Touch (DI Charlotte Savage)

by Mark Sennen

  She must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing she was aware of was a sound at the door. A key turning in the lock. She grabbed the duvet and scampered under, like a snail retreating into its shell.

  The door opened and a hand pushed a tray along the floor and into the room. The tray held a bowl of fruit – apples, bananas, grapes – and a bottle of spring water. The door swung shut.

  ‘Wait! Who are you? Please let me go!’ Alice jumped off the mattress and ran to the door.

  Click. The key turned and footsteps walked off into the distance.

  Chapter 16

  The final time he saw Carmel was three weeks after Mitchell’s Christmas party. He wished he could purge the memory from his mind, but he couldn’t. The images would stay with him forever.

  The phone had shocked him awake sometime after two in the morning. Mitchell! Mitchell? What the hell was Mitchell doing ringing at that time? He sat up in bed, half asleep, listening to Mitchell asking for help. Mitchell wanted to meet him out at Wembury, in the car park next to the beach. As soon as possible. And no questions.

  Harry got dressed and went out into the night. Got in his car and drove at a crawl through town and out east across the Plym, turning south into the country and toward the sea. At one point he passed a patrol car going the other way and he willed the police to stop and turn in the road and come after him. He’d tell them all about Mitchell and perhaps then the nightmare would end.

  It didn’t happen and he drove on through the dark lanes to Wembury. Down past the village and along a track to the car park that stood next to the beach. A cafe sat perched on the rocks right on the seafront and Harry recalled going there one summer morning years ago. He had drunk a coffee while he waited for the crowds to arrive.

  He parked the car overlooking the bay and sat and waited. Drizzle misted the windscreen and he set the wipers to intermittent. Somewhere up in the clouds the moon cast a strange washed-out glow over the sea. Harry could see the tide was ebbing and more and more beach became exposed as the minutes ticked by. Harry remembered the last time. The hot sun, the drip, drip, drip of ice creams, the screaming kids. But most of all he remembered the girls. Their firm, young bodies, the colourful bikinis, the wet T-shirts, the curves, the smiles and the laughter. Click, click, click with his camera and their flesh was captured forever. Preserved. Harry chewed his tongue and swallowed spit. His eyes surveyed the cold, grey sand, the rocks and the dark clumps of seaweed. The place had transformed into something different now and so had he. Frigid. Empty. Plain absent.

  Swish. Another five seconds. The dashboard clock glowed out 3:00 AM and he realised that he had now been sitting in the car for twenty-three minutes. Too long. Mitchell had told him to hurry so where was he?

  As if in answer he saw headlights coming down the track. It was either Mitchell or he was busted. The car crept along, as if checking the roadside and then stopped perhaps twenty metres away. The lights were on full beam and it was hard to make out the make and model. Then the lights dimmed. Bright white to a dim yellow, fading all the time, first like a torch, then a candle, then a glowing cigarette, then off.

  Mitchell’s Jag.

  Harry was shaking now. Mitchell scared him and as he grasped the door handle to get out he was aware of the sweat on his fingers. He wiped his hands on his trousers, clambered out of the car and walked back to the Jag.

  The driver’s window purred down and Mitchell sat staring ahead.

  ‘Harry,’ he whispered. ‘Thank God you’ve come!’

  ‘Well, you know–’

  ‘You and me, Harry, we understand the world, we understand things don’t appear as they should, plans don’t transpire the way we want them to. The brave press on. The accomplished performer improvises. The fallen runner gets up and attacks with renewed vigour.’

  Harry’s mouth hung open. Mitchell spouted gibberish, but it went with the territory he supposed. He let Mitchell continue.

  ‘Check the boot. Bit of a problem.’ Mitchell didn’t move. He just continued gazing into the distance.

  Harry went round to the rear of the car and sprung the boot lid. There was a rubber dinghy folded up and crammed in there, not the sort you could buy on the seafront, but a heavy inflatable from a chandlers. He didn’t say anything, just stared and wondered what the hell was going on in Mitchell’s head.

  ‘Get the fucking dinghy out and see what is underneath.’ Mitchell’s voice floated out from the window.

  Harry tried to pull the dinghy out but it took all his effort to get even part of it over the lip of the boot. Then he saw the hand poking out from underneath the rubber. Pink nail varnish. The odour of perfume mixing with the PVC smell of the new dinghy.

  Clunk.

  Mitchell got out of the car and stood beside Harry.

  ‘Bit of a problem,’ he repeated, as if Harry hadn’t heard him the first time.

  Harry groaned. This was bad. He didn’t need this sort of trouble. The rapes were one thing, but Mitchell had gone too far this time.

  ‘Let’s get this pumped up and down to the beach.’ Mitchell grabbed the dinghy, his voice calm and ordered as if they were on a day out at the seaside. The dinghy rolled over the lip of the boot and flopped onto the floor, lifeless. Harry peered in the boot. Hand connected to arm, to body, to some hessian material. The girl was hooded with a sack tied tight around her neck. He looked down at her body. Light brown skin wrapped in a baby-doll nightdress, a silver cross on a chain nestling in ample cleavage, toned muscles, a little tattoo of a dolphin high on her left inner thigh.

  ‘The Spanish girl?’ Harry said, feeling quite unwell and putting a hand out to steady himself against the car.

  ‘Precisely.’ Mitchell said. ‘The pretty Spanish girl who knows a bit too much about the English. I’ve given her a little something to help her forget.’ He reached into the boot and took a bellows-type foot pump out. ‘Possibly a bit too much of a little something. Couldn’t call an ambulance, could I? Too many questions. Too many silly little questions.’

  ‘I thought she had gone back to Spain?’ Harry struggled to get the words out, aware of the quiver in his voice.

  ‘She had.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She came back again. Unwillingly, of course. Came through customs with her on the back seat covered with a blanket.’

  Harry could imagine Mitchell doing that. Crazy.

  Mitchell began to pump the dinghy. The air made short hissing noises as it forced its way passed the valve. Like sharp intakes of breath. Like the sound the girl had made as Mitchell and RT had fucked her as she lay tied to the bed.

  ‘But why?’ Harry asked. ‘Wasn’t it better with her over there? Out of the way?’

  ‘Out of the way. Exactly.’ Mitchell said. But he shook his head. ‘RT’s fault. The blindfold came off. Afterwards he realised that he knew the girl.’

  ‘Richard? Afterwards?’

  ‘That’s what I said to him. A bit bloody late in the day. Fucking idiot. Anyway, couldn’t risk her blabbing once she was safely home so I brought her back. Kept her round my place for a bit. Had a bit of fun. Seemed a shame not to!’

  Harry said nothing. He didn’t know what to think. Mitchell was grade one rocket fuel. Unstable. One little spark and he would blow and take Harry with him into oblivion.

  ‘Help me!’ Mitchell lifted one end of the dinghy and nodded at Harry to grab the other end. He did so and they stumbled across the car park and down the steep path to the beach. They manhandled the little boat across the wet sand and rock to the sea and Harry felt icy cold water surge around his ankles as they staggered into the surf. Mitchell left him holding the painter as the boat bobbed around on the swell and he ran back to the car park. A couple of minutes later he staggered into view again, the girl thrown over his right shoulder in a fireman’s lift and a grab bag with something heavy in it in his other hand.

  Mitchell dumped the girl down and she slumped onto the edge of the dinghy now, a pretty marionette wit
h all the life gone out of her.

  ‘Get her out there,’ he said, gesturing with his arm somewhere in the general direction of France. ‘Chuck her overboard with something to weigh her down.’ He pulled a length of heavy chain from the bag, bent down near the girl’s ankles and grinned. ‘This should do!’

  Harry wondered if Mitchell was quite right in the head. But of course he wasn’t. The two of them were here on a beach in the middle of the night with a corpse and Mitchell was smiling.

  ‘Harry! What has happened to you? We are living man! That was why I told you to stop taking the pills. Experience things as they really are. Live on the edge. Did you think that was only talk?’

  Harry gazed down into the inky water, feeling the sand shift beneath his feet as another wave frothed by. The dinghy bounced against his legs, spinning, alive. The girl lay still, the only noise the surf and a small hiss as if air was escaping from a leak somewhere. Harry prayed the police would be along soon and they would be caught, but at least he would be safe. Pulled back from the brink before he went one step too far. He was aware of Mitchell staring at him, but he didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. He was too scared.

  Suddenly the girl twitched and a leg shot out catching Mitchell on the left knee. He staggered backwards and fell into the surf, cracking his head on a rock. Blind from the sack the girl flailed her arms at nothing, jumped up, stumbled and tripped on the painter line on the dinghy. For a second she thrashed in the surf, but then she was on her feet, running away across the beach, her hands clawing at the sacking, a nightmarish figure disappearing into the gloom.

  Mitchell was up now, grabbing the bag in his right hand and roaring at Harry.

  ‘Bloody bitch! Come on!’

  Harry jumped up and followed him, the sand already sapping his energy with every stride. Mitchell loomed somewhere ahead, thump, thump, thump, thump. He looked back and gestured for Harry to hurry up. The girl had run along the beach, but she was running west, away from the car park, where there was only a rocky foreshore with steep cliffs blocking the way to the coastal path. A vast plateau of rock stretched out to the sea and the girl was stumbling across it. Harry could see her ahead now and it was plain that they were going to catch her. All of a sudden she disappeared from view, she had gone down a fissure in the rock, a sandy finger that led to the sea. Mitchell gestured again and Harry understood his plan. He wanted him to go to the next crack farther on so he could cut off any chance she had of escape, for that was the only other way out from the plateau.

  With renewed vigour Harry sprinted the remaining distance and reached the second fissure. He stopped with hands on hips for a moment, panting.

  ‘Harry!’ Mitchell’s voice rung out, echoing off the rocky cliffs. ‘Down here!’

  Harry took a deep breath and jumped down onto the sand and headed seawards.

  ‘Quickly!’

  Harry raced along the sand, half-groping in the dark, afraid he might trip and smash his head on a rock. Then a bright light in his eyes blinded him for a moment as Mitchell pointed a beam from a torch at him. Right in his face. The girl cowered against a boulder, knees drawn up to her chin and Mitchell stood over her, one hand clamped on her shoulder.

  ‘The trouble is she knows Richard, Harry. And now she knows you too, doesn’t she? Recognises you from when you first met her.’ Mitchell shook his head. ‘Hold her down.’

  The words froze Harry, grabbed hold of his heart and squeezed hard. He stood motionless as Mitchell seized the girl and threw her to the sand.

  ‘What are you going to do, Harry? Phone the police? You get too pushy with some real cute pussy and this is the result. What do you think the police will say when they find out about all those girls you have been following around town? And all those pictures? Tut, tut, tut. I think they will call the doctors, don’t you?’

  ‘Can’t we just–’

  ‘What? Ask her if she will forgive us?’

  The torch beam left Harry and shone down on the girl. Her face was poking out from behind her knees, the sack hood missing, her nightdress torn. With her long, dark hair and light brown skin the likeness to Carmel was frightening and Carmel had been special to him. Very special.

  ‘Can’t we take her somewhere? Talk about this. Work something out.’ Harry couldn’t find the right words, but he knew he wanted to help Carmel, to try and save her from Mitchell. Perhaps she would be grateful. Perhaps they could even be together.

  ‘OK, Harry, you win.’ Mitchell looked resigned. ‘Hold her, will you, while I find my phone to call an ambulance.’

  Harry took Mitchell’s place, holding the girl’s left arm and thinking this was the first time he had touched her. Mitchell took something from the grab bag, some sort of medical device, metallic, cylindrical. Not like a phone at all.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘Just something to put her to sleep so we can deal with her.’

  At the word ‘sleep’ the girl struggled once more and Mitchell screamed at Harry to hold her.

  Then Mitchell had the thing against the girl’s head and there was a loud bang. The head jerked back and blood sprayed out, bubbling over Harry’s hands and arms, warm and sticky. There was a burnt smell like a kid’s cap gun, only a kid’s cap gun never busted someone’s head like that.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ Harry was up on his feet, stumbling backwards, unable to take his eyes from the horror.

  Blood was still spurting out, cascading over Mitchell, over the stones, the girl’s body was shaking and quivering and then all of a sudden she was silent and still, only the distant sound of the waves washing over the rocks in the gloom.

  ‘Shit,’ Mitchell smiled and got up and wiped his hands on his jacket. ‘Didn’t think it was going to be quite as much fun as that!’

  Harry turned from Mitchell and ran into the blackness.

  Chapter 17

  Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 28th October. 2.38 pm

  Hardin must have got indigestion from too much liquorice because he had been in a foul mood when Savage told him about Alice Nash, threatening to skin the officers who failed to follow up on the Donal case. Thank goodness those responsible weren’t on her team because those picked out for the Hardin treatment would get pissed on and the splashback would hit anybody within range. With the metaphor stuck in her mind she went for lunch, unsurprised when she found she didn’t fancy much apart from a pastry and coffee. She finished off the pastry in record time and took the coffee back to the incident room. The heating had been turned up and a distinct fug hung in the air. Officers bustled to and fro in shirtsleeves, oblivious to the weather worsening outside the windows, and the place felt like a haven from the brewing storm. DS Collier sat in front of a terminal showing Calter some reports of various sightings of Forester. The two of them looked an unlikely pair with the sergeant’s greying military-style hair and shirt and tie contrasting with Calter’s bouncy shoulder-length bob and casual outfit of distressed jeans and tight top. Collier had collated all the statements and they pointed to Forester disappearing sometime in early August. He had started to tell Savage about cross referencing the dates with the bank and mobile records when DC Enders called across from his desk with a flush of excitement on his face.

  ‘Ma’am, phone call for you. A guy with some information. Won’t give his name and won’t speak to anyone but you.’ Enders indicated a phone near where she was standing. ‘Line one.’

  The whole room fell silent as Savage moved to the desk, plucked up the handset and punched a key.

  ‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage speaking, who is this please?’

  A pause before a voice came on the line. A man’s voice, but muffled and quiet, a whisper almost. Maybe he was holding something over the mouthpiece?

  ‘It’s about Forester. I have some information. He murdered the girl. Poisoned her. You wouldn’t know from looking, but he killed her. From the inside out.’

  ‘Could I have your name please?’

  ‘No.
I am not telling you that.’

  ‘Anything you say will be treated in the strictest confidence, but if you do not want to give your name that is fine.’

  ‘Good. Because I am not going to.’ Another pause. ‘You sail boats don’t you?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Despite the warmth of the room a cold chill slid over her for a second. Then she remembered the newspaper story about her and Pete again, the one Nesbit had mentioned. She continued. ‘Yes, when I get the chance.’

  Silence. Savage sensed the man was waiting for something more, some elaboration and if she didn’t oblige the call would be over.

  ‘I sail a Westerly out of Plymouth, a little family boat, mostly coastal pottering, but we go down to the Isles of Scilly occasionally, across to the Channel Islands and Brittany if we have the time.’ Savage waited a moment. ‘You said you had some information about David Forester?’

  ‘Zero five zero degrees, thirty-seven point four five minutes north. Zero, zero, three degrees, fifty-nine point six one minutes west.’

  Savage motioned to Calter, waving her towards the terminal on the desk as she scratched the numbers down on a pad.

  ‘Can you repeat that please?’

  Then nothing but dead air and the sound of the caller hanging up leaving Savage repeating the numbers aloud and cross checking with what she had written.

  ‘Google this,’ Savage said, handing Calter the piece of paper. ‘Lat long.’

  ‘Sorry, ma’am?’ Calter crooked her head on one side and squinted at Savage’s writing.

  ‘The caller gave me those, a latitude longitude plot supposedly pointing to where Forester is hiding. Put it into Google Maps and we might just have a result.’

  ‘The position is on Dartmoor, ma’am.’ Enders, beaming and pleased with himself.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit, um, embarrassing. A little like trainspotting.’ The pleased look had turned sheepish, Enders staring at the desk.

  ‘What is?’