Vital Signs

by Candy Denman

  Butterworth shook his head.

  “I very much doubt it.” He shrugged as he explained, “The heat, the accelerant−” He didn’t really need to say more. Callie knew that they would almost certainly have destroyed any DNA between them.

  “CCTV?” she asked hopefully.

  “Spray paint.” Again, Butterworth didn’t need to say more.

  “Brilliant.” Callie looked as unhappy as the two men at this.

  * * *

  “I mean, it really makes me cross.”

  Callie was still fuming as she spoke to Kate on the phone later.

  “I’m getting that message.”

  “All they needed to do was have someone outside the yard in a patrol car.”

  “Policemen don’t grow on trees, Callie,” Kate replied. “Look, I know it’s frustrating, but look at it this way, it makes the case so much stronger against Savage. At least in the minds of the police and it will make the CPS more likely to listen, too. All Miller needs to do is concentrate on getting the evidence.”

  “What evidence is left?” Callie asked. “I mean, if the murders were committed in the office, any forensics have long gone now.”

  “The bodies would have to have been transported elsewhere. I am sure Miller will be applying for warrants on the Savages’ cars, and trying to find out if they have a boat and going for that, too.”

  Callie knew she was right, but the CPS’s caution over the warrant for the discarded carpet left her concerned that they still wouldn’t listen and be equally cautious about giving Miller any kind of a warrant for the vehicles. If the Met didn’t find any connection between Savage and the two victims, what possible evidence did Miller have that could convince them? Nothing! He didn’t even know if Savage owned a boat.

  Callie spent some time researching the politician online. It was amazing how much you could glean from old interviews, tweets and other social media sources, but to find it and put it all together would take more time and probably more skills than she had. She found an interview with him in his “Hastings home” and could see that there were sea views out of the window. She knew the house was in Pett Level because Miller had told her that, and it was a small enough village for her to feel fairly confident that she could wander round and maybe spot the most likely place, or the MP’s car on the drive.

  She thought back to the visits she had made to the office and to the meeting at the leisure centre. There had definitely not been any big important cars, the sort of cars you might expect powerful men to drive. Nothing that she could say she would recognise. Just the immaculate red hatchback, possibly Mrs Savage’s car, she thought, or just the run-around they used when they were in Hastings. Perhaps she would see that.

  She grabbed her own car keys and a jacket and headed out the door.

  * * *

  It was just beginning to get dark when she arrived in the small village where the Savage constituency home was located. She parked on the road, with a sad look at the pub carpark. It had barriers now that the pub was shut, and there were weeds growing through the tarmac, it wouldn’t be long before nature claimed it back completely if the pub remained empty. She knew there were plans for it to become a doctors’ surgery and café, a real community hub for the locals, and she hoped it went forward soon even if she was still sad that a pub she had frequented in her youth had gone. The Smugglers had been her meeting place of choice when she needed to be sure she wouldn’t bump into anyone her parents knew and who might let drop that she was underage to be drinking alcohol. She turned away from the derelict pub and looked along the road towards the row of coastguard cottages and the houses beyond. To her right was the way over the bank to the shingle beach and the slipway for launching the independent rescue boat, whose volunteers covered the area and helped when swimmers and small boats got into trouble off the beach. They had been the ones to find the migrant boat, upturned and empty apart from one poor man who had thought to keep safe by tying himself to the side of the boat. With a shudder she remembered how battered his body had been when she pronounced him dead.

  Callie walked up the path to the top of the bank which separated the houses from the sea. It was about ten foot higher than the road and designed to protect the homes from storm tides. There was a path leading towards the cliffs and Fairlight Glen, the route she had taken when the bodies were washed up there. It was almost completely dark, but when she turned, the wide, concrete walkway along the top of the bank and behind the houses was brighter, illuminated by the light spilling from the homes. There was a gate to stop cars using the walkway except when they had a key. There were boats at the top of the shingle shelf and the path was presumably used to tow them to the slipway when needed.

  Callie went around the gate, which was only designed to prevent vehicular access, not pedestrians. With the sea to her right, she walked along the back of the houses, which were all about ten feet lower than the path she was on. Most had stairs, with locked gates at the top, leading up from their small gardens to the path where she was standing. Moving forward, she could see that the older coastguard cottages had no sea view from the ground floor because of the bank, but at least some of the newer houses were built with bedrooms or utility rooms on the ground floor and living areas higher up to take advantage of the spectacular scenery. Their owners’ desire to have open and unfettered views also meant that she could see right into many of them, although the rooms seemed mostly empty.

  As she walked along the path, she could see into one where a couple were having pre-dinner drinks, the man standing behind the counter of the open plan kitchen, stirring a pot whilst the woman flicked through a magazine in the seating area. Neither were aware of her standing on the path, looking in and Callie thought that she would hate being on public show like they were. She understood the need for net curtains, even if she didn’t like their look. She would be tempted to put in tinted glass, making it impossible to see in, if she owned one of these houses. Not that she would ever be able to afford one, she thought, even if she wanted to. Many were weekend getaways for city folk and although some had lamps on, Callie suspected most were empty midweek and the lights were to deter burglars rather than an indication that the houses were occupied.

  The one picture Callie had found of the MP at his home, showed him in a large, minimalist, open plan “living space” as the gushing interviewer had described it. There was no way the photo had been taken in a small cottage, so she hurried past them to the larger houses beyond. Her problem was, there were several, large, white, modern, box-like, houses along the beachfront. She moved on to inspect the next brightly lit, minimalist white blockhouse, in which every perfectly neat and tidy room appeared empty of emotion as well as people. It was one of these larger and flashier houses that Callie felt sure belonged to the MP and his wife-slash-secretary. One of the facts Callie had managed to find out was that Mrs Savage had indeed been his secretary before marrying him and continuing her work for the MP but with a slightly elevated status.

  Slowly, she walked the length of the houses but saw nothing to tell her which house was owned by the MP. Callie had noted several boats, pulled up on the shore, but none looked as if they had been used recently. She also realised that the noise involved in moving a boat from the shingle would mean that it would be likely to attract attention. She stopped at the last house, where a spaniel barked at her through the closed window, suggesting that this one was occupied, even if the home owners were sensibly hidden somewhere in a room not on show to the world, or at least that they would be back at some point to feed the dog.

  Callie turned back; the path went on, along the top of the bank, but there were no more houses for her to look into.

  She walked back to the slipway, still looking into any of the houses that she could see into in the hope that she would recognise one from the picture of the MP’s home. But there was nothing and no one, just the couple she had seen before, now seated at the dining table, eating whatever the man had cooked.

  At
the slipway, she walked down its short length to the end where it became nothing more than shingle. The tide was out and it would be a long, tiring and noisy job to try and launch a boat here at any time other than high tide. Callie couldn’t believe that Ted Savage could have man-handled a boat, and bodies, to the sea, not once, but twice without attracting attention. Not from here, anyway.

  Feeling a little deflated that her theory on how the murderer got rid of the bodies really wasn’t working out, Callie went back down to the road and walked along the unpaved and poorly lit street, wanting to see the entrances to the buildings she had just walked past on the other side. Perhaps she would at least be able to identify the MP’s home from the road if she saw the car. First, she walked past the coastguard cottages, a terrace of well-kept homes with pretty gardens. Keeping as close to their front walls as possible, listening for traffic and looking for headlights that might mean she needed to get out of the way, she made her way forward. Beyond the cottages were the larger, more modern buildings.

  Trying not to look suspicious, because the last thing she wanted was for some nosy-parker neighbour calling the police, Callie looked into the front driveways of all of the houses. Some had garages, double garages even, despite the lack of space between the road and the main entrances, and they could have had cars inside them, but Callie quickly realised that the houses that really were occupied, rather than empty and waiting for their owners to visit, usually had the cars parked outside, not in the garages. Probably because manoeuvring the vehicles in and out was difficult in the confined space.

  As she moved onto the next house, Callie saw a small red car that she was sure was the one she had seen at the office and at the meeting where she had met Ted Savage. It was, indeed, parked outside a white minimalist cube of a house. There wasn’t another car outside, which perhaps meant that Teresa Savage was home alone and that her husband was in their London flat. Callie stood and thought about what she should do next. There was a garage that might hold another car, or a boat, but if she went up close enough to look through the small window, she worried she might trigger motion sensors or some other security device. Not so bad, if that was just lights, but if there was a more sophisticated system that involved alarms inside the house as well, or even CCTV, she could be in trouble. He was an MP, after all, she should expect a high level of security.

  Meanwhile, she recognised that standing in the road, suspiciously staring up at the house wasn’t without problems. Her mind was made up by the sudden appearance of headlights in the distance, she had only moments before she would be lit up in the car’s beams. She moved swiftly into the driveway and slipped between the fence and the garage, crossing her fingers and holding her breath, frightened that any movement could set off an alarm.

  She was out of luck, the light over the garage came on in response to her movement.

  The car went by but Callie stayed where she was for a moment longer, listening for any alien sounds or signs that she had disturbed anyone. There was nothing but silence and then the sound of a door opening. A light over the front door to the house came on, throwing the whole area into brilliant white light and dark shadows. Callie’s foot was in the light, but the rest of her was in shadow. Very carefully, Callie moved her foot slowly back and inched along the side of the garage, making sure that she was completely hidden from view, then she stopped and held her breath again, as she listened. She heard footsteps come to the garage door and rattle it, checking it was still locked, there was a pause, while the owner of the footsteps presumably also listened for sounds of someone in the shadows. Callie had an itchy nose and had to restrain herself from scratching it. She knew the itch didn’t really exist, that it was purely psychological, but still the desire to scratch her nose or sneeze was almost over-powering. At last she heard the person move back towards the house, hopefully reassured that there was no one there, and after what seemed like an age, she heard the sound of the front door closing and she was able to breathe out.

  After the fright of so nearly being caught she stayed where she was for a while, catching her breath and taking in her surroundings. She was in a narrow gap between the garage and the ivy-covered wall that marked the edge of the property. Behind her, and a little above, was a small narrow window into the back part of the garage. It was sealed shut, but with a bit of climbing up, using the wall and the garage itself for leverage, Callie was able to get herself into a position to look into the garage. Light was coming in from another window on the side nearest to the house, because the security lights had not yet clicked off. In that light she was able to see the usual detritus found in people’s garages, and a small RIB on a trailer. Eureka!

  Suddenly Callie herself was flooded in light, caught in the beam of a torch.

  “Dr Hughes, this is a surprise,” Teresa Savage said, as Callie lost her grip and slid down the garage wall.

  Chapter 33

  Held in the glare of the high-intensity torch beam, and with absolutely nowhere to hide, Callie sidled out of the space between the garage and the wall. She felt like an actor on a stage, or more appropriately, an escapee from prison, caught in the searchlight before she had even got to the main gate. As she inched her way out, she desperately tried to think up a reasonable explanation for why she was sneaking about the woman’s home after dark, but for the life of her, she couldn’t come up with one.

  Teresa Savage looked her intruder up and down as Callie stood there trying to think what she should say. Something, anything, to explain away her presence, but she failed to come up with anything better than, “Hello, it’s a surprisingly large garage, isn’t it?”

  Teresa Savage said nothing and Callie felt that the woman must think that she was completely mad.

  “Why don’t you come in, Dr Hughes,” she said finally. “Then you can tell me why you were sneaking around my property in the dark.”

  Teresa Savage turned and walked towards the closed front door. She had presumably shut it to trick whoever was behind the garage into thinking she had gone back inside, and it had worked, Callie thought ruefully. It didn’t seem to occur to Teresa Savage that Callie wouldn’t follow her, and, surprising herself, Callie did. She knew the wise thing would be to refuse, plead a pressing engagement, an appointment with someone she was running late for, but the need to try and explain her way out of the situation, and her inherent good manners meant that she followed the woman into the house, closing the door behind her. Besides, she wanted to know if the woman knew her husband hosted orgies, and if she had any suspicions that he might be a killer.

  Mrs Savage led the way up the stairs that were directly in front of the door, and into the open plan kitchen and living area. She went straight to the kettle, going through the ritual of making tea. It gave them both time to think.

  “Do take a seat, Dr Hughes,” she said as she busied herself with cups and tea bags. “How do you take it?”

  “Milk, no sugar,” Callie dutifully replied, taking a seat at the breakfast bar.

  The situation was totally surreal, she thought. Would the MP’s wife call the police? That would be the normal thing to do if you found someone on your property, looking through the windows, wouldn’t it? Although the fact that they did know each other might complicate matters. They’d probably believe she was a stalker, which she supposed she was, in a way.

  “Is Ted, your husband, in London?” Callie could feel herself panic slightly. Did she really think Mrs Savage wouldn’t know that Ted was her husband? She felt an overwhelming urge to giggle, but managed to turn it into a cough and turned in her seat to look out of the window at the view of the sea, or at least where the view of the sea would be if it wasn’t a dark and cloudy night, with not even a bit of moonlight reflecting off the water.

  “Yes, he’ll probably drive down later tonight after the sitting, or tomorrow, if it goes on too long.”

  Callie knew that Westminster business often went on late into the night, MPs were always complaining about it and how it was unduly hard
on those with families. She turned back as Mrs Savage put a mug of tea down in front of her and stood facing Callie, staying on the other side of the breakfast bar.

  “Now, Dr Hughes, perhaps you’d like to tell me exactly why you were sneaking around my garden at this time of night?” Her tone was still fairly light, faintly remonstrative as if she expected Callie to confess to a fetish about garages, or a crush on her husband.

  Callie hesitated, playing with the mug before coming to the conclusion that the only course of action was to tell the truth, or, at least, the partial truth.

  “I wanted to see if you had a boat.”

  “A boat?” Mrs Savage seemed surprised. “Well, we do, as a matter of fact.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t think you will find many people living along here who don’t.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

  “And why did you particularly want to see if we had a boat?”

  “Because, whoever killed Michelle Carlisle and Daniel Spencer, had to have access to a boat in order to dump their bodies at sea.”

  Mrs Savage vigorously stirred her drink, and took a sip. She hadn’t been expecting that answer, Callie could tell.

  “And you thought we might be involved?”

  “I was trying to exclude Ted.”

  “And have you?”

  “No. But perhaps you can help me there.”

  “I can certainly do that, because it’s just ridiculous. Ted is a good man.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he is.” Callie wasn’t so sure, but she didn’t want to antagonise the woman any more than she already had.

  “Don’t let your tea get cold,” Mrs Savage said, nodding at the mug in front of Callie.

  “Do you think it’s possible that your husband might have known Daniel?” Callie asked as she sipped the drink, trying not to show her distaste as she realised that it had been sweetened. Perhaps Mrs Savage was more rattled than she seemed and had mixed up the two mugs.