by Mark Sennen
‘Exactly.’
*
Savage dragged herself up to Hardin’s office and found DCI Mike Garrett and DI Davies waiting. As a Superintendent Hardin had the luxury of his own space even if he hadn’t made much effort to personalise it. The obligatory picture of him in uniform at some event with his wife standing dutifully at his side sat on one side of a tidy desk. There was also a calendar of Greek islands on the wall – a year out of date – and a couple of P.D. James novels stuck in the bookcase alongside the law books and policing manuals. Hardly a home from home.
Savage took the seat next to Davies. He had managed a shave, but still looked rough. Garrett was as smartly turned out as ever, but the older detective wore a subdued expression, fresh lines of worry on his face. As the Senior Investigating Officer on operation Leash he would have received the sharp end of Hardin’s tongue, Savage suspected. However, rant finished, the DSup had now come over all conciliatory. He even muttered some apology to Savage about his earlier behaviour.
‘This bloody diet plays havoc with my mood. Have you ever tried chewing a stick instead of having a doughnut with your morning coffee?’
He held up a jar of real liquorice and offered it around. All present politely declined.
‘According to my doctor the coffee must be decaf, lunch is to be salad, dinner is wholemeal bread and a light soup and if the wife offers kinky sex I am to refuse.’
Hardin had suffered a mild heart attack around six months before. Enders said it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke. The quip got a big laugh, but made Savage think of her next medical and wonder what the doctor would say to her when he checked her blood pressure readings. Especially the way operation Leash was going.
‘Right,’ Hardin rubbed his hands together. ‘I am taking direct control of this operation, in effect assuming Mike’s position as SIO in all but name. I know you have worked your butts off, but the results are disappointing to say the least.’
Too true, Savage thought, meeting Garrett’s eyes and detecting discomfort behind his frown. With Hardin as SIO in all but name Garrett was stuffed. If the investigation went further downhill he would carry the can, if they got a result Hardin would take the credit. Win-win Hardin. Relegation Garrett.
Hardin started to elaborate on the different approach the team would be taking now he had taken charge.
‘I just had a call from the officers attending the post-mortem. This is definitely a murder inquiry, and not a nice one.’
‘Is there ever a nice one?’ Garrett said.
‘No, but this is brutal and nasty. The pathologist believes the girl may have been killed with a, let me see...’ Hardin peered down at some notes. ‘Ah yes, a captive bolt stunner. Otherwise known as a humane killer, although I think we can agree that Olivárez’s death does not fall into a category one would call humane.’
‘A cow killer?’ Savage said.
‘Yes. Whether that is useful information or not remains to be seen. All depends on who might have access to one.’
‘A farmer or a vet?’ Davies said. ‘Seems the obvious line of enquiry.’
‘Or an antique dealer,’ Savage said. The others looked at her. ‘I came across an old one in a shop once. People collect this sort of stuff and I don’t think they require a firearms licence.’
‘OK, so the weapon may have come from anywhere,’ Hardin said. ‘Let us get to the subject of catching these people. As you are all aware Big Night Out will be taking place on Saturday nights for the next four weeks. This will push us for bodies on other stuff, but until this is solved follow ups on some minor crimes are on standby. The overtime budget is going to go through the roof and there are going to be complaints, but I tell you something: if we don’t catch these brutes by Christmas then it is not going to be a happy one. For any of us.’
Hardin ran through his ideas for the Big Night Out and the others chipped in with a few suggestions. Garrett thought they should include Friday nights as well since two of the girls had been picked up then. Hardin disagreed.
‘The problem is manpower. Not enough to go round, I’m afraid. Right bloody fools we would appear when an attack happens at a club we weren’t covering because we were spread too thin. I can visualise the headlines on the Monday morning and my bollocks nailed to the ACC’s desk by the afternoon.’
Garrett also wanted to step up uniformed patrols, but again Hardin disagreed.
‘They’ll only end up going somewhere else where there are no patrols and we will miss them completely.’
In the end they compromised on some increased presence in the city centre around a couple of clubs. That would be good publicity and provide some pictures for the papers and mean the operation could take a risk in not putting officers into those particular venues, leaving more free for the others.
The meeting concluded and Savage and Davies left, leaving Garrett with Hardin.
‘Poor old fucker,’ Davies said, shaking his head. ‘Mike had high hopes of promotion next year. Been DCI for as long as I can remember.’
‘Hardin’s a wily devil,’ Savage said. ‘Because he is built like the proverbial brick outhouse people assume there is nothing up top, but you don’t dare underestimate his cunning.’
*
Savage grabbed another cup of something resembling coffee from the canteen and went back to the Major Crimes suite where the talk had once again degenerated into who would be wearing what come Saturday night. Not much else was happening or was likely to, Savage thought. They would be very lucky if the body on the beach yielded any forensic evidence. The corpse had been lying in the water so long anything present would have degraded to beyond the point of being useful. What they needed was something distinctive about the girl’s life that separated her from the other victims. Something to indicate why she was tracked down and killed when the other girls had been let go.
Savage went over to where DC Jane Calter sat at a desk trying to piece together some intel on the girl’s movements in the days following the assault. Calter was young, mid-twenties, and like Enders her appearance didn’t shout ‘detective’. She wore her hair in a shoulder-length blonde bob and dressed right on the ‘casual’ limit of the recommended dress code. Today that was a black denim skirt and jacket and shiny black boots. With Calter though appearances were deceptive: she was hard as nails, ran marathons and some years back had won a national junior title at Taekwondo.
Calter looked up at Savage and started to explain that her task was a waste of time: the girl had no contact with anyone but her flatmate and police officers before she left for Spain.
‘She spent some time at the Sexual Abuse Referral Centre, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘The doctor examined her and a sexual offence liason officer did her bit too. Then she went back to her flat and the SOLO stayed with her until she departed. I interviewed her several times over the next few days as we tried to make sense of what had happened and get a coherent statement. She was never alone.’
‘And you accompanied her to the boat?’
‘I did, ma’am. With DC Enders. At least we took her through check-in and passport control. She had a single room on the boat and we know it was used. Her parents are both disabled so there was nobody to meet her at Santander and she was going to make her own way home to Zaragoza, but she seemed quite happy about that.’ Calter paused for a moment before continuing, a noticeable trace of emotion in her voice. ‘You know, I liked her. She was a strong girl, confident. The assault affected her badly but I sensed she would get over it. That she wouldn’t let what happened go on to destroy the rest of her life.’
Calter didn’t say anything more. She didn’t need to, the inference was obvious: somebody else had destroyed Rosina Olivárez’s life. Literally.
Chapter 4
Malstead Down, nr Buckfastleigh. Monday 25th October. 4.41 pm
Gordon Isaacs was fed up with people telling him he was lucky to be a farmer. Everyone said it must be great to have such a varied existence with all the changing sea
sons and different challenges. In reality, one day was very much like the next and in Isaacs’s mind that meant today had been bloody awful. People didn’t realise it was a hard life. Bloody hard work and no days off and no knocking off at five thirty and having a drink with some cute blonde in a posh wine bar.
It just wasn’t fair.
Isaacs whacked the starter motor with the hammer once more, squirted a burst of EasyStart into the air intake and used his screwdriver to bypass the ignition. The Landrover spluttered a couple of times, backfired, and then burst into life, coughing a plume of black smoke from the exhaust in the process.
‘About bloody time you useless heap of shit,’ he said slamming the bonnet down and lumbering round to the door. He swung a leg to try to kick his collie as it went to grab the hammer. The dog jumped out of the way and leapt up through the driver’s door and across to the passenger seat.
‘Look what you bloody done now!’ Isaacs eyed the muddy prints all over the seats. He got in anyway and rammed the gearstick forward, flooring the accelerator. The Landrover slewed round in the mud and he pointed it out of the farmyard and down the rutted lane.
‘Lil’ acre, Fly. That’s where we’re off to.’
The dog yapped and panted. Now they were moving Isaacs didn’t feel too bad either. He hated having to fix things because there were always two constants in any job he had to do: never enough time and never enough money. Earlier in the day the big Ford had got a puncture because the previous repair had been a bodge job rather than a new tyre. And now his neighbour, Peter Wright, had been on the phone to tell him he’d seen a couple of Isaacs’s heifers pushing their way through the fence at the bottom of Little Acre. Isaacs had spent a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to start the Landrover which meant that the heifers had plenty of time to frolic in the winter wheat, ruining the freshly sown crop and trampling pounds off his bottom line. Which in the grand circle of life meant the next puncture repair would be yet another bodge and he’d never be able to afford a new Landrover.
His ongoing problems reminded him of an old song, There’s a Hole in My Bucket, and he began to hum the tune to himself as his Landrover bounced along the lane down towards Little Acre.
‘–dear Liza, dear Liza.’ Liza in his case was Sandra and she was always nagging at him to sell up and get out. They weren’t getting any younger were they, so what was the reason for carrying on? Since the house, barns and land must be worth well over a million there wasn’t a good one. If they sold up they could buy a little place somewhere and stick the majority of the money in the bank. They would be able to take holidays in the sun, treat their grandchildren with more than just love and reward themselves for years of hard work. They’d never have to worry again.
‘Bugger that, eh?’ Isaacs said to the dog.
Stubbornness was one trait all farmers shared and Isaacs wasn’t going to give up just yet. His mum and dad had both worked the land until it had them beat. Now mum tottered around some nursing home with only dribble and memories for company, and dad lay six foot under in the local churchyard. He owed it to his parents to carry on while he could. If one of his sons had been interested things might have been different, but no, they were too clever for that. Off to university and no stopping them either. Still, they couldn’t be blamed. Who in their right minds would put up with what he had to endure?
He stopped the Landrover at the gate to Little Acre and got out. Down by the water trough several of the heifers were pushing against the fence. A whole section had given up the ghost and left a bloody big hole. The buggers were walking back and forth between Little Acre and the wheat without a by-your-leave or a ‘thank you Mr Isaacs for feeding us.’
Isaacs undid the gate, swung it open, got back in and ripped into the field. Brakes, out, close gate, in, foot to floor, the vehicle skidding sideways for a moment before the chunky tyres got a grip and the Landrover shot across the grass. Several of the heifers had seen him coming and, thinking they were in for some extra feed, they began to trot towards him. He whacked on the anchors a few yards from them and the vehicle slid to a halt. Then he jumped out, grabbed a piece of black plastic pipe from behind the seat and rushed at the bemused animals.
‘Get the hell out of there!’ He thwacked the pipe against his wellies and it made a satisfying sound and the rest of the herd moved away from the gap. Isaacs could now see that a ten yard section of the fence had been flattened. Three stakes had been knocked over and the netting and barbed wire had been pulled down too. The mess was a morning’s work to fix.
He sighed and walked through the gap into the corn field to round up any of the heifers still in there. Then he spotted the tracks.
Some bastard had driven into the field, the tyres crushing the green shoots and compacting the seedbed. Hang on. Some bastard had driven through the fence into the field. Then something about the gate to the lane struck him. The chain and padlock hadn’t been there. In his rush to get into the field he’d failed to spot they were missing. A few months ago he had taken the precaution of securing all the gates to his land after a spate of rustling saw a couple of neighbours losing some stock. Fat lot of good it had done by the looks of things.
Two sets of tracks led into the field, curved to the left and ran down the edge. From the way the new green shoots were bent over it was obvious that one set marked the outward journey and one the same vehicle returning. Isaacs swore extreme vengeance on the perpetrators and stumbled into the field to look down the tramlines the tracks had made.
Thwack.
The pipe thudded into his welly again. A lone heifer who decided to see if Isaacs needed any help had second thoughts and skipped back into Little Acre. Isaacs stared at her for a moment to make sure she had got the message that he wasn’t standing for any trouble today and then plodded off along the boundary of the corn field to see where the tracks led.
They went down the field’s gentle slope towards the copse at the bottom, always keeping close to the edge and making light work of the heavy soil. Isaacs reckoned that this and the tyre size made it probable it was a 4x4 some kids had nicked from a rich townie. Maybe there was a sort of perverse justice in the world after all. The tracks stopped at the bottom of the field next to the copse and Isaacs saw the vehicle had turned round by reversing into a patch of scrub in the corner and had then gone back the way it had come. Strange. It didn’t seem like the driving style of some drugged-up hooligans from a sink estate. On the other hand maybe they were so tanked up on cheap cider that they couldn’t drive fast.
He peered into the woodland where the last of the day’s light dappled patches of soft, green grass. A couple of years ago he had some pheasants in there. Was it possible someone had hoped to get a few birds? They were pretty ill-informed if that was the case. Still, it might be worth taking a look to make sure of things.
The rickety stile creaked as he climbed over it and Isaacs followed the narrow path that wound into the shadows. For a moment he felt uneasy. He wasn’t sure why and he tried to put the feeling from his mind; it was stupid, he’d been down this way hundreds of times. As a kid he’d played here, built dens and won fantastic battles against the Germans or the Indians. Later on as a young man, he’d taken a neighbour’s daughter here and they had got sweet on an old blanket. That was after he’d got engaged to Sandra. And it had happened again after they were married too. In more recent years he’d raised pheasants down here, stalked foxes, thinned out some trees. So it was stupid. There was nothing here to be scared of. Despite that he wished he had his gun with him, but it was locked away in a cabinet back at the farmhouse. Once he had always kept it in the Landrover, ready to take care of a stray dog or to bag a rabbit for the pot. Bloody bureaucrats and their rules, they just couldn’t stop meddling.
He shook his head to clear the ridiculous thoughts from his mind and followed the path for thirty yards or so to where it led into a glade at the centre of which some lilies were trying hard to cling to their beauty. Isaacs stopped and breathed in the
air. Closed his eyes and breathed again. Sweet smells, earthy smells, and then he remembered the neighbour’s daughter on the blanket, her mild protestations, her ‘no’ which meant ‘yes’. It was all so long ago now, yet the memory was still clear. And he realised why. There simply weren’t that many memories worth recalling anymore.
He opened his eyes and sighed. As he turned to go something caught his eye. Something in the long grass on the far side of the clearing. He stopped and stared and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Lying in the grass in among the dying nettles and brambles was a young girl. A shaft of light shimmered down through the misty air and illuminated her. Brown hair, angel face, a white cotton sheet covering her body. Isaacs gasped in a lungful of air and then put his hand to his mouth and let the air escape. He moved one step forward. A twig cracked under his right foot. The girl didn’t move. He edged closer across the mossy glade and now he noticed her eyes were shut. Closer still and he could see her full lips parted in a half-smile that made his insides go all light and tingly. She was beautiful, so very, very, beautiful.
He stood over her now and still she didn’t wake. He realised he was still holding the plastic pipe and now he used it to probe the white sheet.
‘Excuse me, er, miss?’
No response.
He hooked the edge of the sheet with the pipe and pulled it down, sweeping the covering from her body. Golden skin, white bra and panties, nothing else. Legs long and not too thin, round hips, curvy waist, pert breasts. In his younger days Isaacs and his mates had a word for girls like this. The word was ripe.
There was still no reaction from the girl and she lay still, an object of perfection frozen in time. He poked her again. Nothing. A slow chill began to creep across his shoulders and down through his chest. He stuck out his foot and pushed it against the girl’s arm. It moved in response and fell back.