CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

by Mark Sennen

  A nosey parker walking on the railway line?

  Savage went back to the tent. The prints went right to the edge of the hole. Somebody had stood there. Could that person conceivably be the killer returning to the crime scene? Wilson had hinted at such a scenario. Had he been correct?

  The light had begun to leach from the sky and now the line of trees marking the railway stood black against the background of the city. Savage took out her torch and flicked it on. The weak beam flashed around the inside of the tent as she checked to see if anything had been disturbed. No. Whoever had been this way recently had done no more than stand and stare.

  She flashed the light down into the hole. The white light from the torch made the water resemble insipid tea. She swung the beam around, absently playing it back and forth across the surface. In the water something twinkled in the beam. She held the torch steady. Something metal-like, shiny. Something the person had dropped.

  Thinking the object might be an item as innocent as a piece of silver foil – wrapping from a sweet or the innards of a cigarette packet perhaps – she looked around for something to hook it out with. Propped in one corner of the tent were a number of plastic measuring poles which had been used to demarcate areas of the search and provide sightings for the surveying equipment Layton had used. She grabbed a pole and lowered it down to the water. She wouldn’t be able to hook the item out, but moving the pole around might reveal what the thing was and whether it was worthy of further investigation. Holding the pole with one hand and the torch with the other didn’t make for a very accurate touch and as she pushed, the shiny object sank beneath the water.

  Sod it.

  Savage knelt in the mud, her knees sinking into the soggy ground. She placed the torch to one side, aiming the beam across the hole. With both hands she lowered the pole once again and stirred the water. The pole met resistance and she applied leverage, moving something beneath the water.

  There. A twinkle in the torchlight. She leant forward for a better look, aware she could topple over. Not a piece of foil; something sparkling, much more precious than a discarded wrapper. A ring. On a finger, attached to a hand, the arm disappearing into the sludge.

  Fuck!

  Savage rolled back from the edge, sliding over in the mud and scrabbling for the torch. She grasped at the side of the tent, hauling herself upright and then leaning forward again, aiming the torch down into the water.

  Did she imagine that? Were the situation and darkness playing tricks on her mind?

  No. The torchlight picked out the fingers of the hand, white against the brown water. A left hand. A silver ring on the third finger, the sparkle of diamonds announcing a wedding which would never take place.

  Paula Rowland.

  Savage pushed herself to her feet and plunged out of the tent into the murk, aware of a rumble from down the field. Lights coming across the bridge. A train. Catterly-dum, catterly-dum, catterly-dum. The train reached her side of the bridge and slowed as the lead carriage hit the curve and the climb up to Bere Ferrers station. The noise had at first reassured her, something ordinary to bring her out of the nightmare. But as the carriages rumbled past in front of her, the interiors lit up, she saw there was nobody on board, like the thing was some demonic ghost train on a journey to hell.

  She shivered, aware of the mud and wet creeping through her clothes. She needed to go back to the farm and call for help. The area had to be secured as soon as possible and that included stopping trains from going across the bridge. As she turned away, the last carriage passed below her. She saw a figure at the trackside, the shape silhouetted against the white of a window. Somebody standing, facing her way.

  Watching.

  The scene flicked off as the lights from the train passed by and the figure was lost against the dark embankment.

  Savage began to move down towards the railway line but then stopped, sense taking hold. She turned and began to run up to the farm.

  ‘Déjà vu,’ Layton said as he climbed out of his Volvo, looked around the farmyard and then glanced at the sky. ‘It’s even bloody raining again.’

  ‘Sorry to do this to you, John. Tonight’s your dance night, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Layton shrugged, turned towards the back of the car, almost as if he was embarrassed to be caught enjoying himself. He opened the tailgate and pulled out a white suit. ‘Back to earth with a bump, but nights like this make you realise there’s always some bugger worse off than yourself.’

  Paula Rowland was very much worse off. It was unlikely, given the circumstances, that they’d have found her alive, but while there was no body a tiny piece of hope remained. The hand rising from the sludge, the diamonds mocking mortality as they continued to sparkle, put paid to that.

  ‘How are we going to get her out?’ Savage asked.

  ‘D Section. Inspector Frey’s sending a couple of lads. Should be here in a few minutes.’

  In fact it was thirty minutes before D Section’s van arrived. Another twenty for two men to get into their drysuits and squelch down to the scene along with Layton, Savage and three more CSIs.

  They opened the door on the far side of the tent so as to preserve what was left of the trail. Layton hung a powerful lantern from one of the roof poles and then he edged round the hole and covered a couple of the footprints at the other entrance with little cloche-like domes to protect them.

  ‘Make sure you get the right ones,’ Savage said.

  ‘Not much chance of me getting it wrong,’ Layton said. ‘Dunlop size twelve. I reckon they’re the same ones which shed those dried bits of mud we found on Paula Rowland’s floor. Clunkers, anyway.’

  ‘Clunkers?’ Savage said.

  ‘Big feet. Big load too, the way the prints have such deep indentations.’

  ‘Somebody carrying the body then.’

  ‘Yes. Huge compared to your dainty little things.’

  Savage looked down at her feet, which she didn’t exactly consider dainty, and then asked Layton about possible forensic from the mystery man.

  ‘Difficult to get up here from the railway line without getting filthy,’ he said, looking down at his own wellingtons where mud had worked its way past the tops and up the legs of his white suit. ‘Especially if you’re carrying a body. The man’s clothing will be filthy and he’ll carry the dirt into his car. If he drove down the track on the other side of the bridge there’ll be mud on the tyres as well, gunge under the wheel arches.’

  One of the men from D Section lowered a small aluminium ladder down into the hole and clambered down, dropping into the water which came up to his waist. There was no sign of the girl, but Savage pointed across to the far side.

  ‘The body’s over there.’

  The diver waded through the water, hands outstretched, feeling beneath the surface.

  ‘Here she is,’ he said, lifting a pale arm from the water, the diamonds glittering again.

  The other diver jumped down into the hole, sending water splashing up. Savage looked at Layton, wondering if they should be a bit more careful.

  ‘No worries,’ Layton said. ‘She was dumped here. Literally. The sooner we get the body out of the water the more chance of preserving any evidence on her. We’ll get something from the footprints, maybe down on the railway line.’

  ‘A squad car blocked the end of the track soon after I called in, but they saw nothing.’

  ‘I’ll get over there later and see about tyre impressions. For now let’s concentrate on this.’

  The two divers lifted the corpse until the body floated on the water, gently cradling the girl, almost like some sort of baptism. Only you couldn’t sprinkle water on Paula’s forehead because her head was missing, just a couple of inches of vertebrae poking from the pulp of the neck. Like the other bodies, cut lines criss-crossed the torso, but this time there was a vivid contrast between the pale skin and the flesh below. The girl had been alive only a day or so ago.

  The men hoisted the body to shoulder height and r
olled her up onto the edge of the pit where the CSIs had laid out a body bag. Layton moved across and prodded the skin with a blue-gloved finger.

  ‘She’s not been in the water for more than an hour or so.’ He turned to Savage. ‘I guess you’re a witness. Whoever was down on the railway line dumped the body. Congratulations, you’ve seen the Candle Cake Killer.’

  Savage had known that already, but Layton’s words chilled her. Not only had she seen the killer, he’d seen her too.

  Dr Wilson arrived at the farm as the clock was pushing up to midnight.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ he said, fiddling with his coat as he tried to loosen the zip in the fuggy warmth of the incident room van. ‘To return to the scene, even though there was a chance of being caught. I only wish I had been there with you. Maybe we could have given chase.’

  The phrase sounded antiquated to Savage, like something Sherlock Holmes would have said as he charged over Dartmoor after the hound. Wilson’s take on the Candle Cake Killer seemed to be that the investigation was a game. She wondered if he inhabited some sort of fantasy world – possibly gleaned from his time in America – where the profiler was at the centre of things, the rest of the team hanging on his every word.

  The three of them – Savage, Hardin and Wilson – sat in the van listening to the rain drum on the roof. Hardin had summoned the psychologist to the scene, wanting Wilson to see the recent developments ASAP. He also wanted to know where the hell Wilson’s report was. ‘The bloody fucking profile’ as he put it. Events, Wilson said, had delayed his analysis. The baby rabbit on the barbecue and now the killer’s return to the farm to dump a body meant a re-evaluation. He’d work something up, he promised. Anything, Hardin said, anything to help.

  Which was where they were now.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ Wilson said again. ‘Classic serial killer behaviour is to revisit the scene, maybe use the same dumping ground over and over. But I’ve never heard of one doing so after the site has been compromised. The fact he has suggests an audacity beyond anything I have seen, here or in my time at Quantico.’

  Hardin shook his head. Savage knew his love of the States extended about a mile west of Land’s End. US policing he thought abysmal. Quantico, he’d joked to Savage some days before, sounded like a cut-price supermarket, and was about as useful to British detective work.

  ‘This is Devon, Dr Wilson,’ Hardin said, tapping the van window where streaks of rain ran down the glass. ‘This is not the country of Ted Bundy or the BTK Killer. This is not the country with the highest homicide rate in the developed world. For God’s sake leave your preconceptions Stateside and give us something relevant to work with.’

  ‘I—’ Wilson stuttered and then reached into his jacket and pulled out a pad and pencil. He stared down at the pad.

  ‘And?’ Hardin bent his head to one side and gave one of his disconcerting sneers.

  ‘I mentioned to DI Savage the other day that serial killer behaviour sometimes gives the impression the perpetrator wants to be caught. I said this is a mistaken viewpoint: the killer becomes convinced he is invincible, that they can’t be caught. They do incredibly risky things and are amazed they still evade capture. They are laughing at the police, mocking them almost. In this case even going so far as to let an officer see them in the act of dumping the body.’

  ‘Mocking us?’ Hardin’s face began to flush. ‘He won’t be mocking us when we get hold of him, he’ll—’

  ‘It’s no good getting angry, Superintendent. That’s just what he wants.’ Wilson put his pad down on his lap and leant forwards, smiling as he put his hands out and brought them together in a slow motion hand clap. ‘He’s this close, touching us almost. He’ll be watching, trying to get in amongst us, following our every move. This is the thrill the killer seeks, the sense he can move at will and we are powerless to stop him.’

  ‘Powerless to …? For God’s sake, keep that thought to yourself. Can you imagine what the media would make of such a comment? There’d be outright panic on the streets.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Wilson tapped the side of his nose. ‘Client confidentiality. Anyway you and the residents of Devon and Cornwall have nothing to worry about for the following twelve months. The cycle has ended. He’ll be dormant now until next June. You’ve just got to catch him before then.’

  Savage noted Wilson had changed from an inclusive ‘we’ to an accusative ‘you’, excluding himself from the responsibility of solving the crime. Hardin hadn’t noticed. In fact the unexpected arrival of a twelve months’ grace period seemed to have cheered him.

  ‘Now then,’ Wilson said. ‘I need to get to bed. Tomorrow morning I’ve arranged to drive down to the Plymouth side of the railway bridge with your senior CSI. Apparently there’s been a fingertip search, but I’d like to walk across and see the route the killer took for myself. Afterwards I’ll work on the profile. Have something for you by the evening.’

  Wilson stood and clambered out of the van. Hardin clucked to himself for a few seconds.

  ‘Twelve months hey, Charlotte?’

  ‘That’s the pattern, sir. We knew it before. Wilson saying so doesn’t change anything.’

  ‘You still don’t like him, do you?’

  ‘Too many words, sir. But I’ll eat them all with cold gravy and brussel sprouts if he manages to help us catch the killer.’

  Chapter Thirty

  You’ve got the big Kilner jars out from the back of the cupboard. Sat on the table their contents brood, suspended in the fluid, floating like some kind of revolting amoebas or creatures from the depths of the deepest ocean. Just now Mikey came bounding in. When he saw the jars he squealed and scampered away. You understand his sentiment. The things inside revolt you.

  They’ve gone all white and colourless in the formalin and without the pink tinge of blood you wonder if for a moment they’ve lost their potency, if, perhaps, they are not quite so dangerous. But of course you’d be mistaken. These things have caused untold misery in pursuit of selfish pleasures for their former owners. ‘Lock and key’, you say to yourself as you check the seals round the top of the jars. They’re quite intact, thank goodness.

  You push them to one side of the table and fetch two clean jars from the back of the cupboard. One small, one enormous. You decant formalin from the big container in the shed into both the jars. Then you look at the plastic wrapped around something squidgy and nasty on the draining board. A casual glance would suggest the things inside were pieces of meat for dinner. But no, they’re not for eating. Quite revolting. A horrible sight which brings back memories. And that isn’t good.

  You reach under the sink for the big rubber gloves. Pull them on. Take a deep breath. Begin to unwrap the parcel. You gag, not from the formalin, but from the sheer thought of the power of the flesh.

  ‘No!’ you say, picking the pieces of flesh up and holding them at arm’s length. ‘You won’t do that again. Not to me. Not to anyone.’

  Plop.

  Down they go into the clear liquid, spiralling towards the bottom of the jar. You flip the lid over, engaging the catch and flicking it down.

  Thank God!

  You push the jar across the table to join the others. Paula, Kat, Heidi, Sue, Mandy. The array of awfulness is almost too much for you.

  But stop! Enough reminiscing. Paula. You’ve forgotten something. The big jar’s full of formalin, waiting. You look down at the bucket on the floor. Something round in there. Round with squidgy bits, hair, ears, bits of flesh hanging off where you severed the neck. You reach down and lift Paula’s head from the bucket. Heavier than you’d have thought. The eyes stare out. You wonder for a second if you should kiss her on the lips. Decide not. You lower the head into the formalin, Paula’s face sinking down as liquid rises out of the jar and spills onto the table. The Archimedes principle. Eureka. Pure fucking madness.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Wednesday 25th June. 9.22 a.m.

  Savage realised trouble was
brewing when she arrived at the station and spotted the big car and its uniformed driver in the car park: Simon Fox, the Chief Constable, chauffeured over from Exeter first thing. He wanted the latest; wanted too, to give the team a roasting.

  Briefing room A. Everybody in there, from Hardin down to the lowliest indexer. Fox stood at the top of the table in place of Hardin and he didn’t waste much time on formalities. No beating about the bush. He thumped a bundle of newspapers down in front of him and fanned them out.

  ‘This is appalling. Awful.’ Fox stood, head bowed, staring at the headlines, the same lead on every front page. The same photograph of Paula Rowland too. ‘Beforehand there was a glimmer, just a glimmer of hope. Gone now, isn’t it?’

  Fox looked up and scanned the room, starting with the senior officers. Hardin, Garrett, Savage, the other DIs, Layton, Collier. Then the detectives with specialised roles on the inquiry: the receiver, the action manager, the document reader, the exhibits officer, the disclosure officer, the house-to-house coordinator. Next, the mass of junior detectives, followed by the police support staff: the indexers, the researchers, the PR team. Finally Fox’s gaze alighted on Dr Wilson, sitting snug right alongside Savage.

  ‘Failure is a bitter, bitter pill,’ Fox said, eyes remaining on Wilson before flitting off in Hardin’s direction. ‘But we have to swallow it. All of us.’

  The eyes went round the room again, faster this time.

  ‘I was sitting with the parents of Paula Rowland on Sunday at the press conference. Now I have to go and meet with them again. This time with an apology in hand. What else can I tell them? Can I honestly say we tried our best? Even if we did our efforts fell woefully short of what the public – what Mr and Mrs Rowland – should expect.’

  The lecture went on and on, the atmosphere in the room souring with every minute. By the end nobody could be under any illusion as to the message Fox intended: catch the killer soon or else. Responsibility lay with each and every operational officer.