CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel Read online

  Wilson swivelled his chair and got up. He walked to the window and put his hand to his chin.

  ‘Look, I’ve dealt extensively with serial offenders. Recently I’ve been over at Channings Wood in Newton Abbot studying paedophiles and other sex offenders. I know these sort of people, know how they operate, what they are capable of. The killer could be out there right now. Passing by on the street, passing within a few feet of one of your officers. You’d never know. You might have had him in custody, he might be your next-door neighbour, he might be an anonymous worker at some factory on an industrial estate. You’ve no idea who he is because there are no witnesses and no forensic. If he doesn’t make a mistake then last year’s victim is destined to be the first of another set.’

  Wilson turned back from the window and Savage nodded. Everything he said was true.

  ‘The date.’ Wilson returned to his desk and once seated he pointed at the little calendar next to the Rolodex. ‘I assume the date has not escaped your attention?’

  ‘Of course not. We’re trying to formulate some sort of strategy, both investigative and preventative, but we haven’t got long. Which is why we could do with your input.’

  ‘That paper I mentioned a few minutes ago.’ Wilson glanced across at the picture on the wall again and then turned back to Savage. ‘I didn’t do it to show off. The paper considered what happens when, literally, the killing stops. Often investigative forces can do little until another death. It’s unpalatable but true. The good news, if it can be called that, is when the killing does start up after a long respite, it can be the beginning of the endgame for the killer. They go crazy, make mistakes. Sometimes it’s almost as if they want to be caught, but that’s the wrong way around. They come to believe they can’t be caught. Which is why as soon as I heard the police had found the bodies of the missing women I got in touch.’

  ‘So how do you think you can help us?’

  ‘I’ll need to see the burial site ASAP. This afternoon if possible. Obviously with the first corpse – Mandy Glastone – there was no burial, she was dumped in the river. Uncharacteristic. Analysis of a grave site can reveal a lot about a killer. It was what was missing from my report of the first killing and the missing persons. And it was what helped me catch Peeking Paul.’ Wilson doodled on a piece of paper. ‘The Candle Cake Killer is not going to get the better of us this time. This time we will catch him.’

  Us. We. Wilson clearly believed he was back on the team. With what she’d heard, Savage could think of no reason he shouldn’t be.

  Apart, she reflected, from the issue of Walsh’s feelings.

  Davies had been a little too much mouth and not enough trousers when it came to pressing Corran’s wife. After lunch they’d called in at the Dousland cottage, Cassie Corran as distraught as ever. Maybe Davies’ softness was down to the fact that, unbeknown to Mrs Corran, they’d spotted her through the living room window as they arrived, tears flowing down her cheeks. Or maybe it was the little girl, Emily. While Riley and Davies were there she’d run in from outside. Cassie was still crying and Emily had produced a tissue from her pocket and told her mother not to cry. Daddy would, she promised, be back soon.

  Riley had asked about the life insurance and for a moment the woman’s expression had made him think they were on to something. But the look on her face was fleeting. When Riley went on to ask about people Corran might have been worried about she looked blank, didn’t know. If the whole thing was an act then it was a very good one.

  Back at the station there was a message from a junior CSI on Layton’s team. The results from the analysis on the paint sample Layton had found on the road had come through. Riley called him up.

  ‘It’s a blue paint,’ the CSI said, ‘but the lab couldn’t get a match. Either from a re-spray or a much older vehicle. Not much help I’m afraid.’

  ‘Result?’ Davies said, coming over as Riley hung up.

  ‘Sort of,’ Riley said. ‘If narrowing the vehicle down to about a quarter of the cars on the road is a result.’

  ‘Any ideas?’ Davies scratched his day-old stubble. ‘I mean how we go about finding the driver?’

  ‘No witnesses, sod all forensic evidence, no body to examine? No, sir, I don’t.’

  ‘I thought you fast-track boys had all the answers.’ Davies shook his head. ‘What’s the problem, that university education wasted on you, was it?’

  The DI tapped Riley on the back before walking away, Riley not sure if the gesture was an admonishment or a consoling pat.

  Davies gone, Riley bent to his pad and began jotting random thoughts, then drawing circles within which he wrote single words: Corran; prison; criminals; road; accident; bicycle; wife; history.

  History. Corran’s history. That would need to be fully investigated, sure, but was there something simpler here, something his over-educated brain was missing?

  There was.

  Riley swivelled his chair and moved his hands to the keyboard of a nearby terminal, thinking about RTAs or rather RTCs as they were called these days, the implication being that no incident on the road was an accident. Soon a list of traffic offences committed on Dartmoor scrolled in front of him. There was a paucity of serious ones. Riley supposed that could be because the moor wasn’t a place routinely patrolled. Just two incidents flagged themselves up as being of interest. Both had resulted in fatalities.

  In the first incident, a couple of years ago, three teenagers had been killed when their souped-up Fiesta had taken the run down from Haytor towards Bovey Tracy at way over the forty limit. The driver had lost control and the car had rolled and collided with a stone wall.

  In the second incident a girl of nine had been killed while cycling on a minor road in the depths of the moor. A hit and run driver had failed to stop. The family of the girl had been picnicking close by and had seen the car speed away, but the driver had never been traced.

  Riley stared again at the report. Took in the girl’s name.

  Clarissa Savage.

  Not …? Riley leant back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and glanced round the room. Then he beckoned to one of the nearby indexers, a guy who’d been doing the job for years. Riley pointed to the screen and asked if his assumption was correct. It was, the man said. Tragic. The DI hadn’t been the same since. But then that sort of thing would do that to you, wouldn’t it? Make you sad, bitter, make you look at life in a different way?

  It would, Riley conceded, thanking the man and then reading the report again. The log detailed a blue Subaru Impreza. Even if the colour was the same, that was all. The event was a coincidence which left Riley feeling saddened, but Savage’s daughter’s death was an accident. Tragic, as the indexer had said, but in no way comparable to the Corran case.

  Chapter Thirteen

  You sit in the little dinghy as it bob, bob, bobs. A queasy feeling bubbles up from somewhere in your abdomen. Boats do that to you. It’s the way they float on the water when they shouldn’t. The same way an aeroplane hangs in the air on tiny wings. Not nice. Not right. But at the moment you don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. Not if you want to watch what’s going on.

  Up the slope from the estuary you can see the farm. Buildings cluster round in a square, fences run in lines bisecting fields, hedges crawl the perimeter marking out the boundary of the land where hell started for you all those years ago. You don’t remember any of it of course. You were never actually there, but nevertheless here is where it started. Without this place you’d have been fine. Normal. You wouldn’t have suffered. You wouldn’t have had to embark on this sick crusade. Because that’s what it is: a crusade. And right now there’s a group of infidels trying to stop you.

  You dip the oars and pull, trying to keep the dinghy moving in a straight line. You don’t want the people up in the field to notice you, to think there’s anything unusual about the lone oarsman down on the river. You’re just someone out for an afternoon row. Enjoying the sun, the fresh air, the smell of death drifting down
the slope.

  You’re trying to see exactly what’s happening at the farm. You know they’ve found your hiding place. Taken the bodies away. Those people up there, the police, they’re causing you problems. You can’t complete your mission with them milling and mulling and messing around. How long will they stay? A day or two? Longer, and there will be real grief. Like with the first one. You couldn’t bury her where you wanted. Had to dump her body on the moor. You don’t want to have to do the same with the next one. Which means everyone has to leave. The men up there. The women too. You’ve seen the one who owns the farm. The black-haired whore who took over the place. By rights you think the farm should have been yours. But that’s not why you do what you do. The fact is incidental.

  There’s another woman who’s been hanging around too. She’s got red hair like a beacon. She’s a police officer and you wonder what she’d look like tied to the oak table with Mikey drooling over her and the Big Knife sweeping and swooping.

  Good. That’s how she’d look. Tasty.

  At the moment she’s not part of your plan and for her sake, you hope it stays that way. But for you? Well, if she becomes too much trouble then you’d go for it. Oak table, Mikey, Big Knife and all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bere Ferrers, Devon. Wednesday 18th June. 2.32 p.m.

  Savage sat outside the health centre, trying to juggle a number of appointments for the afternoon. Wilson wanted to visit the scene as soon as possible and she’d need to be there with him.

  ‘Meet you there,’ he’d said. ‘Clearing the diary for this one. Got a patient to see and then I’m all yours.’

  The psychologist had smiled, Savage unsure whether the double entendre had been intentional. As she flicked through her ‘to do’ list on her phone she wondered about the details of the harassment case against Wilson. The man obviously had a problem relating to women and she certainly hadn’t warmed to him. Then again, maybe that was what it took to get inside the minds of serial killers. The phone vibrated, John Layton’s name flashing up.

  ‘Your Mr Shortcut been proving elusive then?’ Layton said. ‘Because I might have something for you.’

  At first Savage wasn’t sure what the senior CSI was on about. Then she realised he meant the unknown person who’d been using the route across the railway bridge at Tavy View Farm. She’d emailed Layton earlier asking if there wasn’t an easier way of tracking the man down because so far they were having no luck. A PC sent down to watch the bike for a couple of hours around five p.m. Tuesday had reported the chain hanging loose from the tree, no sign of bicycle or rider. He’d been ordered to wait but a burglary-in-progress report at nearby Tamerton Foliot saw him called away. Two suspects were apprehended and taken in for processing and another emergency intervened. His late shift ended and by the time a replacement officer was able to return to the bridge the surrounding woods were filled with birdsong, sunlight piercing the horizon. And the bike was safely locked to the tree.

  They couldn’t spare anybody to repeat the debacle. Hence the email to Layton.

  ‘UV,’ he explained to Savage as he gave her the address. ‘And I’m not talking sunbeds.’

  ‘Sorry?’ Savage said.

  ‘The bike was marked with the postcode of the owner. Under UV light it showed up. As you suspected, the address is in Bere Ferrers.’

  ‘On my way, John.’

  Convenient, Savage thought, since she had to return to the village to meet Wilson.

  The PL20 postcode led her to a semi-detached house on Station Road, the door opening after several knocks to a man bleary with sleep.

  Mr Shortcut turned out to be a man by the name of Adam Narr. He was in his sixties and had a round face with a bulbous nose like a washed new potato. Savage explained nothing beyond the fact that she wanted a word. Narr took her through the house to the back garden where there was a circular table with four chairs and then excused himself. The plot was small, down to grass with a little vegetable patch at the far end. Peas and runner beans twisted up an elaborate tepee of bamboo canes and through the greenery Savage could see a low fence and fields which swept down to the estuary. To the right lay Tavy View Farm and farther away the railway bridge.

  When Narr returned it was with a mug of tea for himself, nothing for her. He gestured towards the farm.

  ‘You’ll have come about them bodies no doubt,’ he said. ‘Tavy View. Knew it weren’t right having a woman there. Man’s job, farming. Bound to be trouble.’

  The logic of Narr’s words was lost on Savage so she ignored them and instead asked him about his trips over the bridge.

  ‘You see you didn’t mention any of that when the enquiry teams interviewed you. In fact you denied going near Tavy View Farm.’

  ‘Hey?’ Narr tried it on for a moment but he didn’t have a liar’s face. ‘I’ve done nothing.’

  ‘Your bike, Mr Narr. We know you use the bridge to get into Plymouth, but you told us you hadn’t been anywhere near the railway line.’

  ‘Well I would, wouldn’t I?’ Narr picked up his mug and slurped a gulp of tea. ‘I expect it’s not legal taking the shortcut, but residents have been going that route for years. At least they used to before everyone had cars.’

  ‘And you don’t have a car?’

  ‘I do, but this way saves me a fortune in petrol, not to mention the difficulty parking. It’s less than four miles from the other side of the bridge. An easy cycle to where I work.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Derriford. I’m a night porter. Mostly nights anyway. Sometimes a half shift.’

  ‘You can forget about trespass, Mr Narr. We’re not interested in how you get to work. What we are interested in is whether you’ve seen anything in your comings and goings. Specifically around this time last year midsummer but at other times too.’

  ‘Seen anything?’ Narr’s head turned, his eyes wandering to the right and the bridge. ‘What, you mean like the killer?’

  ‘Anything suspicious, anyone else on the bridge. Cars parked on the other side. Perhaps a boat on the river.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Narr took another swig from his mug and then drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table. ‘He came across the bridge. That’s what you’re telling me. I’m coming one way, him the other. Jesus, he could have had me. Fuck the petrol, I’m going by car from now on.’

  ‘That might be the safest,’ Savage said. ‘Now, did you see anything?’

  ‘I’ve had a close call. He could have stabbed me, run me over, thrown me into the estuary even.’

  ‘Run you over? Why do you say that?’

  ‘Hey?’

  ‘You said the killer could have run you over.’

  ‘Yes, I did. Don’t know why.’

  ‘Was there a car parked on the other side of the bridge in the lane?’

  ‘Now you come to mention it, there might have been at some point. Probably was a year ago too. I remember a smart top-end model being there on a couple of nights when the weather was warm. An executive’s car. Never saw anyone inside. I assumed it was some businessman type out for a session in the woods with his secretary. You think that was the killer?’

  ‘Can you remember anything about the vehicle? For instance the make or the colour.’

  ‘Dark. Black or a dark shade of blue. It was possibly a German car. A BMW, Audi, Mercedes kind of thing. When I say “executive” I mean expensive. Come to think of it, the thing was more of an SUV. Not a true 4×4.’

  ‘And that’s the first time you’ve seen a car down there?’

  ‘Yes. At that time of night anyway. I was doing a half shift and knocking off at midnight. I’d have been there around half an hour later after leaving work. I never saw anybody though.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Savage said.

  ‘Yes. I definitely didn’t see anyone.’ Narr picked up his mug of tea again. This time his hand shook, liquid spilling out onto his trousers. ‘The thing is, you’ve got me worried now. Just because I didn’t see him, it d
oesn’t mean he didn’t see me, does it?’

  After finishing her interview with Adam Narr, Savage went back to the farm to meet Dr Wilson. An unseasonal mist had risen from the Tamar, hiding the river’s surface from view and marooning the peninsula in a sea of ethereal white. The railway line floated above the mist, forging across to the mainland and Plymouth. In the farmyard, Wilson leant against the gate looking down towards the field and the estuary.

  ‘This,’ Wilson said, turning as Savage approached, ‘is more like it.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Savage said.

  ‘Last time there was nothing. Except for the body of Mandy Glastone.’ Wilson offered a thin smile. ‘And with all respect to the woman, she wasn’t much use. The location did nothing to help us as it was obviously random. I need more than a single body to enable me to build a profile.’

  Savage nodded, wondering about the cuts, the cake and the candles, the victims’ homes, the date, the clay which had led to the notion of the suspect being an artist. More than enough to start with she thought.

  ‘This art business you mentioned back then …’

  ‘What of it? DCI Walsh wasn’t very impressed with my theory. It took the intervention of the Chief Constable to get any progress.’

  ‘But the theory didn’t lead anywhere, did it? Hundreds of studios visited, artists questioned, nothing came of that line of investigation, not one suspect.’

  ‘That I have to concede but it doesn’t mean I’m not correct.’

  ‘You may well be, because we’ve found some more clay.’

  ‘What?’ There was shock for a moment on Wilson’s face and then a smile spread. ‘I told you! Back then, I told you!’

  Savage wondered if she’d made a mistake, added to the pool of arrogance which Wilson drew from. It could only fuel his overbearing manner.