs and then a figure behind the glass panel. The door opened a fraction, coming up against a security chain. A woman’s face appeared in the gap. Elderly, looking concerned.
‘Police.’ Savage kept her voice low and proffered her warrant card. ‘We’ve business with Mr Stone. If you could let us in that would be great.’
The woman looked back over her shoulder and then nodded. She released the security chain and was already scuttling down the corridor and up the stairs as Savage and Calter entered the hallway. Halfway down on the right a bicycle leant against the wall. Beyond the bicycle a door with a Yale lock. Savage walked down and knocked on the door.
‘Police, Mr Stone,’ she said. ‘Open up, we’d like a chat.’
There was movement from within the bedsit and the noise from the TV ceased. Somebody stumbled behind the door and then the lock clicked open. The man who answered the door had a chiselled face and a short haircut. A tattoo ran up one side of his neck and on the hand which pulled open the door was more ink: F. U. C. K. She wondered how that worked. Did the other hand have only three fingers?
‘Ned Stone?’ Savage held up
her warrant card so there could be no confusion. ‘Police. We’d like a word please. You can invite us in or you can come down to the station.’
‘Hey?’ Stone blinked and then rubbed his eyes. He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting grey tracksuit bottoms and a white T-shirt, the latter inside out. He shook his head. ‘I’ve just woken up and I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’
Stone turned from the door and walked back into the room. On the far side a mattress lay on the floor against one wall. A duvet had been rucked up on the bed and now Stone went over and slumped down on top of it.
‘Late night, Ned?’ Calter said as she moved past Savage and entered the room. ‘Burning the candle at both ends? Well, we’ve got plenty of beds down at the custody suite and the rooms are a darn sight cleaner than this one.’
‘What’s your problem?’ Stone said.
‘Jason Hobb is our problem. Yours too.’
‘He’s gone missing, Mr Stone,’ Savage said. ‘I understand you’re with Angie, Jason’s mother. Is that right?’
‘With?’ Stone looked up and grinned, but the smile wasn’t friendly, more like a dog baring its lips. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly. I’ve seen her a few times, yeah.’
‘Seen her?’ Calter said. ‘What does that mean? You’re having sex with her. Eating her food. Using her toilet. You’re probably not paying her bills, but hey, she can’t have everything, right?’
Stone kept silent. Shook his head.
‘Do you know where Jason is, Ned?’ Savage said.
‘How the fuck should I know? I haven’t seen him since I was round Angie’s place on Saturday.’
