by Mark Sennen
‘So this nutter’s only motive was to draw attention to the children’s home?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘But he’s something to do with the home, am I reading that right?’
‘He must be.’
‘Then we might be getting somewhere. You see, Ned Stone was a resident at the home for a short time.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. Only for a few months, and a year or so before the disappearance of Hayskith and Caldwell. He was eleven years old at the time and went to a foster family when he left.’
‘When did you discover this?’
‘It only came to light this morning when an indexer entered all the boys who’d been resident since the home opened in the seventies. The computer spat out the match.’
‘If he wasn’t before, he must now be the number one suspect. Any news on his whereabouts?’
‘No. We’ve got a list of his friends and associates and they’ve all had multiple visits. Not a dicky bird so far. Problem is his mates are not exactly amenable to cooperation.’
‘Well, finding him is a priority. This simply isn’t good enough, Gareth. We should be on top of everything by now. We need to trace and eliminate the rest of the boys and staff and then concentrate on Stone.’
‘In hand.’ Collier gestured over to one corner of the room where a couple of civilian researchers were working hard, heads down over their keyboards. ‘I’ve already got a full list of names from the council of everyone connected with the home and we’re going through them now.’
‘Good. Next, we need a plan for finding Stone.’
‘Right.’ Collier was silent. Something was bugging him. After a moment he jabbed a finger down at the copies of Hardin’s letters. ‘But do you think Ned Stone wrote these?’
Savage looked at the letters too. The spaghetti-like writing was beautiful while at the same time had a touch of madness about it. Huge letters curled back on themselves with unnecessary flourishes and unfathomable squiggles. In contrast, the plan and elevation showing the coffin-box had been done in pencil. Neat perpendicular lines spanned the page. Areas of shading had been painstakingly hatched in. Each element had been shown in fine detail and overall the drawings were a work of perfection. They’d been created by somebody with draughting skills. An architect or somebody who’d studied technical drawing at least.
‘What’s your point, Gareth?’ Savage said.
‘Neither letter seems like anything Stone could have produced.’ Collier paused and looked first at the letters and then at Savage. ‘And if Stone didn’t write these …’ He left the sentence hanging and shook his head.
‘Somebody else did,’ Savage said.
Riley left Enders with the officers and walked down the track, heading for a slash of beach visible through the trees. Layton had already run out several lengths of blue and white tape to ensure no one used the little path at the edge of the estuary, so Riley was forced to make his way through the undergrowth. Brambles snagged at the legs of his trousers and more than once a low branch caught him in the face. At the bankside he clambered down onto soft sand. The estuary was a couple of hundred metres wide and the water curled seaward in two distinct streams. Between the streams, the raft lay marooned on a sandbank and atop the raft, lying on its side, was a green wheelie bin.
‘Darius.’ John Layton, fully suited in a white coverall with blue bootlets and gloves, was on his hands and knees on the raft beside the bin. He shouted across. ‘We’ve got a right mess in here. Come and take a gander. To the left of the tape, please.’
Riley moved to the water’s edge, paused for a second, and then waded in.
‘Bloody hell!’ Cold water rushed up the sides of his wellies and several dollops found their way inside. ‘Give me a simple shooting in a nice dry London tenement any day of the week.’
‘Stinking of piss and with the local youth chucking stuff at you?’ Layton waved his hand at the surroundings. ‘Prefer this little paradise with the fresh sea air and utter tranquillity myself, but each to his own.’
Layton was correct about the tranquillity. The estuary ran between banks of woodland set on steep hillside, the sandy strip disappearing round a bend a few hundred metres away. Tranquil didn’t begin to describe the isolated nature of the place. There was nothing here. Aside from the raft, the only thing attributable to humans was an aircraft contrail drifting in the sky.
‘Footprints?’ Riley waded across the stream and stepped out onto the sandbank. A series of deep indentations ran from one side of the raft into the water.
‘Yes, but the outlines are blurred. Won’t get much from them, I’m afraid.’ Layton pointed at a pile of wood on the raft beside the wheelie bin. ‘Still, there’s more than enough here.’
‘He was trying to assemble that?’ Riley looked at the pieces of wood, something like a flat-pack wardrobe. ‘A box. Exactly like the coffin thing we found on the raft at Jennycliff. The raft looks identical too.’
‘Just so. He must have brought everything down here in his car – raft, barrels, the coffin and the wheelie bin. Getting the whole lot in place and putting it together would have taken a while. I reckon he started well before first light.’
‘But he didn’t finish the job.’
‘No. I don’t think he factored in the terrain. Moving all the stuff from the car to here would have been tricky. Luckily for our victim time ran out.’ Layton gestured into the bin. ‘Had the estate manager not come along when he did, I doubt very much he’d have been found alive.’
The bin was facing away from the bank so Riley had to edge round in the soft sand. He bent and peered into the bin. His first impression was of a mass of dark red smeared over the sides. Down the far end, a pool of blood spread towards him and had coagulated in a frozen waterfall at the edge. In amongst the blood, little pieces of pink poked above the liquid like atolls in a red sea.
‘I see what you mean.’ Riley swallowed. Stared at the inside of the bin. ‘I’m trying to get my head around what happened here.’
‘The bin was upright when Mr Johnson found it. As soon as he realised somebody was inside, he tipped the bin over. The blood which had collected in the bottom flowed out. The man inside was, quite literally, drowning in the stuff. Mr Johnson’s quick thinking saved his life.’
‘This is …’
‘Beyond belief?’ Layton nodded. ‘Yeah. Perhaps you’re right about that tenement job you mentioned earlier.’
‘Yes.’ Riley straightened and gazed at the scenery for a moment, thinking there was a terrible contrast between the beautiful estuary and the awful fate of Tim Benedict. He stared down at his feet where the river gurgled around his wellingtons. Noticed the blue floats. ‘The chemicals, John. The stuff in the barrels at the boatyard. These barrels look identical.’
Layton moved to the edge of the raft and peered over. ‘They do, don’t they?’ He shook his head. ‘But I haven’t got the results back yet. I’ll hurry the lab along.’
‘Do that, would you?’ Riley turned his attention back to the raft and the huge bloodstain. ‘Be nice not to have to witness anything like this ever again.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Tuesday 27th October. 8.25 a.m.
Riley was back in the station early Tuesday morning. The Benedict and Sleet case was no longer simply about a couple of mispers. The discovery of Tim Benedict in the wheelie bin had crystallised what they were dealing with and Hardin had summoned Riley to an emergency meeting. On his way to the DSupt’s office he bumped into DI Savage in the corridor. Riley nodded a greeting.
‘Alright, ma’am?’ He stopped as Savage moved to the side and leant against a noticeboard. ‘I hear your cold case has turned hot.’
‘Not as hot as yours, Darius.’ Savage shook her head. ‘Unbelievable. Who would do such a thing?’
‘At the moment we have no idea. Thing is, we’ve got another man missing and we could do with finding him before our nutter decides on a repeat performance.’
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‘Sound like our case. One dead, one missing. Only there’s more than one dead now.’
‘Right.’ Riley wanted to stay and chat, if only because Savage looked as if she needed to unburden herself of something. There was Hardin though. Riley could imagine him pacing back and forth, glancing at his watch, and cursing. ‘Got to go. Catch up later, right?’
‘Sure, Darius,’ Savage said. ‘Good luck up there.’
Riley turned and ran down the corridor. He bounded up the stairs to the DSupt’s office and knocked on the door. Hardin opened the door himself, standing there with a phone pressed to his ear. He waved Riley in and pointed at a chair facing his desk. As Riley sat, Hardin continued with his call. The conversation was distinctly one-sided, with the DSupt uttering a succession of ‘Yes, ma’ams’ and trying to get a word in but failing. The call over, Hardin paced back behind his desk and crashed down into his chair.
‘Bloody woman.’ Hardin put his mobile on the table and stared at the phone as if the device actually held the source of all his troubles. Something like a bottle with a genie inside, the stopper temporarily back in place. ‘To say she’s becoming a pain in the backside is an understatement. She’s now decided to pay us a royal visit. At least Foxy knew when to give a man some space to think.’
Riley kept his mouth shut. Simon Fox had lost it. Become a criminal himself. As bad as Maria Heldon might be, she had nothing on the old Chief Constable.
‘The vicar chappie, what’s the latest?’ Hardin looked at Riley, expectant.
‘Tim Benedict?’ Riley thought it fitting the man should at least be given a name. ‘He’s still in a critical condition.’
‘Unconscious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Time frame?’
‘The consultant said it’s still touch-and-go. When and if Benedict regains consciousness he may well be brain damaged.’
‘Bugger.’ Hardin considered the phone again. He reached out and pushed the sliver of black to one side of the desk. ‘As you can imagine, the CC is not in a good place right now. We’ve got the missing boy and the murdered kid. That would be bad enough, but this attack on the vicar is another order of magnitude more serious.’
Hardin continued. The media, he said, would be all over this. The fact Benedict was a vicar provided a tasty angle, while the attack symbolised a complete breakdown of moral values. The casual placing of Benedict in the bin only added to the horror.
‘I don’t think it was casual,’ Riley said. ‘Quite the opposite. The raft is identical to the one we found at Jennycliff. The attacker planned this and he’d have needed some skill and foresight to carry out the kidnappings and to build the raft.’
‘Skill?’ Hardin said. ‘Whoever did this is a complete psychopath. A nutter. I’ve read the report on Benedict’s injuries. Simply horrendous.’
Riley said nothing. Hardin didn’t understand that being crazy and clever were by no means mutually exclusive.
‘Now then, you’ve done well, Darius. Commendable work. However, from here on in I need a senior officer up front. The Taser suggests to me a link with organised crime and that, as you know, is DI Phil Davies’ area of expertise. He’s going to be taking over up front. Now, where are we with this? I want to know what you’ve got, however slim. Leads, suspects, witnesses.’
The assignment of Davies to the SIO role was disappointing but expected. A high-profile case like this was never going to be led by a detective sergeant. Still, he could earn himself some brownie points by showing the DSupt the progress the investigation had made so far. He peered down at the notes he’d prepared and began to fill Hardin in. He went through all the preliminary details and then told him about the first raft and their meeting with Dan Phillips over at Jennycliff. It was Phillips, he explained, who’d alerted them to the disappearance of Tim Benedict and the fact there might be a link between Sleet, the raft and Benedict. Hardin was unimpressed.
‘Toerag.’ Hardin jabbed a finger at Riley. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows more about this than he’s telling. Sounds a bit unlikely he just came on the names like that.’
‘Phillips has a nose like a sewer rat,’ Riley said. ‘I can well believe he did.’
‘Well.’ Hardin paused and then changed tack. He pointed at the map on the wall, his finger aimed at the patch of sea south of the Erme estuary. ‘I get the torture of the mannequin, but what’s with the raft? And also, where the hell’s Perry Sleet?’
Riley shrugged his shoulders. His notes had nothing in them which might help answer Hardin’s question. ‘To be honest, sir, I’ve no idea. I’m hoping we’ll get some forensic evidence from the Benedict crime scene.’
‘Hope, Sergeant Riley, is something we resort to when we’re desperate.’ Hardin leant forward. Sneered. ‘Now, please tell me we’re not desperate?’
To Savage’s immense disappointment, Monday had seen no new developments in the Lacuna/Curlew case. The CSI team at Woodland Heights had pretty much concluded and Layton had produced a brief written report. First thing Tuesday, Savage sat in her office with a cup of coffee and digested the bad news: the ground physics had come up negative and, short of demolishing the entire structure, there was nothing more to be found in the house. If she wanted to, Savage could meet him there at noon, by which time he’d be finishing up.
The morning squad meeting was short but not sweet. Hardin was annoyed by the lack of progress and took his frustration out on the Lacuna team. Savage could see the pressure was getting to him. One high-profile op was bad enough, but Devon and Cornwall Police now had two headline-making cases to deal with.
‘We’ve got until the weekend,’ Hardin said, as he wrapped the meeting up. ‘After then, Maria Heldon is going to send in her pretty boys from Exeter to help us. You know, the ones who think officers west of the moor smell of either a herd of sheep or a bag of kippers and enjoy fucking either.’
Hardin’s remarks were greeted with a roar and Savage smiled to herself. At the last moment the DSupt had turned the bollocking into a pep talk. If anyone needed an incentive – which they shouldn’t – the thought of interference from force HQ at Middlemoor would provide them with one.
After giving her own briefing, which focused on the importance of finding Ned Stone, Savage headed over to Woodland Heights to liaise with John Layton. When she arrived, she found him standing next to his old Volvo, a Tupperware box of sandwiches sitting on the roof.
‘Bit behind schedule, Charlotte,’ Layton said as he peeled the lid from the box. ‘Down to yesterday’s discovery on the Erme. Never seen anything like it. The bloke had been tortured and then dumped in a wheelie bin, the bin hoisted onto a raft. I think the aim was for the whole caboodle to float out to sea. What the poor fellow had done to deserve such a thing, I’ve no idea. The only silver lining is he’s still alive. Just.’
Savage nodded. ‘I’m worried Hardin’s going to prioritise that investigation over this one.’
‘Might do,’ Layton said, extracting a thick wholemeal sandwich from his box. He waved the sandwich at the home. ‘But time’s on your side. The case has taken the best part of thirty years to get this far, another month or two won’t make any difference.’
‘Not to Jason Caldwell, no, but to the other Jason it will. Time isn’t on his side at all and I don’t want to think what his kidnapper might be doing to the boy.’
‘Crazy fucker.’ Layton took a bite of his sandwich. ‘I’m glad you understand these nutters, Charlotte, because I confess I don’t.’
‘I don’t know what’s going on here either.’ Savage turned towards the house. ‘Which is why I really needed you to find something in there which can help. Anything.’
‘I see.’ Layton followed her gaze. ‘Well, we’ve done the cellar and stripped some of the floorboards up. Plus we’ve managed to get behind all the panelling in the loft. And the GPR operative’s been over the garden and car park. I’ll take you inside and show you what we’ve been up to, but I’m sorry to say we’ve scored a blank
so far.’
‘Shit.’
‘Yes, shit.’ Layton nodded and then looked away from the house towards the coast. ‘To be honest, why would you put something in the home when you’ve got all this around? And I’m sorry, but we can’t start digging up the surrounding countryside. I wish I could be more positive.’
‘You do your best, John. You always do.’
Layton reached into the car and picked up his Tilley hat from the front seat. Plonked the hat on his head. ‘Let’s hope that’s enough, hey?’
Within the hour the Benedict case had burgeoned into something resembling a serious investigation. The operation had a name – Caldera – and the team had grown to include a receiver, a document manager, indexers, several DCs and various ancillary staff. There had also been a promise from Hardin that they wouldn’t have to fight for resources with Lacuna.
‘You know Hardin,’ Enders said to Riley as together they supervised the initial set-up of the incident room paraphernalia under the watchful eye of the operation’s SIO, DI Davies. ‘For every column inch of front-page news, we get an extra officer. Slip to the inside pages and we’ll be lucky to retain a three-legged police dog and a PCSO.’
The chance of the story dropping from the front pages became minimal when they received the bad news mid-morning: Benedict had passed away despite the sterling efforts of the ICU team.
‘Blood loss,’ the consultant said when Riley spoke to him on the phone. ‘And the shock. The body can only take so much, see? Although many of the injuries were superficial, put together they amounted to more than he could take. I counted thirty-seven different puncture points on his torso alone.’
‘Made by?’
‘No idea. You’ll have to ask the pathologist. Benedict’s on his way down there now.’
No, Riley thought as he hung up, Benedict wasn’t on his way anywhere. A husk which once contained him was heading down to the mortuary, sure, but the real Benedict had either ceased to exist or was in a better place. Riley wondered if death had come any easier to the man, seeing as he was a vicar. Perhaps his belief had faltered at the last minute.
