CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  ‘Not an accident then?’ Campbell said.

  ‘No.’

  Riley stood and took in the expressions on the faces of the rescue team. They were used to dealing with dead bodies, but this was beyond their experience. From the look of Enders’ face it was beyond his too.

  Not beyond Riley’s though. He’d seen this before, up in London. This was a gunshot wound. Point blank. Devlyn Corran had been executed.

  A couple of hours later Riley stood in a bathroom at Derriford Hospital. He splashed water from the tap against his forehead, the cool liquid for a moment soothing the pain of a headache. Chemicals from the pathology lab he reckoned. Some sort of allergy. That, the hangover and the thought of having to tell Corran’s wife her husband had been murdered. Assuming she didn’t already know, of course.

  He left the bathroom and headed out into the foyer of the hospital. He went through the front doors and searched for Davies. The DI stood next to a ‘No Smoking’ sign, fingering an unlit cigarette.

  ‘Fucking hey, Darius,’ he said. ‘This is more like it!’

  Riley had called Davies from up on the moor and he’d been waiting at the hospital when Riley arrived trailing the mortuary van. The full post-mortem would take place later, but for now Nesbit had made a preliminary examination. There’d been no point him coming out to the moor, much as Enders had joked about how he’d like to see the pathologist lowered into the abandoned mineshaft.

  Davies was still ranting on. A gunshot wound. To the head. Point blank. All the hallmarks of a professional hit.

  ‘You and me, Riley, we’re back in business, right?’

  Riley nodded and then flicked his phone on and called Hardin. The DSupt wasn’t one for small talk, especially at this time of the morning, so Riley gave him the news straight.

  ‘Murder, sir. Nesbit’s initial thoughts are the broken bones and internal injuries were caused when he was knocked off his bike. However, it was the gunshot which killed him.’

  ‘Not what I wanted to hear,’ Hardin said. ‘Any idea on the shooter?’

  ‘Do you mean the gun or who pulled the trigger?’

  ‘The gun.’

  ‘Small calibre. We’ll have to wait until the post-mortem to get the bullet.’

  ‘Proper operation now, Darius,’ Hardin said. ‘Need an incident room and an SIO. DI Davies, I reckon. Bit short on officers. You’ll be his deputy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Riley began to walk towards the car park, following Davies, who’d by now lit his fag. ‘You want us to come in and get things sorted?’

  Hardin didn’t. He’d get someone to see to all the details. They were to get back on the moor. Find something. Riley hung up and told Davies the news that he was to be SIO.

  ‘Thank fucking Christ,’ Davies said. He took a drag on the cigarette and flicked some ash away. ‘It’s good riddance to the stupid diesel investigation forever. We can leave Maynard to sulk behind his hedge while we get on with some proper police work.’

  ‘Mrs Corran,’ Riley said. ‘We need to be the ones to tell her so we can gauge her reaction.’

  ‘You, Darius, you.’ Davies jabbed a finger at Riley. ‘I’m going to go into town and lean on a couple of lads, find out if anyone knows anything about a gun. You can go to the station and pick up a family liquidation officer while you’re there. Luke Farrell will do. The boy can charm the knickers off a nun.’

  Sensitivity, Riley thought as he got into the car, had never been one of Davies’ strong points.

  Friday. Nearly a week since the discovery of the bodies at Tavy View Farm. Like several other members of the team, Savage had a few hours off. Saturday was the longest day and, Hardin had promised, would be an absolute nightmare.

  Mid-morning Savage headed from home to nearby Plymstock to pick up some bread and milk from the Co-Op. She took her little sports car, putting the top down and enjoying the sun. She’d bought the classic MGB as a near-wreck on a whim years back and Pete was fond of reminding her that it was as old as she was. Although, he always added with a smile, not in as good condition.

  The car swept up the hill away from the house and then she was on the coast road, the Sound coming into view below. The water reflected the sun, a million wavelets like diamonds in the breeze, yachts criss-crossing their way through the patterns. Sod’s law, Savage thought, as soon as their sailing holiday had ended summer had arrived.

  In Plymstock she pulled the car into the car park at the back of the Broadway, a sixties shopping centre with retail space surrounding an open air pedestrianised area. Savage walked into the centre. Outside the butcher’s, a life-size plastic sheep grazed a patch of grass. Nearby, children clambered on a wooden giraffe. At a table in front of the baker’s an elderly couple drank coffee and fussed over who should finish the remains of a custard slice. The tableaux seemed a long way from Operation Radial.

  She went into the Co-Op, emerging a few minutes later with her shopping, but pausing at the entrance as the wail of a fire engine rose in volume. The siren stopped, to be replaced by the sound of the vehicle’s engine roaring somewhere beyond the confines of the centre. At the far end of the precinct, heads turned as two PSCOs sprinted past startled shoppers. The officers ran down a side street which provided delivery access to the shops. Savage broke into a jog and trotted after them.

  She rounded the corner and saw the fire engine trying to squeeze through a gap between a delivery lorry and a car parked on double yellows. The PCSOs were waving the fire engine down to where they stood at the bottom of a set of stairs which led up to a row of maisonettes sitting above the shops. At the top of the stairs smoke billowed from a broken window, yellow flames beginning to lick out too. The driver of the fire engine gave up on subtlety and nudged the obstruction out the way, the front of the car crumpling, the windscreen crazing. Seconds later and the fire crew were out of the cab, two of them up the stairs, axes in hand, the others readying hoses.

  As the lead fireman crunched his axe into the front door of the property on fire, Savage approached the nearest PCSO, tapped him on the shoulder and showed her warrant card.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘A mob. Set about some guy as he came out of the bank. They chased him back to his flat, but he managed to get inside. One of them put burning paper through the letterbox and it looks like it caught.’

  Fire officers continued to mill around as they ran a hose up the steps. A couple of minutes later one came out of the flat and down the stairs. Savage went across, flashing her card again.

  ‘Fire’s out and we’ve got an ambulance on the way,’ the fireman said. ‘The guy’s in a bit of a state. Broken arm, gashed head, a lot of bruising.’

  ‘Can he talk?’

  ‘No chance, he’s collapsed from smoke inhalation and we’ve got him on oxygen. Lucky we arrived when we did.’

  ‘Ma’am?’ The second PCSO approached holding out a Co-Op bag. ‘Found this back in the Broadway. A couple of eyewitnesses say the man dropped it when he was attacked.’

  Savage looked in. Nestled between a copy of the Daily Mail and a loaf of white sliced bread sat a chocolate cake, a pack of pink candles and a set of plastic candle holders.

  Riley drove to the station and picked up Luke Farrell, and half an hour afterwards the two of them were climbing the steps to the Corrans’ little cottage in Dousland. Farrell, whose blond hair appeared particularly mussed-up in the moorland breeze, went first. At the front door he stopped and smiled at Riley.

  ‘I know there’s a point to this,’ he said, ‘but let’s go easy, OK?’

  Riley nodded and reached for the doorbell. Then there were footsteps down the hallway, the door opening, Cassie Corran’s hand going to her mouth, her body slumping to the floor.

  Not guilty then, Riley thought, as he and Farrell helped her into the living room. Riley left Farrell with Cassie while he went to the kitchen to make some tea. Out the back Emily was playing with an older woman – a grandparent maybe? – oblivious to the crisis tak
ing place inside.

  In the living room Cassie’s tears came with great gulping sobs, Riley’s over-sweetened tea gulped down too, her hand steadied by Farrell as she placed the cup on the low table.

  ‘Knew it,’ she kept saying over and over again. ‘Knew it would lead to trouble.’

  Riley didn’t say anything but he moved his head a fraction and glanced at Farrell.

  ‘Knew what, Cassie?’ Farrell said, taking Riley’s cue.

  ‘Knew where this would all lead. The money.’

  Riley eyed the big flat-screen, the nice carpet and sofa, remembered the new car out the front and the fancy two-storey wooden playhouse he’d just seen in the back garden. Money, of course. If you discounted blind rage and madness, murder in the end always came down to one of two things: sex or greed.

  ‘What money, Cassie?’ Riley said. ‘Where from?’

  ‘Devlyn. Clever-clever bloody Devlyn.’ Cassie sniffed and dabbed her nose with a tissue. ‘He called it a no-brainer. Only it’s turned out that he was the one with no brains. Stupid idiot. I never should have listened to him. We should never have moved here.’

  ‘OK, Cassie, let’s take this one step at a time. How much money are we talking about?’

  Silence, Cassie wiping snot from her nose and then shaking her head and staring down at the carpet.

  ‘How much?’ Riley tried again. ‘Ten grand? Fifty? More?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said, looking up. ‘It was a monthly thing. Ongoing. At first a grand a month, then two. The last couple of months the amount was five K.’

  ‘Five thousand pounds a month?’

  ‘Yup.’ Cassie shook her head and started crying again.

  Riley leant back in his chair and took a mouthful of tea. He knew where this was going. Obvious. Devlyn Corran was a prison officer. He came into contact with dozens of unsavoury characters, even at a low-grade nick like HMP Dartmoor. There were a couple of possibilities: The money could be a keep-schtum sweetener or a retainer for performing a task like smuggling drugs, phones or something else into prison. Alternatively – and this Riley reckoned was more likely, considering what had happened – Corran had been blackmailing somebody, using information he’d discovered in the course of his work. Bearing in mind the type of people Corran worked with, doing that was nigh-on suicidal.

  ‘Who, exactly,’ Riley said, ‘was Devlyn involved with?’

  ‘I don’t know. He printed letters out. Sent them once a month.’

  ‘We’ve searched through your documents,’ Riley said, looking over to the corner of the living room where a monitor stood on a computer desk, cables trailing down to an empty space below, the machine taken a couple of days ago. ‘We found nothing of interest.’

  ‘That’s the family’s. Devlyn has another one. Upstairs.’ Cassie took a fresh set of tissues and then got up and left the room. A couple of minutes later she was back with a laptop. ‘There’s a password, but I can’t get in.’

  ‘Cassie, we could have done with knowing about this days ago.’ Riley took the laptop. Didn’t bother firing it up and trying to log in. Hi-Tech Crimes would remove the disk and copy the contents. No point wasting time.

  ‘I was scared. Anyway, it wouldn’t have made any difference, would it?’

  Riley conceded the point and then tried to delve deeper into what Corran was up to, but Cassie couldn’t tell them much more. She said Corran hadn’t wanted any records, so he’d handwritten the envelopes. He’d worn gloves and used his left hand. Posted the letters in town. Untraceable. So he said.

  ‘But the money,’ Riley said. ‘How did he receive it?’

  ‘Cash. He’d turn up with a wad of notes. I don’t know where from.’

  ‘Cassie?’ A figure at the living room door. The woman from the garden. ‘Emily wants some lunch.’

  ‘OK, Mum. I think the police were just going.’

  ‘Righto.’ The woman turned and left.

  ‘Fish fingers, chips and beans,’ Cassie said as she rose from the sofa. ‘Emily’s favourite.’

  ‘I’d like to stay, Cassie,’ Farrell said, reaching out to touch Cassie’s arm.

  ‘No, love, thank you.’ Cassie smiled. Patted Farrell’s hand. ‘Family is what Emily needs now. Me and her gran, the three of us, we’ll be fine.’

  As the front door closed the last thing Riley saw was the white of Cassie’s face in the narrowing slit, the colour all gone from the skin and looking as pale as her husband had as he lay on the gurney in the mortuary.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bere Ferrers, Devon. Friday 20th June. 12.14 p.m.

  Jody was away all day, spraying the corn they had over Yelverton way. Joanne moped round, finishing some odd jobs, trying to do some admin. Jobs done, she made coffee, taking the cup out onto the front veranda. If she kept her eyes focused east she could avoid looking at the mess in the field.

  Most of the police had gone, just a uniformed officer at the front gate to the farm, there to prevent the media getting a closer look. But Joanne was still feeling the effects of the grisly discovery. The publicity had led to ninety per cent of the summer visitors for the holiday cottages cancelling their bookings. The other ten per cent, she reckoned, hadn’t cancelled because the news had so far escaped them. Quite how, she had no idea.

  Not so lucky now.

  Unless you could call the money various newspapers had offered her a windfall. The police media adviser had told her to ignore them.

  ‘To put it bluntly, Ms Black,’ he’d said looking her up and down, ‘you’re an attractive woman. They’ll play on that. They’re not happy about the last victim being a lesbian. No sympathy there. They’ll want you in skimpy farm wear and there’ll be innuendo about Aga sagas and single mature ladies and all sorts. Money or no money, I’d give them a miss.’

  So she did, letting her three dogs have the run of the farmyard when the police weren’t around. Last she’d looked, there were no press cars parked in the lane so it appeared as if they’d got the message.

  Adam Narr had given her a surname for the girl: Bailey. Lara Bailey. From the sound of it Joanne’s uncle had got a little too friendly with the girl and the family had upped sticks. Narr didn’t know where they’d gone. ‘Plymouth’ he’d said, as if that single word described anything and everything which might have happened to them.

  After finishing her coffee, Joanne returned to the computer. Distracted from her accounts, she searched the online phone directory. Bailey was a common name, far too common to even consider ringing round. Besides, it was likely the girl had got married and changed her name. She’d be in her sixties, the parents probably long since dead. Tracking her down would be impossible. And anyway, what could something which occurred decades ago have to do with the bodies in the field?

  Joanne closed the browser window and concentrated on the cash flow spreadsheet where more than a few columns had turned to red.

  With the victim of the fire taken away in an ambulance, Savage awaited the arrival of Hardin. When he turned up his face was like thunder. He peered into the plastic bag as Savage held it open. Shook his head at the sight of the cake and candles.

  ‘The bloody internet,’ Hardin said. ‘The Chief Constable received the news via some social media channel. Myself and the commander of the Plymouth division have just been in an emergency teleconference with him. He’s apoplectic. Says we’re losing control. And there’s still twenty-four hours to go. God knows what’s going to happen tomorrow.’

  Hardin strolled across to the steps which led to the maisonette. Close by, Layton was chatting to two members of his CSI team who stood leaning against their van.

  ‘Update,’ Hardin said. ‘Were these vigilantes on to something or not?’

  ‘I guess we’ll soon find out.’ Savage nodded up the steps to where a fire officer was taking photographs of the black soot stains around the door and window of the flat.

  ‘Just waiting for them to finish,’ Layton said as he came over. ‘But we need to
know before we go in. I can’t go nosing around in the bedroom if I’m doing an investigation into the fire.’

  ‘But whatever you found wouldn’t be inadmissible, would it?’ Savage said.

  ‘This isn’t America,’ Hardin said. ‘Not yet, thank God.’

  ‘It depends what we found,’ Layton continued. ‘Murder weapon, things he might have collected from victims, anything directly linking him – that would be in. Circumstantial evidence we might have more of a problem with, especially if we need to rely on it in court.’

  ‘Well, Charlotte?’ Hardin again.

  ‘One of the PCSOs told me an onlooker said the man is ex-military. That’s nothing special, but if what they told the officer is true then the guy’s been away on various tours for a number of years.’

  ‘So if the dates of his tour of duty match we’re quids in,’ Hardin said.

  ‘You’re quids in, I go in, guns blazing.’ Layton turned away and strolled across to the man and woman next to the van. The two CSIs began unloading a couple of crates from the rear.

  ‘That’s positive thinking for you,’ Hardin said. ‘Must be that dance night he goes to. Jive rhythms or something, isn’t it?’

  ‘Five rhythms, sir,’ Savage said.

  ‘Whatever. Sounds like New Age claptrap to me, but maybe I should look into doing it myself.’

  As Savage tried to stop herself smiling at the thought of Hardin doing any kind of dancing, her phone rang. One of the Radial team calling from the station with information on the victim.

  ‘Graham Bunce, ma’am,’ the DC said. ‘Forty-one. He’s got a prior for assault, but although serious it was the result of a bar brawl. Served in Afghanistan with Four Two Commando and left the marines shortly before they returned from active duty in 2009. He was also in Iraq. With a bit of jiggling his tour dates can be made to fit.’

  Savage hung up and told Hardin, stressing the problem with the dates.

  ‘Great,’ Hardin said, seeming to overlook the point. He waved across at Layton. ‘Let’s get the CSI boys in there pronto. Who knows, we might even have something to give that lot before too long.’