by Mark Sennen
‘Not that we know of, sir,’ Savage said. ‘But it’s possible reports might not have reached us yet.’
‘Speculation is for another place,’ Nesbit said. ‘You know my motto: facts not flights of fancy. So we can start with the fact that this boy died from asphyxiation. Those cuts on the hands, while serious, would not have caused death. A ligature, most likely a belt, was placed around his neck and tightened.’ Nesbit placed his hand against the boy’s throat where there was some grazing and redness. ‘Two fingers in width. Approximately three centimetres. There are several distinct marks from the ligature and I suggest the attacker alternatively tightened and loosened the belt, perhaps to try and elicit some sort of response or reaction.’
‘A nutter,’ Hardin said. ‘I knew it.’
‘That’s not for me to say, Conrad.’ Nesbit moved his hand to the boy’s right arm where encrusted blood surrounded the knife wounds. ‘At some point shortly before he was asphyxiated he received wounds to both hands. Possibly he was trying to defend himself from a knife attack. Nasty, but the cuts wouldn’t have killed him.’
‘Do you think that was deliberate?’ Savage said. ‘By not killing him it meant he could continue to play some sort of game with a live victim.’
‘Possibly.’ Nesbit paused for a moment, head cocked to one side in contemplation. ‘Bruising around the wrists suggests the victim being held firmly or tied up. The good news, if I can call it that, is I don’t believe he was sexually assaulted.’
‘No?’ Hardin appeared disappointed. Sexual assault could have meant a sample for DNA analysis and that sort of evidence made an arrest and conviction far more likely. ‘Pity.’
‘Don’t worry, there’s the grease I talked about. I’m not sure what the substance is, but Layton sent off a sample. He fast-tracked it last night while you were sleeping like a baby.’
Nesbit took a scalpel from a nearby bench. At the same time he nodded to his assistant who held an electric cutting device. In one swift movement the pathologist sliced a Y-incision in the chest of the cadaver. He folded the skin back neatly and then moved aside. The mortuary assistant switched his cutter on and approached the body. The whirring sound increased in pitch as the blade began to slice into the ribcage.
Savage looked away.
It wasn’t until a couple of hours later, the post-mortem almost concluded, that the subject of the wellington boots arose. The mortuary assistant was replacing the cap of bone on the boy’s skull. He deftly folded the scalp back in place over the top and began to sew up the skin.
‘The boots, Andrew,’ Savage said. ‘Can you get them off for us?’
‘Hey?’ Nesbit turned his attention away from the needlework of his assistant. He glanced down at the wellingtons as if seeing them for the first time. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’
He held the boy’s knee in one hand while the other grasped the heel of one of the wellingtons. He began to pull.
‘Jammed on. They seem way too small for the boy.’ Nesbit stopped pulling and instead moved his fingers to the top of the wellington and tried to slip them inside. After a moment he gave up. ‘It’s no good, I’ll have to cut them off.’
‘He’s not going to bloody need them, is he?’ Hardin. Gruff. He sounded like he’d just about had enough. ‘Get on with it so we can get the hell out of here.’
Nesbit took a fresh scalpel and sliced into the green rubber around the calf area. This time he was able to slip a finger into the opening. He cut again and then put the scalpel down and removed the right wellington. For a second he looked at the boy’s foot and then shook his head.
‘Nothing out of place here as far as I can tell. I’ll take the other one off and then bag them for Layton.’
As Nesbit began to work on the other wellington, Savage moved closer. The first boot lay on the post-mortem table, flapping open where Nesbit had cut the rubber. There was something written on the material lining inside. Two words. For a second Savage thought of her own children. She’d sewn numerous name tags into their clothing. You couldn’t do that with a welly so instead she usually took an indelible marker and wrote their names. That’s what was written in the boot. A name. But not the name of the victim, not unless he’d been wearing boots much too small. Savage turned her head to read the writing. It was smudged and faded but the name was unmistakable.
‘Oh fuck!’ Savage looked across at Hardin. ‘Sir, take a look.’
‘Charlotte?’ Hardin moved around the table and stood by her side. ‘No. We don’t need this. Oh God.’
‘What is it?’ Nesbit had finished removing the other boot and now he turned his attention to Savage’s discovery.
Savage looked at the name again. ‘Jason Hobb. These boots belong to him.’
Thursday found Riley pretty much left to his own devices. The discovery of the boy in the tunnel had meant Collier’s attention had been deflected and a missing sales rep – albeit one who’d gone AWOL in suspicious circumstances – was way down the list of priorities.
The scene at the station was grim. The jokey banter gone. Every last copper had his or her head down working hard. The boy had been stripped and then strangled and what’s more he wasn’t even the lad everyone had been looking for.
Mid-morning, DI Savage came into the crime suite, back from the post-mortem on the boy. Riley gave Savage a smile, but she didn’t return it.
‘Ma’am?’ he said, as she came over. ‘Everything OK?’
‘No.’ Savage shook her head. ‘Turns out the killer of the kid is likely the same person who’s taken Jason Hobb, and Hobb – as you’ll have heard – is still missing.’
‘Christ.’ Riley looked at Savage. Her pale, washed-out face told the whole story. ‘Anything I can do? I mean …’
‘I’ll be fine, Darius.’ Savage tapped Riley on the shoulder. She managed a half smile as she turned away. ‘But thanks all the same.’
Once Savage had gone, Riley knuckled down and tried to focus on his own case. The mobile phone data hadn’t arrived so he had nothing yet on the mysterious Sarah. He did have a result on the Taser though. The part of the cartridge Riley had found turned out to be from a consumer model – the X26c – not available in the UK but readily purchasable in the US. He’d contacted Taser International and requested sales data on the weapon. The felon identification numbers should theoretically mean he’d be able to find out when and where the gun had been bought. They might even give him the purchaser’s name.
Meanwhile, he gathered background information on Sleet. The man seemed to be well liked at work and was one of the drug company’s top salesmen. He’d grown up in Devon, gone on to study animal science at university and then worked for a time in the Midlands. In his early thirties he’d returned to work for the animal health company. There was nothing to suggest he’d made any enemies, nothing to hint at a reason for him to go missing. By all accounts Sleet was a happy-go-lucky type of guy, but perhaps under the surface there were darker issues even friends and family didn’t know about. Riley had come across such cases before and, if it hadn’t been for the Taser evidence, he’d have suspected some kind of depression had taken hold. The pretty little pieces of confetti put paid to that theory.
There was also the wife to consider. Catherine Sleet had at first seemed cold and distant, but by the end of the interview Riley had been left wondering what her temper would be like if she got really angry. The woman obviously didn’t suffer fools gladly. Suppose her husband had been a fool, an idiot? Most men were, Riley thought. Even when you were with a woman like Catherine Sleet, the grass might appear greener somewhere else. If Perry Sleet had strayed, was it possible his missus had arranged a little surprise for her husband?
Riley shook his head. He was entering the realms of melodrama. The Sleets were most likely happily married and Catherine’s reaction to his questioning had been nothing more than the signs of understandable stress.
Dissatisfied by his work so far, he pushed his chair back from the desk and got up. He needed a brea
k, but as he went to leave the crime suite, John Layton pushed open the doors, coming the other way.
‘You in a hurry?’ Layton said to Riley. ‘Only I’ve got something on the raft you and DC Enders found.’
‘Yeah?’ Riley looked down at the plastic tray in Layton’s hand. At the mention of his name, Enders looked up from a nearby terminal. ‘Show us then.’
‘Sure.’ Layton put the tray down on a desk. The tray was laden with several evidence bags, one of which contained the aluminium tube they’d found next to the mannequin. ‘To be honest, I thought this stuff with your mystery raft would be the least of our worries considering, but it turns out you were right.’ Layton pulled out one of the bags, inside a sliver of white material. He turned the bag over in his hands. ‘It’s a finger bone. From a child.’
‘A child? We figured the raft could be part of a publicity stunt, but I guess we were wrong, not with a real bone.’ Riley pointed at the bone. ‘Anywhere someone could legitimately get their hands on one?’
‘Nice pun.’ Layton chuckled. ‘I guess it’s not impossible, but it seems a lot of effort to go to if this was some sort of promo. And most people wouldn’t realise what it was anyway. You might as well have used an animal bone.’
‘So where could it have come from?’
‘A medical school or a museum. They’re the first two places which come to mind. Perhaps more sinisterly, a morgue or a funeral parlour. None of the options are what you’d call legitimate.’
‘And if not one of them, then where?’
‘A grave, possibly?’
‘I’m just trying to get my head around what’s going on here. If it’s any of the examples you’ve given me then this isn’t really something for Major Crimes. However, if we discount those, then we’re looking for a body, aren’t we?’
‘Are you thinking this is the Hobb boy?’ Layton shook his head. ‘Doesn’t compute I’m afraid, Darius. You can see from the state of the bone it’s been buried in the ground for some time. Definitely historical, although not archaeological, if you get my drift.’
‘Somebody else then.’ Riley gestured at the aluminium tube on the plastic tray again. ‘And what about the paper? Looks like something quite specialised to me, something we might be able to track down easily.’
‘Ah, the paper.’ Layton replaced the bone on the tray and picked up the third bag. Inside, the parchment had been flattened, the writing visible. He held the bag up to the light. The material was translucent with hundreds of little perforations. Shook his head. ‘This is where things get a whole lot more interesting. You see, this isn’t parchment; in fact it’s not any kind of paper.’
‘Well, what is it then?’
‘Skin.’ Layton put the item down and stared grimly at Riley. ‘Human skin.’
Back at Crownhill the news about Jason Hobb’s footwear caused a visible change in atmosphere in the crime suite. The misidentification of the previous night had been bad enough, this was far worse.
‘Not good,’ Collier said when Savage told him as he stood next to a whiteboard. ‘Not good at all.’
The office manager wasn’t usually so understated and Savage could see from his reaction he was deeply shocked. The boots linked Hobb with the murder in the tunnel and almost certainly meant they were dealing with a serial offender. What might possibly have been put down to a one-off had now turned into something very different and very scary. Operationally, the case would be a nightmare, but Savage could see from the way Collier was shaking his head that this had affected him on a more profound level.
‘Anything from the scene?’ Savage said, trying to break the silence.
‘No.’ Collier shook his head, downcast. ‘Layton, for once, is sanguine about the lack of evidence. Says the fact he’s come up empty-handed on the tunnel search must be the exception which proves his rule. There’s also nothing from the army guys at Bickleigh. Their cameras cover the entrance gates apparently, but don’t take in the road. Nothing suspicious reported either.’
Savage nodded. Collier had plainly been hoping for something to kick-start the investigation.
‘Need to think this one through, Charlotte,’ he said. ‘The Lacuna meeting’s scheduled for midday but this thing with the wellington boots puts a whole new perspective on the case.’
Savage left Collier with his marker pens and moved across the room to where Hardin was giving several detectives a good bollocking about the lack of leads. Once he’d finished, he turned to Savage.
‘DCI Garrett,’ he said. ‘He’ll be my deputy SIO on Lacuna. You’re to help out.’
‘Garrett?’ Savage said. ‘But—’
‘But what, DI Savage?’ Hardin said. ‘Mike Garrett is a very experienced detective and on this case I want some clear and unemotional thinking. You boobed with the identification of the body and we can’t afford any more mistakes.’
‘Experienced? He’s that all right. Sir, Garrett’s retiring next month. His last few cases have been, to put it politely, lightweight. This is ridiculous, sir.’
‘Ridiculous or not, that’s the way it’s going to be.’ Hardin flicked his eyes up to the ceiling. ‘This has come from the top, I’m afraid, Charlotte. The Hatchet has instructed me to make sure you keep a lower profile until the fallout from the inquest of Simon Fox has blown over. With one murder and a missing boy, this case is going to attract a lot of media attention. She wants you away from the limelight, understand?’
‘No, sir, I don’t understand. Hunting killers like this one is in my blood. I’ve got a track record on these sorts of cases. I—’
‘Oh, you’ve got a track record all right. Usually your methods lie at the edges of legality. You’re a potential liability, DI Savage, and right now the Chief Constable doesn’t need your kind of officer.’
‘You can’t be—’
‘Shut it! One more word out—’
‘Sir!’ The shout came from the far side of the room. Savage and Hardin turned as one as DC Calter replaced her phone on the desk. ‘Possible on the body. A missing child from Newton Abbot. The misper was reported locally yesterday but the details have only just reached us. A young lad by the name of Liam Clough.’
‘Liam?’ Hardin’s mouth dropped open. He looked at Calter and then cast a glance at Savage. He put out a hand and steadied himself on a nearby desk. ‘Liam? It can’t be a Liam. Get your facts right, girl. This is impossible!’
‘Sir?’ Savage moved closer to the DSupt as his face whitened. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘Liam? I … I …’ Hardin shook his head. ‘I need my medication. In my car. I’ll be fine.’
Hardin pushed himself away from the desk, weaved across the room and barged out through the double doors.
‘This new girl of his will be the death of him,’ Calter said as she came over to Savage. ‘Maria. She’s a problem we need to work out how to solve, right?’
Savage didn’t laugh at Calter’s joke. Something was wrong with Hardin. Very wrong.
Chapter Eleven
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 22nd October. 11.54 a.m.
Hardin stumbled out of the main entrance and walked across to his car. He pulled the door open and collapsed into the passenger seat. He opened the glovebox and fumbled inside until he found a smoked plastic container. There was a small bottle of water in the glovebox too. Hardin took a couple of gulps and swallowed three of his pills. He leant back in the seat.
Liam? Had he heard the name correctly or was he going crazy? No, there was no mistake. Liam and Jason. The names of the two boys were surely no coincidence. Hardin stared through the windscreen at the station. Being a police officer meant everything to him. Sure, he had his family, a wife and two grown-up children he loved dearly, but they knew it was in this concrete hunk of a building where his heart lay.
Hardin blinked and then shook himself. This was no good. The last Chief Constable, Simon Fox, had killed himself. Depression. The man had let personal issues get to him. That wasn’t the
problem here. This wasn’t personal. Quite the opposite.
Hardin put the pills and the water back in the glove compartment and flipped the hatch closed. His eyes moved up to the windscreen again. An envelope lay flattened against the glass beneath one of the wipers. He jumped out of the car and lifted the wiper blade. Another letter. He recognised the block capitals which spelt the address. He grabbed the envelope, ripped up the flap and pulled out the piece of paper within. He unfolded the sheet to reveal a series of pencil lines forming some kind of picture. Neat and precise and with numerals next to the lines, some cross-hatching and a shaded area. Hardin turned the piece of paper ninety degrees and then saw what the lines represented. A scale drawing in two parts. Something like an architectural plan on the left side and a cross-section on the right.
‘No.’ Hardin shook his head and bit his lip. ‘Please, no.’
He placed the piece of paper on the car bonnet, both hands flat on top. He glanced towards the station again. Thirty years’ service and the whole lot came down to this. He wouldn’t count his time in the police as distinguished, he wasn’t a brightly burning star, but there were other ways of serving. He was solid and dependable, reliable and honourable. And yet …
How about your sense of duty, PC Hardin?
He recalled the words from the previous letter. Was he honourable? Bearing in mind what he knew, could he really say that? Yes, Hardin thought, sometimes honour came from serving, and in one particular instance he’d obeyed orders rather than done what he thought was right. In the end the police force relied on the chain of command. Break the chain and chaos would follow. Besides, all he’d done was ignore a photograph. Two men seated at a table, a bottle of whisky, a couple of tumblers, a clock on the wall. Nothing to get excited about, nothing incriminating. Except for two things. One, there was something in the photograph which had made Hardin, just a lowly PC at the time, feel distinctly uneasy. Something about the clock. Two, there was a word written on the back of the photograph, a word which only added to his disquiet. He’d reported both worries to his superior who’d handed the photograph over to a man from Special Branch.
