CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel Read online

  ‘So,’ Davies said. ‘Fill me in. What did you discover yesterday?’

  Riley recounted the facts as he saw them. He explained about the search team, told Davies about the prison governor’s comments regarding Full Sutton and Channings Wood and outlined Layton’s theories concerning the bike.

  ‘He’s dead though, isn’t he?’ Davies said, jabbing a finger up at the snap of Corran. ‘This sort of thing is hard to fake so I don’t think Corran’s taken a dive. Stands to reason we’re looking for a body.’

  Riley nodded but didn’t say anything. Davies would be desperate to make the Corran case turn into something juicy, something which would keep him from having to go back to Operation Cowbell for a good while. A misper inquiry might run for a couple of days, but if leads weren’t forthcoming then the pair of them would be back in the soggy ditch with Maynard. Murder, on the other hand, was an entirely different ball game.

  ‘So do you reckon it’s down to some nonce then?’ Davies said. ‘Corran pissed somebody off or maybe found out something and they or associates of said pervert top him.’

  ‘Difficult to say, boss. Needn’t be a sex offender at Channings Wood or Full Sutton. Could be a prisoner at HMP Dartmoor.’

  ‘Nah. Petty thieves, minor fraudsters, a few in for a bit of aggro. They’re hardly going to get angry enough to risk a life stretch because Corran spat in their food tray.’

  ‘I don’t know where you get your ideas of prison from, sir. These days Shawshank it isn’t. You know what they call the place dealing with sex offenders over at Channings Wood?’ Davies shook his head. ‘The Vulnerable Prisoners Unit.’

  ‘Vulnerable? Bollocks. They’d be bloody vulnerable if I ever got to work there I can tell you.’

  ‘What I’m saying, sir, is I think it’s highly unlikely Corran was bashing someone around at any of the prisons he worked at.’

  Riley sighed inwardly. Davies’ ideas about policing and criminal justice came from either underworld Plymouth or from whichever bedside trash he was reading at the time. To be fair to the DI, underworld Plymouth would have surprised a lot of people, but it didn’t translate to much else. Certainly not to the red diesel inquiry. Maynard had found the whole thing amusing. Every time Davies started on another story Maynard would mumble, ‘Quiet out here, isn’t it,’ and then point to some countryside feature which neither Riley nor Davies were the least bit interested in. The man drove Davies crazy.

  ‘Well,’ Davies said. ‘If prison is a dead end, then what else?’

  ‘Anything from a simple hit and run to gambling debts, marital problems, an affair, a family feud even. I’ve actioned getting hold of Corran’s financial information.’

  ‘Gambling debts, I could go with that one. Corran runs up a big debt, keeps on borrowing, gets to the point where he can’t or won’t pay and then—’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. How does knocking off Corran get them their money back? Better to threaten his wife and kid.’

  ‘And if that doesn’t work they have to whack him, right? Leave a message.’

  ‘But what’s the message? A few bits of broken bike lamp?’

  ‘Corran will turn up and mark my words, he won’t be looking pretty when he does.’

  ‘Right.’ Riley glanced down at the spread of printouts on the desk, grabbed a couple so as to look willing and then turned to leave. ‘Going to read through these and then do some research on Corran’s missus. The locals were in contact with her on Sunday and Monday, but I need to speak to her myself so when I’m done I’ll be off to Dousland for an interview. I’ll take DC Enders with me. Do you want to follow up your idea and go over to Channings Wood?’

  ‘What, you mean get up close and friendly with those sickos?’ Davies shook his head as if in distaste, but then grinned. ‘Be my pleasure.’

  As Riley reached the doors of the crime suite he remembered something. He shouted across to Davies.

  ‘What about DI Maynard, sir? He’s up on the moor again this morning. Shouldn’t we let him know we’re not going to be joining him?’

  ‘Maynard?’ Davies chuckled. ‘Leave him. He’s happy enough out there on his own getting a hard-on over some fucking chiffchaff. Be a shame to spoil his fun, wouldn’t it?’

  Savage returned to Crownhill and collected DC Calter at a little after eleven. They headed out of the city into the rolling countryside of the South Hams on their way to Salcombe and a meeting with Phil Glastone. Calter wasn’t buying Walsh’s theory about Glastone having an accomplice nor him being in the frame on account of his record of domestic violence.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘I’d like to live in a world where we could legally take a pair of garden shears to his bollocks, but hitting his wife doesn’t make him a killer. Besides, even if he’d killed his wife, why would he go on to kill those other women and why the gap of all those years until this one? And I’m sorry, but Walsh’s idea of him having an accomplice sounds like sour grapes because Glastone’s alibi back then played out.’

  Savage slowed as they came up behind a tractor winding its way into the village of Modbury. Calter didn’t miss a trick and she was probably right. Walsh had had tunnel vision. Easy, Savage thought, to get fixated on one suspect and do everything to make the evidence fit. In the circumstances she could understand why that had happened. The pressure to get a result back then would have been enormous; the public outcry, the political pressure both locally and nationally, the feeling the inquiry was slipping away from them.

  ‘Let’s run with it for now,’ Savage said. ‘See what Mr Glastone has to say for himself.’

  Twenty minutes later and Savage was parking on double yellow lines opposite Phil Glastone’s place on Devon Road. No chance of finding a space nearby with the season beginning to take off.

  ‘Impressive place,’ Calter said, peering up at the property. ‘For a wanker.’

  The houses were on one side of the street only, sitting above triple garages. The door to Glastone’s garage was open, inside a Volvo SUV and an Alfa Spider, beside the cars a smart RIB on a trailer, a huge outboard attached to the back of the boat. With nothing opposite but a wooded area which fell away steeply, the house had uninterrupted views. On the estuary far below a yacht glided by, heading seaward past another on the way in. The harbour master’s boat was already on its way to intercept the newcomer, to collect fees and guide the boat to a buoy. On the far side of the estuary the beach at Millbay thronged with mums and pre-school children, busy on the golden sand. Salcombe itself was spread out below and to their left, a town of winding streets and overpriced boutiques, chock-full of tourists in the summer, but a ghost town of empty holiday properties in the winter.

  On the first-floor balcony of Glastone’s place a figure stirred from a sun-lounger, reached for a shirt and pulled it on over a bare torso. Then he waved down and disappeared inside French windows. Seconds later and the man came through the front door and pointed to a patio area to the left. His shirt was only buttoned halfway up, dark curls of hair on his broad chest matching the curls on his head. His biceps were pumped and there wasn’t a shred of fat round his waist. He glared down at Savage. Didn’t speak.

  Savage and Calter climbed the steps and joined Glastone on the patio.

  ‘Mr Glastone? DI Charlotte Savage and DC Jane Calter.’

  Glastone nodded. Indicated the chairs around a teak table. Sat. Still said nothing.

  ‘Just a few questions,’ Savage said, pulling out a chair and sitting.

  ‘Now you’ve found the bodies I guess an apology will be forthcoming,’ Glastone said. ‘Not that sorry is worth much after all this time. Mud sticks, and you clowns threw a lot of the stuff at me.’

  ‘Last year, twenty-first of June,’ Savage said, taking an instant dislike to the man. ‘Can you account for your whereabouts around that time?’

  ‘Account for my whereabouts?’ Glastone laughed, but the laugh vanished into a sneer. ‘What you mean is, did I fucking murder this latest one?’ />
  ‘There’s no need to get angry, Mr Glastone,’ Calter said, scraping a chair out for herself. She pulled out her notepad and waited with pencil poised. ‘Just tell us where you were.’

  ‘As it happens I was here. Like most other days. I work at home, see?’

  ‘You’re a web designer, aren’t you?’ Calter said, looking at her pad. ‘Bed and breakfasts, local shops, is that the sort of thing?’

  ‘No I’m not a bloody web designer. I’m a database developer.’

  ‘Databases?’ Calter turned her head to take in Salcombe. ‘Much call for that sort of thing around here?’

  ‘What sort of Stone Age rock have you crawled out from under? I work remotely for a Swiss company. Occasional meetings in London or Zurich, a lot of time on Skype, millions of emails.’

  ‘So no work colleagues to verify your story?’ Savage said. ‘A visitor to the house maybe?’

  ‘Without checking my diary I can’t tell you who I spoke to that day, but there’ll have been emails I’m sure.’

  ‘What about your wife, Mr Glastone?’ Savage turned her head to peer in through the open door. ‘Was she around back then?’

  ‘My wife?’ Glastone raised his hand to his mouth, a sure sign, Savage thought, of a lie or an indiscretion.

  ‘Your new wife. I believe you remarried after Mandy’s death?’

  As if in answer there was a clatter of dishes from inside, something falling to the floor and breaking. Savage made to rise from the table and go and investigate but Glastone waved her to sit down.

  ‘Carol?’ Glastone raised his voice. ‘What the hell’s going on in there?’

  A moment or two later and a figure ghosted out from the dark shadow and stood blinking at the door.

  ‘I …’ The woman paused at the sight of Savage and Calter. ‘I dropped a plate. Clumsy me.’

  A smile broke on the thin features of the woman’s face but it lasted only a second. She moved forward and placed a hand on Glastone’s shoulder, as if for support. She had mouse-brown hair and wore a bright summer dress with short sleeves. A shawl half-covered her arms which were slim and goosebumped, despite the warmth. Above the right elbow, a black and purple bruise encircled the arm. The woman drew the shawl across the bruise and looked at Glastone.

  ‘Police, Carol,’ Glastone said. ‘They’re still trying to fit me up for Mandy’s death all this time later.’

  ‘We are not trying to fit you up,’ Savage said to Glastone before turning to Carol. ‘If you can remember what you were doing around the twenty-first of June last year it would be very helpful.’

  ‘Last year? The twenty-first?’ Carol looked to Glastone yet again, as if he should answer, but then spoke for herself. ‘I’d have been at the school, I think. I help out most days as a teaching assistant. I’d be back here by four-ish and then I’d prepare the dinner.’

  ‘But you don’t know, you’re just guessing?’

  ‘No, I remember clearly now. We had some fresh fish I bought on the way home. We opened a bottle of Sancerre and I made a béarnaise sauce. I recall thinking it would be a lovely evening for eating on the balcony, knowing the light would be with us until late. The longest day, see?’

  ‘Yes,’ Savage said, thinking she had asked Carol to remember and the woman had remembered all too easily. ‘Is that Salcombe Primary? Where you work?’

  Carol muttered an assent and Savage and Calter got up.

  ‘We’re finished for the moment, Mr Glastone. If you could check your emails and send us a record of any you sent on the twentieth to the twenty-second of June, that would help. Any calls too.’ Savage placed a business card down on the table and nodded to Carol, catching the woman’s eyes and trying to appear friendly. ‘And anything else you would care to share with us, Carol, just get in touch. Anything at all.’

  As they walked down the steps to the road Calter leant close to Savage.

  ‘The bruise, ma’am, did you see it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Savage glanced back up at the house, but Glastone and his wife had already retreated inside. ‘Changed your opinion of Mr Glastone yet?’

  ‘No, but I’m going to check in the boot. See if there isn’t a pair of garden shears in there.’

  ‘No easy alibi for last year and I thought Carol was a little too quick to remember what she was doing, right down to the sauce she poured over their fish. Would you be able to do that?’

  ‘Easy for me, ma’am. It’s always vinegar. But I still contend beating his wife doesn’t make him a serial killer.’

  ‘No, but we need to get over to the school and check Carol’s story and if it doesn’t pan out then I want to talk to her alone. See if we can get her to open up. Glastone’s not off my radar just yet.’

  Chapter Nine

  Three beeps and then silence. The absence of noise makes you look up from your newspaper and you note that the dishwasher has run its cycle. You turn to the clock on the wall. Two hours and twenty-three minutes. So far so good, although on forty-five degrees eco mode the cycle should have gone on for another half an hour. You put the paper down and go and inspect the contents. The dishes are clean but there is a pool of dirty water in the bottom. You sigh and realise you will need to visit the repair man. He won’t like it much, but then you don’t like looking at the water with the scum floating on top. Why did he say he knew about dishwashers if he didn’t? He lied and you find lying worse than rudeness.

  The repair man will have to wait though. Other matters need to be attended to first. Your eyes flit back to the headline on the newspaper which lies on the table next to a half-eaten crumpet, the top brown with Marmite. Lovely, a crumpet with Marmite on. Nicer than strawberry jam. Perhaps not quite as nice as one with apricot but it’s a close run thing.

  Thinking about the crumpet toppings makes you realise you haven’t checked your jars recently and the next ten minutes are taken up with a rummage through the walk-in pantry examining the jams and relishes you have in stock. You take your special pad and pencil and double check the best-before dates. There’s a fine line you think, between everything turning out OK and it all going to pot. A few hours either way, the balance tilted, from delicious to total fucking crap.

  Finished with the jams, you cast a glance at the back of the pantry where there are some bigger jars, huge Kilners, a few of them not far off the size of a small bucket. Usually they are for preserves, marmalades and the like. These jars don’t contain anything sweet though, oh no. These jars contain things which were once far more dangerous. No longer though, not now you have neutralised them.

  You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.

  Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?

  But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.

  A serious crime.

  Which brings your mind back to the girl.

  Verdict: guilty.

  Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.

>   If she’s lucky she’ll be dead long before then.

  Chapter Ten

  Salcombe Primary School, Devon. Tuesday 17th June. 12.27 p.m.

  Some sort of sports day was taking place at Salcombe Primary when Savage and Calter arrived. Children ran round the outside of a playing field practising for a relay race while teachers arranged chairs in a row at the edge. A voice croaked ‘one-two, one-two’ from a dodgy PA and a couple of parents arranged snacks on a trestle table. A handwritten sign gave prices: a cup of tea and a fairy cake for fifty pence.

  In the school office the administrator seemed reluctant to give out any details about Mrs Glastone even after she had verified Savage’s credentials by calling Crownhill station.

  ‘Carol’s had a rough time of it,’ she said as she led them through to the next-door room. ‘I think you’d better speak to Mrs Cartwright. Mind you she’ll not have more than ten minutes. It’s our Olympics today.’

  Savage was thinking of Jamie’s own sports day, coming up in a few weeks’ time. She hoped she’d be able to attend. Missing her children’s red letter days always pained her and, as she had told Pete many times when he’d been away from home, once they were gone they were gone.

  Jenny Cartwright, a smart woman in her thirties who looked like she should be running a quoted company rather than a school, introduced herself as the Head of Teaching and Learning.

  ‘We’re an academy, see? A number of small schools in a federation. We pool resources and expertise. Share our experiences. There’s an executive head who runs everything across the federation.’

  To Savage the set-up sounded like the sort of rubbish which could well find its way into the police force. But then again maybe it already had. The senior management were as removed from the day-to-day issues of policing as Jenny Cartwright’s boss was from dealing with a six-year-old who’d stumbled in the playground.