Puppet: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  ‘We’ll take tea,’ Duffy said, and before Savage could protest, he was waving his wife away to the kitchen and guiding Savage down to the table. He pulled out a chair for her. ‘Take a seat and enjoy the view. Put your feet up and relax.’

  ‘Difficult to, sir.’ Savage ignored the offered chair and went round to the far side of the table and sat on a chair facing the house. ‘In the circumstances.’

  ‘You got him, though,’ Duffy said. He sat in the chair he’d offered Savage. ‘And for that we are very grateful. It’s good to draw a line. Marjorie and I will be able to move on. I’m even thinking of leaving the force, you know? I’ve used the time I’ve had off to reflect on life and how limited our threescore years and ten are. So I’m going to retire and we’ll travel. Or perhaps we’ll just sit here and admire the view and grow old gracefully.’

  ‘And what would Abigail think of that?’

  ‘Oh, she always thought Marjorie and I were too rigid, too stuffy. The stuffy Duffys, she said. It might be good to try to blow some of that stuffiness away and live a little.’

  ‘You tried to deceive me, sir. All that material on Francis you sent was intended to put me off the trail. You hoped he’d go down for Abigail’s murder.’

  ‘Francis was a nasty piece of work, Charlotte. He deserved nothing less than what he got at the hands of Ben Kelly. I’m not sorry.’

  ‘But he didn’t kill Abigail and neither did Kelly.’

  ‘He didn’t?’ Duffy raised an eyebrow. ‘Clent or another member of his sick community, was it?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe so. With the help of Ben Kelly, Francis killed Fiona Jones and Dave Smeeton. He tried to find the third Bride of Christ, Isobel Anderson, but luckily failed. Kelly, not liking the way Francis had prolonged Fiona’s death, turned the tables on Francis, possibly on Clent’s orders. Then, when DC Enders and I visited God’s Haven, Kelly attacked us. Everything Clent had worked so hard to preserve came tumbling down. And it was all thanks to a long-dead Hungarian toymaker.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense, DI Savage.’

  ‘Really?’ She noted the formality and felt the edge to his voice. ‘Perhaps we should wait for your wife?’

  Marjorie Duffy was padding across the lawn. She carried a large tray adorned with tea things. A bone china pot, three cups and saucers, a small jug of milk, a sugar bowl, teaspoons, three plates, a cake slice and cutter, and a Victoria sponge dusted with icing sugar. So precise, Savage thought. Like the Duffys. The stuffy Duffys. Neat and ordered and nothing out of place aside from a wayward daughter.

  Marjorie placed the tray on the table and sat. She organised the cups and saucers. She asked Savage if she took milk and sugar and poured the tea. Finally, she cut the cake and served it. As she passed Savage a plate with a slice on it, her hand trembled.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ Savage said to her. ‘Jack told you. I’m not sure if it was recently or back when it happened, but at some point, he told you the truth.’

  Marjorie didn’t reply. She stirred her tea with a spoon. Clink, clink, clink. She kept stirring. Round and round. Clink, clink, clink. Her eyes moistened.

  ‘My wife has taken the news badly,’ Duffy said. He reached out and placed a hand on Marjorie’s forearm to stop her stirring. ‘Catching the killer is the end of all this and that’s overwhelming. For both of us.’

  ‘You visited Abigail at God’s Haven, didn’t you?’ Savage put the plate on the table. She hadn’t touched either the tea or the cake and didn’t intend to. ‘You went there to persuade her to come home.’

  ‘What nonsense is this?’

  ‘One of Abigail’s friends at the community posted a picture of Abi to you. She cut it from a communal photograph and sent it anonymously to reassure you that your daughter was still alive. She didn’t mention God’s Haven, but she hadn’t banked on you recognising a part of the hexagonal tower in the photograph’s background. Coincidence, fate, or perhaps even an act of God, had conspired to take you to Penn Haven – as it was once known – many years before when you were investigating Thomas Raymond. When you saw the tower in the picture, you immediately understood what had happened to Abigail. You drove there the day before the wedding and were able to make contact with her without anyone knowing. She agreed to go for a walk in the woods to discuss the situation, but you ended up arguing when she refused to come home. You see, sir, I got this all wrong. Abigail was happy at God’s Haven. Sure, she was probably deluded, possibly beguiled by Clent, but she was an adult and free to make her own decisions.’

  ‘Clent brainwashed her like he brainwashed the lot of them. God’s Haven is a cult, no different from Scientology or those lot at Waco or Jonestown, no different from the ISIS fanatics.’

  ‘No different, perhaps, than the Catholic Church or other organised religions?’

  ‘Don’t talk stupid, DI Savage, there’s a world of difference and you know it.’

  ‘Perhaps I do, but I also know that sometimes you have to let people make their own decisions in life.’

  ‘She was my daughter, and she was about to marry a forty-seven-year-old man who believed he was some kind of messiah. What would you have done?’

  ‘I’d have taken it up with him.’

  ‘It was my fault.’ Marjorie Duffy’s voice was quiet and thin. Devoid of emotion. ‘When we discovered Abigail was at God’s Haven, I told Jack to go there and bring her back. Whatever it took, he wasn’t to return without her.’

  ‘Marjorie, shut up.’ Duffy grasped his wife’s wrist, but she wrestled free. ‘DI Savage is on a fishing expedition. She doesn’t know anything.’

  ‘You got angry,’ Savage said. ‘Then you tried to bring her back using force. There was a struggle and Abigail slipped. She tumbled over and fell down from the rocks. The impact was severe enough to cause a major wound in her abdomen and a cerebral haemorrhage. She died within a few minutes.’

  ‘Oh, God!’ Marjorie’s hand covered her mouth. ‘My baby.’

  ‘What did you think, Mrs Duffy? That she lay down and went peacefully to sleep?’

  ‘She didn’t feel any pain,’ Duffy said. ‘I’m sure of that.’

  ‘The pain she felt was in the years leading up to her death.’ Savage stared at Duffy and then at Marjorie. ‘The lack of love, the feeling she was always being judged, the weight of expectation you placed on her, the way you censored her, the way you tried to control her life. Perhaps that’s why she ran away, perhaps that’s why she turned to God’s Haven and Marcus Clent for love and security. Yes, it was a bastardised, polluted form of both, but it was better than nothing.’ Savage waved at the estuary, at the boats and the expensive properties on either side of the Duffys’ place. ‘It was better than all this crap.’

  Silence. Tears streaming down Marjorie’s face, Jack Duffy rigid like a statue.

  ‘You’re right,’ Duffy said. ‘She wouldn’t listen. When I told her she was doing the wrong thing and she should come home, she refused. She literally spat at me. Then she lifted the hem of her dress and showed me the tattoo on her thigh. BOC. Bride of fucking Christ. Like Clent owned her. Can you imagine that? Your own daughter in thrall to her abuser?’

  ‘You should have confronted Clent.’

  ‘Perhaps, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was to bring Abi home.’

  ‘There were marks on her neck.’

  ‘I was angry and she was struggling. I had my hands on her for a few seconds, no more. When I released her, she stumbled and fell down the side of the bluff and hit her head. I rushed to her but she wasn’t breathing. There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘Jack.’ Marjorie. Distraught. ‘You never told me you attacked her.’

  ‘It was an accident, Marjorie. You remember what she was like when she got into a tantrum? I was merely trying to restrain her, to try and bring her back like you wanted me to.’

  ‘If it was an accident,’ Savage said, ‘then why didn’t you report it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Duffy was stone
-faced again. ‘I didn’t think anyone would believe me.’

  ‘At the start of the investigation, I was struck by how much you knew of the geography of the area where Abi was found. I assumed it was because Hardin had briefed you. You called me and put forward a theory that Abi’s death resulted from some sort of mishap. I thought it strange, but now I realise you were trying to sway the enquiry. It was also strange how you refused Hardin’s earlier offer of help. Now it’s obvious you didn’t want anyone reviewing the case.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill her. You must realise that?’

  ‘The post-mortem showed she’d been assaulted, and her tumble down the rocks wasn’t simply an accident but the result of sustained violence. You couldn’t abide Abigail’s disobedience and your anger boiled over. You hit her, you grabbed her round the neck, you refused to let her go.’

  ‘She was branded, for God’s sake. What the hell was I supposed to do?’

  ‘Perhaps you could have told her you loved her.’

  Marjorie broke down, the sobbing now uncontrolled. Duffy’s complexion had drained of all colour. He looked as good as dead.

  ‘Enough.’ Duffy stood. His voice was barely audible. ‘Either arrest me or leave.’

  ‘Arrest you?’ Savage pushed back her own chair and got up. ‘Oh no, that would be too easy.’

  ‘Too easy?’

  ‘Due to the lack of evidence, the CPS will struggle to make a case, and if they proceed, they’ll likely go with a manslaughter charge. With a good lawyer on your side, a jury will deliver a not guilty verdict. Even if you’re found guilty, you’ll probably receive a short sentence and serve it at an open prison. A couple of years and you’ll be out, free to start again, to forget about Abigail and move on.’

  ‘Are you trying to blackmail me, DI Savage?’

  ‘You obviously don’t know me very well, sir.’ Savage started to walk away up the lawn and towards the house.

  ‘DI Savage?’

  She stopped and turned back. ‘I want you to retire from the force, just like you said you were going to do. Other than that…’

  She stood motionless, taking in the look on Duffy’s face and the tears running down Marjorie’s cheeks. She wanted this moment to stretch on, for Duffy and his wife to feel this abject horror and emptiness forever, for them to never get closure and to have to endure countless sleepless nights aware that Savage knew the truth and might reveal it at any time.

  She waved again at the surroundings, at the neat lawn, the perfect house, the million pound view across the water.

  ‘This is your life sentence,’ she said. ‘All this crap.’

  Savage went through the house, got in her car, and started up and drove away. As she headed through Topsham, she thought of Abigail Duffy and Fiona Jones. Thought, too, of her own children. When she reached the dual carriageway, she pressed the accelerator pedal hard to the floor and willed herself home as fast as possible.

  Author’s Note

  Penn Haven / God’s Haven bears a passing resemblance to the actual moorland community of Moorhaven. Situated a few miles to the east of its fictional counterpart, Moorhaven was built in the later nineteenth century and was known as the Plymouth Borough Asylum. At its height in the 1950s, it held over 700 patients. The treatment of mental illness was, back then, barbaric and involved, amongst other things, forced electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

  These days, Moorhaven is a quiet and pleasant community, but on a cold and misty winter’s day, it isn’t hard to imagine the place as it was back when it was an asylum. There is, however, no evidence that a Hungarian puppet maker called Jakab Mézáros was ever incarcerated there.

  About the Author

  Mark Sennen was born in Surrey but spent his formative years in rural Shropshire, where he learnt to drive tractors and worm sheep. He has been a reluctant farmer, an average drummer, a failed PhD student and a pretty good programmer. He lives, with his wife, two children and a rather large dog, beside a muddy creek in deepest South Devon where there hasn’t been a murder in years. Puppet is his tenth novel.

  Web: http://www.marksennen.com

  Twitter: @marksennen

  Also by Mark Sennen

  The DI Charlotte Savage Series

  Touch

  Bad Blood

  Cut Dead

  Tell Tale

  Two Evils

  The Boneyard

  Puppet

  The Holm and da Silva Series

  The Sanction

  Rogue Target

  Standalone

  The Sum of All Sins