Touch (DI Charlotte Savage)

by Mark Sennen

  Isaacs chucked the pipe away into the bushes and knelt beside the girl. He put the back of his hand over the girl’s face. No breath. He looked down at her chest. No rise and fall. He moved his hand down there and placed it over her left breast. No heartbeat. He slipped it inside her bra, cupping the breast in his hand. Still nothing.

  The breast was cold, but the round fullness hit him like a sudden white heat. He pulled his hand back. The sensation shocked him, set off a troubled train of thought in his head, the pleasing beginnings of an erection in his trousers. He glanced around the clearing, and beyond into the depths of the copse. There was nobody. Nobody to tell. He reached out and touched the girl again. She was like ice. Cold, but pure. Then, without knowing quite why, Isaacs bent over and kissed the girl on the lips.

  Chapter 5

  Barbican Leisure Park, Plymouth. Tuesday 26th October. 10.47 am

  The glitter balls sent light spinning round the room, dancing fractals morphing as they swept over the floor and walls. Calter and Enders jived in the centre of the empty dance floor to an old Police number, the club manager’s idea of a joke, while Savage skirted the edge making notes.

  It was Tuesday morning and the three of them were checking out clubs in preparation for Hardin’s Big Night Out operation and so far they’d done the White Rabbit on Breton Side and Annabel’s next to the marina. Now their focus had turned to Oceana, a huge club situated on the Barbican Leisure Complex along with a multiplex and a Pizza Hut. The club had several different themed rooms and right now they were in an area that supposedly mimicked a New York disco, complete with flashing multi-coloured floor panels and a mirrored ceiling. Savage had pages of notes covering exits, vantage points, possible numbers of clubbers and anything else she thought might be of use for the undercover officers who would be on the ground come Saturday night. Even so the venue would be a nightmare to cover, what with the separate dance floors, booths and private rooms.

  At this time of the morning with the venues empty, they all had the same sterile atmosphere. Savage had to remind herself it was the clubbers who made a venue, the ‘in crowd’ who gave a place its unique vibe. She thought, rather wistfully, that she hadn’t been part of any sort of vibe for a good number of years. With that in mind she beckoned Calter over.

  ‘What sort of people come here then?’ she asked.

  ‘Kids, ma’am. Fifteen year old girls trying to pass for eighteen. Eighteen year old boys trying to look older than their mates so they can snare one of those girls. A few older guys ogling the goods. It’s that sort of place.’

  ‘You’ve been here?’

  ‘Once or twice when everywhere else has been full or when I have been too drunk to be sensible.’

  ‘Snared is a good word, Jane. Both Sally Becker and Tayla Patterson were enticed from this club. Looking around though I am wondering how.’

  ‘It’s like the other venues, ma’am. You wouldn’t believe the place when full. The club is heaving. Anything could happen.’

  ‘Yes, but someone couldn’t be dragged out could they? The door staff would notice at least.’

  ‘They are more concerned with stopping people coming in than worrying about who is leaving, and if someone looks drunk or ill and about to throw up then I would imagine they would be only too pleased to see them go.’

  The CCTV from the camera at the entrance had shown Sally Becker looking ill. She had left alone, staggering down the pavement, pissed out of her brain, whereas Tayla Patterson had been with a man wearing a hoodie who had almost had to carry her away. The bouncers hadn’t remembered the couple, but then why should they? They would shepherd a thousand drunken people in and out of the club every weekend. A half-comatose girl being helped, or even coaxed, to the exit by a guy was nothing out of the ordinary. It went with the territory. Most of the girls would wake up the next morning with a bad head and some would have regrets, maybe even require a visit to the doctor for a pill. The victims in operation Leash came home with rope burns on their wrists and the rest of their lives to try to work out ‘why me?’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Enders. He had glided over the dance floor to Savage and Calter in a pale imitation of John Travolta. ‘You coming out with us Saturday?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. My clubbing days are over. At least in this sort of place. I will be attending tea dances before too long.’

  ‘Well, what about a quick one now, right here, you and me?’

  Message in a Bottle, the Police number, had ended and I Shot the Sheriff echoed from the speakers. Savage smiled, another joke from the manager.

  ‘A quick what, Constable?’

  Savage never got an answer because her mobile rang. Hardin. He wanted her to return to the station. No explanation. Just get back. Fast.

  Savage left Calter and Enders to scout the rest of the clubs on their list and returned to Crownhill. Hardin was waiting in his office, impatient but wearing a mood of quiet seriousness instead of anger. The frown creasing his forehead and narrowing his eyes made her suspect the worst and she was right.

  The body of another girl had been found at Malstead Down, a village on the edge of Dartmoor, some twenty-five miles east of Plymouth. She was naked and had been left in a small wood and the corpse showed signs of sexual interference. Hardin had recounted the facts as if he was telling her about a stolen vehicle.

  ‘Malstead Down. Not right in the village, but nearby. Close enough to make me worried.’ Hardin pulled a liquorice stick from the jar on the desk on front of him and began to chew.

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘The Chief Constable’s mother-in-law lives in the area.’

  ‘Not Jean Sotherwell, the dog mess woman?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hardin’s mouth drooped, but Savage couldn’t stifle a half-smile. The ‘Dog Shit Bitch’, as she had become known, had provided the lower ranks with much amusement a couple of years ago. She had managed to manipulate the local papers and TV stations and mobilise what, at times, seemed like half the force on a crackdown on dog fouling in Devon beauty spots. Simon Fox – the CC – and his immediate subordinates had jumped on command. It had been quite a sight. This was altogether more serious, but Hardin was taking no chances.

  ‘I don’t want the media stirred up on this one if it turns out to be a murder. Lord knows where it may lead. They are going to link the killing with the Plymouth rapes and that will cause us all sorts of problems.’ Hardin gnawed on his liquorice stick. ‘I want you out at the scene pronto. My eyes and ears. You’ve got sensitivity. Some of the others think the word means a type of high grade cannabis.’

  Savage didn’t know whether to be offended or pleased.

  ‘What about Leash?’ Savage asked. ‘With the Olivárez body turning up I feel we are getting somewhere.’

  Hardin shook his head. Leash would continue, of course, and he would need everybody come Saturday night, but a third of the team were going to be seconded to the new inquiry.

  ‘Zebo is the name. I will be pressing to get this ramped up, especially if it does turn out it is a sexual crime. We will be drafting in some of the local boys who have a better knowledge of the area, but the inquiry is to be based here at Major Crimes.’

  Savage nodded. Hardin was under a lot of pressure, and if the Malstead body proved to be yet another sex crime he was right, the media would have a field day.

  *

  The morning had started out fine, but the rain soon pushed in from the west and by the time Savage set off for Malstead it was torrential. The journey took her to the east, first crossing the Plym where the estuary sliced through acres of mud, a few lonely bait diggers braving the elements in search of lug. Then up and out of the city along the A38 where the spray from the heavy lorries made the weather seem all the worse. As she headed along the dual carriageway, Dartmoor rose to her left, a foreboding presence at the best of times. Now, with low cloud scudding over the tors and shadows coalescing in the valleys, the moor appeared as dank and dismal as ever. Savage had history with the
place and the two of them had never made up. Never would either.

  The little village lay up in the hills not far from Widecombe in the Moor. At Buckfastleigh Savage turned off the A38 and negotiated a maze of lanes that became smaller and more winding as she climbed onto the edge of the moor. Only a few patches of the purple heather bloom remained and the procession of cars, to be found clogging roads all over Devon during the tourist season, was absent. For that reason Savage was driving a little too fast, a fact she had cause to regret when at one T-junction she turned left and had to drive into the hedge as a tractor bounced past, its driver laughing at her as he went by. The car had a couple of fresh scratches, but no other damage and Savage resumed her journey at a slower pace. Half a mile farther on a sign on a neat and well-trimmed verge announced she had arrived. A collection of houses you would be hard pushed to call a hamlet, let alone a village, hugged a small green with a single tree in its centre. At the far end a church lay nestled up against the open hillside. A noticeboard with the name St Michael’s on proclaimed ‘Jesus Loves You’. That was as maybe, but in the wet the building loomed grey and grim; the last sort of place you would go for solace. To the right of the church a uniformed officer stood blocking a narrow lane that wound its way along the edge of the moor. Savage slowed the car, lowered the window and showed her warrant card. The officer bent over.

  ‘Carry on along here, ma’am. After a mile or so you’ll get to a lay-by where you can park.’

  Savage thanked the officer and drove on. To the left the moor towered upward, disappearing into mist and cloud. To the right a patchwork of fields cascaded downward to meet a line of trees marking a river. Beyond the trees the fields grew larger and Savage guessed the river marked the boundary between a small farm and a bigger one. A mile farther on several vehicles were pulled off the road on a grassy verge. She parked the car and struggled into her waterproof jacket, recalling Hardin’s parting words to her.

  ‘Charlotte? I don’t need to tell you these are crazy times. With these rapes, the Olivárez murder and now this. I want you to go softly softly on this one because believe me we are already up to our necks in the brown stuff. One wrong step and we might slip under. All of us.’

  Hardin’s words seemed appropriate as she stepped out of the car into a squelch of mud. The rain poured down and the cloud seemed even lower, threatening to engulf her in its chilly grip. All around, the hedgerows and trees were fading to brown and up on the moor the bracken had turned a light tan colour. Winter was coming, a cold and harsh one, if you believed the forecasters. Savage shivered at the thought. She didn’t like the winter with its short days and long, dark nights. With Pete away life became difficult. The children went stir-crazy if they couldn’t be outside, and even with Stefan to help out they were a handful. After they had gone to bed for the night Savage should have been able to relax, but she rarely could. She either had stacks of paperwork to complete or, worse, nothing to do but think. And that wasn’t relaxing at all. This year would be different though. At Christmas Stefan would be returning to his family in Sweden, like he always did. But Pete was due back end of November. Touch wood.

  The door of the car parked in front opened and a young man in his late twenties got out. Tall and athletic with gelled blond hair that shook off the rain like a duck’s back, he stuck out a hand, his friendly smile concealing the reason they were both here.

  ‘DC Craig Newlyn, ma’am. Totnes. I think you’ll find the whole thing a little confusing.’

  ‘Morning, Constable. Who discovered the body?’

  ‘Found by a local farmer,’ Newlyn said. ‘He spotted the tracks in his field, figured they belonged to poachers or vandals, went down to investigate and bingo. Name of Gordon Isaacs. He owns the land around here. His farm is along the road a bit, up on the left.’

  ‘What time?’ asked Savage.

  ‘Last night. Only he didn’t alert us until this morning, said he had work to do.’

  ‘What? Well that’s not a good start.’ Savage glanced back up the lane where the tower of St Michael’s poked up through the mist. ‘We will need to get statements from everybody in the village ASAP. TIE and all that.’ TIE meant Trace, Interview and Eliminate. Unlike when an incident occurred back in the city, the task didn’t appear too arduous out here.

  ‘We have got a couple of extra bods coming from Totnes, should be arriving soon.’

  ‘Good stuff.’

  ‘Ma’am, are you the SIO on this one?’

  ‘No, that will be Detective Superintendent Hardin. I am here for a first look. We’ve got a lot on our plates back in Plymouth.’

  ‘So I’ve been reading,’ Newlyn said.

  ‘Hardin is on his knees and praying this one can be cleared up without any fuss.’

  ‘I don’t think so, ma’am. Not from what I have seen.’

  Savage shook her head. If possible she wanted to get to the scene, have a quick scout around and return to operation Leash. She didn’t want to consider the alternative right now.

  She let Newlyn get back in his car out of the rain and walked up the lane to where a white van straddled the tarmac, parked slap bang in the middle of the road as if acting as a windbreak. Behind the vehicle the crime scene manager was a guy she recognised but couldn’t place and he clung to a large umbrella in the gusting wind. The rain slashed down as determined as ever and neither the van nor the brolly were doing much of a job protecting a white-suited CSI kneeling on the verge in a gateway. The officer had placed a tape measure on the ground alongside some tyre impressions and footprints and was in the process of taking a couple of photographs. Next to the gate a section of fence had been removed to allow access without having to go through the original entrance. A line of blue and white tape snaked across the ground and led down the side of a grassy field marking out a path along which they could walk without disturbing potential evidence.

  ‘John Layton,’ the man held out his free hand as Savage approached. Layton was mid-thirties. Dark hair poked from beneath the brim of a Tilley hat and framed an angular face with an Aquiline nose. The hat dripped water onto a tan coloured Columbo-style rain coat. He pulled the scene log from a coat pocket for Savage to sign. ‘Hardin said he was sending you.’

  ‘He knows I enjoy a nice summer jaunt in the country,’ Savage said, indicating the autumn storm howling overhead. ‘What have you got there?’ She gestured at the mass of mud at Layton’s feet.

  ‘Tyre prints and footprints. The whole thing is a bit of a mess because we have got the farmer’s as well but we might get something. Lifted a couple of good fingerprints off the gate too.’

  ‘Can I go down?’ Savage nodded towards the tape running down the field.

  ‘Sure. One of my guys and a couple of photographers are at the scene already.’

  ‘Pathologist?’

  ‘Stuck on the A38 somewhere.’

  ‘If it’s Nesbit he won’t be happy.’

  ‘It is Nesbit, and no he didn’t sound too pleased when he called to tell me he was late.’ Layton paused and looked down at Savage’s feet. ‘The field is a complete bog. Got some wellies in the back of the van if you’d like?’

  Savage said she would and Layton dug out a pair of yellow boots as well as the obligatory white coverall. Her feet slid around inside the over-sized boots, but as she walked down the side of the field she was grateful for them. The cattle had made much of the pasture a quagmire and the saturated ground oozed underfoot.

  She followed the blue and white tape down to where it was tied to a small aluminium step ladder the CSIs had put up to span the fence. A few metres farther on fence posts and netting lay in a flattened tangle and Savage noticed tyre tracks leading from the pasture into an earthy field where green shoots of wheat or some other crop poked up through the soil. The tyre marks crossed the neat tramlines of tractor tracks and curved left down towards a small patch of woodland at the bottom of the valley.

  Savage climbed over the ladder into the next field and followed the tap
e again. As she neared the trees the clouds seemed to crowd overhead, darkening the sky even more. A stile led into the copse and to its right some more fencing had been removed. She walked through the opening into a little grove with towering old oak trees and slender young ash.

  A sudden flash of harsh white light from a camera lit up a white crime scene tent and through the open end Savage could see a pale body lying like a sleeping nymph from a fairy tale. Two people stood next to the body on plastic stepping plates, one taking the pictures, the other with a small video camera. She recognised the photographer as Rod Oliver. His silver hair and craggy, weathered face showed he was getting on in years, but he knew his job. A year or so ago he had gone independent and filled in his spare time doing wedding shoots. Two more disparate sets of clients were hard to imagine. At the far edge of the clearing another figure in white combed the scrub with a long metal probe, teasing the long grass and nettles apart. Savage didn’t go any closer but she could see the corpse belonged to a young woman, late teens or early twenties. White skin, no clothing, hands by her sides, legs apart. She didn’t appear dead, just as if she was resting for a while. Her angelic face stared skyward towards heaven, but although the nakedness hit Savage like an electric shock, there was nothing else of note.

  She looked around at the woodland. On a summer’s day with a picnic and a family and laughter and smiles this would be an idyllic place. Today an autumn chill seeped from the ground and the wind whistled through the trees. The scrub and brambles appeared to be creeping into the clearing, trying to cover everything, to wipe out all traces of humanity and reinstate the wilderness.

  Oliver noticed her and walked back along the row of stepping plates. He told her what he knew.

  ‘At first sight no obvious cause of death, although there is a strange cut mark on the belly. I would hazard a guess drugs are involved. Also, clever young Matt spotted a couple of indentations in the moss between her legs.’

  Oliver introduced the pale-faced guy with the video camera as his assistant. Savage didn’t think Matt looked young or clever, but when you went independent you would have to keep a tight rein on costs, she thought.