by Mark Sennen
‘There’s a simple explanation, lad,’ the officer who’d made the journey down from London had said, pointing to one of the figures in the photograph. ‘He’s a good man, him. An honourable man.’
That word again. Honourable.
‘But—’ the young Hardin had protested, seeking a more meaningful answer.
‘This isn’t anything for you to be concerned about. Still, you say nothing about it, right?’
And that’s exactly what Hardin had done. Obeyed orders. Said nothing.
Hardin stared down at the drawings once more. They were quite meticulous, and it was obvious what they represented. A box. According to the plan and cross-section, the box measured two metres long by a metre and a half wide and was ninety centimetres high. The cross-section showed a hole in the ground, gravel at the base for drainage. The box lay at the bottom of the hole, a tube ascending to the surface for air, the hole backfilled with earth. And in the box was a stick-figure drawing of Jason Hobb.
A sound brought Jason blinking into consciousness. Scrabbling. Something like a rat. Then from above came a small shaft of light. He opened his mouth to scream, but then stopped himself. Somebody was out there.
He moved across to the light source, an opening set into the roof of the box. A smooth plastic tube ran upwards from the opening and at the far end he could see daylight.
‘Boy!’ The light was abruptly snuffed out. ‘Are you awake down there?’
A gust of bad breath wafted down and Jason jerked back. He cowered into one corner.
‘I said, Jason, are you down there?’ The voice came again, this time with a mocking, sing-song tone to it. ‘I know you are. Don’t be frightened. I do so want us to be friends.’
The man had used his name, Jason thought. Was this somebody he knew? He bit his lip. Best keep quiet, best not say anything.
‘Stand clear of the opening, Jason, I’ve got some presents for you.’
A second later something slid down the tube and fell from above, thudding onto the wooden floor. Then something else. Again and again.
‘If you’re a good boy then you’ll get some more. Oh, and this will bring a little brightness into your life.’
Another object clattered down, a beam of light spinning round and then hitting the floor and shining towards one wall of the box. A small torch!
Jason reached forward and grabbed the penlight. He gasped now he could see the true extent of his prison. He was in something resembling a packing case just a couple of metres square. Plywood walls, floor and ceiling on a wood frame. The opening which the torch had come through was an orange waste pipe which jutted from the roof a couple of centimetres. On the floor directly beneath the pipe lay three Mars bars and a can of Coke.
‘You’ll need this and these too. And don’t keep the torch on too long, will you?’
An empty plastic bottle came clattering through the opening and then a toilet roll and a bundle of plastic bags.
‘I …’ Jason forgot his thoughts about not talking. ‘Please, let me out.’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly do that. Later, maybe. When I’m sure you won’t try to desert me. Until then I need you to be a good boy and stay down there. It’s all part of my plan, you see?’
‘Noooooo! Heeelllppp!’
Something scraped up above and the light shining down the tube diminished to at first a faint glimmer and then faded completely. Jason clutched the torch in his hands and shivered.
As Savage came out from the front entrance of the station, she spotted Hardin leaning on the bonnet of his Freelander. The DSupt was staring downward and shaking his head, muttering something under his breath. She wondered what was up with him. He’d had a health scare a while ago but she’d thought he was over it. Unlikely this was a family matter though, since Hardin’s marriage was rock solid. Which left work. The case with the two boys was harrowing, but she’d known worse. Much worse.
She jogged across the tarmac until she reached Hardin. ‘Sir? Is everything all right?’
‘No.’ Hardin didn’t look up. He seemed to be considering a piece of paper he was holding against the bonnet. ‘Thirty years, Charlotte. That’s how long I’ve been in the force. I’ve never put a foot wrong, always done things by the book. You know me. Tick boxes, risk assessments, everything written up in the policy book, nothing dodgy, rules obeyed to the letter. I don’t think many other officers in this station could say the same, do you?’
‘No, sir, I don’t think they could.’
Now the DSupt did look up. He smiled at Savage. ‘I didn’t mean that as a criticism of you, Charlotte. We do things differently, you and I. You’ve crossed the line on more than one occasion. If you want to go any higher in the force then you’ll need to change your ways.’
‘Sir, I’m sorry about the stuff up in the crime suite. It’s just I’d sort of assumed I’d be the deputy SIO. It’s what I do. Catching these pervs, right? Obviously I’ll take whatever role on the team you want me to.’
‘Enough.’ Hardin stood upright, folding the piece of paper he had in his hand. ‘Give me ten minutes and then come to my office, OK?’
A quarter of an hour later Savage was sitting at Hardin’s desk. Hardin stood over to one side of the room, where he was fiddling with his new coffee machine. Something resembling the waste water from a dishwasher dribbled into a cup. Hardin stared down at the drink for a moment before passing the cup across to Savage.
‘You’re not going to like what I have to tell you any more than this muck,’ Hardin said as he took his own cup and sat behind his desk. ‘My words will be as bitter and hard to swallow.’
‘Really, sir?’ Savage picked up the cup and took a sip. Made a face and smiled. ‘I doubt it.’
‘You haven’t heard what I’ve got to say yet.’ Hardin glanced at his cup and then sighed. ‘But promise me you’ll listen before you jump down my throat, OK?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right. There’s no easy way to say this. You’re off the Jason Hobb investigation.’
‘Bloody hell, sir, you can’t!’ The words came out before she remembered her promise of but a moment ago. ‘I mean … I …’
‘There’s a cold case.’ Hardin nodded across to a cardboard box on the floor. ‘I’d like you to look into it for me.’
‘No way. I’m not going to be shunted aside because Maria Heldon’s got it in for me. First I’m not your deputy on the Hobb case and now I’m off the whole thing. The fucking cow won’t stop until I quit the force. Bitch.’
‘Charlotte!’ Hardin raised his voice. ‘I should reprimand you for that remark. It’s insubordination. However, you’ve misread what’s happening here. This has nothing to do with the Chief Constable and the case is important.’
‘It’s cold, sir. Frozen, I expect. You just said so yourself. Boxes full of files, files full of paper, paper full of witness statements which have been gone over time and time again. I know what this is. It’s some sort of review. Just to say an ancient investigation is still active, when really we all know there’s not a hope in hell’s chance of an arrest, let alone a conviction.’
‘I’m surprised at you. I thought you’d welcome the chance to get out on your own.’
‘I want to be working on proper stuff, sir. You know, catching criminals. I want to find Jason Hobb and catch the killer of Liam Clough.’
‘This is proper stuff.’
‘But why me? Somebody else could do this work, surely?’
‘I wish that was true.’ Hardin looked at the box. ‘If you need some help you can call on one of the junior DCs if they’re not too pushed. DC Calter, perhaps.’
‘Too pushed?’ Savage sighed. Shook her head. ‘It bloody sounds like the case is an afterthought. Doesn’t really give me much confidence.’
‘Charlotte, I said this is important.’ Hardin reached down and pulled a file from the cardboard box. He placed the file on the desk. ‘And you’re the best person for the job. This is not a punishment.’
&n
bsp; ‘Yeah, sure.’ Savage looked at the file. Operation Curlew. The words were stuck on the front of the folder, the print from an old dot matrix printer for God’s sake. ‘Anything else I should know?’
‘Just look through the file.’ Hardin glanced at his cup of dishwater. ‘And I’ll get us some better beverages, hey?’
Savage pulled the manila file across the desk and flicked open the cover. Her eyes were drawn to the top of the first sheet of paper. Two small mugshots had been stapled into the document. The colour in the pictures had all but leached away but the expressions on the faces were timeless. Two young boys, each grinning at the camera, the picture from a time when having your photograph taken was still an event, not simply an everyday occurrence.
She searched the page for a date, to see if her hypothesis was correct. Yes, the document had been marked January 1990, the time of an annual case review. She scanned the synopsis and discovered the original incident had taken place nearly a year and a half earlier, on 26th August 1988.
Now she settled down to read through the file. The case concerned the disappearance of two boys who’d been residents at Woodland Heights, a secure children’s home on the coast over near Salcombe. The two boys – Jason Caldwell and Liam Hayskith – had gone missing …
Jason and Liam?
The names jumped from the page, quickening her heart for a moment. As a coincidence the identical names seemed improbable and, whether happenstance or not, was cause for comment. Was this what had made Hardin react in such a strange way when the identity of the boy in the tunnel had been revealed?
Savage looked back at the photographs. Jason Caldwell was the lad on the left. Blond hair cut in a pudding-basin style, light blue eyes, and a smile which belied the fact he’d spent most of his childhood in care. Liam Hayskith’s smile was no less wide, but he had brown eyes and matching hair, the hair a mass of natural curls. She paused for a moment. Now she remembered the incident. She’d been at primary school back then and recalled some playground gossip, remembered too a warning from her mother to be careful. Never mind that the two boys were, in the terminology of the time, juvenile delinquents, and the initial suspicion was that they’d run away. Talk later was of somebody preying on young children, even that someone at the home might be involved.
Gossip. Suspicion. Rumour.
That’s all it was back then, but Savage wondered about the truth. Maria Heldon had told Savage there was no smoke without fire. Was that the case here?
She read on, working her way through the brief biographies of the boys and on to the summary of the case. The first inkling anything had been wrong was when Jason and Liam hadn’t come down to breakfast. A window in a storeroom had been found broken, although a forensic report seemed to cast some doubt on how and when that had happened, a finger of suspicion pointing to the caretaker. In the days following, there were some unconfirmed sightings across Devon, but nothing concrete. Staff were extensively interviewed and the rescue services conducted a three-day search of the coastline. There was evidence the boys might have been down at a nearby cove where several sets of footprints were discovered in the sand above the tideline, but nothing else was found and neither of the boys was ever seen again.
She moved on beyond the summary, working her way deeper into the document. All the pertinent facts were here: names, dates, places, key witnesses, details of events, analysis. She began to read some of the witness statements. The home had been run by a Mr Frank Parker and his wife, Deborah. The Parkers said they’d heard nothing in the night and Mr Parker surmised the boys had made good their escape in the small hours. In another statement, the housekeeper reported the disappearance of a large kitchen knife. Detectives concluded the missing boys had likely stolen the knife, possibly for protection on their travels. However, later on, the housekeeper had changed her mind, insisting the knife had been missing for months.
Savage read on through dozens of other statements, some from the other boys. One interviewing officer described one boy as reticent, another as nervous, but the overall impression seemed to be that the young residents of the home were obstructive and not at all helpful.
‘To put it bluntly,’ a statement from one of the staff members said, ‘they’re a bunch of wrong ’uns mixed up with worse ’uns with a topping of nasty little shits.’
Savage shook her head, not quite believing what she was reading. Today, thank God, police attitudes had changed. What back then may well have been viewed as obstructive behaviour would nowadays be interpreted quite differently. More probing questions would be asked. There’d been too many mistakes in the past not to investigate cases like this properly. With Operation Yewtree and the events in Rotherham, the police had become a little bit wiser.
Hardin returned a few minutes later, furnished with some proper coffees from the canteen. He leant back in his chair and stared at the wall.
‘Operation Curlew. Over twenty-five years ago it was. Half a lifetime for me.’ Hardin shook his head and then rocked forward and looked at Savage. ‘What do you think?’
‘The names, Jason and Liam, can’t be a coincidence. Is that why you want me to review the case?’
‘Yes. I don’t believe it’s chance the two boys we’re dealing with today are called Jason and Liam. I spoke with the Chief Constable a few minutes ago and she agrees. She wants to begin her watch with no skeletons in the closet.’
‘I thought you said this had nothing to do with Maria Heldon?’
‘It doesn’t, this is my decision. All Heldon said to me was she didn’t want anything swept under the carpet. In my mind that means you’re just the person for the job.’
Savage’s eyes were drawn again to the top sheet of paper in the open file. The photographs of the two young boys. They were either dead or living somewhere far away. The latter seemed unlikely after all these years. She looked back at Hardin. A crease had appeared on his brow and she noticed a slight shake of his hand as he lifted his coffee cup to his lips again.
‘But there’s more, sir,’ Savage said. ‘Isn’t there?’
‘That’s where it gets tricky, Charlotte.’ Hardin took a gulp of coffee and put the cup down. ‘And where it gets personal too.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘In 1988 I was a young PC over in Kingsbridge. I was there.’
‘You were part of Operation Curlew?’
‘Initially, yes. But only for one day. Something else came up and I was transferred to more pressing business.’ Hardin sat back again. He shook his head. ‘Charlotte, I need you to look into this, but I need you to be discreet. If anyone asks, just say there’s a review. That’s all they need to know.’
‘And what happens if I find out some uncomfortable truths?’ Savage pointed at the bundle of papers. ‘Because, to be honest, I think there was something missing from the investigation.’
‘Go on.’
‘The staff members’ statements appear to have been taken at face value. I don’t reckon that would happen today. I was just a child, but I remember there were rumours about the home and yet the possibility of abuse doesn’t seem to have been raised at all. According to the review, the home closed down following the incident and that seems to have put paid to any further work on the case. The boys were consigned to history, forgotten.’
‘Then I think it’s time we made amends, don’t you?’
Savage sighed and then reached for the file. She flipped the cover closed. She didn’t want this case. She wanted to be out there looking for Jason Hobb. Orders were orders though and there wasn’t much she could do about it.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
Chapter Twelve
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 22nd October. 1.00 p.m.
The skin, Riley knew, changed things completely. The finger bone had had him worried, but there may well have been a plausible explanation for it. Not so for a piece of skin the size of a large envelope which, according to Layton, had come from the back of somebody’s head. There seemed little dou
bt in Riley’s mind that a crime had taken place, but what crime? Murder, perhaps? Unlikely. Far more probable was grave robbery or failure to report a death. Serious crimes, yes, but victimless.
That left the actual writing on the skin. The text was unambiguous and disturbing:
The female mannequin in the box on the raft had been burned and hacked about. The arm had been severed. Could the damage be illustrative of what might happen to the cowardly and faithless mentioned in the text? If so, then was the whole set-up a message or a threat? On the other hand, perhaps Enders’ initial hunch had been correct and the thing was some kind of prank.
‘We need to impound the raft as evidence,’ Riley had said to Enders once Layton had gone. ‘Get the CSIs to work over it to see what else they can find.’
A phone call to the harbour master revealed the final resting place for the raft. The makeshift craft had been towed round to a boatyard up the Plym. There it had been craned from the water and broken up.
‘That was the deal.’ The harbour master sounded apologetic as he explained. ‘If they took the raft off our hands they could do what they wanted with it. Boatyards always have a use for this sort of stuff. Odd pieces of wood, plastic barrels, sheets of ply. I daresay bits and pieces of it are stacked up somewhere, if you want to take a look.’
Riley did and an hour later he stood in the boatyard with Enders. The yard sat on the west side of the Plym, tucked between the Laira Bridge and a scrap metal merchant. Boats of all sorts stood on the shore in various states of disrepair, while others floated on the river tied up to a couple of long pontoons. This, Riley could see, was the other end of the market from the posh marinas with their huge gleaming yachts; G and Ts and tanned women lounging on spotless aft decks were in short supply.
