Touch (DI Charlotte Savage)

by Mark Sennen

  Monday morning brought her back to earth with a bump. The elation from the conclusion of the Leash case was proving short-lived now operation Zebo had another body to contend with. Over the weekend more staff had been drafted in and the incident room was becoming rather crowded. An extra-large photograph of Simone Ashton now adorned the main whiteboard. Blonde tresses, cuddly jumper, a pout on her lips like she had blown the room a ‘thank you’ kiss. And startling eyes, deep blue, intoxicating. Those eyes had seen the killer when she had been picked up, when she had willingly gone with him. Those eyes had gazed upon someone who had reassured her. Those eyes had been deceived. But by who?

  The post-mortem on Simone had taken place over the weekend and Nesbit confirmed signs of freezing were present. Worse, the girl’s mouth had been mutilated with a knife and Nesbit had identified the piece of flesh Savage had discovered in the church font as the girl’s tongue. Nesbit had also, in his words, ‘double fast-tracked’ the toxicology. The results only served to further dampen the mood: As with Kelly, Simone’s hair had traces of GHB in and the segmentation analysis suggested that she had only lived for between seven to fourteen days after it was administered.

  ‘Alice Nash went missing two weeks ago this afternoon. Time is running out. We need a lead and fast.’ Savage sat at a desk with Calter and Enders, indulging in a spot of brainstorming. ‘Kelly, Simone, possibly Alice. All disappeared without any sign of an abduction. No struggle, nobody notices anything, in broad daylight?’

  ‘They knew the abductor?’ Enders said.

  ‘Thank you, Patrick, that much is obvious. But the problem is who?’

  ‘There are so few male staff at these places. We’ve eliminated them all.’ Enders scanned a printout of names and Calter peered over at the sheet.

  ‘Different places anyway,’ Calter said. ‘We are looking for connections. Someone who can access all the nurseries and who arouses no suspicion.’

  ‘OfSTED?’ Enders said, a half-smile on his face.

  ‘I want you to check when they made their inspections and get a list of the people involved,’ Savage answered. ‘No stone as they say.’

  Enders groaned and now Savage went off on one. She wanted lists of cleaners, caretakers, plumbers, builders, entertainers, anyone who might have cause to visit more than one of the nurseries. She got up and crossed the room to one of the whiteboards on which she drew a checkerboard of lines.

  ‘Names of nurseries along the top, possibles down the side, a cross where we get a result. Two crosses and we are interested, more than two and we have a definite suspect. We put the data in the system and this is what the results will look like graphically. The important thing will be not to miss anybody.’

  ‘They’ll have been CRB’d, ma’am,’ Calter said.

  ‘Good, the CRB check will make it all the easier to find them and eliminate them.’

  ‘How are we going to be sure we get everyone?’

  ‘We will start with the accounts. Staff and other workers will all get paid. Anyone from outside doing work at the nursery, like builders for instance, send in invoices and the details will be in the ledger. After that we can develop any other possibles. Like OfSTED.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Enders said. ‘One group of people who use the nurseries won’t have been CRB checked and that is the parents.’

  ‘You are right and we mustn’t overlook them. But the nurseries should hold accurate records so we will be able to see any correlations.’

  ‘You think some dad took a fancy to one of the girls?’ Calter asked.

  ‘That is entirely plausible.’

  ‘At different nurseries?’

  ‘People move house, children are unhappy, lots of reasons to change nurseries.’

  ‘But you think a parent could do what this guy has done?’

  Savage paused. Parents killed, of course they did, but in this situation? You drop your little Jake off, wait outside and when one of the girls comes off duty you pick her up, take her somewhere and rape and kill her?

  ‘I would hope not, but if you put a stop sign at the end of an avenue you can’t drive down the road can you? We can’t start with any preconceived ideas about who we are dealing with.’

  At that moment DS Riley came into the incident room. He stood at the door with his hands on his hips, out of breath. He had sweat on his forehead and worry on his face, but excitement in his eyes.

  ‘Ma’am, someone got stabbed on the terraces below the Hoe last night.’

  ‘So I heard.’ A stabbing wasn’t unusual. Neither, for that matter, was a glassing, a bloody good kicking or anyone of the other possible ways to hurt someone when you’d had one too many and somebody had knocked your drink over, glanced at your missus or just stepped on your toes. Late night Plymouth did violence like West End London did shows.

  ‘The victim is one Ben Robbins. He happens to be Simone Ashton’s boyfriend.’ Riley stood with his hands on his hips, trying to get his breath back. ‘And we have a witness.’

  *

  When Riley explained the witness they’d found was Done That Danny, a well-known police time-waster, Savage sent Enders off to deal with taking a statement. Danny’s evening meal often consisted of a bag of soggy chips washed down with half a dozen cans of Tenants Super, so it wouldn’t be altogether surprising if the lead turned out to be nothing but a drink induced fantasy. Something to get Danny a bit of attention and maybe some free biscuits and a cup of tea, five sugars.

  Enders had trooped off to the cliff-side terraces wearing the sort of hang-dog expression Savage was used to from her junior officers when put on house-to-house duties, but he called through breathless and excited an hour later and insisted Savage ought to see what he had found.

  She had dutifully got in a car and driven to the Hoe to find out what Enders was on about. He stood at the gap in the wall where Simone’s boyfriend had been attacked and he led her down a twisting path toward the sea.

  Danny waited on the beach, hands in the pockets of his threadbare raincoat, head bowed, his greasy black hair shaking off the drizzle. He had an expression of sublime resignation on his face, a look Savage had seen many times before on the faces of those used to having the world push down on them day after day. It was a weary acceptance of the way things were, a humility in the face of greater powers, a perceptive understanding of the fact that although things would happen and the years would pass, in the end nothing would ever change.

  ‘Tolds yur, dinna I?’ Danny raised his head and smiled, touching his cap with his hand in a deferential manner belonging to another century, another era.

  ‘Told us what, Danny?’ Savage said.

  ‘Tolds yur guys about the flash and seeing the knifing. I saw a man with one of those dickable cameras. Flash, and then I heards a scuffle and fawt that’s one of them poofters getting buggered, I did.’

  ‘Sometimes used as a cruising area, ma’am,’ Enders said.

  ‘Yes, I know. So what is this about a camera?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t one of those poofters, was it? No, it was attempted murder by camera, Mrs Savage. That’s what I was trying to tell your boys, only they wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘OK, let’s get this straight, what exactly did you see?’

  ‘I was sitting on my bench up there ‘aving a leetle drink, trying not to get me head blown off by the fireworks.’ Danny gestured up at the terracing. ‘Then I sees a white flash and I thinks who’s messing me evenin’ up? So I jumps up and has a good look. That’s when I sees it.’

  ‘What, Danny? You saw what?’

  ‘I sees blood, Mrs Savage. That’s when I thinks that’s a pretty amazing camera, something I ‘aven’t seen before.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I runs. I don’t forget me beer, mind you, but I gets out of there quick. I heads into town and I don’t stop until I gets to me spot at the back of the Sainsbury’s car park. Then I sleeps with scary dreams.’

  Scary dreams and cardboard boxes, Savage thoug
ht.

  ‘Ma’am?’ It was Enders. ‘The long and the short of the story is that Danny told me about this camera flash he saw. Now there were a lot of people on the Hoe taking pictures of the fireworks and it could have been Danny saw one of them or an explosion from a rocket or something. However, Danny was insistent and he said he could prove his story was true.’

  ‘I did, Mrs Savage. I told Detective Constable Patrick that I knew where the killing-camera was because the man had dropped it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I came down to the beach with Danny and we hunted around until I found this wedged in a crevice just above the tide line.’

  Enders reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a compact digital camera, Canon brand.

  ‘What is really amazing is the camera is still working after tumbling down here.’ Enders fiddled with the controls through the plastic and the screen on the back lit up. A hand was reaching out, partially obscuring a face. The face of Ben Robbins, Simone Ashton’s boyfriend.

  ‘Bloody hell, Patrick. Good work. You too, Danny.’

  There’s more, ma’am.’ Enders flicked a control on the camera and navigated through a series of images.

  ‘Oh God, oh no!’

  It was Simone Ashton herself. She was reclining in some kind of weird chair, all black plastic and shiny stainless steel, the sort of thing you might find in a hospital or maybe a prison. Her arms were tied above her head, her legs apart, her feet restrained on some kind of footrests with leather straps. She was naked and the look of absolute terror on the girl’s face was something Savage would never forget.

  *

  By the time Savage got home that night Jamie had gone to bed.

  ‘Shattered. Not him, me,’ Stefan said as Savage came into the kitchen.

  On the table a purple and green robot lay face down on a half-eaten potato waffle and an assortment of little monsters fashioned from Play-Doh clambered over the rest of the dinner.

  ‘Godzilla, King Kong, the Hulk,’ Stefan explained. ‘Don’t ask me where he knows them from though.’

  ‘The other kids in the playground. I am shocked at what the little ones are allowed to watch these days.’

  ‘Our parents said the same.’

  ‘Probably.’ Savage paused. Stefan did look shattered, really shattered. For an eighty kilogram grinder who thought nothing of hauling ropes for hour after hour on a race that was something. Jamie must have been one handful today.

  ‘Go on, get yourself back to your place, I’ll sort this lot out.’

  Stefan nodded and stumbled from the room.

  After a quick trip upstairs to find out what Samantha was up to – homework: no; IMing with friends: yes – she got down to clearing up. The simple monotony of tidying calmed her and contrasted with the hectic atmosphere of the incident room. Dishes in the dishwasher, Play-Doh separated in to constituent colours, a wipe round and then she grabbed a cold Peroni from the fridge with the intention to put her feet up in front of the telly while the frozen pizza she had put in the oven cooked itself.

  The fridge door closed and the green and purple magnetic dinosaur’s eyes bobbed up and down. The tide times had been replaced by a colourful printout from Jamie’s school. In the top right corner two little pictures caught her eye, one of Jamie and one of his class. The word ‘Proof’ ran diagonally across the thumbnails and on the left of the page a list of various ordering options gave print sizes and prices. She remembered he had talked to her about his school photograph a couple of weeks ago, worried about a little spot on his chin. Getting him to go in on the day had been a real struggle. Examining the proofs now Savage didn’t think she could even see the thing. Probably the photographer’s lights had been strong enough to wash the red mark out.

  Flash.

  Shit!

  She strolled across to a knife rack where a bottle opener hung and opened her beer. A quick gulp and she exchanged the bottle for the phone. Four rings and Ender’s voice came on the line. He sounded weary.

  ‘You still working, Patrick? You ought to get home and read your kids a bedtime story.’

  ‘Ma’am? I need the overtime. You know what the finances are like with three... sorry ma’am, I didn’t–’

  ‘That’s OK. Can you bring up the accounts for a few of the nurseries for me? Kelly’s, Simone’s and Alice’s?’

  ‘Sure, give me a minute.’

  The keyboard clattered in the background and Enders said he had the documents open.

  ‘We’ve been concentrating on trades people and looking for the invoices the nurseries have received requiring payment. The accounts have been our way of linking the nurseries to people from outside of their direct employment, right?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Look on the other side of the sheet. The incomings.’

  ‘OK. I am on Little Angels, Kelly Donal’s nursery.’ A pause. ‘A whole load of entries, ma’am. All the monies received from the parents.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But scroll through. I am looking for a payment from somebody other than a parent. The name might appear only once in a year’s worth of accounts.’

  Nothing but static for a few moments and Savage could visualise Enders running his finger down the screen. He wasn’t the most competent or the fastest with computers, but he was meticulous.

  ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I’ve got parents. Parents. Parents. Parents. More parents. Bloody hundreds of them. Interest from the bank. More parents.’

  ‘Keep looking.’

  ‘Parents. Interest. Parents... Hang on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oliver Photographic?’

  ‘Bingo! You understand what I am talking about?’

  ‘Photograph commission the note says. That’s Rod Oliver isn’t it? The CSI photographer we use?’

  ‘Yes. Now check out the other two sets of accounts. Do a search for an Oliver.’

  Some faint noise from the keyboard reached Savage’s ear before Enders grunted with frustration.

  ‘Control F,’ Savage said.

  ‘Oh yes. Thanks, ma’am.’ There was a further period of silence until Enders spoke again. ‘Got the results, ma’am. Yes, all three nurseries used the same company.’

  ‘Patrick, can you get Oliver’s number for me?’

  She heard Enders tapping away at the keyboard and then he gave her the number.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll call you back in five.’

  Savage hung up and punched in the number. Oliver answered in a couple of rings and Savage introduced herself.

  ‘Oh hello, Charlotte, not another body I hope?’

  ‘No, Rod. Are you out on a shoot?’

  ‘No, at home. About to clear up the dinner before the wife starts giving me earache over the mess.’

  ‘Just a question about your assistant, Matthew, is it?’

  ‘Yes, why, what’s up?’

  ‘Has he been with you long?’

  ‘Ever since I went independent. He is not the sharpest tool in the box, but he is good with the equipment and takes cracking pictures.’

  ‘Ever had any problems with him?’

  ‘He is not always reliable, but he only works for me part-time so I can’t expect him to drop everything and come running. Other than that I’ve no complaints. He’s got a great eye for a picture. Some people have a way of seeing things which enables them to simply point the camera at something, click, and get a brilliant photograph. Matt is a natural, but that’s really all there is to him. He doesn’t say much, just gets on with the job. That’s not a crime, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Savage paused for a moment. ‘Rod, you introduced him to me back at the Malstead Down crime scene. I want to confirm his surname in case I misheard.’

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It might be. Can you give me his address too?’

  Oliver reminded Savage of the name and gave her an address and she thanked him and hung up.

  Sh
e dialled the number for the incident room and within seconds Enders answered.

  ‘Ma’am? You got something?’

  ‘Riley said Julie Meadows encountered a guy with a camera. He got into a fight with David Forrester, I believe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Done That Danny discovered the camera used in the attack on Simone Ashton’s boyfriend. He saw the flash of the camera and we found those awful images of Simone Ashton.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then we know Mitchell and Forester were both into photography, and a neighbour of Mitchell’s reported the flashes coming from a window.’

  ‘You mean Rod Oliver is the killer?’

  ‘No, not Oliver. Everett Mitchell mentioned somebody called Harry, remember? The killer’s name is Harry. Oliver’s assistant is called Matthew Harrison.’

  ‘Harrison... Harry?’

  ‘Yes. He was over at the Kelly Donal crime scene gloating over the body he had just dumped.’

  ‘Bloody hell, ma’am. That’s sick.’

  ‘Gather some bodies together. We are going to need a TAG team in on this as well so I’ll get on to Hardin and fill him in on the details. And don’t leave without me. I am on my way in.’

  Chapter 31

  Harry sat in the dark in the living room at the cottage examining the pictures on the screen on the back of one of his cameras. The images scrolled by and Harry studied the faces looking out. Lovely, all of them, but none resembled any of the girls from his past. No Deborah, no Katya. Perhaps he was going to have to widen his search. He chewed his tongue and began to feel uncomfortable with the thought. Other types of girls wouldn’t have the exquisite qualities that he wanted, the inner qualities he remembered from long ago.