Puppet: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel Read online

  PUPPET

  Mark Sennen

  This novel is a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First published 2021

  Copyright © Mark Sennen 2021

  Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Web: www.marksennen.com

  Twitter: @marksennen

  Prologue

  He stands over her. Blood oozes from a gash beneath her left breast, the redness spreading in tiny fractal curls across the white material of her dress. She’s broken. Battered. Her face bruised. He didn’t mean it to happen like this. Over so quick. Alive one moment and dead the next. The mistake was his, of course. An error of judgement. He should never have come here. He should never have argued. He should never have tried to grab her when she ran.

  He stares at the body, wondering if anyone will believe this was an accident, that he didn’t mean to kill her. He simply wanted her close again, wanted to take her home, but she rejected him and spat and called him names and told him this wasn’t love. He angered, yes. Struck her, yes. But…

  He shakes his head. There are no excuses, and nothing can bring her back or change what happened. He considers the options. To be honest, there aren’t too many for a man in his situation.

  His mind is made up. He bends and lifts her, cradling her lifeless body. He turns, looking for a suitable place to bury her, but trees surround him. Twisted hawthorns trying to find purchase in the thin rocky soil. Stunted oaks. Several pines in a cluster on a nearby ridge. Something else up there too. Grey stone and a rusty corrugated iron roof. An old byre.

  He skirts round the bluff, carrying her in his arms, searching for a way up to the building. He pushes through waist-high bracken, the fronds catching her hair, teasing the strands. Such lovely hair, black and silky. He wishes he had a brush so he could make her look beautiful again.

  The building is a cattle barn, no longer in use, the doorway battened shut with metal sheets and fenceposts. He lays the body down on a patch of grass and pulls away the sheeting. Inside, the air is dry and musty. Straw and cow muck a foot thick on the floor. A stack of ancient bales in one corner. Leaning against the back wall is a pitchfork with curving prongs and a handle riddled with woodworm. He takes the fork and scrapes away at the dirt until he hits the cobbles beneath. He fetches the girl and places her in the shallow grave. He kneels beside her as a sunbeam dances in through the open doorway and flickers on her face. For a moment, the light makes it look as if she’s smiling. He touches her hair, slips his fingers down her cheek, and wonders how on earth did he get to this instant in time.

  He rises and takes the fork and flings muck and straw over the body until she is gone. He shifts the tin sheeting back into the doorway and replaces the fence posts. He stands back and looks at the building and the tangle of trees encircling the rocky outcrop. Nobody ever comes here and she’ll lie undisturbed forever. He steps over to the doorway and peers in through a narrow gap, satisfied there is nothing to see but dust motes floating in the still air, nothing to say she was ever here but a gentle disturbance in the ether.

  Chapter 1

  People called the shop an Aladdin’s cave. An emporium. A bazaar. A place to buy antiques if you knew what you were looking for. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d likely walk out with bric-a-brac or plain old junk.

  Raymond’s Oddities had clung on in the Barbican area of Plymouth as the city had changed around it. Situated in a tiny cut off Quay Road, most tourists passed by unaware of the shop’s existence. The few locals who ever visited did so out of morbid curiosity rather than to make a purchase.

  The bustle and hum were left behind as you slipped into the cut. A small sign in the shape of a hand with a pointing finger bore the name Oddities, but there was no clue as to what a visitor might find if they navigated their way down the twisting alley. Those who braved the smell of piss and sense of claustrophobia as the buildings loomed above, found a small shop at the far end. A window display contained a couple of maritime portraits, several Toby jugs, a stack of books, a few metal toys, and an old drum from a marching band.

  The glass-fronted door opened with the clanging of a brass bell overhead, a spring bouncing up and down, the ringing piercing a silence that was as solid as the atmosphere was thick with smells. A scent of old books and furniture polish. The tinge in the air of paraffin burning in a heater on one side of the entrance lobby. An aroma of tobacco from a roll-up, puffed out by an unseen smoker. Occasionally, around one in the afternoon, a gagging odour of liver and onions frying in a pan, the sickly vapour wafting from somewhere deep in the bowels of the building.

  Those who didn’t immediately turnabout and leave found a maze of tiny rooms and interlinking corridors, staircases that ended at locked doors or pirouetted down into cloying darkness, and long passages so narrow that they could only make progress by walking sideways. There was no natural light, only a feeble illumination from ancient filament bulbs and a dull glow seeping through the layers of brown paper plastered over the windows of any rooms lucky enough to have them. ‘UV degradation,’ said visitors who knew a thing or two about the preservation of antiquities. ‘Prying eyes,’ said locals who were aware of the proprietor’s past.

  It wasn’t long before those who ventured into the jumble of rooms became utterly lost. There were no signs and the layout was haphazard. There was, however, a certain logic because each room contained one particular type of object: Brasses; antique guns and weaponry; maps and atlases; nauticalia; figurines in marble and jade and alabaster; stuffed animals; pots and pans and cooking implements from the Victorian age and earlier; medals and military uniforms; clothing that reeked of mothballs; oil lamps and candelabras; ancient radios and gramophone players.

  Each doorway led from one set of wonders to another, and each room saw visitors laugh with delight or shake their heads in disbelief. If the contents had been transported to a modern museum with broad galleries and a cafe serving over-priced refreshments, there’d have been queues round the block. As it was, only a handful of people slipped in through the door each week, and fewer than one in ten ever walked out having purchased anything.

  The perennial question for the neighbouring shopkeepers and bar owners was how Raymond’s Oddities survived the ever-increasing business rates and why – given the lack of customers – the place hadn’t been sold off for a small fortune and redeveloped as residential property.

  Only Thomas Raymond, the proprietor, knew the answer, and he rarely uttered a word to his neighbours other than to tell them to mind their own business should they attempt to remonstrate with him about the rusty old van parked in front of their shops. He’d give them a stare and shuffle away, flicking ash from a cigarette and gobbing into the gutter before disappearing down the cut.

  Of all the rooms in Raymond’s Oddities, there was one that unnerved visitors. A low door lintel with a ragged velvet curtain meant those who entered the claustrophobic chamber were almost on their knees as they looked up and took in an array of marionettes dangling from the ceiling. There was an infrared beam at the threshold, and when triggered, it activated a tinny recording of ‘I’ve Got No Strings’ from the movie Pinocchio. In addition, an unseen mechanism began to pull the strings of the puppets.
They jerked their limbs and twisted their heads in unison. Those with movable eyes fixed their gaze on the intruders. The sight was unsettling, to say the least.

  After ten seconds, any visitors still in the room would be regaled by another terror as the lid on a large wooden chest to the right of the door opened. From within, a life-size puppet emerged. The puppet was dressed like an Aunt Sally, with rouge blotches on its porcelain cheeks and a tattered bonnet covering golden horsehair locks. The figure rose from a crouching position, becoming full height in a few seconds. It stood there and swung its head from right to left, and the jaw dropped open and clacked shut. A voice recording – out of sync with the puppet’s mouth – let out a hideous chuckle. The cacophony was usually enough to send anyone scampering from the room where, often as not, they’d encounter Raymond. ‘Bugger off out of it,’ he’d say and laugh, the sound identical to the noise the Aunt Sally had made.

  Back outside, perhaps a little shaken, those who knew nothing of the owner’s past would stroll away none the wiser and likely not think too much on what they’d witnessed. Those who did know about Thomas Raymond would feel quite, quite differently about the experience, and that night, lying in their beds, they would struggle to put what they’d seen from their minds. When finally they drifted off, their sleep would be fitful. They’d mouth silent words and toss and turn, their bodies twitching as if unseen strings were tugging at their limbs.

  ***

  Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage sat at the kitchen table with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a thumping headache. The kids had gone to bed and her husband, Pete, was in his little home office drawing up a lesson plan for a group of cadets he was teaching navigation to. He was a naval officer, once in command of a frigate, now ashore but working as hard as ever. Savage was alone with her thoughts and more than a handful of regrets, one of which was the empty bottle of red wine standing on the draining board.

  ‘Go easy, love,’ Pete had said earlier as she’d poured her fourth glass. ‘You know it doesn’t help.’

  What didn’t help was Pete saying it didn’t help. His nagging only served to rub her up the wrong way. Still, when he’d disappeared to his office, she’d tipped the rest of the bottle into the sink and made herself a cup of coffee. She wasn’t worried about the caffeine keeping her awake because she didn’t sleep much these days anyway. Most nights, she lay in her bed, wondering where it had all gone wrong.

  ‘Where it all went wrong,’ she imagined Pete saying, ‘was when you took the law into your own hands.’

  He was right, but at the time there hadn’t been any alternative. Savage had believed a serial killer called Malcolm Kendwick had abducted her daughter, Samantha. She’d turned the tables and kidnapped Kendwick, torturing him to find out what he’d done with her. The problem was Kendwick hadn’t been involved. Guilty as hell for other horrific crimes, in this particular instance, he was innocent. The situation had worsened when he’d managed to get free. A fight ensued, and Kendwick had been critically injured. With hospital out of the question, Savage had called on local crime baron Kenny Fallon for help. He’d put a bullet in Kendwick’s head and dumped the body at sea. Savage now owed Fallon big time.

  Her boss, Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin, knew nothing of what had happened. She’d told him she’d wounded Kendwick in an act of self-defence, and he’d crawled away to die somewhere out on the moor. However, extensive searching had found nothing, and Hardin described her account as ‘very convenient.’

  Suspension from active duties followed, and she’d spent over a year on full pay, doing very little while the cogs of bureaucracy ticked round. There’d been an internal investigation, an IOPC inquiry and an external audit conducted by another force. All proved inconclusive, and her career hung in the balance. Only her high profile in the media had saved her skin, although it hadn’t been enough to see her return to her job in CID. Instead, Hardin had found her a new role, and she’d become Devon and Cornwall’s first public liaison officer detective.

  ‘You’re joking me?’ DI Darius Riley had said over a consolation drink. ‘PLOD?’

  ‘Yes.’ Savage said, contemplating the bubbles in her pint of beer. ‘Hardin is Mr Acronyms R Us, but I’m not sure he thought this one through.’

  Riley, someone who was as much a friend as a colleague, was newly promoted to Detective Inspector, and Savage wondered if he was feeling guilty that his career was flying while hers had crash-landed. As they sipped their drinks, he tried his best to be sympathetic but struggled to mask his scepticism.

  ‘And what does a PLOD do exactly?’

  ‘Visits schools, attends agricultural shows, provides a public face for CID. To be honest, fuck knows.’

  ‘You’ll be great. A few autographs, a couple of selfies. You’ll need some social media accounts, but I guess the main thing will be meeting people and pressing the flesh. Good job you’re not a misanthrope.’ Riley winked at Savage. ‘I mean, you love the great unwashed British public, right?’

  Right.

  Now, barely six months in, she’d decided the PLOD initiative was a complete waste of time. No matter on how many occasions she showed her presentation, no matter how many question-and-answer sessions she sat through, the public took their cue from what they saw on the screen in their living rooms. The daily grind of police work didn’t interest them unless it involved car chases and guns and girls buried in a back garden. Savage had plenty of tales to tell that did include the juicier aspects of detective work, but Hardin had been most insistent.

  ‘Don’t go regaling them with any of that serial killer nonsense,’ he’d said. ‘I don’t want you telling them about bodies in freezers, vigilantes torturing paedophiles, or nutters roaming the wilds of Dartmoor. Informing them about real-world policing is your job. You’re the face of hard-working detectives, and your task is to provide a context for the public so they can aid us in future investigations.’

  The problem was the reason Hardin had picked Savage for the role – her high profile – meant virtually everyone she met had a preconceived idea of what she was there for. Just the other day, a group of year six primary school kids had wanted to hear all about Malcom Kendwick and his mad uncle accomplice.

  ‘Please, miss? Did they really, you know, do it with dead bodies?’

  The teacher swiftly directed Savage to move on to the lesson’s practical segment, which involved fingerprinting the whole class.

  ‘Out of the mouths of babes,’ Savage thought.

  PLOD was a valiant effort by Hardin to keep her employed on the pretence that she was engaging with the public, but in the end, people weren’t interested in the painstaking and mind-numbing process of catching criminals. They wanted movie-style action, reaction and resolution. They wanted bad-ass villains and larger-than-life superheroes, not a washed-up middle-aged woman with a chip on her shoulder about the way she’d been treated.

  Middle-aged?

  Fuck it.

  She took her coffee cup to the sink, where the dregs followed the wine down the plughole, and got herself ready for bed.

  ***

  The thump, thump, thump permeating the night air was a low-end rumble from a high-end sound system. Even from his position in a car parked across the road from the large detached property, DI Darius Riley could feel the bass drum pulse in his stomach. He flicked the wipers to clear the windscreen of drizzle as another bunch of teenagers headed through the wide front gates and up to the porch where a couple of volunteer bouncers – older youths, perhaps nineteen or twenty – provided a semblance of order.

  ‘It’s turning into some party,’ the DC sitting in the passenger seat beside him said.

  ‘Yes,’ Riley said, even though this was, by the standards of his youth, a relatively low-key affair. However, Detective Constable Naomi Hester was fresh faced and not long out of college. What’s more, she was a local girl, and for Plymouth the party was pretty decent. Riley, however, had grown up in a part of South London where a sound system didn�
��t get noticed until it tickled the soles of your feet half a mile away.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing in there?’ Hester said.

  He meaning an unidentified Romanian going by the alias of Andrei, who they suspected of being involved in pimping young girls. They’d tailed him from the Stonehouse area of the city, following an Uber ride to the well-to-do suburb of Plympton, hoping to build a picture of the man’s connections. The ultimate destination – an expensive detached house – had been unexpected.

  ‘Meeting a contact,’ Riley said. ‘At least that’s what I’m hoping. Or he could be on the lookout for fresh bait. There are probably young lasses in there he can charm. One minute he’s whispering sweet nothings. The next they’re walking the streets for him.’

  ‘Yuk.’

  ‘Give him another minute, then you go in.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Can hardly be yours truly,’ Riley said. ‘I’d stick out like a sore thumb.’

  ‘Because you’re…’

  Riley smiled. Hester had stopped short of saying ‘black,’ and yes, given the party was filled with white teenagers, the colour of his skin was a good reason. Not the main reason, though.

  ‘No, I’m too well-known from my days as an undercover officer. Andrei might not recognise me, but he may be meeting somebody who could.’ Riley turned and took in Hester. She was twenty-four but didn’t look a day older than eighteen. Not much good when confronting a load of drunk yobbos spilling from a city-centre pub, but ideal for this situation. ‘Most of the kids inside are under sixteen, but you’ll pass muster.’

  He reckoned she looked a bit straight, but she’d fit in fine. Besides, the youths on the door hadn’t stopped anyone from entering; even Andrei had waltzed on through unchallenged. The DC wouldn’t have a problem.

  ‘Shall I go now?’ Hester moved her fingers to the door handle. ‘Right now?’