Puppet: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  ‘Yes.’ Riley spread his hands. ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘Right.’ Layton tipped his Tilley hat with a forefinger and hunched forwards, looking for all the world like an explorer about to enter a tangled jungle. ‘Shall we?’

  Davies had pulled the plastic sheet to one side and rotated one of the ceiling-mounted lights so Dave Smeeton was the star turn. The harsh glare revealed the extent of the decay. Blotchy black and purple. Yellow streaked with grey. One area on the fleshy part of Smeeton’s stomach already crawling with maggots.

  ‘These will have hatched a couple of days ago.’ Layton moved closer. He pulled a magnifying glass from his bag and held it close to the heaving flesh. ‘Meaning he probably died sometime on Friday evening.’

  ‘You can be that accurate?’

  ‘I’m sure Nesbit will want to give his opinion, but yes, nature doesn’t hang around. Flies blow their eggs within an hour of death, and the eggs hatch within a day. Personally, I find it comforting that life is cyclical, that the world carries on whatever.’

  ‘Some comfort.’ Riley stared at the corpse as Layton scraped a few of the maggots into a petri dish. ‘I’d prefer death without maggots.’

  ‘In that case, you have misunderstood the nature of our existence. Death is the end of preference. Your wishes matter not. What remains is for those who still live, but everything beyond the moment of your passing is an irrelevance for you.’

  ‘You sound like Doctor Nesbit.’

  ‘It’s science, Darius. No more, no less.’ Layton put the petri dish on one side and knelt. He prodded at Smeeton’s feet with a wooden spatula. ‘Now then, what’s this? Looks like he’s lost something unless my ability to count beyond four has all of a sudden vanished.’

  Riley stared down. Smeeton was missing the little toe from each foot, crushed skin and bone all that remained.

  ‘Fuck.’ Riley swallowed. Tried not to think of the pain. ‘We missed that.’

  ‘There must have been two attackers. One person held him while the other did the cutting.’ Layton moved the spatula to the ankles. ‘Look, there’s bruising here where somebody grabbed his leg. With the belt round his neck, there was little he could do but scream.’

  ‘And afterwards?’ Riley pointed to where the rope secured the belt. ‘His hands weren’t tied, so with a bit of effort, he could have stood on tiptoes and taken the weight off the rope and freed himself.’

  ‘Possibly.’ Layton was staring at one of Smeeton’s forearms. ‘But he was using. And I’m not talking a few tokes on a spliff.’

  ‘Heroin?’

  ‘Most likely.’ Layton slipped a lid on the petri dish. ‘Let’s suppose someone gave him an extra-strong hit after they’d cut off the toes. He’d have been in such a state he wouldn’t have known what was happening. He could have slipped or thrashed around. The movement might have been enough to cause asphyxiation.’

  ‘Boss?’ The voice came from behind. Riley turned to see Enders. The DC held a plastic evidence bag with something wooden inside. ‘Found this when I was searching around the outside of the container.’

  ‘What is it?’ Riley said as Enders came closer and raised the bag. Little legs and arms and an oversized head. ‘A kid’s toy?’

  ‘Not exactly. Take a look.’

  Enders passed the bag across, and Riley grasped at the plastic, surprised at the weight. He peered down. It was a doll of sorts. Wooden, the limbs articulated, fishing-line strings leading from each limb to a cross of wood. The face and limbs had been painted pink, intricate details carved into the wood. It was strangely lifelike and possessed a haunting beauty.

  ‘A puppet?’ Riley made to give the evidence bag back to Enders, annoyed at being interrupted. ‘You need to learn to filter, Patrick. ‘Not everything we find is evidence. Not everything is relevant. Until you can get your mind around that, you’re going to struggle.’

  ‘With respect, sir, you don’t know what is relevant until you’ve inspected the evidence.’ Enders kept his arms by his sides rather than accept the bag. ‘And you haven’t done that, have you?’

  Riley sighed. Enders was sometimes quick to temper and often took offence when people didn’t see things his way. There was also the fact that Riley’s promotion to DI meant he was now two ranks above the DC. It had, Riley thought, created a touch of resentment. He wondered if it was time to have a few quiet words and set out the new reality. Instead, seeing the intense look on Enders’ face, he took pity on him.

  ‘Go on then. Show me.’

  ‘Turn it over. Look at the nape of the neck below the hairline.’

  Riley did so, the plastic bag slipping in his hand, the wooden puppet limp. A shock of black hair fell down to the shoulders, so he pressed his fingers against the plastic and pushed it away. A letter had been scratched into the wood.

  ‘D?’ Riley said. For a moment, he stood there, mystified. Then he had it, but before he could speak, Layton’s voice floated in from behind. Matter of fact. As if the CSI had known all along.

  ‘Matey boy,’ Layton said, gesturing over his shoulder at the cadaver dangling on the rope. ‘D stands for Dave, right?’

  ***

  As they drove away from Kenner’s place, Savage asked Calter about God’s Haven.

  ‘Did the neighbourhood team flag up anything?’

  ‘No,’ Calter said. ‘From the sound of it, the community is as good as gold and never bothers anyone. The residents donate to village fundraising events, sometimes have a stall at the local agricultural show, and are basically no trouble at all.’

  ‘If they’re that innocuous, why would a young girl go to the trouble of getting Bride of Christ carved into her upper thigh?’

  ‘You think the tattoo is to do with God’s Haven?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  Back at the station, Savage asked Collier if the results of the door-to-doors had come in.

  ‘Did anyone in the surrounding villages mention God’s Haven?’ she said. ‘It appears Abigail may well have been there at some point.’

  ‘Really?’ Collier moved to one of the whiteboards where there was a map of the crime scene and the surrounding area. He walked his finger over the surface of the map. ‘And she turns up dead less than a couple of miles away? Not a coincidence then.’

  ‘So nothing of note in the interviews at the community itself?’

  ‘Nothing that stood out. From what I recall, nobody from there had been near the scene, and nobody had heard of or seen Abigail.’ Collier scratched the top of his head. ‘Which, given what you’ve just told me, does rather put the place in a new light.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ Calter was at a nearby terminal. She’d brought up the community’s website and was now pointing at the strapline. ‘Putting God before self, before family, before country.’

  ‘Go on.’ Savage moved across.

  ‘The place was originally known as Penn Haven. It was built as a mental asylum back in Victorian times. Not closed down until the sixties. Then it fell into disrepair until it was bought up by a small religious sect a few years ago. Gradually they’ve done up the buildings and established a community.’ Calter clicked to another page. ‘Led by a man called Marcus Clent. According to the blurb on the site, he’s a prophet and a healer. Many of his predictions have come true, and several cases of cancer have been cured simply by the laying on of hands.’

  ‘Check him,’ Savage said. ‘See what we have.’

  Calter switched windows and typed the name into the PNC. The PNC was the Police National Computer, a country-wide database of crimes and evidence. You could look for people or places or do a wildcard search using various parameters.

  ‘You couldn’t make this up.’ She laughed. ‘Ten years ago, he did a three year stretch for fraud. Bet his flock aren’t aware of that.’

  Savage read the details of the crime. Clent had set up a pyramid selling scheme based around paying to pray. Every subscriber paid to have people above them in the pyramid pray for them and, in turn, r
ecruited another level below their own position. With the requirement for each participant to only have to contribute a hundred pounds and recruit ten followers, it was highly rewarding for those who desired both divine intervention and hard cash. The worldwide scam had netted Clent close to a million pounds, most of which was never recovered.

  ‘A man for whom the word charlatan was surely invented,’ Savage said.

  Had Abigail, a young woman searching for some kind of meaning to her life, fallen for Clent’s patter? Then again, perhaps Savage was prejudging Clent. Maybe the community had provided somewhere Abi felt safe and secure, even loved. Why then, when questioned by the detectives Collier had sent to God’s Haven, had the members concealed the fact she’d stayed there?

  ‘But these people are God-fearing Christians,’ Collier said. ‘They’re do-gooders. Presumably, they feed the poor, look after the meek, care for the elderly, that sort of thing. Can they really have had anything to do with the brutal murder of Abigail Duffy?’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Savage said. ‘But there’s only one way to find out.’

  ***

  Later that evening, Riley and Davies returned to the station to find a despondent mood hanging over the Tarquin team. In the crime suite, DI Maynard sat at a table with several junior detectives. A couple of tubes of Pringles were being shared, and everyone but Maynard had a can of lager in front of them. He was pouring a cup of tea from his flask.

  ‘You got the news then?’ Davies said. ‘Smeeton dead as a dodo and operation Tarquin fucked.’

  There was a murmur from a few of the younger officers, and someone offered a couple of cans to Davies and Riley.

  ‘The only good thing,’ one of them said, ‘is he got the type of sentence pushers like him deserve.’

  ‘The others are off scot-free, though.’ Maynard was staring down into his plastic cup for some sort of answer. ‘Six months of my life down the drain.’

  Riley took a can, pulled it open, and sat on the edge of a desk. Tarquin was indeed fucked. If, as looked likely, Joel Hartson had killed Smeeton, then it was because he’d become suspicious. Smeeton had undoubtedly spilt the beans and admitted he was a snitch, meaning Hartson wouldn’t be meeting the Bristol crew anytime soon. However, even if Hartson wasn’t responsible, there’d still be a problem. The operation relied on him turning up for the meet, and there was no way he’d do that with Smeeton mysteriously going missing and then ending up dead. And if he didn’t attend, then there’d be no delivery, no handover of cash, no chance of catching the Bristol lads red-handed. Hartson might make a new arrangement, but the undercover detectives in Bristol feared their cover could soon be blown. At some point, they’d have to be pulled out.

  ‘We’d have had them too,’ Davies said. ‘They’d have walked straight into the trap.’

  Maynard necked the rest of his tea. He stared at a whiteboard where the final details of the op sat in testament to the team’s hard work. Lowered his head. Reached for a can of beer.

  After consoling various members of the team, Riley stole away from the Tarquin wake. He found Enders and John Layton arguing over what the Dave Smeeton puppet represented.

  ‘It’s a type of Voodoo doll.’ Enders jabbed a finger at a nearby table where a bag contained the diminutive wooden version of Dave Smeeton. ‘You stick pins in it. Quite literally if John’s theory about the heroin is correct.’

  ‘But we found it at the storage place,’ Riley said. ‘Why would it be there? The whole idea is that these things operate remotely.’

  ‘They don’t operate at all,’ Layton said. ‘You know, science and all that?’ He stared at the bag for a moment. ‘Look, perhaps we got it wrong and the initials are a coincidence. It’s a kid’s toy belonging to a Debbie or a Darren. Who’s to say it’s even connected?’

  Enders scowled. ‘Of course it’s connected. Remember the old maxim? Coincidences don’t happen in police work.’

  ‘So what is it then, Patrick?’ Riley moved away from the table and sat in a chair. ‘I can’t see Smeeton as the kind to hold on to some family heirloom or go in for collecting unusual toys.’

  ‘Perhaps he hid drugs in it.’

  ‘No.’ Layton reached out and picked up the bag. ‘I’ve checked. The body and head are hollow but filled with sawdust. There’s no sign anything has ever been in there.’

  ‘Yeah, but maybe he was going to remove the sawdust.’

  ‘Nice idea,’ Riley said. ‘But If anything is going to draw attention, it’s that puppet. Not exactly inconspicuous, is it? And if he got caught with it, then having his initial on there was a little dumb.’

  For a moment, he considered the wooden object. It didn’t resemble Dave Smeeton. The hair was black and much longer than Smeeton’s. The face of the puppet had a crooked nose and the painted-on lips curved in a wide smile. There were six strings: one for each arm and leg, one for the head, and one for the lower body. It didn’t look much of a toy, not for today’s kids. If you opened a present on Christmas morning and found this inside instead of a phone or an Xbox, you’d be mightily disappointed.

  ‘If it’s important, then we need to discover where it came from.’ Riley turned to Enders. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘Not as such,’ Enders said. ‘I’ve browsed the websites of the main toy shops in Plymouth, Exeter and Truro. Most don’t sell any kind of puppets, and those that do have nothing like Dave in stock.’

  ‘What about Amazon?’

  ‘I’ve searched all the major online retailers, and there’s no match.’

  ‘So it’s either an antique or somebody made it from scratch.’

  ‘Possibly Smeeton himself?’

  Riley tried to visualise Smeeton at a lathe working the wood and having the care and attention to detail to model the toy. The patience and dexterity to cut the pieces and shape them. The imagination to come up with the design.

  ‘No, I don’t see it. Not Smeeton.’

  ‘He could have been given it then.’

  ‘By who?’

  ‘No idea. Perhaps it was a joke.’

  ‘Whatever. Tomorrow you’d better move onto the smaller retailers. Start with every shop within, say, fifty miles. Check their websites and call them up.’

  ‘Fifty miles?’ Enders slumped in his chair, his face a picture of despair. ‘I’ll be at it for the rest of the week.’

  ‘Best head off home and get an early night then.’ Riley suppressed a laugh. ‘You’ve got a long day ahead of you tomorrow.’

  Chapter 14

  Wednesday morning and Riley was back in early. He found Collier at a workstation assigning personnel to the two murder inquiries, the stabbing of DC Hester and operation Tarquin.

  ‘We’re struggling for resources,’ Collier said. ‘Hardin told me to prioritise Farlight, which is fair enough considering it’s the ACC’s daughter, but it means the jam is spread thinly for the other ops. Something has to give.’

  ‘Just do your best, OK?’ Riley said, trying to sound sympathetic. The office manager had a habit of moaning to all and sundry before pulling himself together and producing miracles. Riley turned to go.

  ‘Darius?’ Collier reached across to a tray next to his desk. ‘You found some sort of puppet at the scene yesterday, correct?’

  ‘Yes. It had a D scratched on the back of its head. D for Dave Smeeton. Like it was a voodoo doll.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Collier passed Riley a couple of photocopies. ‘Crank letters we received that reference the Abigail Duffy murder.’

  Riley read through. ‘The Puppet?’

  ‘Might be nothing, but it seems odd that we get these supposed hoax letters, and then you find a puppet at the Smeeton crime scene.’

  ‘You think that’s a hoax too?’

  ‘The other possibility is the writer is linked with both Smeeton and Abigail Duffy. The discovery of her body forced him out into the open for some reason.’

  ‘A drug connection then?’ Riley knew about ACC Duffy and Barry Shultz. Schultz had been a s
ignificant dealer in his time, but he’d spent the last twelve years in prison.

  ‘Could be. The letter writer claims to have killed Abigail Duffy but doesn’t give any details about her death. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but it might be worth bearing in mind. I’ll mention you found a puppet to DI Savage.’

  Riley studied the letter again. The writing was incoherent and childish. The product of a disturbed mind, or perhaps somebody trying to give the impression of a disturbed mind. Either way, he wasn’t inclined to take it too seriously, well aware a hoax could send an investigation down a cul-de-sac. A classic example was the infamous Wearside Jack letters and audiotape sent to the police during the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper way back in the 1970s. Despite compelling evidence to the contrary, the police remained convinced they were genuine. They wasted time searching for a man with a Wearside accent, even ruling out Peter Sutcliffe – the actual ripper – several times because he didn’t sound like the voice on the tape.

  Riley handed the photocopy back to Collier. Operation Tarquin was already in serious trouble, and although the letter was worth bearing in mind, they didn’t need any additional complications at this stage.

  After a trawl through possible suspects for the Smeeton killing, he sought out DI Davies. Should they go in search of Joel Hartson, or was there a chance of salvaging Tarquin?

  ‘We’re working on it, Darius,’ Davies said cryptically. ‘So let’s leave Hartson out of it for the moment, hey?’

  With Hartson off limits, the other obvious connection to Smeeton was the mysterious Faye. Finding her was top of the list of actions, but a local media appeal at the weekend had drawn a blank. Riley headed for the canteen and grabbed a drink and a sandwich. He was paying when Enders dashed in.

  ‘Darius!’ Enders shouted across.

  ‘You found the shop?’ Riley had spotted the DC first thing, head down over a laptop, doing his best to track down the origin of the puppet.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Enders raised one hand and tousled his hair. The other hand flapped a series of printouts in Riley’s direction. ‘In fact, not at all.’