Touch (DI Charlotte Savage)

by Mark Sennen

  Donal stopped and Savage heard the clock in the hall tick-tocking, marking the silence. She struggled for what to say to a man who was happy to have other men leer at his daughter, but could think of nothing. After a moment Donal continued.

  ‘I suppose you wonder at how I could stand it? Well, I can’t explain. She was happy doing it and earning money. Plus it was tasteful at first, nothing you don’t see in magazines or on the television. Trouble was they soon wanted more and Kelly wouldn’t say no. You might think it odd me being there at the shoots, but by going along I knew she was safe and nothing untoward was taking place. At least that was how it was before she met Forester.’

  ‘Which was at the Metropolis?’

  ‘Yes. Back in the spring. An all-day shoot. Kelly was getting a couple of hundred quid net for it after we had paid a sum to the club management and something for equipment hire. The money worried me because Kelly was beginning to get used to it. She had already moved out and rented the place in Plymouth. She said it made it easier to get to college and to her work placement, but I thought she might drop her studies if too many rewards came her way. I think that was how Forester got to her.’

  ‘Because you were not around?’

  ‘Yes.’ Donal’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And he promised her more money and other stuff too.’

  ‘Drugs?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For doing the videos?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which from what we have seen weren’t quite so tasteful.’

  ‘No.’ Donal lowered his head and looked down at the floor and Savage let him brood for a moment.

  ‘Was there anybody else she saw, apart from Forester?’ She asked.

  ‘What, you mean at the shoots?’

  ‘No, I mean generally. Other men interested in her.’

  ‘Oh, there were lots. If you are a woman who takes her clothes off for money you get interest. After a shoot my phone would ring red hot for the next few days. “Does Kelly do girl-on-girl, Mr Donal?”’ Donal put on a weasel-like voice. ‘“Can she use her fingers for me, Mr Donal? For an extra couple of hundred?” They wanted to get as much flesh into their cameras as possible. You were right in what you said earlier, Inspector. It had got out of control, it had gone too far. Her innocence had gone.’

  Donal glanced up at the big picture of Kelly and bit his lip. Savage wondered whether he thought it was all his fault the innocence had slipped away along with Kelly’s clothing.

  ‘What about other boyfriends?’

  ‘I wish there had been, Inspector, but no, Forester would have killed them.’

  ‘But he didn’t seem to mind other men getting off on pictures or videos of her, did he?’

  ‘Some men like that, owning something others can’t have. Anyway, with Forester I reckon it was the money. Kelly was his way out. His way up.’

  ‘He was hardly the next Mario Testino.’

  ‘Forester wouldn’t see it like that. You know how these estate kids are, they think they are the best at everything. Stupid, because he was an all round loser, a right scrote. Poor Kelly got hooked on whatever crap he was peddling and look where she’s ended up.’

  At that point the living room door opened and Farrell came in with some cups on a tray.

  ‘Mrs Donal has gone to have a lie down so I thought I would do the honours. Have I missed anything of importance?’

  Calter opened her mouth as if she was about to say something, but Donal got there first.

  ‘No, Luke, not really.’ Donal was half-smiling now, but shaking his head at the same time. ‘Only the sound of some birds flapping their wings.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Chickens. Coming home to roost.’ The smile vanished from Donal’s face and a tear rolled down the man’s cheek.

  Chapter 11

  North Prospect, Plymouth. Wednesday 27th October. 2.20 pm

  They drove back from Yelverton in silence. Calter stared out of the window, arms folded across her chest. Savage just let her stew. The girl had to learn that real life situations differed from those encountered during training. Donal needed to be told. Maybe now the truth had been knocked home he might come to his senses and realise what he had done had, at least in part, led to Kelly’s death. It wasn’t going to be easy for him, but better to face up to the facts now than let them stew for the rest of his life.

  Back in town Savage drove them through Beacon Park, where Kelly had lived, and then into the adjoining area of North Prospect. The place had a reputation for being rough and crime-ridden, filled with youths who liked nothing better of an evening than indulging their passion for a bit of anti-social behaviour. Thanks to the efforts of community workers and the police the reputation diminished a little every year. Nevertheless, the council had plans to transform the neighbourhood, despite the protestations of many of the residents, by demolishing half the properties and refurbishing the rest. In Savage’s eyes it didn’t seem too bad; you would feel far more nervous walking through so-called good areas in London, and in the summer the place had an aura nearer to that of a leafy suburb than a location associated with high deprivation.

  Appearances could be deceptive though, and in the mile or so distance from his parents’ house in St Budeaux to his flat in North Prospect David Forester had moved down the social scale, hitting rock-bottom with a grotty place on the ground floor of half an old council semi. Cracks in the pebbledash, metal window frames crusty with corrosion and a pile of junk in the minuscule front garden didn’t make it inviting, and inside was worse. Officers were trooping in and out with plastic boxes filled with what looked to Savage like rubbish.

  ‘Evidence,’ a member of the search team assured her. ‘Mind you, the place is a complete tip. Cigarette butts ground into the floor, empty cans of coke, Stella, half-eaten Indians, McDonald’s, pizza, you name it. And the whole thing nicely festering since it has all been sitting for a few months.’

  ‘Lovely.’

  ‘There’s worse. Dog shit everywhere as well and a thousand flies swarming around. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from until the neighbour told us about Forester’s dog.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Oh yes! A staffy, as if you couldn’t have guessed. We found the corpse in the spare room under the bed. It was mostly maggots. A neighbour said she heard barking but was too scared of Forester to do much.’

  ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer breed of dog,’ Savage said.

  ‘My gran kept staffies,’ Calter said. ‘Me and my brother played with them when we were kids.’

  ‘Well, if they get anywhere near my kids I kick first and ask questions later.’

  Calter shut up and went even deeper into her sulk while Savage asked the team leader if they had found anything linking Forester to Kelly. He stood at the edge of the garden and sparked up a fag, leaning over the wall to ensure any ash dropped outside his search cordon.

  ‘He’s got a couple of computer screens and a keyboard in his bedroom, but no computer. There must be a base unit or laptop somewhere, but we haven’t found it yet.’

  ‘Anything else of interest?’ Savage asked.

  ‘A hundred grams of smack and some small bottles of liquid that could be GHB.’

  ‘Really? Confirms he was a serious dealer then.’

  ‘Looks that way. We also found his mobile phone and there are a hell of a lot of contacts. We’ll download the address book and call logs and let you have them. Last call was made on the seventh of August.’

  ‘A good number of days after Kelly was last seen.’

  ‘Yup. And we found a Mirror dated the eighth on the kitchen table.’

  ‘So they didn’t disappear together then, we now know that at least. Let’s see if his parents can shed any light on where he might be.’

  *

  Alice Nash came round in pitch black, a cloying darkness smelling of damp, mould and mildew. Her head hurt like crazy and she felt groggy.

  That would be the alcohol t
hen, idiot.

  She remembered having drunk too much, way too much. After work? With a friend? The memory flickered somewhere in her mind but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She reached out for the bedside clock to try and find out the time and her hand fumbled in the air. Nothing. No bedside table either, and as she groped farther – ouch – a wall. Now she realised she was lying on the floor. In her bedroom?

  No, my room has a nice soft carpet with a couple of big sheepskins.

  She felt the hard, wooden surface beneath her body, an uneven floorboard digging into her back. She shivered and hugged herself, touching the goose bumps on her arms and realising at the same time she was naked.

  Naked!

  An uncontrollable spasm shook through her whole body and she began to retch. Almost without thinking she put her hand down between her legs, but no, she hadn’t been raped and she hadn’t had sex.

  She sat up and turned and saw a thin, horizontal glare of light at floor level. She blinked. The light came from a gap under a door perhaps two metres away and gave her some perspective. The slit cast a weak ray that fanned out across the floor and illuminated a space no bigger than a box room. The walls appeared to be rough plastered. An old house perhaps? That would explain the damp. But when she breathed in she detected a pungent aroma as well, a smell of something rotten. Next to her a mattress lay on the floor with no bed frame or anything.

  Was I on that? Did I roll off in my sleep?

  She eased herself across the floor and onto the mattress. Now she could see something on the mattress, a bulky, formless shape. She put out a hand and discovered a duvet. She pulled it nearer and gathered the soft material around her, grateful for the warmth and the privacy.

  Privacy from what? From who?

  She let out a little cry, involuntary; her instincts told her she should scream, scream at the top of her voice until someone heard, but she didn’t.

  He would have thought of that.

  He? It must be a ‘he’ mustn’t it? They always were. Apart from Rose West or the Myra woman who’d died in prison from cancer because they didn’t ever let anyone like her out.

  She wished she hadn’t thought of that. Not just of those women, although the image of them was bad enough. It was also the thought of prison, being trapped in a small room and dying without ever knowing freedom again.

  Hang on, who said you were in prison, stupid?

  She shook herself and laughed at her wild imagination. Maybe she had crashed out at some party or dossed down in some student’s room. She moved off the mattress and stood up, wrapping the duvet around herself like an over-sized toga. She walked over to the door and reached for the handle. The cold metal made a slight squeak as she pushed it down and tried to pull the door towards her.

  It was locked.

  *

  They drove from North Prospect to the top end of St Budeaux, the nicer part, which wasn’t saying much. However, on Waverley Road neat little bungalows and semis jostled for position and some care and attention had been paid to the properties by their owners. The line of mid-range cars – some new – parked on the road testified to the fact that the area had aspirations. Still on-street though, Savage noted. Only once you parked your car on your own land could you finally say you had arrived in true middle class suburban heaven.

  Number sixty-two had a tiny pond in the front garden and a black and white porcelain cat dipped a paw in the water, intent on catching one of the goldfish swimming under the dying lily pads. The house backed onto some woodland, almost a rural idyll, Savage thought. But not quite. When she and Calter got out of the car the roar of the traffic became all too apparent. The A38 lay the other side of the trees and the noise of the cars rushing down the hill towards the Tamar Bridge crossing into Cornwall was quite intolerable.

  The bright red front door reeked of fresh paint and was opened by Mrs Forester, an overweight woman in her seventies. She held onto the door for support with one hand and with the other tried to button her mauve cardigan against the chill. The cardigan was loose-knit and the sleeves looked like they had expanded over the years to accommodate her pudgy arms and body to the extent that the garment now resembled a purple fishing net. She gave up fumbling with the buttons and accepted the need for further questioning with a weary nod of her head. Savage got the impression the woman had dealt with the police many times before.

  She led them through into the lounge, a simple, neat little room, probably unchanged for decades. Apart from the huge flat screen TV standing half in front of the fireplace. Older houses hadn’t been designed with such monstrosities in mind and it looked ridiculous.

  ‘Present from David,’ Mrs Forester said, noting Savage’s interest. ‘He was always good to me when he was around.’ She nodded at the sole picture on the mantelpiece. A teenage boy in football kit, one foot on a ball, hands on hips. Defiant.

  ‘Is that him?’ Savage asked.

  ‘Yes. Years ago.’ The old lady smiled. Then her face turned sour. ‘Before you lot started hassling him.’

  Savage ignored the dig and began to ask about David’s childhood. It soon became evident Mrs Forester was not David’s mother after all, rather she was his grandmother. Savage asked her how she had come to care for David.

  ‘Clary, my daughter, had David when she was fifteen and still at home. By seventeen she had got bored with the baby and buggered off. We got the occasional letter for the first few years, then nothing. Don’t even know where she is now.’

  ‘So you had to bring up David all on your own?’

  ‘Well, with my husband Vic, but he wasn’t much help. He hit David hard enough but he never changed a nappy, never fed him, never read a bedtime book.’

  Mrs Forester stared out of the bay window with a blank expression Savage had seen countless times before. The empty eyes almost always belonged to a woman, and Savage could usually sense regret and resignation in them. Regret at who the woman had married, resignation to their fate and the fact that prince charming was not about to rescue them.

  ‘And David? Bringing him up must have been difficult.’

  ‘Difficult! What would you lot know about difficult? Does your husband come home drunk and slap you around? Do the kids round you shoot cats with airguns? Do your neighbours fight on the street outside?’

  ‘Mrs Forester we are not here to judge you, we just want to find out what happened to David.’

  The old lady ignored Savage and carried on.

  ‘Initiatives and targets then back to your nice house with a driveway and a bloody people carrier, I’ll bet. Good school round the corner where the teachers can teach rather than spend their time searching the kids for knives or drugs.’

  ‘We are police officers, Mrs Forester, we are not social workers or politicians. We are trying to find David and Kelly.’

  ‘Kelly? Oh, it’s about her is it? I seen on the news she was dead. No one cared before, no one bothered about what had happened to my David.’ The woman’s eyes filled with tears and her head went down, a hand scrabbling in her sleeve for a handkerchief.

  Savage made a gesture to Calter and the younger officer moved to comfort the old woman. Savage left the room and went back to the kitchen to see about rustling up a pot of tea. The kitchen was a surprise after the staid lounge: modern, everything clean and tidy. Through the window to the back Savage saw a pretty garden. You’d have to be deaf to enjoy sitting out on the patio, but the plants appeared well-tended and a lot of work had gone into laying out the lawn and the neat flowerbeds. Mrs Forester must be proud of it. Savage wondered if she could say the same about her grandson.

  When Savage returned with the tea Mrs Forester had composed herself. She had suggested to Calter that they might like to see David’s room.

  ‘Room?’ Savage asked. ‘I thought he lived at the flat in North Prospect?’

  ‘He does. But he only moved out three years ago and I’ve kept his room for him. He likes to crash here sometimes and he’s still got his photo stuff up there so he is
round a couple of times a week. Or rather, he used to be.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Forester, it might be useful.’

  ‘Not at all.’ The old lady’s face brightened for a moment. ‘First on the left at the top of the stairs.’

  Savage and Calter climbed the stairs and heard Mrs Forester call out after them. ‘The pictures on the wall are all his own work. He’s quite good with a camera. He was with a club you know?’

  ‘Which club, Mrs Forester?’ Savage called down.

  ‘A photography club. I can’t remember the name, but it is in Plymouth. He used to go there before he got interested in video. After that he preferred to make movies.’

  Calter mouthed a silent, ‘Did he now?’ to Savage as they entered the bedroom.

  The single bed had a faded Chelsea duvet on it and football stickers covered the flat-pack off-white wardrobe and chest of drawers. Over to one side of a window that overlooked the back garden was a desk on which sat with three flatscreen monitors. A jumble of leads snaked down from the monitors to a computer base unit tucked away underneath. Calter moved to the desk and reached down to switch the unit on.

  ‘Result, ma’am. You don’t have three big screens connected to one machine just to waste your life on Facebook.’

  Savage let Calter get on with searching the computer and scanned the pictures on the walls of the room. Large sized black and white prints of women, naked or partially clothed, dark shadows, pale skin, almost abstract and not in any way pornographic. They weren’t even in that category called tasteful, which was merely an excuse for sad wankers to display them without appearing sexist. These were innocent, naturalistic and the women were not looking at the camera. They wouldn’t have been out of place at a local gallery, except Plymouth didn’t do such things very well. Take them up to Salcombe or Dartmouth though and the grockles swarming round the streets in the summer would snatch them up.