Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

‘I’m sorry to press you, Angie,’ Calter said with a half glance towards Farrell. ‘You told us Jason failed to return home Monday evening. That he’d been digging bait in the late afternoon. Why didn’t you report him missing straight away?’

  ‘I said, didn’t I?’ Angie snapped. Her hands sat on her lap, tightly clenched. ‘I thought he was round a friend’s house.’

  ‘But you didn’t worry, didn’t feel the need to check?’

  ‘No. He often stays out late.’

  ‘But all night, Mrs Hobb? An eleven-year-old?’

  Angie said nothing. Shook her head and stared down at her hands.

  Calter tried another line of questioning. ‘Monday was a weekday. Why wasn’t he in school?’

  ‘He was upset about being bullied, so I let him stay home. Please, you’ve got to believe me.’

  Calter felt a buzzing in her pocket. She pulled out her phone and silenced the call.

  ‘Can anyone else corroborate this? Because the headmistress at …’ Calter glanced down at her pad, ‘Torpoint Community College says Jason’s missed a lot of school this term. Nothing about bullying. She says there are concerns about family life.’

  ‘Concerns?’

  ‘Ned Stone. Your boyfriend.’

  ‘Ned? He’s got nothing to do with this.’

  ‘Did you know Ned has a conviction for assault?’

  ‘Yes, of course I did. You lot told me.’

  ‘When did you last see him, Angie? Not Monday night, was it?’

  ‘No, not this week. Ned was last round Saturday.’

  ‘You need to think hard about this. Whether you want to cover up for this man. He’s a violent offender, Angie.’

  ‘Ned? He wouldn’t hurt Jason, would he?’ Angie looked hard at Calter and then glanced at Farrell.

  ‘Has Ned ever got angry with you?’ Calter said. ‘Got angry and lashed out?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t.’ Angie shook her head and then brought her hands up and hugged herself. ‘I don’t understand. You’re confusing me. Why would Ned hurt Jason?’

  ‘I told you, Angie,’ Calter said. ‘He’s got a record for violence.’

  ‘Ned loves me. Jason will turn up, you’ll see. He’s run away before and always come back.’

  ‘He has?’

  ‘Yes. In the summer shortly after I met …’ Angie’s words trailed off.

  ‘Ned Stone.’ Calter nodded. ‘Suppose Ned had an argument with Jason and the argument got out of hand. Suppose Ned went too far.’

  ‘What do you mean “suppose”? Have you …?’ Angie looked again at Farrell, her mouth dropping open. Farrell stood and moved across the room. ‘No! You haven’t?’

  ‘We don’t know yet, but we’ve found a body.’

  Now Angie was standing too. As Farrell reached her, she put her arms up and began to beat him across the chest.

  ‘No! No! No!’

  Farrell caught Angie as all the energy went out of her and her legs buckled. He moved her back to the armchair and lowered her down.

  ‘My Jason! How can this happen? Noooooo!’

  Calter almost put her hands to her ears to shield herself from the scream. She was surprised to see that in the turmoil Farrell had answered his phone. He stepped across the room away from the wailing. Calter got up from her own seat. She had to do something, to try to comfort the woman.

  ‘Angie?’ Calter moved to the armchair. She put her hand out and touched Angie on the shoulder. ‘We need you to be strong. We need—’

  ‘Fuck!’

  Calter looked across at Farrell. He was Mr Goody Two Shoes and she’d never heard him swear before. He shoved his phone in his pocket and glared across at Calter.

  ‘What is it, Luke?’ Calter said.

  ‘It’s not Jason,’ Farrell said, shaking his head. ‘The body in the tunnel belongs to some other poor kid.’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Angie looked up, mouth agape. ‘Jason, my Jason. He’s alive!’

  Chapter Nine

  Friday again. I haven’t had much time this week as I was given extra homework on account of getting into a fight at school. Thank goodness it’s the weekend. When I mentioned this to Jason earlier, he shrugged. Something is bothering him. I know Father gave him the cane on Wednesday for some misdemeanour, but I don’t think that’s it. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s to do with Bentley.

  Bentley is Mother’s fancy man. The guy from the Home Office. Of course, Bentley isn’t his real name – it’s the make of car he drives, or rather his chauffeur drives the car while he sits in the back and does his paperwork. Bentley, you see, is a minister. Not a religious minister though, Bentley is a Minister of the Crown.

  The first time I saw him he jumped from his car and swept up the front steps with a number of aides in tow. The visit was routine, some kind of inspection, nothing much to worry Father though. Father keeps a tight ship and there’s rarely anything amiss.

  Lately though, Bentley’s been coming alone or with just his bodyguard and chauffeur, slipping down the lanes to the home under the cover of darkness. Sometimes I’m in bed and I hear the big car crunching across the gravel car park, the headlights sweeping the coastline as the car turns in. Upstairs footsteps pound on the floorboards as boys scamper from room to room, while downstairs there’s a banging of doors as staff jump to please him.

  Tonight I met him face-to-face for the first time. He arrived a little earlier than usual and when I came into the living room in our private apartment he was sitting in Father’s armchair, head down in a newspaper. As I entered, he looked up and asked me my name, almost as if knowing what to call me would give him some sort of hold over me. I shook my head and kept silent. As I stood there, Bentley smiled a lipless grin and nodded, as if accepting my right to challenge him. Then he returned to his newspaper.

  I’m back upstairs now, snuggled down under the covers with a torch to help me to write. A few minutes ago I heard the familiar sound of boys on the move. I wonder about Bentley. What’s he up to? Why does he come here?

  While Mother is in thrall to Bentley, with Father it’s different. Bentley has some kind of hold over him. It’s the only way I can explain their relationship. You see, my father isn’t a weak man, but Bentley walks all over him. He arrives whenever he likes, drinks my father’s whisky and does things with my mother I’d rather not think about. Father just takes it. I guess Bentley, being in the government, could close the home with a snap of his fingers. Perhaps he could even get Father in trouble, considering the kind of punishments used here at the Heights. One word from Bentley and Father would be facing unemployment or even prison.

  I’ve just looked at the clock and it’s late, nearly twelve. Bentley is still here. I peeked out from the curtains and the car is still out front. The chauffeur is sitting in the driver’s seat with the window open, smoking a cigarette. Bentley is somewhere downstairs and just what he’s up to I have no idea.

  The Shepherd jerks awake in the darkness. He holds himself still for a few moments until he has fully come to his senses. A dream, he thinks, it was only another dream.

  Lately there have been many dreams. The Shepherd has seen them as some sort of test. God wants to know he can stay strong. Only those with the resolve to serve Him through the darkest hours and the harshest pain can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

  ‘I have sinned,’ he says aloud into the grey air. ‘But if I repent I will be forgiven. If I carry out the tasks God has set me then Good will prevail. If I stay faithful until the Very End then He will reward me with Eternal Life.’

  He knows he won’t sleep now so he pulls himself from his bed and heads downstairs. He prepares breakfast which he eats in the kitchen while listening to the radio. The news is full of the missing kid from Plymouth and a body found in a railway tunnel. The tunnel is just a couple of miles from the barn, the location too close for comfort. The Shepherd wonders if this is another test or if God is trying to tell him something.

  He dismisses the idea and his mind turns from the bo
y in the tunnel to the other boy, the one who plays with the skull. The world is full of sinners, he thinks, and all of them deserve to be punished.

  After breakfast he goes into the living room. Either side of the fireplace are bookshelves, the shelves bare apart from one particularly heavy volume. The book is old and leather-bound, the title on the spine embossed with gold. He takes the book from the shelf and sits in the rocking chair. He’s broken his fast but now he needs sustenance from God’s words.

  His long fingers slide between the pages, ruffling the thin paper until he finds the passage he is looking for.

  … as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.

  The Word of God is unambiguous. Sinners must be punished. The Shepherd leans back in his chair, the ancient text fuel for his mind. He allows himself to relax for a moment. The last few days have been hectic. He has not only completed his work in the barn, he’s also tested the altar and the raft. The altar performed admirably and the Shepherd was only sorry that a mannequin was standing in for the true sinners. The raft, too, had worked like a dream and as he’d watched it float out to sea with the mannequin aboard he’d felt a moment of catharsis. This was the beginning of the end.

  Still, all his hard work on the altar and raft would be for nothing without the attendance of his first guests.

  Judgement is mine, saith the Lord.

  Yes, but even God needs help to bring the accused to his courtroom.

  The Taser he’d purchased mail order from the States, where apparently they were perfectly legal. Initially he’d been uneasy about the device, seeing the thing as a necessary evil. After having used the gun on his first guest he’d changed his mind. The weapon was heaven-sent, instant justice administered much like a lightning bolt from above. Sleet succumbed to the weapon in the same way as his first guest. The man had gone down instantly and then quivered like a jelly as he received shock after shock.

  He’d bundled Sleet into the boot of his car and driven him to the barn. At the barn the man had been ready to fight until he saw the Taser again. From then on Sleet had complied willingly and allowed himself to be locked in a cell.

  Fool.

  The Shepherd thinks of the passage from the Bible once more.

  … as for the cowardly …

  A coward is the worst kind of sinner. By failing to have courage and conviction, the coward spits in God’s face and denies His existence. Cowards must experience the love of God and repent before Him.

  The Shepherd returns to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. It’s half past six and the radio station is repeating the story about the body in the tunnel. Poor lad. The Shepherd can’t help but think the Lord has missed a trick. The pure evil which the boy faced is still out there, free to wreak havoc.

  He reaches across and switches the radio off. It isn’t his duty to question God. He merely has to carry out His wishes. And His wishes are clear.

  Dead clear.

  Chapter Ten

  Near Bovisand, Devon. Thursday 22nd October. 6.30 a.m.

  The alarm on her phone went off at six thirty, Savage reaching across to silence the crescendo before the noise could wake Pete. She blinked in the darkness and then got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Peered at herself in the mirror. She hardly recognised the eyes which stared back. The past few months had changed her, she thought, and maybe not for the better. She’d come close to killing Owen Fox, a young man who, it turned out, was innocent of anything but protecting his girlfriend. If it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of Kenny Fallon, she’d have pulled the trigger on the gun. Would she be feeling better if she had? Would she be staring at herself in the same way?

  An hour later and the melancholy was subsumed by the usual pre-school hell and the need to get the children ready. Samantha had lost her phone and was refusing to leave home without it, while Jamie had – in his own words – ‘bastard growing pains’. Savage had dosed him with Calpol but was more concerned with his ever expanding vocabulary of bad language.

  ‘I’m innocent, officer,’ Pete said, holding his hands up before scouring through the debris on the kitchen table as he searched for the phone. ‘He didn’t get the word from me. Must be on the National Curriculum list.’

  ‘Right.’ Savage replaced the bottle of Calpol in the cupboard and put the spoon in the dishwasher. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Huh?’ Her daughter looked up from a pile of schoolwork and shook her head. ‘Not me, Mum.’

  Samantha gathered up her things, stuffed them into her bag and left the room.

  ‘You all right?’ Pete said. ‘This kid and all?’

  ‘Not really.’ Savage shook her head. She’d told Pete about finding the boy in the tunnel when she’d crawled into bed in the small hours. ‘I’ve got to attend the post-mortem this morning and you know how I hate them.’

  ‘But it’s not just that, is it?’ Pete moved across the room and stood beside Savage. ‘Love, you’ve either got to let go of Clarissa or accept you can no longer work these type of cases. Tell HR it’s affecting your health. Any sense they might have to pay some sort of compensation and they’ll move you like a shot.’

  ‘But there’s the rub, I don’t want to be moved. I want to get the bastard sicko who’s responsible.’

  ‘Bastard?’ Pete grinned. ‘Well there’s one case closed at least.’

  ‘What?’ Savage managed a half smile. ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Look, however many nutters you bang up, she’s never coming back, is she?’

  ‘No.’ Savage remembered the look on her face in the mirror that morning. ‘I thought things would change after …’

  ‘After what?’

  ‘After …’ She sighed. Pete knew nothing of her involvement with Simon Fox and his son. Perhaps one day she’d need to come clean. But now wasn’t the time. ‘After the girl on the moor.’

  ‘Which one? You saved that Russian woman from the Satanists. Then there was the lass captured by those twins. Not to mention the girl you pulled from that psychopath’s freezer. How many does it take before the guilt’s gone?’

  Savage shook her head. She didn’t like the way the conversation was heading.

  ‘Face it, Charlotte. There was nothing you could have done to prevent Clarissa dying and however many cases you solve, however many kids you save, it won’t make any difference.’

  ‘It makes a difference to them, doesn’t it? And to me.’

  ‘Sometimes I wonder if it does.’ Pete stood for a moment, staring at her intently as if he didn’t want the conversation to end on a negative. But then he turned and stomped from the room.

  An hour later Savage stood in the anteroom at the mortuary thinking the white lights had taken the colour from DSupt Hardin’s face. He looked – appropriately – like a corpse.

  ‘Hate these bloody things, Charlotte,’ Hardin said, both his hands wrapped around a paper cup of coffee as if the warmth from the liquid inside might take away some of the chill in the air. ‘So early in the morning too. Didn’t even have time for breakfast.’

  ‘Maybe that’s a good thing, sir,’ Savage said.

  ‘Nonsense. Line the stomach. The old-fashioned way. The only way.’

  No, Savage thought. The only real way was to avoid attending post-mortems at all. She’d never been to one which she could call ‘nice’. The experience always lay on a continuum from horrible to downright appalling. She was not looking forward to seeing the victim from the tunnel dissected, and the argument with Pete hadn’t improved the prospect.

  ‘Mind you,’ Hardin said. ‘I wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for that bloody woman. At least I’ll lose some weight from all this running around.’

  ‘People.’ Nesbit emerged from the main PM room. ‘We’re ready for you now.’

  Hardin huffed and then poured the remainder of his coffee into a
nearby waste bin. ‘Ladies first,’ he said, gesturing to Savage.

  Savage followed Nesbit into the room, Hardin shuffling along behind her.

  Nesbit had once told her they were ‘blessed’ in having three post-mortem tables. ‘A conveyor belt of corpses,’ he’d said. Savage could see nothing good about it. At least today the only body in the room was that of the boy. He lay on the central table, the others nothing but gleaming stainless steel.

  At one end of the table a small block held the boy’s head. At the other the wellingtons now looked even more incongruous than they had in the tunnel. Aside from the footwear, he had on a pair of Y-fronts and nothing else, and in the glare from the overhead lights Savage could see the lividity in his buttocks and thighs where the blood had pooled by gravity. In addition, every inch of exposed skin glistened with the slick, oil-like substance Nesbit had noted in the tunnel. Several deep cuts criss-crossed the boy’s palms. The light also made a mockery of their mistakes of the previous night. Even allowing for the poor mugshot, there was no way this boy could be confused with Jason Hobb.

  ‘Do you have a name for him yet?’ Nesbit said as he came over to the body. ‘Or is he still John Doe masquerading as Jason?’

  ‘Moot bloody point,’ Hardin said. He looked across at Savage. ‘The confusion caused us a lot of problems.’

  ‘Quite.’ Nesbit turned to Savage, bent his head and looked at her over the top of his glasses. ‘And since I know the two people involved, I think I can say that misidentification was understandable, given the circumstances. Now then, shall we?’

  The pathologist reached up and turned on the overhead microphone and began to make some initial observations. He noted the boy’s height and weight and made a guess as to his age.

  ‘Somewhere around eleven or twelve years old, I should think. Similar to Jason.’

  ‘Which raises a question,’ Hardin said. ‘We’ve no other missing children of this age, as far as I know. Not here or nationally.’