Читать книгу Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel - Mark Sennen, Mark Sennen - Страница 11

At Jennycliff, Riley turned off and drove down the access road to where the wooden cafe sat at the top of the cliffs. He spotted DC Enders standing by the path which led down to the shore. Enders wore a high-end red Berghaus, the hood raised against a light drizzle swirling in from the sea on a gusty breeze. A tangle of brown hair poked out of the hood above his boyish round face. The DC was a good few years younger than Riley and already married with three kids, but despite their differences, he felt an affinity with Enders. Perhaps it was because Enders’ Irish roots were, in a way, similar to his own distant Caribbean heritage. Perhaps it was because he just liked the lad.

Enders stood next to a PC, the officer explaining to a dog walker with a lively border collie why she couldn’t go down to the beach.

‘No access until further notice, ma’am,’ the PC said. ‘In police jargon, it’s what we call an ongoing incident.’

‘Nicely put,’ Riley said, as the dog walker moved off.

The PC shook his head. ‘Never seen anything like it, sir. She’s naked down there. Butchered. God knows who would do such a thing. Horrible.’

‘Right.’ The PC was working himself into a frenzy, Riley thought. ‘Well, you remain up here and DC Enders and I will go and take a look, OK?’

‘Yes, sir!’ The PC swallowed. Nodded enthusiastically.

‘Do you remember your first body?’ Enders asked as they negotiated the tortuous path down the cliff face to the beach. ‘Mine was a homeless guy down under the flyover at Marsh Mills one January. The poor bugger had frozen to death over Christmas, but by the time he was found the weather had turned. Terrible stink. Yours?’

‘A stabbing,’ Riley said. ‘Never would have believed anyone could bleed so much.’

‘That way.’ They reached the beach and Enders indicated off to the right. ‘She’s over in the next cove.’

The gravel crunched under their feet as they trudged along. Little waves came up over the gravel and sucked at the stones as the water fell back. The tide, Riley thought, was on the way in. But he might have been wrong about that.

‘What a beauty,’ Enders said, gesturing out into the Sound. A large yacht slid by a couple of hundred metres offshore, the crew on board well wrapped up in oilies and obviously returning from some serious sailing out beyond the breakwater. ‘Beats London, doesn’t it?’

Riley thought for a moment. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Only sometimes? Don’t tell me you’d honestly swap this for a crowded, polluted city?’

Riley pondered the question. He’d been down in Devon for a couple of years now. He’d got together with Julie and recently she’d moved in with him. He knew he should feel settled and content. Yet being a black officer in a white force, a London lad in a provincial city, he did sometimes feel like a fish out of water. He missed the vibrancy of London, the diversity of people, the clubs, bars, the fact that twenty-four hours a day something was happening.

‘Maybe on Saturday night, but come Sunday morning I’m quite happy here.’ Riley glanced at the yacht. ‘I’d be even happier if I could afford one of those things.’

‘Yeah, right. Fat chance on a police salary.’

They rounded a rock promontory and there, halfway up the beach, was some sort of raft. The thing atop the raft was more of a box than a coffin. Rectangular. Like a crate used to ship goods. The box lay on two eight-by-four pieces of plywood, the plywood supported by a criss-cross of wooden beams. Beneath the frame, a dozen plastic barrels provided the flotation.

‘The question is,’ Riley said as they approached, ‘how long has it been here?’

‘No idea.’ Enders pointed to the yacht again. ‘We need someone who knows about tides and stuff. DI Savage or John Layton.’

They stood next to the raft now. Riley clambered up onto the structure and Enders joined him. The raft creaked and shifted under their weight and then settled. Riley pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his pocket, took a gulp of fresh air and reached out and lifted the lid of the box.

She was naked, just as the PC had said. The right arm had been severed above the elbow, the amputated limb lying neatly alongside the torso. The left arm was still attached, but the hand was missing three fingers. On the stomach a series of burn marks patterned the surface like zebra print, while near the breasts there was evidence a cutting device had been used. The head was the worst. Where the eyes should have been there were nothing but gaping holes where some kind of drill had twisted its way in and the mouth was nothing but a froth of bubbled plastic.

Riley reached in with his hand and flicked the right arm with a fingertip. The limb made a hollow ringing sound.

‘Oh,’ Enders said, a smile spreading across his face along with a tinge of red as he stared down at the mannequin. ‘Sorry, sir. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have called you out. I took the PC at his word and I only caught a glimpse before he whipped the lid back on. That’s where the ice cream came in. There was this kid up on the raft with a ninety-nine. The whole thing was about to fall off the cone and land on the body.’

‘Never mind,’ Riley said. ‘It’s one for the canteen. The lads at the station will be joking about this for months.’

He looked down at the raft. The structure had been painstakingly constructed with dados and lap joints on the subframe, the pieces of plywood on the top had had the edges rounded over and the surface given a coat of wood stain. Somebody had spent time and money on building the thing.

‘It’s a lot of trouble to go to,’ Enders said, following Riley’s line of thinking. ‘Unless the raft is some sort of publicity stunt.’

‘Publicity?’

‘Yeah. A promo for a soft drink or a movie.’ Enders gestured at the structure beneath his feet. ‘You set this lot up and hope someone might film a video which will go viral and get hundreds of thousands of views. Isn’t that how it works?’

Riley had no idea. Since Julie had moved in there hadn’t been much time for movies.

‘I’m right, sir.’ Enders had picked up the disembodied arm and was running a finger up and down one side. ‘There’s a message engraved here, look.’

Enders held out the arm. Hundreds of little indentations peppered the surface and spelt out a sequence of letters:

TB/PS/CH/BP

‘A game, I reckon. Xbox, PlayStation, that sort of thing. This is a code. Maybe it’s a set of keystrokes to a secret level or an Easter egg.’

Riley looked down at the rest of the mannequin. Perhaps the raft had been constructed in a special-effects workshop. That could explain the high-quality joinery.

‘Where’s the press then?’ Riley said. ‘And why here, why not somewhere a bit more glamorous? Seems to me if this was a clever publicity stunt then the budget’s been wasted.’

‘Someone got their timing wrong. Couldn’t read a tide table.’ Enders dropped the arm back into the box with a clatter and patted Riley on the back. ‘You know, London types.’

‘Very funny, Patrick.’

‘They’ve probably chartered a big motorboat and are waiting out at sea with a bunch of journos and hampers full of hospitality food and plenty of booze.’

‘Well I hope they brought enough to last them a while because they’ll be waiting a long time.’

‘Are we going to impound the raft then?’

‘No, that’s not our job. We’ll leave it to the coastguard or the harbour master or whoever’s supposed to deal with this type of thing. Come on, Patrick, we’ve got better things to do with our time.’

‘Hang on, sir.’ Enders was peering down at the arm he’d just dropped. Something had fallen from the hollow interior. He bent and picked the item up. ‘More trickery?’

Enders showed Riley a cylindrical aluminium tube around six inches long. A rubber bung had been pushed in at each end. Enders began to ease the bung from one end of the tube. The bung popped out and Enders tipped the tube slightly. A small piece of rolled parchment fell out and into the box, something wrapped inside.

‘What’s that?’ Riley moved closer. The parchment was stiff and translucent, a scrawl of ink on the uneven surface. ‘Unroll it, Patrick.’

Enders reached for the roll and gently teased it open. Wrapped within was a small piece of something like china or white plastic.

‘God-bod Biblical stuff,’ Enders said, peering down at the writing. ‘Hellfire and damnation. Sinners will burn in the fires of hell sort of thing. Me being a good Catholic boy, I should recognise exactly where in the Bible this comes from, but I don’t.’

‘What’s the white thing?’ Riley asked.

Enders picked up the object and let the parchment fall back into the box. ‘Looks like porcelain or some kind of fine china.’

Riley stared at the parchment as the light material rocked back and forth in the wind. Was this part of the publicity stunt? If so, they’d certainly made an effort with the paper prop. The piece of broken china was another matter.

‘Nothing else in the tube then?’ Riley asked. Enders picked up the tube and stared inside. He shook his head. Riley pulled out his phone and held it out level in front of him. ‘Put the piece of china on there, would you? I want to look at it more closely.’

Enders placed the little white object on the glass screen and Riley held the phone up close to his eyes. The surface wasn’t uniform, nor was the shape. It was around half an inch long and bulbous at each end.

‘This isn’t china,’ Riley said. He gestured at the item. ‘It’s a piece of bone.’

The water was creeping round the edge of the houseboat when Savage arrived. A series of scaffold boards had been fixed to uprights sunk deep in the mud and rope hung between the uprights to provide some sort of notional security. She placed a foot onto the first board, feeling the wood strain beneath her, and walked out to the boat. ‘Boat’ was rather a grand title for what amounted to a bodge job of plywood, old window frames and off-cut timber. Beneath the superstructure lay the remnants of an ancient barge, black with layer upon layer of a tar-like antifoul. The boat didn’t look seaworthy and Savage doubted it could get anywhere under its own power. Likely as not this would be the barge’s last resting place and when the owner was dead or gone the boat would rot down to the frame in the same way as the one along the shore had.

She stepped onto the deck. In front of her, a regular house door in white PVC plastic and glass stood incongruously between two pieces of salvaged teak. She was about to knock on the glass when she saw something move at the far end of the boat. Somebody was back there.

‘Hello?’ she said.

The figure glanced up for a moment before disappearing from view. Savage edged along the side deck until she came to what she guessed must be the stern. Lobster pots and crab creels lay strewn about a large platform. To one side a dozen marker buoys stood in a jumble amid a nest of rope, their flags fluttering in the wind. Nearby there was a stack of white crates and a figure in a huge black cloak was sorting crabs from one crate to another. An unlit wooden pipe stuck out from a full beard.

‘If you’re after a lobby, you’re out of luck,’ the man said, the pipe jerking up and down as he spoke. ‘Shrimps I’ve got, or else one of these nice spiders.’

‘Police, Mr …?’ Savage moved from her precarious position on the side deck and onto the rear platform. ‘Just a few questions.’

‘Larry.’ Larry laughed to himself and then held out a huge spider crab towards Savage. The legs wiggled helplessly in the air while the claws snapped open and shut, searching for something to clamp onto. ‘Larry the Lobster.’

‘Detective Inspector …’ Savage leant back, avoiding the creature as Larry moved the crab nearer to her face. ‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage. We’re investigating the disappearance of a young boy. He was out digging bait next to the wreck.’

‘Gone under, has he? Should have learnt to read the tide tables. Can’t help idiots, I’m afraid.’

‘We believe he made it back to the shore. We found his bucket. We also found a pipe out in the mud.’ Savage pointed at Larry’s mouth. ‘You’re a pipe smoker.’

‘When I can afford it. And yes, I lost one out there the other day.’ Larry shook his head and then sneered. ‘You think I’ve got him, do you? Down below confined in a giant creel with the others?’

‘Larry, this isn’t a joking matter. The boy is eleven years old. He’s a kid.’

‘When I was only a couple of years older, I was working for a living out on the blue.’ Larry held up his right hand and Savage saw it had only fingers, no thumb. ‘That was how I lost this. Caught on a trolling hook as the line went over the transom. Right into the bone. Wireline it was, so the skipper had no choice but to cut my thumb off, else I’d have been dragged down to the deeps.’ Larry turned to the crate of spider crabs. ‘That lot would have been eating me, instead of the other way round.’

‘He was out there late yesterday afternoon. Some time about five or six o’clock. Did you see him?’

‘Seen nothing. Around then I was probably cooking my tea.’

‘We have a couple of witnesses who saw him hanging around on the shore near here.’

‘Really?’ Larry’s voice was deadpan, wholly disinterested. ‘Told you, I saw nothing.’

‘Here.’ Savage reached into her jacket and pulled out the misper leaflet she had of Jason. ‘This is the lad. Maybe you didn’t see him yesterday, but can you tell me if you recognise him? His name’s Jason.’

Larry held out his hand, the one with no thumb, his first two fingers open like scissors in a rock-paper-scissors game. The fingers clamped shut on the picture. Like crab claws, Savage thought.

‘Jason you say? Interesting.’ Larry stared down at the image as if the name would allow him access to some secret hidden in the ink. ‘Jason. I have seen him before, but I didn’t know his name, more’s the pity.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I swapped some bait he dug for a couple of crabs. Some time a few weeks ago. Maybe before that too. Good lad from what I remember. Polite.’

‘He came here? Onto your boat?’

‘Yeah. Stood right where you’re standing now.’ Larry smiled and then glanced down at the deck. A pile of fish guts sat near a pool of blood up against a hatch in the deck. Larry nodded at the hatch. ‘I invited him in for a cuppa, but the lad said no. Was something in his eyes. I didn’t push it. People talk, love, don’t they? A man and a young boy? Doesn’t bear thinking about what folks would say. Mind you, when folks do talk, you lot don’t do anything, do you?’

‘What are you getting at, Larry? Do you know something?’

‘Lass, I know a whole lot more than I’m telling, but not about the boy. Seen this sort of thing afore, years ago, but nobody believed anyone then. I’d be looking closer to home if I were you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He was unhappy. I told you, I could see it in his eyes. Deep down.’

‘Thanks for the advice.’ Savage turned to go. She didn’t need help from a crazy old fisherman turned psychologist. His pipe may well have been found out near the wreck, but the man knew nothing. ‘If you think of anything else give us a call. The number’s below the photo.’

‘No good to me, love,’ Larry said. ‘I ain’t got no phone. If I need to, I’ll come in and see you, right?’

‘Yes,’ Savage said, visualising a horde of spider crabs crawling over the desks in the crime suite. ‘You do that.’

Pete was doing his impression of a pizza chef as Savage came into the kitchen at a little after six thirty, a sing-song of mock-Italian words in a heavy accent accompanying his antics. Jamie, Savage’s seven-year-old son, laughed uncontrollably as a circle of dough spun in the air, flying dangerously close to the ceiling.

‘Mamma mia, Mummy’s home!’ Pete said as the pizza base fell just beyond his reach and folded into a pile on the floor. ‘Shit.’

‘Daddy swore, Mummy!’ Jamie said. ‘He used the S word.’

‘He said “shovel it”, sweetheart.’ Savage walked over to Pete and cast him a stern look. ‘As in shovel the pizza off the floor.’

‘He didn’t! He said sh …’ Jamie paused. ‘You know. The same as the C word.’

‘The C word?’ Savage stared at Jamie, thinking that having a fourteen-year-old sister wasn’t altogether a good thing for the lad. ‘Spell it.’

‘C. R. A. P.’

‘Oh.’ Savage stood next to her husband and stared down at the mess on the floor. ‘Well I’m sure I don’t know that C word or the S word, but I do know I’m hungry.’

‘There’s more.’ Pete pointed to a large mixing bowl containing a huge hunk of dough. ‘Might even be enough for you too.’

‘Thanks. I do live here.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Pete switched his focus to the radio. ‘But I heard on the news a kid had gone missing. Didn’t realise you’d be back.’

‘Yes.’ Savage looked across to Jamie. He was already bored of the conversation and his head was deep in a Beano annual. ‘An eleven-year-old.’

‘Suspicious?’

Savage sighed. ‘The kid regularly plays truant and the mother’s got a violent partner. Plus she didn’t seem to think it worth telling us he’d gone missing last night until this morning. So yes, deeply worrying.’

Pete put his arm out and held Savage around the waist. He glanced over to Jamie. ‘Well, you’re home now. Let’s have something to eat and a drink and you can forget all about it for a few hours, can’t you?’

Savage half turned to the window. A reflection of their little family tableau shone back at her. She refocused and stared beyond the pane to where the lights of Plymouth flared in the growing darkness across the inky black water. Jason Hobb was out there somewhere. Face down in the cold sea. Battered to death by his mother’s boyfriend. Abducted by some pervert. Or perhaps, as she’d said to DC Calter, the boy had just run off and tomorrow he’d turn up, safe and sound and everyone would live happily ever after.

‘Forget about it?’ Savage said. ‘Yes, of course I can.’