by Mark Sennen
After some ten minutes of breakneck driving, they entered a wood, the trunks of stunted oaks twisting in the shadows like something from a fantasy film. Savage wouldn’t have been surprised if an orc or a goblin had sprung from the darkness. The rain had turned to thick sleet, the wipers struggling to shift the residue from the windscreen. Hard to believe it was April.
After another half a mile or so, Hardin slowed the car and turned onto a rough track. A minute later, he pulled over. The engine died, and Hardin flicked the lights down. For a moment, silence, then a gust of wind rocked the car, and a smatter of sleet drummed on the roof.
Hardin pointed through the windscreen. Up ahead, a couple of halogen lights on a stand illuminated a turning circle, and several police cars, a white van and a battered Volvo sat parked around the edge. Beside the Volvo, a ghost in a white PPE suit was talking to a uniformed officer.
‘Typical,’ Hardin said. ‘Looks like he beat us here.’
There was no need to ask who the ghost was because he was wearing a Tilley hat on his head. John Layton, their senior CSI, never went anywhere without the hat. Likely, he’d once told Savage, there was evidence from a thousand crime scenes permeated into the fabric. It was a contamination nightmare, and an expert witness appearing for the defence could have had a field day had they known the truth of it.
‘Abigail Duffy,’ Savage said. ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’
Hardin stared ahead, and in the twinkle of light from the halogens, Savage saw a hint of moisture in his eyes.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Chapter 3
The sleet eased to a thin drizzle as they got out of the car and pulled on their waterproofs. Savage’s wellies were in a bag on the back seat, and Hardin grabbed his own set from the boot.
‘Haven’t worn these since…’ Hardin’s voice trailed off at the memory of some appalling crime scene. He bent to pull his boots on. ‘Christ Almighty.’
‘Does Jack Duffy know yet?’ Savage said.
‘No.’ Hardin zipped his bulky form into his waterproof. ‘But I’ll have to tell him tonight. I wanted to make sure first, wanted your opinion.’
‘There’s no doubt it’s her?’
‘Apparently not.’ Hardin reached for the rear hatch and slammed it shut. ‘And it’s not as if her face isn’t etched into every police officer’s mind, is it?’
No, Savage thought. Whenever anything happened to one of our own, the entire UK-wide force – from the Isles of Scilly to the Shetlands – jumped into overdrive, no stone left unturned, no effort spared. Not that it had helped much since every lead in the Duffy case had led to a dead end.
She winced. Dead end. Somewhere up in the dark woodland was the body of Abigail Duffy. What horrors had been done to her before she died, Savage had no idea. John Layton and Doctor Andrew Nesbit, the pathologist, would tease part of the story from the corpse, but there’d be gaps. The warp and the weft, as her old mentor DCI Derek Walsh used to say. The facts of the case were the warp. Like the vertical threads fixed to a weaving frame, they couldn’t be altered. The detective’s job was to run the weft back and forth, in and out, and little by little build a picture. Different colours and patterns. A changing texture. But the weft was art, not science, and the finished tapestry depended on the weaver’s skill. The wrong colour or pattern and the picture turned out imperfect, flawed.
‘Conrad. Charlotte.’ Layton tapped on the roof of his Volvo as they approached. He nodded into the wood. ‘I’ve been up there, and I can confirm it’s Abigail Duffy.’
‘You’re sure?’ Hardin followed Layton’s gaze with a hard stare. Closed his eyes for a second. As if he might change reality with a simple blink. ‘Absolutely positive?’
‘Yes. I’m no dentist, but I’ve looked at the records, and she has a couple of fillings and a cap on one of her front teeth. There’s also a small beauty spot on the side of her neck.’
‘Dental records? You can’t tell from her face?’
‘You’ll see.’ Layton gestured at the back of the Volvo. ‘PPE. Get your kit on, grab a torch each, and we’ll go up there.’
‘Right,’ Hardin said with zero enthusiasm.
There was a box in the back of Layton’s car containing suits, hairnets, masks, gloves and bootlets. A couple of torches to one side. Savage and Hardin got kitted up save for the bootlets; they’d be useless in the rough terrain, and they’d don them when they got closer.
‘Looks like the rain’s stopping.’ Layton put out a hand, palm up. He waved at an area of blue and white tape off to the right. ‘We’ll take an animal trail that circuits the area and comes in round the back. She’s been there for a while, so there’s not much chance of finding the killer’s route, but you never know, we might get lucky.’
‘Lucky?’ Hardin said. ‘I hope we’re not down to relying on bloody chance on this one.’
The DSupt stalked off, a torch in one hand, following the sequence of lights Layton had rigged up. Layton leaned over to Savage.
‘What’s up with him?’ he said.
‘Jack Duffy is a close friend. Hardin is Abigail’s Godfather.’
‘I didn’t realise.’ Layton turned his head, his gaze tracking the steady progress of the bulky white figure moving through the trees. ‘Foot in mouth.’
Savage patted Layton on the back, and they set off after Hardin.
The animal trail snaked into the woodland, lights hanging from tree branches guiding the way. The trail climbed towards a crag of granite standing pale and grey in the glare from another set of halogens. Beyond the circle of light, shadows in the trees played tricks with Savage’s vision. Something moved off to the left, but it was only a branch caught in a gust of wind. A stick cracked behind them, but when she turned, she saw two uniformed officers scanning the ground with torches.
Ahead, Hardin was slowing. The hill was proving too much, and he had his hands on his hips as he stalled at the final steep section that led to the rocks.
‘Hell of a place,’ he said, as Savage and Layton caught up. ‘Do you think whoever did this was aware of the terrain before they set out?’
‘I don’t know,’ Layton said. ‘But you’re right. Getting her here can’t have been easy. Dead or alive.’
‘Alive? She walked in voluntarily?’
‘Hard to tell, but that’s my hunch.’ Layton didn’t elaborate further. He simply forged on past Hardin and squeezed between two boulders. A series of rock steps led up to a plateau where several large pines stood dotted at the edge, the whole area awash with light from another rig of battery-operated floods.
‘After you, sir.’ Savage let Hardin go first. He turned and edged through the gap, and Savage clambered after him.
A stone byre stood on one side of the plateau, a harsh radiance filtering from the open door, the interior lit up as if it was some kind of fairy grotto.
‘She’s inside,’ Layton said. ‘Go to the right here and walk on the stepping plates to get in. We’ve already fingertipped the interior but try not to touch anything.’
Hardin stood staring into the clearing, momentarily at a loss for words. He muttered something incomprehensible and turned and steadied himself on one of the rocks before joining Layton at the line of plastic stepping plates. They all pulled on their flimsy bootlets, and then Hardin moved carefully from one plastic island to another until he reached the doorway. He stepped in.
‘Jesus.’ Hardin froze inside the entrance, transfixed. ‘How the hell am I going to tell Jack Duffy about this? His only child.’ He turned back to Layton. ‘For God’s sake, man, let’s get the girl out of this dreadful place.’
Savage moved along the line of plates and slipped past Hardin. Now she understood his reaction. The floor was deep in straw and muck, and Abigail Duffy lay in a shallow depression in the centre of the byre. She wore a white dress that had a shapely bodice and fancy lace edges. Dung stained the dress, and there was a darker area below the chest, the material ripped apart. Her black hair was a mess of muck and
dirt and straw, her face shrunken. The body appeared shrivelled and dry. Savage clenched her fists.
‘Sorry, Conrad.’ Layton moved over to one of the floodlights and adjusted the angle, so the beam fell on the corpse. ‘My lads have finished with the body, but we’ve got to wait for Nesbit.’
‘Who found her?’ Savage whispered, trying to take in the scene, wondering at the mentality of somebody who could do something like this to an innocent young girl.
‘A team working for Historic England.’
‘Sorry?’
‘There’s a census recording all the old buildings on the moor to see which may need protection. The team came out here on a recce to survey the building, and one of them dug in the muck to see if there was a floor.’ Layton tapped one foot on the plastic stepping plate. ‘Something about dating the building by the way the cobbles were laid.’
‘And you buy that?’
‘There were three of them, so I guess. They called it in and a local neighbourhood beat officer was the first to attend. I got here an hour after that. I uncovered her as much as I could without disturbing the body, and here we all are.’
‘And here we all are.’ Hardin parroted the words back. ‘Except for Doctor Nesbit. Where the hell is he?’
‘I understand he’s coming from another incident. The usual duty pathologist has been struck down with a bug, so Nesbit’s covering all the bases. Not much more we can do.’
‘Give him five minutes, and then you’ll get the girl moved.’ Hardin stared across at the body. ‘And that’s an order.’
‘Belay that.’
The words echoed off the crag as Doctor Andrew Nesbit dissolved into view through the mist. His white suit made him look like a phantom rising from the cleft in the rocks.
‘This is not my idea of fun,’ he said as he halted to take a breath, an ungainly figure, all arms and legs and a body as thin as a broomstick. ‘I’ve just dealt with a rather unpleasant suicide. Now this. Retirement looms ahead of me like a green pasture in the distance.’
‘You’ll be bored, mate,’ Layton said. ‘Without the excitement, your mind will atrophy.’
‘Nonsense.’ Nesbit’s face brightened. He blinked and raised a hand to wipe the rain from his half-moon glasses and then strolled across the plateau. ‘I shall have more time for travelling and painting.’
‘Mucking around with a palette knife and oils is no substitute for cutting up dead bodies with a scalpel.’
‘None at all, John, but the smell is preferable, and the joy of completing a fine landscape comes close to that of conducting a successful post-mortem.’ Nesbit straightened. He greeted Savage and Hardin with a nod and peered inside the byre. ‘Conrad, Charlotte. Now, who do we have here?’
‘Abigail Duffy,’ Hardin said.
‘Really?’ Nesbit’s eyebrows arched. ‘I’m sorry to hear you say that. Awful news.’
‘Bloody understatement of the century.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Nesbit gestured at the row of stepping plates and turned to Layton. ‘OK for me to approach?’
‘Sure,’ Layton said. ‘Be my guest.’
Nesbit pulled on a pair of bootlets, stepped forwards and walked along the line of plates. When he reached a larger platform to the left of the shallow depression that held the body, he knelt and leaned over. ‘Did you clean her up, John?’
‘Yup. Removed the muck and soil as much as I could.’
‘She’s been here a while.’
‘Looks that way, even though there’s minimal decomposition.’
‘Well, beneath the muck, there’d have been anaerobic conditions. Plus the material is dry, as is the air in here. I’d say she was buried several months ago and has, to some extent, been mummified.’
‘Bloody hell.’ Hardin stood in the doorway. He put out a hand to steady himself against the wall.
‘Are you OK, Conrad?’ Nesbit turned, his face a mixture of concern and puzzlement. ‘You’ve seen worse, surely?’
‘Jack Duffy’s a friend of mine. Abigail’s my goddaughter. The thought of telling him about all this…’
‘Ah, I see.’ Nesbit returned his attention to the body. He peered over the top of his glasses, focusing on the corpse but addressing Hardin. ‘Perhaps you should wait outside.’
‘No, I need to hear the details.’
‘Right. Best I get to work then.’ Nesbit hunched down and used a finger to probe in at a point above the right eye. ‘A large contusion here, probably caused by a strike from a blunt object. I’d say there could be a fracture beneath.’
‘That killed her?’ Savage asked.
‘It would be enough to cause a severe concussion, to knock her unconscious, certainly.’ Nesbit shifted a little and swept a piece of straw from the torso. He ran a gloved finger over the white dress. ‘And there’s severe impact damage below the chest. A lot of dried blood. I suspect several broken ribs, possibly a punctured lung. We’ll discover more when we get her home.’
Home. Nesbit’s euphemism for the mortuary. A place, self-evidently, of death and dissection. A place where the disassembly of a human being into constituent parts took place under sterile lights and with the gentle hum of air conditioning in the background. Scalpels and bone saws and kidney dishes brim-full of organs. Blood and bodily fluids washed away with jets of water. The smell of disinfectant never enough to overpower the odour of despair. Not a place to call home by a long way.
Nesbit used a gloved hand to lift the hem of the dress, revealing plain white underwear. He took a pair of forceps and prodded the material.
‘She’s been assaulted?’ Savage said.
‘I can’t tell, not here.’ The tip of the forceps moved to a spot on the right thigh. ‘There’s something else, though. A mark.’
What kind of mark?’ Savage leaned in, seeing what looked like a swirl of letters on the dried skin. ‘A tattoo?’
‘Not a tattoo, no.’ Nesbit straightened. ‘You want to look?’
‘Yes.’ Savage hopped along the line of stepping plates until she was next to Nesbit. ‘If it’s not a tattoo, what is it?’
‘Scar tissue, possibly from a burn.’
Savage stared down. She could read the letters now: BOC, the skin raised and uneven, the text perhaps half an inch high. She ran through a bunch of acronyms, but nothing fitted. ‘Any ideas how it was done?’
‘My best guess,’ Nesbit said, looking at Savage with a frown, ‘is that she was branded.’
***
‘You want some of this?’ Savage was sitting on a rock by Hardin’s car, sipping from a plastic cup. One of the uniforms had rustled up a flask of coffee. Black. Strong. Just the thing for countering the wine she’d drunk earlier in the evening. ‘There’s plenty of it.’
Hardin shook his head. He stood and stared at the animal trail and the dots of light leading to the rocky bluff. A few minutes ago, four white-suited figures had manoeuvred a stretcher with a black body bag on it through the narrow gap and down to a waiting mortuary van. By now, they’d be speeding to Plymouth with Abigail Duffy. Next stop ‘home’ and an appointment with Nesbit and his bone saw. Her skull would be trepanned, brain in a jar, the chest and abdomen opened up, guts on a tray. Every orifice would be examined, and if there was dignity in death, you wouldn’t find it anywhere between here and the girl’s final resting place.
‘Branded, Charlotte,’ Hardin said. ‘What the hell are we dealing with here? What am I supposed to tell Jack Duffy and his wife?’
Savage didn’t answer the last question. What did you tell somebody who’d lost their only child? She’d experienced family tragedy herself, but when her daughter had been killed in a hit-and-run accident, she’d realised she needed to be there for her other two children. The loss had still been almost unbearable, but Samantha and Jamie had meant there was something to live for. She couldn’t imagine the grief the Duffys would face in the months ahead.
The first question was equally tricky to answer, but that was her job. She was used to dealing
with motives that couldn’t be explained in any rational sense. In some small way, she understood the workings of minds devoid of morality or empathy.
‘A brand implies membership of something. Ownership perhaps,’ she said.
‘Ownership?’ Hardin glared at Savage. ‘You mean she was somebody’s slave or chattel?’
‘Possibly.’
‘I really don’t fancy telling Jack and his wife that.’
She let Hardin brood for a moment.
‘Am I the SIO?’ she asked.
SIO: Senior Investigating Officer. The lead on the case, the SIO wore many hats. They had to run the team, decide the strategy and tactics to be used, deal with the public relations side of the inquiry, manage crime scenes, witnesses and victims, identify suspects, liaise with the Crown Prosecution Service, and much, much more.
‘Yes, of course,’ Hardin said. ‘If Jack agrees.’
‘Why does that make a difference?’
‘Because if ACC Jack Duffy says he’d like you in charge, then the Hatchet can’t very well deny him, can she?’
The Hatchet. Otherwise known as Chief Constable Maria Heldon. If Savage was to be put back on active duty, the Chief Constable would need to be consulted. The problem was Heldon had taken a dislike to Savage and was looking for any excuse to railroad her out of the force. Hardin’s intervention had so far prevented that, but being assigned to PLOD was one step from the edge. Savage felt the imprint of Heldon’s hand in the small of her back. It would take just one little push…
‘And do you think Duffy will want me?’
Another grim expression from Hardin, this one the deepest and blackest so far. ‘It depends whether he forgives himself for not taking me up on my offer.’
