Puppet: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel Page 27

‘He did something bad and paid the price,’ Reynolds said as they meandered back to the reception building. ‘Does that make him evil? No. If there’s one downside to Marcus Clent, it’s that he believes in himself as much as he believes in God. He’ll do anything to defend both positions and he’s very protective of his faith.’

  ‘That I can confirm,’ Savage said. ‘He misled us and the justification was his concern for his community.’

  ‘His flock, yes. I noticed that when he was here. I think you have to take it as genuine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yes, you see, there was an incident where Clent literally put his life on the line for a fellow inmate.’ They’d reached the doors to the reception area, and once more, Reynolds checked her watch. ‘Got to go, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Please,’ Savage said. ‘Just the barest details.’

  ‘OK.’ Reynolds made eye contact with the officer behind the reception desk, raised her hand, and tapped the face of her watch. ‘Clent was on library duties when he was here. He delivered books on the book trolley. He made a lot of friends by picking out suitable books and reserving them for particular inmates. So one day, he’s in the Vulnerable Offenders Unit with the trolley, and there’s an argument between two prisoners. Prisoner A goes for prisoner B with a shiv, intent on inflicting serious facial damage. He nicks the face of B, but then Clent intervenes. He jumps between them using a hefty Bible as a shield and parries the shiv several times before four POs arrive and restrain prisoner A. Clent receives a nasty cut on his finger but saves B from serious disfigurement, possibly even death. End of story.’

  ‘And that changed your opinion of him?’

  ‘It proves Clent is not all me, me, me.’ Reynolds stuck out a hand. ‘Sorry, have to go. I hope Devon and Cornwall Police can follow the prison service’s example and root out institutional prejudice. Contact my PA if there’s anything else you need.’

  Reynolds whirled about and entered the foyer, leaving Savage turning over the encounter in her mind as she walked back to the car park. Clent had sold Reynolds a dummy, she was sure of it. Reynolds had been keen to earn brownie points, and Clent had helped her promote religious tolerance at Channings Wood. The Inspectorate of Prisons would have visited and spoken to inmates, and the answers they’d given would have resulted in a few boxes being ticked. Job done.

  At the car, Savage noticed a fresh scuff mark on the front nearside wing. She must have scraped it while negotiating the narrow lanes up near God’s Haven. She cursed since she’d have to sign it into the log. At the end of the year, Collier tottered up the damage, and there was a booby prize for the worst driver: The winner had to make a cake run for the entire crime suite.

  She got in, still thinking about the scuff, for some reason relating it to Clent and the nick on prisoner B’s face. Sometimes a cut didn’t heal and became a scar, but unlike car paintwork, it was impossible to polish a scar away. Why was that nagging at her? She sat and tried to focus for half a minute, running the story over to see if she could work out the answer.

  Nothing came.

  ***

  John Layton and a team of CSIs arrived at Oddities within thirty minutes, Layton shaking his head after making an initial assessment.

  ‘Bloody nightmare,’ he said. ‘The place is a labyrinth and each room contains hundreds of objects. Must be tens of thousands in all. Plus, we don’t even know what we’re looking for.’

  ‘Something to connect Thomas Raymond to the murders,’ Riley said.

  ‘Darius, I’m not dumb. I realise that.’

  ‘Sorry, of course you do. I’m just angry Raymond got away.’

  Riley blamed himself. He should either have followed Raymond down the chute or headed straight for the front door, but instead, he’d been taken in by Raymond’s diversion. As soon as he’d realised, he’d called for backup, but it had been too late.

  He left Layton with the unenviable task of making sense of the shop’s clutter and returned to the station.

  DI Savage came across as he entered the crime suite.

  ‘It’s Thomas Raymond then?’ she said, wearing a downcast expression, almost as if she didn’t want to hear the truth.

  ‘He’s done a runner, so it looks that way,’ Riley said. ‘Layton’s at the shop right now, trying to find some evidence. Bearing in mind the state of the place, that could be a stretch.’

  ‘Before Raymond fled, did you get anything from him?’

  ‘Not a lot, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to kill again. One of Mészáros’s puppets has been found at each of the murder scenes, and those puppets were the same as the one in the display case at the shop. So when he tricked me and risked capture to retrieve the puppet from the case, it can only mean he’s going to carry out another killing. Perhaps he views the puppets like voodoo dolls, perhaps he uses them to play through the act of murdering, perhaps he talks to the damn things.’

  ‘Or else he simply got scared and ran away, taking the puppet with him because it means something to him. I can’t imagine life’s been easy after prison.’

  ‘Is that sympathy coming from string ’em up Savage?’ Riley smiled and made a play of holding an imaginary rope and jerking it, tilting his head over as if he’d been hanged.

  ‘Always a first for everything.’ Savage looked over to the whiteboards. ‘There’s still no link to Abigail Duffy, Faye or Smeeton. We need the connection to make sense of what he’s up to.’

  ‘Maybe there is no sense to it. Abigail and Faye were random targets, in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ Riley followed Savage’s gaze. She was looking at the picture of Marcus Clent. ‘You’ve got to forget about God’s Haven. If you even breathe in the direction of the place, it won’t just be your head on the line; it’ll be mine and Hardin’s too. Maria Heldon will have us drummed out of the force.’

  ‘Even if it helps us to find Isobel Anderson?’

  ‘Well, no, but how can you be sure there’s anything there to help?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Savage said.

  Riley watched as Savage turned and walked away. He wondered why she couldn’t let the whole God’s Haven thing drop. Sure, Clent wasn’t the saint he made himself out to be, but so far, there was no evidence he was a murderer. The tenaciousness that had led to DI Savage’s past successes was, on this occasion, in danger of leading to her downfall.

  ***

  Savage was at a loss. The discovery about Jakab Mézáros and his relationship to God’s Haven had initially buoyed her. She’d been determined to tell Riley and get him to sanction another search up at the community. However, the pending arrest of Thomas Raymond now made his approval unlikely.

  She compiled a report on her visit to Channings Wood Prison, reluctantly noting that the deputy governor had described Clent as a model prisoner. When she finished, she was aware of Collier hovering nearby, a satellite with vital information to transmit.

  ‘Yes, Gareth?’ Savage said.

  ‘Just had a call from DC Robertson over in Ipplepen. She’s been to the pub, and it turns out Zac Francis wasn’t working on Friday evening. Not sure it’s relevant in light of recent events, but he lied to you.’ Collier looked over to the whiteboard where there were mugshots of Clent, Raymond, Francis and Schultz. ‘Also, after visiting the pub, Robertson went round to see Francis, but he wasn’t there. A neighbour said Francis left the previous evening after the warden had been. We’ve now had that confirmed by his probation officer. He says most of Francis’s stuff has gone from his room. Looks like he’s done a runner.’

  ‘Shit,’ Savage said. ‘Have you told DI Riley yet?’

  ‘Nope.’ Collier bowed his head, embarrassed. ‘To lose one is bad enough, but to lose two? Well…’

  Collier went back to the whiteboard, leaving Savage wondering if Francis had neatly bumped himself into prime suspect position. She watched as Collier rearranged the pictures on the board. Raymond got the centre spot while Francis, Clent and Schultz were relegated to one side. Still no doubt
in Collier’s mind then.

  She turned to her computer, taking a half glance back at the picture of Francis as she did so. Something there. Something nagging. The same way it had in the car park at Channings Wood Prison. She cast her mind back to the scuff mark on the pool car.

  And then she had it.

  Her fingers flicked across the keyboard, and she brought up a picture of Francis, the same image as on the whiteboard. She zoomed in until his face filled the screen. There, on his right cheek, halfway between the nose and the ear, was a tiny scar. She’d noticed it when she’d first met him, but the blemish was so minor it had hardly registered. She turned her mind back to the story Linda Reynolds told her about Clent intervening in a fight between two men in the Vulnerable Offenders Unit. Prisoner A and prisoner B, she’d called them. B had received a nick on the face from a shiv wielded by A. The alias for B was no longer necessary because now Savage was pretty sure she knew his name.

  Zac Francis.

  She decided to check, so she brought up the details of Francis and his trial and conviction. He’d been detained on an indeterminate sentence and served a vast chunk of it at HMP Wakefield. The prison sometimes went by the moniker ‘monster mansion’ because of the number of sex offenders and other dangerous prisoners it housed. Francis, Savage thought, would have felt at home there. She clicked another tab to find details of his later years and release and let out a long breath when she saw the confirmation on her screen: Before being released to the hostel and the halfway house, Francis had been at HMP Channings Wood in the Vulnerable Offenders Unit. She checked Clent’s dates at the prison, and they overlapped with the time Francis was there.

  She sat back in her chair, berating herself. She should have guessed Francis had been at Channings Wood since the house in Ipplepen was no more than a couple of miles from the prison. The probation service must have placed Francis there so he could be close to the VOU and the therapy and supervision the unit offered.

  Still, her hunch had been correct. Not only had Zac Francis and Marcus Clent been at the same prison at the same time, but Clent had saved Francis from death or severe injury. Had they then become friends? Had Francis felt he owed Clent something? Had Clent managed to turn Francis into a believer?

  She took a piece of paper and doodled. Clent and Francis, somehow friends or at least acquaintances. Francis and Jack Duffy, sworn enemies. Jakab Mézáros and his puppets and the connection to God’s Haven. Thomas Raymond, the weird shopkeeper who’d strung up a young woman like a puppet and was also linked to Mézáros. Finally, Abigail and the other missing brides, and Dave Smeeton and his runner, Faye.

  She turned her attention once more to the monitor screen. Smeeton had been inside, but not at Channings Wood. What about Raymond? He was a sex offender. Was there a chance he’d been at the Vulnerable Offenders Unit? Savage brought up his details and checked. No, he’d been admitted to Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital and later transferred to a prison in the midlands. She crossed referenced all four suspects once more, but it was only at Channings Wood that two of them had ever met.

  She sat back, disappointed, and closed the database, spotting an email notification as she did so. She clicked the email open. It was the picture she’d requested from Collier, the one of all the God’s Haven residents. It showed the residents lined up on a grassy bank near the main buildings. They stood in three rows, one hundred and twenty faces smiling for the camera. Collier had helpfully annotated the picture, drawing a circle round Isobel Anderson and Fiona Jones. Savage zoomed the image and scanned the faces. Nothing. She looked again, pausing on each female, carefully studying their features. Finally, she stopped near the right-hand edge of the photograph. There, half-hidden behind the left shoulder of a tall woman, a face framed with jet black hair peered out. Faye, Smeeton’s runner. Or rather, Savage suspected, the real Fiona Jones.

  Collier, even though he’d been careful to corroborate Fiona’s identity with several residents, had been played.

  She pulled up a map on the computer. God’s Haven was surrounded by open moorland, and paths and tracks dotted the area. She took a glance at the window. It was mid-afternoon and cloudy and the forecast promised rain. Not the best conditions for a walk in the country, but still…

  She rose from her chair and went over to where Collier was sitting at a nearby workstation. The office manager looked up as she approached.

  ‘You good?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Savage took in Collier’s screen. There was a long list of action points on it, every single one relating to Thomas Raymond. Marcus Clent appeared to have been discounted completely. ‘Just got a lead on some puppet stuff. Off out to check up on it now.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Collier said. ‘The more background information we can get on Raymond, the better.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought.’

  Collier had lost interest. He was concentrating on his screen and not really listening. He didn’t have a clue she was lying out of the top of her head.

  ***

  Riley was feeling the pressure of being the SIO. He had a meeting with Hardin and then sat down and read through a detailed forensic report from the solar farm crime scene, which, however it was spun, lacked any valuable leads. Doctor Nesbit called and offered a word or two on the probable cause of death, and the neighbourhood team leader spent half an hour running through the interviews already carried out and the ones pencilled in for tomorrow.

  Mid-afternoon found Riley in a meeting with the POLSA – the police search advisor. The hunt for Thomas Raymond was in full swing, but the POLSA wasn’t hopeful of an immediate breakthrough.

  ‘It’s the paper trail, sir,’ she said. ‘Or rather the lack of one. Raymond doesn’t have a debit or credit card, no mobile phone, no email address. According to neighbouring business owners, he has an old van, but so far, we haven’t found any documents at Oddities, and there’s nothing from a VODS check.’

  VODS was a facility within the PNC for vehicle online descriptive searching. A partial registration number, colour or make, or several other parameters could identify and, with the help of automatic number plate recognition cameras, locate a suspect vehicle.

  ‘Unlicensed then?’

  ‘Unlicensed, uninsured, possibly a cut and shut from a scrapyard.’

  She continued, explaining that Raymond had no relatives, appeared to have no friends, and never took holidays. Where he was or where he might go was anyone’s guess.

  The meeting concluded, and Riley was left wondering where a breakthrough might come from. Then DS Calter breezed up with a possible answer.

  ‘This is a bit of a longshot,’ Calter said. ‘But I’ve just had a call from an informant we were working with on the Andrei case.’

  In the blur of the past couple of weeks, Riley had almost forgotten about the man they suspected of pimping and people trafficking. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Krisztina – she’s a Romanian who works for Andrei – she saw all the commotion at Oddities this morning and figured she should get in touch.’

  ‘About Andrei?’

  ‘No, about Thomas Raymond. And she wouldn’t call unless it was important.’

  Thirty minutes later, Riley was in the Waterstones in the shopping centre. There was a little cafe crammed in at the back of the shop. A few tables and chairs, a handful of customers. Krisztina sat opposite Riley and Calter, sipping from a tall latte glass.

  ‘Are you OK to talk?’ Calter asked. ‘I mean in here?’

  ‘Sure.’ Krisztina turned her head to the rows of bookshelves. ‘Andrei wouldn’t come in here. Nobody I know would.’

  The young woman spoke excellent English and was intelligent and good looking. Riley wondered how on earth she’d got mixed up with Andrei. The story, he guessed, would be all-too-familiar. Promised a better life in the UK, she’d have been lured with the offer of a job as an au pair or similar, finding herself instead forced into sex work to pay back the money she owed for her ticket.

  ‘Could you tel
l us about Thomas Raymond?’ Riley said.

  ‘He’s a client. Andrei set me up with him. I go every few weeks and do a house call. Easy money. Plus, he tips me generously, and I can keep that hidden, save it up. If I can do the same with half a dozen clients, I can save enough to get me away from this pisshole.’

  ‘When did you first start visiting?’

  ‘A few months ago, but I hear on the street that he’s well known. Some girls won’t go with him because he’s weird, but I don’t mind. As I said, easy money. He seems to like me too.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask what you do with him?’

  ‘No. That’s why I called Jane.’ Krisztina looked at Calter for a moment. ‘You know about Raymond’s history, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s common knowledge on the street, so the first time I went to see him, I was frightened, especially when he took me up into the attic. Still, Andrei insisted, so I had no choice.’

  ‘And what happened?’ Riley glanced left and right. At the next table, a father was trying to contain the mess being made by his three-year-old, while behind Krisztina, an old lady was deep into the latest Val McDermid.

  ‘I had to take all my clothes off, and then he tied ropes to my hands and feet and led them up to pulley wheels attached to the beams. He ran his hands over me and then tugged on the ropes for a bit, and I had to dance. Then, after a few minutes, he sat on this old armchair and jacked himself off.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘Yes. I was petrified the first time. I made sure the knots weren’t too tight so I could slip the ropes off if I needed to. He didn’t seem to mind or else he didn’t notice. Afterwards, he untied me and I left.’

  ‘But you went again?’

  ‘Pretty much every two to three weeks. One hundred pounds plus a tip.’ Krisztina smiled briefly, then her expression turned sour. ‘To be honest, he was preferable to the scum I normally have to deal with. It’s the businessman I hate the most. They think they’re doing you a favour, think you actually enjoy it. Crazy.’

  ‘When was the last time you visited him?’