Touch (DI Charlotte Savage)

by Mark Sennen

  ‘Get upstairs and call for help!’ Savage said to Calter.

  Calter was already on her way, sprinting through the door. Savage had an afterthought and yelled after her.

  ‘Make it an air ambulance!’

  Seconds later she heard Enders clumping down the stairs and he came through the door and helped Savage with the girl. They carried her out into the main part of the cellar and up the stairs.

  ‘In here, ma’am!’

  Calter was in the living room and had ripped some heavy velvet curtains down from the windows and was spreading them on some cushions on the floor.

  ‘How long?’ Savage asked as they lay the girl down and covered her.

  ‘Flight time seven minutes. That was two minutes ago.’

  ‘Seven!’

  ‘Yes, we got lucky. The helicopter was already airborne on its way back to Exeter.’

  Savage thought that Alice Nash deserved a bit of a break, but it would take more than luck to pull her through. Calter had done a good job with the curtains, but they weren’t going to warm the girl up. Savage looked around for inspiration and noticed a wooden wheel-backed chair on the other side of the room. A couple of leather belts criss-crossed through the dowelling on the chair’s back and behind it on the floor Savage spotted a fan heater. It was angled up to point at the chair.

  She went over and pulled the heater out, moving it across the room as far as the cable would allow. Then she switched the unit on and turned the heat setting to the highest possible.

  ‘He would tie them to the chair and heat them up? Is that some sort of torture?’ Calter wasn’t getting it.

  ‘Defrost,’ Savage said. ‘He’d get them out of the freezer, give them a bath and stick them there to dry and thaw out fully. Then he’d have sex with them.’

  A rush of air washed over the girl now and Calter pulled the curtains to one side to let the warmth reach the skin. Savage knelt and felt the girl’s pulse again. It was weak and her breath was very shallow.

  ‘Right now would be a good time for the helicopter,’ Savage said.

  On cue they heard the distant thump, thump, thump of the approaching aircraft and Enders went outside to signal to the crew. Savage looked at Alice Nash again. The helicopter noise was much louder now and the windows started to vibrate and the ground beneath her feet shook. Calter was shouting something, but Savage couldn’t make out what she was saying. Nor could she make out whether Alice’s chest was rising and falling any more. She touched the girl’s neck and now she was sure.

  ‘Defib!’ She screamed at Calter and began to perform CPR on the girl, counting aloud as she did so. ‘One, two, three, four...’

  Calter rushed outside leaving Savage alone, the noise of the helicopter in her ears replaced by that roaring sound inside her head. The same noise she had heard in the hospital when Clarissa had died.

  ‘Twenty-nine, thirty.’

  She bent down to give mouth-to-mouth and then resumed the CPR.

  ‘One, two...’

  Then the paramedics were beside her, unpacking the defibrillator, readying drugs, one of them taking over the chest compressions. Calter helped her get to her feet.

  ‘They know what they are doing, ma’am.’

  Savage nodded and sniffed, aware that she was crying.

  ‘My...’

  ‘I know, ma’am. You don’t need to say anything, I understand.’ Calter put her arm around her and the two of them went outside. The bright blue and red helicopter stood in a field to one side of the house, its blades rotating slowly. Enders was talking to the pilot. The black Mitsubishi Shogun had gone.

  ‘Jesus!’ Savage said, pulling herself together. ‘Where the hell is Harrison?’

  *

  Two hours later and the place was heaving. The Chief Constable had been onto one of his military chums and a team of engineers from the Royal Marines in Plymouth had erected a temporary bridge over the stream to allow vehicle access. John Layton and his CSIs had trundled across it in three white SOC vans and they had disappeared inside the house like kids eager to explore Santa’s grotto. Hardin had arrived along with Garrett, Davies and a car boot full of supplies purloined from the canteen.

  ‘An army marches on its stomach,’ Hardin said, mouth crammed full of sandwich, the diet abandoned in celebration. ‘We are going to be here for days so we have to keep morale up.’

  Hardin had taken the last bacon butty so the rest of them got stuck into egg and cress and soggy cheese and tomato. Washed down with lukewarm coffee. Morale, at least where the late lunch was concerned, was tepid.

  The air ambulance had long gone to be replaced by the yellow and blue air operations helicopter. It buzzed overhead, circling the valley taking pictures. Hardin asked about Alice Nash.

  ‘Just took a call from Derriford, sir,’ Savage said. ‘She is doing OK, all things considered.’

  ‘All things considered, I think you and your team deserve a bloody medal, Charlotte.’ Hardin wiped some ketchup from his chin and sucked it off his finger. ‘DC Enders for getting you here so quickly and you and DC Calter for tackling Harrison and saving Alice Nash’s life. Quick thinking to call the air ambulance too.’

  ‘Harrison got away, sir.’

  ‘Bah!’ Hardin dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand. ‘He hasn’t got anywhere to go now and every police force in the country is on the lookout for his car. We’ll have him before long.’

  ‘And then we’ll have some fun,’ Davies said, rubbing his hands together.

  ‘Quite,’ Hardin said. ‘Anyway, we have weathered the media storm and in the end the results show crime doesn’t pay. Mitchell, dead. Forester, dead. Richard Trent, banged up. Harrison soon to be apprehended. There have been victims, yes, but thank God there won’t be any more.’

  Just then a movement at one of the upstairs windows caught Savage’s eye. It was John Layton. He was waving and fiddling with the latch, trying to open it. Finally he gave up and moved back from the window. The next thing the glass was shattering and he was shouting something about calling for an ambulance.

  *

  Layton had found them in the attic. A man and a woman in their seventies, half-naked, emaciated, the sort of thing you saw on the news when there was a famine somewhere. Or maybe in a documentary about the second world war where you got those flickering black and white images of the concentration camps after they had been liberated. Except this wasn’t on TV and it played before them in full colour.

  Now the couple sat in the back of Hardin’s car wrapped in space blankets, the engine running, the heater going full blast. They had accepted water and sandwiches, only the man had wretched when he had tried to swallow his. The heavy chain that had been secured round their necks with padlocks had been removed. Layton had used a drill from his toolkit, the horrible screeching sound jarring Savage’s teeth as he worked on the locks. God knows what it had sounded like close up.

  Savage, Hardin and Layton were standing some distance from the car, Hardin tapping his watch every minute, probably noting the response time for the ambulance.

  ‘Who the hell are they?’ Hardin said, as if their presence was an affront to the otherwise neat conclusion of the investigation.

  ‘They told me that they are Harrison’s parents, sir,’ Layton said.

  ‘What?’ Hardin puffed his cheeks out.

  ‘It fits, sir,’ Savage said. ‘It was DS Tatershall who called in the location of the cottage, remember? The parents were mispers from down in St Ives, Cornwall. They used to live here years ago before Harrison senior was convicted of abuse.’

  ‘I know where St bloody Ives is, thank you, Charlotte. What I want to ascertain is what the hell they are doing here?’

  ‘According to DS Tatershall the father has cancer.’ Savage glanced across to the car and lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he wanted to see his son again before he died?’

  ‘Fine. I can go with that. But why the fuck did Harrison chain them up in the attic and half-starve them to death? J
esus, have you seen them close up? They look like extras from some zombie movie.’

  Hardin wasn’t big on sympathy, especially when it didn’t have tick-boxes alongside it. In this case Savage thought he was being harsh, but she said nothing. Instead she told him about the information Mrs Harbersher had given them and the planned liaison with the officers down in St Ives.

  ‘DS Riley is heading down there first thing tomorrow and he will find out everything they know. I will take DC Calter with me to the hospital tomorrow and we can get the full story from Alice Nash and the parents.’

  ‘Tomorrow? Can’t you...’ Hardin peered at the occupants of the car, gave an involuntary shudder and then corrected himself. ‘No, you are right. The state they are in it would be better to wait.’

  It was getting gloomy now, dusk enveloping the valley, and when the ambulance arrived its light cast ghostly patterns amongst the trees, the shadows dancing like demons waiting to pounce. Hardin tapped his watch for the final time and muttered something about twenty-three minutes being bloody pathetic. Then he was all smiles for the paramedics, keen to get the old couple out of his car and into the ambulance so he could get away.

  ‘It’s my daughter’s birthday. She’s nineteen this week. Me and the wife are taking her out to dinner tonight. Late is not on the menu.’

  Layton looked over at Savage and she could see he was thinking the same as her: if only. The CSI team would be working through the night and Savage knew that she would have to return to Plymouth to file some sort of preliminary report. When she would get back home she had no idea.

  Chapter 36

  Bovisand, Plymouth. Tuesday 9th November. 9.57 pm

  The clock on the dash showed close to ten before she turned in off the lane and her car crunched over the gravel drive and into the garage. She sat in the dark for a few moments, enjoying the warmth of the car and the silence and thinking about the kids. She had noticed both Samantha’s and Jamie’s lights had been on so she’d need to have words with Stefan again. He was great for them, but he didn’t practise quite the same discipline a parent might.

  Tomorrow she would interview Harrison’s parents and afterwards take the rest of the day off, God only knows she deserved it. She would pick the children up from school and go for a pizza and enjoy some quality time with them. It would give Stefan a rest too.

  Key in lock and she opened the door to blazing lights everywhere. They must all be playing some game that took in the whole house. She sighed at the thought of the mess.

  ‘Kids! I’m home!’

  She dropped her car keys on the table in the hall and went into the lounge where Stefan sat on a kitchen chair in the middle of the room. He must be taking part in the game, she thought, because he didn’t move, he just sat still, like a statue, staring ahead. His eyes widened, but he couldn’t say anything due to the parcel tape wrapped around the lower part of his face.

  Then something hit Savage from behind, knocking her to the floor and sending the room tumbling over and over, the light in the centre spiralling round and fading to stars. A haze rose in front of her eyes with strange floaters swimming across a checkerboard of grey and white. She groaned and moved her hand to touch the back of her head. Wet. Sticky. She felt a sudden heaving in her stomach, the nausea blotting out the pain from her head, and then she vomited through her mouth and nose, coughing and spluttering sick.

  Now someone had her arms and was pinning them behind her. A zipping sound came as her wrists were yanked together and some sort of binding cut her flesh and secured her hands.

  Footsteps moved away, out of the room and a few moments later returned, something being dragged.

  The person lifted her now, up and onto another one of the kitchen chairs. Then the sound of tape being stripped from a roll. Not across her mouth, but round and round her body, holding her against the back of the chair.

  Then he moved round to her front.

  Harrison.

  He appeared calm, almost normal. Apart from those eyes. They didn’t look normal. They darted back and forth between Savage and Stefan, to the door, to Stefan’s baseball bat lying on the floor, to the blood on the carpet where she had fallen, back to Savage.

  She spat saliva and vomit and tried to breath slowly, to stay calm. She looked at Stefan. He didn’t seem hurt, but he had certainly been immobilised. A cable tie secured his arms behind the back of the chair and his legs had been bound with parcel tape too. He rolled his eyes at Savage, glancing sideways, indicating something. She couldn’t understand what he meant, but it gave her a glimmer of hope.

  Harrison dashed out of the room and the sound of him bounding up the stairs made Savage shiver to her very core.

  The kids.

  She heard them coming down and he marched them into the room, their faces stained with tears. Their hands had been bound in front of them with cable ties.

  ‘Mummy!’ They ran across to her, but before they got near Harrison was shouting.

  ‘Sit down on the fucking sofa!’

  Jamie and Samantha cowered before him. He shoved them across the room and bundled them onto the sofa.

  ‘Stay there!’

  ‘Matthew, please. We can work this out, we–’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’

  He didn’t look normal now. Anything but. His hands shook and lips trembled as he muttered to himself.

  ‘You had to meddle, had to nose, had to interfere.’

  ‘That is my job,’ Savage said in a low voice, surprised at her calmness.

  ‘Your job. My Emma. Gone.’

  Who was Emma? Savage had no idea. The name must be one of Harrison’s made up ones, like he used Trinny for Kelly.

  ‘Just let the children go. Please.’

  ‘Younger,’ he said. ‘Lucy was right.’

  Stefan shifted on his seat. Savage reckoned he’d heard something. Then she heard the engine too. A motorbike. The gravel crunching, the bike stopping, the ignition off.

  Harrison cocked his head on one side. He marched across to Savage, the roll of parcel tape in his hands. He pulled off a length and wrapped the tape around Savage’s mouth.

  ‘One word, one squeak.’ He glared at the children and drew his hand across his throat.

  The doorbell rang and Harrison scuttled out of the room and into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.

  Jamie jumped down off the sofa and ran across to the big old oak bureau. Savage made a noise and shook her head. Jamie glanced over but ignored her. He was struggling to open the bottom drawer with his hands tied. In the hall Savage could hear Harrison talking to a pizza delivery man. She saw Stefan nod a confirmation. He must have ordered a takeout earlier, to arrive after he had put the children to bed.

  Jamie had opened the drawer now and was rummaging in an Airfix box. The box contained a kit he had been working on with Pete months ago, an air-sea rescue helicopter. Then he was putting the kit away and pushing the drawer shut. Coming over to Savage with a craft knife in his hand.

  Savage nodded and Jamie rushed across. He went round behind her and placed the knife in Savage’s hands. Next he moved round to her front and laid his head on her lap. Savage heard the motorbike start up and then the living room door opened. Harrison stood with a grin on his face and a pizza box in his hands.

  The grin vanished when he spotted Jamie kneeling at her feet and he dropped the box and leapt across the room in a second, lashing out at Jamie and kicking him hard in the ribs. Jamie screamed and collapsed in a ball where he lay still, a soft sobbing noise coming from him.

  ‘Don’t move again or I’ll kill you!’ Harrison yelled.

  He moved over to Savage, ripped the parcel tape from her face and retrieved the pizza box and went and sat on the sofa next to Samantha. She cowered away. Out came a triangle of pizza and Harrison munched on the slice, chewing each mouthful over and over and staring into nothing, distracted, distant.

  Savage manoeuvred the knife, adjusting her grip so the blade touched her fingers, trying to
place the sharp edge against the cable tie. She moved the knife, sawing up and down, careful not to drop it.

  ‘My mother used to buy second-hand school clothes for me,’ Harrison said. His voice calm and passive with no trace of the anger from a moment ago. ‘She didn’t need to because we had plenty of money, but she did. They had stains on or they were faded or ripped. Preloved, she called them. The boys at school used to tease me about it. They said I wasn’t even that. They were right. I was dirty and used. My father told me so each time he fucked me.’

  Savage jerked the knife now, picking at the hard plastic while trying to keep her shoulders still and her expression calm as Harrison continued his rant.

  ‘My good friend Lucy informed me that younger is better. All the older ones are dirty these days. That is the way of the world. Squalid. Used. We have abused the soil and abused ourselves and now there is nothing clean left. We have been stained by our very existence. Everyone is doing it, existing I mean, and no one clears up the results. Shit, spunk, spew. That is what we are walking around in. Soon it will be up around our nostrils and we will have to recycle the stuff orally. Maybe then people will understand what we have become.’

  Harrison put the pizza box to one side, shook his head and smiled.

  ‘Listen to me. I sound like Mitchell and look what happened to him.’

  ‘You went to Mitchell’s parties,’ Savage said. ‘You took pictures. You enjoyed yourself. Seems to me like you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.’

  ‘No! I only attended to observe.’ Harrison spat the sentence out. ‘Mitchell was sick, but he made me realise that you could get away with things.’

  ‘But you haven’t got away with anything. We know about Kelly. We know about the other girls.’