by Mark Sennen
‘Hey?’
‘But first you must be punished. And the punishment must fit the crime. Are you ready to perform your penance?’
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘Never mind. Now make your peace with God.’
‘No!’ A shout comes from Benedict and now the man is blubbering. ‘Please noooooo!’
‘GOD IS WITH YOU, BENEDICT! FEEL HIS LOVE FOR YOU!’ The Shepherd’s voice echoes throughout the building. ‘OPEN YOUR HEART TO HIM AND LET HIS SPIRIT FILL YOU!’
‘Noooooo!’ Along with Benedict’s pleas, a mechanical noise is growing in intensity, the man’s voice barely audible against the clatter of metal. ‘Noooooo!’
The Shepherd moves the mouse and clicks and a burst of organ music blares out. He begins to sing, the words resounding through every room in the barn.
‘THE LORD’S MY SHEPHERD, I’LL NOT WANT. HE MAKES ME DOWN TO LIE. IN PASTURES GREEN HE LEADETH ME. THE QUIET WATERS BY.’
In the chamber, pieces of machinery are moving, a huge hydraulic arms hisses into action, an electric saw begins to revolve, a drill spins up to speed and lowers. Over it all the sound of Benedict screaming.
Chapter Nineteen
Near Bolberry, South Hams, Devon. Sunday 25th October. 8.35 a.m.
Savage returned to Woodland Heights first thing Sunday morning. Overnight developments in the Curlew case had come in an email sent by Nesbit late on Saturday. The pathologist’s few short words brought a whole lot of consequences for the investigation: the bone from the cellar was definitely human and what’s more it belonged to a child.
A child.
Whether the bone belonged to Liam Hayskith or Jason Caldwell didn’t matter. Curlew had now become a murder investigation.
She parked up and strolled across to where a patrol car sat on the gravel track near the front steps, the officers inside bleary-eyed from overnight guard duty.
‘All quiet?’ Savage asked as one of the officers slid down his window.
‘As the proverbial, ma’am,’ the officer said. He gestured to where the house stood in the grey light. ‘Not a dicky bird. The seal on the cellar door’s still intact. At least it was fifteen minutes ago. Can’t say it was a pleasant night though.’
Savage thanked the officers and then walked over to the entrance steps, turning as she heard a vehicle approaching. The Freelander eased into the car park and stopped. Inside, the bulky shape of DSupt Hardin remained stationary for a good minute before the door swung open and he climbed out.
The drizzle of yesterday had given way to a bank of grey cloud which hung overhead almost unmoving and Hardin lumbered over towards her, shuffling his feet as if the clouds above were pressing down on him. Not for the first time Savage wondered what was wrong. Hardin looked as if he was in a bad way. His mood didn’t improve as he reached her and glanced up at the house.
‘You found something then.’ His eyes flicked from window to window and then to the front door. ‘House of horrors.’
‘Yes, sir. Nesbit sent this through.’ Savage pulled out her phone and handed it to Hardin. ‘It’s a computer reconstruction using the fragment we found. A metatarsal, apparently.’
‘You mean metatarsal as in footballers?’
‘Yes. Only this isn’t a footballer’s, it’s a kid’s.’
‘Fuck.’ Hardin stared down at the photo on the phone, almost as if he was willing the image to disappear. Nothing doing; after a few seconds he handed the phone back and looked at Savage. ‘So, who’s in the frame for this? The owner? Staff? I need something, Charlotte. You know how it is. Heldon will want this to end quickly. The force doesn’t need any more publicity, not so soon after the stuff with Simon Fox.’
‘The situation is complicated, sir. We don’t have much to go on. To my mind it looks as if there was a body, or bodies, buried under the concrete shortly after the two boys went missing. However, somebody returned to the scene recently and dug up the remains. They did a pretty good job at removing everything.’
‘Apart from that.’ Hardin pointed at Savage’s phone and then shook his head. ‘Problems we don’t need.’
‘Sir? Where are you going with this? I don’t understand.’
‘To be honest, I hoped we weren’t going anywhere with it. Dredging up old memories, old bitterness, never pleasant.’
‘Those two boys were probably murdered. It’s likely there was widespread abuse going on at the children’s home. Are you saying we should just forget those crimes?’
‘Not at all. If I’d wanted that I’d have made sure somebody else was on the case. I know you, you’re tenacious, once you get the scent something is wrong you don’t give up. I was just hoping you wouldn’t find anything.’
‘Well I have. We have. This can’t be put back in the bottle now. A piece of the bone has gone off for DNA analysis. Of course, we don’t have any DNA for Liam Hayskith or Jason Caldwell, but we can match them through familial relationships. We’ll know within a day or two what we’re dealing with here, but either way this is almost certainly murder. Somebody was buried in the cellar. Whether or not it was one of the two boys doesn’t really matter.’
‘No.’ Hardin said nothing for a few seconds. He delved in his inside jacket pocket and half pulled out an envelope. Then he appeared to change his mind and shoved the envelope back down out of sight. He shook his head. ‘You’re right, of course. It doesn’t matter.’
‘You want to see?’ Savage gestured towards the front door. ‘The cellar?’
Hardin peered past her, his face creasing with a pained expression. ‘Go on then, show me.’
Hardin stared down at the water bubbling up from the hole in the concrete. The water appeared black in the glare from the arc lights. A fat green hose rose from the morass to a pump by the side of the hole. The outlet hose snaked across the floor, through the doorway and up the stairs. Despite the pump’s best efforts, it couldn’t keep up with the flow and one end of the cellar was flooded to a depth of several inches.
‘Layton says there’s a spring down there,’ Savage said. ‘If we’re going to dig up the rest of the cellar we’ll need specialised equipment.’
‘Whatever.’ The DSupt bit his lip and continued to gaze into the pool of ink as if the bubbles rising to the surface might tell him the story of what had happened years before.
‘As I said, there’s just one bone so far.’ Savage looked around at the cellar, but Hardin seemed interested only in the hole. He’s miles away, she thought. Lost in the past, possibly blaming himself for what happened. ‘You couldn’t have done anything, could you, sir? I mean everyone was convinced they’d run away.’
‘Yes.’ Hardin shook his head, the movement not matching his answer. His tongue poked over his bottom lip and he sighed. Then he moved over to one side of the cellar, sat down on one of Layton’s plastic crates and put his head in his hands.
‘Conrad?’ Savage whispered Hardin’s first name. She hardly ever addressed him like that, but something was very wrong. ‘You can tell me, sir.’
‘I was here, Charlotte.’ Hardin looked up. ‘Woodland Heights.’
‘I don’t understand? I know you were here.’
‘The day after the boys went missing. Me and a lad from Kingsbridge nick. We came up to the home in a squad car to assist the detectives from Plymouth. There was a right flap on. Search and rescue crews along the coast, Plymouth and Salcombe lifeboats out at sea, volunteers scouring the nearby fields.’ Hardin shook his head again. ‘I thought I was unlucky, but that’s nothing compared to what happened to these boys.’
‘Unlucky?’ Savage said. ‘But you didn’t find anything, did you?’
‘I’m not talking about when the boys went missing. I mean before.’
‘Before?’
‘A few weeks before. There was some vandalism in the nearby village. Graffiti. Lewd stuff. Residents pointed the finger at the home. I was the local PC so I went to investigate. I questioned some of the boys but they were tight-lipped, wouldn�
��t give anything away. I’d cycled out here and propped my bike round the side. When I got back to my bicycle, I found this stuffed under the rear mudguard.’ Hardin reached into his jacket and pulled out the envelope he’d been fiddling with earlier. ‘Back at the station I took a photocopy before I handed it over.’
Hardin opened the envelope and extracted a piece of paper. He held it out for Savage. She moved across and peered down, tilting the paper to examine it in the light from the halogens. It was a copy of a photograph and of low quality. Still, she could make out the image well enough: two men sitting in armchairs. A half-finished bottle of whisky on a small table between them. A clock on the wall. One of the men was a much younger Frank Parker, the other instantly recognisable to anybody who knew much about politics.
‘He’s dead, sir, isn’t he? But I still don’t understand. I know who these two men are – Parker and the politician – but what’s the picture got to do with the disappearance of the boys?’
‘That photograph was taken in the little snug upstairs. In the Parkers’ apartment. He was visiting.’
‘And that was a problem?’
‘The man from Special Branch put it exactly the same way.’
‘Special Branch?’
‘I took the picture straight to my superior, the inspector at Kingsbridge Police Station. Bernie Black.’ Hardin smiled. ‘He was a good copper. I thought it best to go to him. He’d know what to do.’
‘And he phoned Special Branch?’
‘Yes. An officer arrived the next day. He asked me why there was an issue. The man in the photograph was in the Home Office. Woodland Heights was a type of young offenders’ institution. He told me there was nothing unusual about the visit.’
‘And you didn’t believe him?’
‘If there was nothing suspicious, then why did Special Branch need to send an officer down to speak to me? And why had “HELP” been handwritten on the back of the picture?’
‘Help? You think—’
‘Look at the clock on the wall, Charlotte.’ Hardin pointed down at the picture. ‘Tell me the time.’
‘Half past three. I still don’t …’ Savage examined the photograph again. Whisky. A slab of cheese on a board. Some crackers on a plate. ‘An afternoon snack?’
‘The window.’
Savage looked to one side of the image. A sash window, curtains open and drawn to each side. And through the window she could see nothing but black.
‘Night-time,’ Hardin said. ‘In the original, which was much better quality, the time of day was obvious. To my mind there could only be one reason for the man to be there relaxing in the early hours of the morning.’
‘And you put this to the man from Special Branch?’
‘No. He took the photograph and assured me there was nothing wrong. Ordered me to say no more of the affair, not even to my superiors. Back then I was just a young PC and all this abuse stuff hadn’t come out.’
‘But now?’
‘The man in the picture’s dead, isn’t he? And presumably the powers that be up in London know all about him.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure, sir.’
‘Do you think I did wrong, Charlotte?’ Hardin reached for the piece of paper and put it back in the envelope. ‘I was obeying orders. The wife and I, well, she’d just had the nipper. We had a house with a mortgage. Money was tight. When the boys went missing, I asked Bernie Black about the photograph again. I remember his face, stern, troubled. “In hand” he told me and I left it at that. I made a mistake, didn’t I?’
‘I don’t know, sir. You were—’
‘Naive. That’s the word. I assumed the chain of command worked. That the people at the top knew what they were doing.’
‘They do, sir.’ Savage half smiled. ‘Sometimes.’
After the confines of the cellar, they escaped outside and walked westward along the coast path and away from the home. The clouds had slipped away and now a weak sun moved steadily higher, promising a fine day. The light lit up Hardin’s face and Savage could see he was still burdened by something.
‘There’s more, sir, isn’t there?’ Savage said as they reached a viewpoint. To one side of the path a railway sleeper perched atop two large stones. She gestured at the makeshift bench. ‘Shall we?’
Hardin lowered himself onto the bench and Savage sat beside him.
‘I must get out here more often, Charlotte.’ He looked at Savage for a moment and then swept his arm in the direction of the sea. ‘Not here, not Woodland Heights. I mean the coast. I sit in my little bungalow with the missus. We’re quite happy. We go to the shops, take a walk in the park, have a night out from time to time. But we don’t do this.’
‘I know what you mean, sir. We don’t appreciate what’s right on our doorstep, do we?’
‘I used to like being a PC in this area. Exploring the countryside. It used to be a gentler way of life out here. At least that’s what I thought until I saw the photograph. It unsettled me and after the boys disappeared I wasn’t the same. I applied to be a detective and moved into Plymouth. I wanted to bang heads.’
‘I can understand. That’s the way I felt too.’
‘About Clarissa?’ Hardin shifted his gaze from the sea to Savage. Raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh yes, Charlotte, I can read you better than you think. And I know more than you think, too.’
‘More?’ Savage swallowed, wondering exactly what Hardin meant. Did he know about Matthew Harrison, the serial killer she’d left to burn alive in his upturned car? Or was it Simon Fox and his son Hardin was hinting at? Savage had put a gun to Owen’s head and had been close to pulling the trigger. ‘Are you talking about—’
‘Never mind.’ Hardin raised a hand and jerked his thumb back in the direction of the children’s home. ‘There’s more pressing business, and if you’ve been concealing things from me, then I’m guilty of the same. You’re right, there is something else.’
‘About Woodland Heights?’
‘Indirectly.’ Hardin paused and reached into his jacket again. This time he pulled out a couple of sheets of paper, flowing handwriting on one, some sort of drawing on the other. ‘I received these letters. The first one came the day Jason went missing. That’s Jason Hobb, not Jason Caldwell. The second came last Thursday. It was the second letter, along with the coincidence with the names, which spurred me to action. I knew then I needed to investigate Woodland Heights. Of course, when I assigned you to the case, I had no idea what you would find. The letters could well have been a hoax.’
Savage took the pieces of paper from Hardin and read through. The first letter was plain weird, filled with descriptions of abuse and violence. Towards the end there were a number of accusations aimed at Hardin. Something about the DSupt not doing his duty, of overlooking crimes committed.
‘So the letter writer is blaming you for the disappearance of the boys?’ she said. ‘Because nothing happened to stop the abuse after you received the photograph?’
Hardin shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
She moved to the second piece of paper and shook her head as she took in the information. The drawings were unambiguous. ‘A box? So Jason Hobb is still alive?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ Hardin said. ‘We can only pray.’
‘I’m struggling to get my head around this, sir. You suggested to me that the names of the two sets of boys being the same was no coincidence and these letters prove it, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’ve had this one since Thursday.’ Savage waved the second letter. ‘You knew Jason Hobb was alive but you did nothing to try and save him.’
‘That’s not fair, Charlotte. You’ve seen the picture with the government minister. The letters may well have been part of some prank. I needed to be sure before I took this any further. There are consequences.’
‘Consequences?’ Savage pushed herself to her feet and walked away a few paces. She turned back to Hardin. ‘Jesus! Of course there are fucking consequences. You’ve probably signed Jason
Hobb’s death warrant. What the hell were you thinking?’
‘Operation Lacuna hasn’t wanted for resources. We’ve thrown everything at it.’
‘Yes, but these letters are evidence. Who knows where the investigation would be now had Garrett and the team had sight of them last week. You’ve put personal issues before operational ones. That’s bang out of order, sir.’
‘Really? And you’ve never done that?’ Hardin shook his head. ‘I remember telling you once about a line one shouldn’t cross. My advice fell on deaf ears, didn’t it?’
‘I did what was bloody right at the time.’ Savage spat out the words. She realised she was getting dangerously close to being insubordinate. ‘I never compromised anyone’s safety the way you’ve done.’
‘Matthew Harrison?’
‘Harrison deserved to die. You can’t compare him to Jason Hobb. To be honest, sir, you’re in a whole lot more trouble than I ever was.’
‘Thanks for your candid assessment, Charlotte, but what’s done is done. Right now we need to focus on what went on here and see if the historical case can help us find Jason.’
‘What about the man in the picture? The minister?’
‘Heldon. This will be in her in-tray first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘And if she behaves in the same manner as your old boss, Bernie Black?’
‘I don’t want to think about that possibility.’ Hardin shrugged and shook his head. ‘Because if she does, then I reckon we’ve lost. Not just you and I, but all of us. The whole bloody human race.’
Chapter Twenty
Well, I tried my best. I didn’t dare approach Father or Mother because I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t do anything. Bentley has so much control over the both of them that I can’t see either would betray him. Instead, I went to the village to see my friend Perry. He’s a year older than me and he’s clever and wise. I told Perry about Father and Bentley and the things which went on in the cellar. I asked him to tell his parents. He seemed unsure, but eventually he agreed he would.
