Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

Copyright

Published by Avon

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

Copyright © Mark Sennen 2016

Cover illustration © Andrew Smith 2016

Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007241460

Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007587896

Version: 2016-03-08

Dedication

For M

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Day One

Creepy, creepy, creepy-crawlies. Little black ticks running over my naked skin. Flies swarming in the air. I slide onto my front, burying my face in the softness of the pillow, but it’s no good, I’m awake now and can’t settle. I roll over. I realise there’s only one fly, not a swarm. Just one fly buzzing against the window. One too many. I don’t like flies. They give me nightmares. Flashbacks. I can recall every last detail. The smell of the sea. The sound of the surf. The blood on my hands.

I blink. The fly is still hurling itself against the window. I stare at the insect and wonder. Something isn’t right. I push myself up from the bed and swing my legs down onto the rough wooden floor. I walk out onto the landing and down the corridor. I knock on the door.

No answer.

I knock again and then turn the brass doorknob. The hinges creak as the door eases open. Inside, the window is unlatched, swung wide, the white net curtains billowing like waves breaking into a sea of foam. Sunbeams flicker in through the window and across the floor to the bed where she lies unmoving. I creep to the bed and where the sunlight strokes her face I bend and brush her cheek with my lips.

Nothing. I try again, this time pressing harder against the dry, cold skin. No reaction, not a twitch. Her eyes remain resolutely shut as if she is determined not to be disturbed by anyone ever again.

Day Two

This time the creepy-crawlies are real. A dozen flies swarming in the air. I open all the windows hoping they’ll go away. No such luck. More come, following their noses, the promise of decay drawing them in.

She’s begun to smell now, the weather warming, the summer heat growing by the day. Pieces of flesh lie loose on her face and her bare flabby arms and her room is full of insects. Droves. Swarms. Hordes. An odour of rotting cabbage, urine and meat gone bad permeates throughout the house. I sit at the foot of her bed and cry.

Day Three

The next day I rip up a dozen oak floorboards in her room. I fashion a coffin from the ancient planks. I’m good with tools. Woodworking. Metalworking. I kiss her on the lips one last time, aware as I do so of her cheek twitching and rippling. Maggots beneath the skin. Consuming her.

I roll her in a sheet and pull her from the bed and into the coffin. Slip, flop, thud. The coffin is heavy and I slide it from the room and down the stairs. Outside, I balance the coffin on a wheelbarrow and weave my way out to the orchard. Then I dig down into the soil and rock and bury her beneath the apple trees. A leaf flutters from above and falls into the grave like the first flake of snow in winter. Inside my chest my heart has turned to ice.

Day Four

Breakfast is a gruel of cold porridge served with a wooden spoon in a cracked bowl. A drop of honey sweetens the goo, but not the day. On the table beside the bowl is a notebook. My diary from years ago. I found the book in her room. Why she kept it I don’t know, but perhaps in some small way what was within helped her to understand where things went wrong.

I stare down at the book. I know I need to relive the events inside, but not now, not here.

Day Five

I knew I would return. The place has too many memories for me to stay away. I park my car and walk across fields, the notebook clasped tight in my right hand. There’s a copse in the distance. Green leaves in a sea of waving corn. I wade through the corn and reach an old fence which hangs between slanted posts. Within grows hazel and scrub and a huge tangle of laurel.

I step over the fence into another world, wandering the woodland until I find my secret place. As a young man I used to come here to meet my best friend. I’d talk to him about my problems, speak of my hopes and aspirations, tell him of my sorrows.

As I grew and matured I gradually weaned myself from my obsession. Life went on and I forgot about my secret place.

And yet here I am, looking for my friend, once more seeking help.

I kneel in the shadows, place the notebook on the ground, and begin to scrabble in the dirt. The brown covering of dead laurel leaves gives way to mulch and soil. My fingers reach down, pushing into the soft material and scraping away until I’ve dug a shallow hole. There it is, shining in the light. A hemisphere of bone, long ago cleaned of flesh and polished to a gleaming white. I pull the skull from the ground and hold it in front of me. In the right eye socket a large marble twinkles. A double cat’s eye whopper. There used to be a marble in each eye, but one dropped out and was lost.

‘Hello, Smirker,’ I say. ‘It’s been a long time.’

I kiss the wide bone of Smirker’s forehead and then I place him on a nearby brick so we can have a talk.

Smirker smiles at me with his perfect teeth and winks at me with his one good eye. I beam back at him. I can see he’s spotted the diary.

‘Ssshhh!’ I say, picking up the book and turning to the first page. ‘This was just a dream, right?’

Smirker smiles again, but I can see he doesn’t believe me.

To be honest, I’m not sure I do either.

The Shepherd sits in his rocking chair. He moves back and forth, the rocking soothing, almost as if he is once more a child in the arms of his mother. There’s a creak from the rockers on the bare boards of the floor. No carpet. The room is sparse with no floor covering except for a small hearth rug. Aside from the rocker there are a couple of wooden chairs with straight backs. A monk’s bench. A table, the surface much worn. To one side of the room stands a huge dresser, plain with no frills. There is a fireplace but no fire. Hasn’t been for years. Cold is something you get used to if you experience it for long enough.

From somewhere across the fields a bell chimes. Twelve strokes. Midnight. A new day beckoning.

The Shepherd nods to himself, the movement of his head matching the rhythm of the rocking chair. There is something mechanical about the action. Purposeful. Like the clock in the church ticking off the seconds. God marking the time until the sinners must face their day of judgement. The final toll of the bell fades and he realises that in the moment between yesterday and today something has changed. There’s been a subtle alteration in the ether. Perhaps the change is merely something physical, meteorological. Then again, perhaps the slight ripple in the air is something quite different. Perhaps it is the voice of God.

He puts his feet out to steady himself, to stop the movement of the chair. He sits in the silence of the night and listens.

God, he knows, doesn’t always announce Himself with a bang. His voice is sometimes not much more than a whisper. Only those prepared to listen can detect His presence.

The Shepherd pushes himself up from the chair and stands. He walks across to where the velvet curtains hang heavy. He draws one back and peers out into the small hours which lie like a suffocating blanket of silence across the valley. The air is still, not a branch or a leaf moving, the treetops reaching for a sky filled with crystal lights.

Just on the edge of perception he can hear singing. Two young boys performing a duet, their voices as clear as the night.

Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove

Far away, far away would I rove …

He closes the curtains, returns to the rocker and eases himself down into the chair. The music continues to play in his head until the final line.

And remain there forever at rest …

The last note hangs in the darkness before the terrible black of the night snuffs the sound out.

The Shepherd blinks. He knows the truth of it now. He realises that God has spoken directly to him. Those who have abased the pure of heart must be judged. Memories may fade but crimes are not lessened by the passage of time. The evidence must be weighed and the sinners must be punished.

And, the Shepherd thinks, the punishment must fit the crime.

Chapter Two

Derriford Business Park, Plymouth. Monday 19th October. 3.30 p.m.

A throng of reporters clustered round the entrance to the coroner’s court as Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage emerged. Rob Anshore, Devon and Cornwall Police Force’s PR guru, drew the reporters’ attention to the person following close behind and ushered Savage away.

‘Let the Hatchet deal with this, Charlotte,’ Anshore said. ‘She’s prepared a statement in response to the inquest verdict with the official line. You know, sadness, condolences, and all that crap to start with, moving on to the utmost confidence in her officers bit to finish.’

The Hatchet. Otherwise known as Chief Constable Maria Heldon.

Heldon was a replacement for the previous Chief Constable, Simon Fox. The late Simon Fox. Fox had killed himself using a vacuum cleaner hose, his fifty-thousand-pound Jaguar, and a one-pound roll of gaffer tape. Savage had been the one to find him sitting there stone dead, a cricket commentary playing on the car radio an unlikely eulogy for a man whose idea of fair play had been to try to kill her.

Inside the courtroom she’d presented her own account of the events leading up to Fox’s death and her testimony had, thankfully, been accepted at face value. The coroner had listened to all the witnesses and weighed the evidence and after due consideration he’d arrived at a verdict of suicide. Summing up, he’d said Fox had been living a tangle of lies and deceit which had included friendship with a corrupt Member of Parliament who himself was involved with a group of Satanists. Ultimately Fox’s precarious mental state had led him to believe there was no way out other than to top himself.

Savage and Anshore stopped a few metres to one side of the entrance and they turned to watch as Maria Heldon dispatched the reporters’ questions with curt, defensive replies.

‘Chalk and cheese,’ Anshore said, gesturing at Heldon. ‘Simon Fox was a media charmer. Knew how to play the game. He was a decent man. Pity he’s gone.’

Crap, Savage thought. The real reason for Fox’s troubles was that he’d been prepared to break the rules, ostensibly to shield his son, Owen, from prosecution. Some years ago Owen had been involved in a hit-and-run accident which had killed Savage’s daughter, Clarissa. Fox had used his position as Chief Constable to obscure his son’s tracks, but Savage reckoned he’d done it more out of concern for his own career than any love for his son. She’d discovered the truth thanks to help from a local felon by the name of Kenny Fallon and some out-of-hours work by DS Darius Riley. She’d confronted Owen Fox and foolishly put a gun to his head. The lad had confessed it hadn’t been him driving the car, but rather his girlfriend – now wife – Lauren. Owen had also told Savage it had been his dad who’d decided to cover up the accident in the first place.

‘Simon Fox was a disgrace to the force,’ Savage said, trying to remain calm. ‘He let power go to his head.’

‘Really, Charlotte, I’m surprised.’ Anshore wagged a finger. ‘Don’t you have any sympathy for the man’s mental condition?’

Savage didn’t answer. Clarissa’s death had badly affected her and her family. Jamie, her son, had been little more than a baby at the time, but Samantha – Clarissa’s twin – continued to feel Clarissa’s absence as much as Savage and her husband, Pete, did. Fox’s actions had compounded the misery. His death had brought about a resolution of sorts, but nothing would bring Clarissa back. The moment when Savage had seen her child lying broken in the road would stay with her forever. The worst of it was that Savage had had to keep everything bottled up. Aside from herself, Fallon and Riley, no one knew the real truth behind Fox’s downfall or Savage’s unorthodox investigative approach. Nevertheless, Maria Heldon could smell a rat.

‘You know what they’ll say,’ she’d said when she’d questioned Savage about Fox’s death. ‘No smoke without fire.’

Well, there was fire, plenty of it, but Savage wasn’t about to tell Heldon anything of the spark which had set the flames alight.

‘Anyway, bet you’re glad the whole thing is over,’ Anshore said, sounding conciliatory. ‘Can’t have been pleasant finding Foxy in the car like that. All gassed up and turning blue.’

Anshore was a media guy, so he could be forgiven for not knowing about the finer details of carbon monoxide poisoning. Fox hadn’t been blue, in fact he hadn’t even looked dead. Just a trail of drool trickling from his mouth alerted Savage to the fact something was wrong.

As for pleasant? Well, worse things had happened.

They walked away from the court towards the car park and as they approached her car Savage turned back for a moment. Maria Heldon had finished speaking and the reporters had shifted their attention to the next group to emerge: Owen Fox, his wife, Lauren, and their solicitor. Owen had jet-black hair like his dad, but his facial features were softer. Lauren was blonde, her hair matching the curly locks of the baby in her arms. Both parents were early twenties, not far off the age Savage had been when she’d had the twins.

‘A difficult time, hey?’ Anshore said, following Savage’s gaze. ‘Tough for the family.’

‘Tough?’ Savage held herself stock-still, bristling inside once again. She wished Anshore would shut up, wished she was away from here. ‘I guess you could fucking say so.’

With that she wheeled about and headed for her car, leaving Anshore standing open-mouthed.

Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin had been at the inquest too. He’d listened to three days of evidence replete with a myriad of unwholesome revelations about Simon Fox. Now, back in his office at Crownhill Police Station with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, he could finally relax. The past few weeks had been a nightmare, but at least, he thought, his own officers had come through with flying colours. DI Savage in particular had handled the situation with a coolness he’d rarely seen in a woman.

Hardin reached for his tea and slurped down a mouthful. A stack of mail formed an ominous pile next to the plate of biscuits. He took the first piece of mail from the pile, promising himself a biscuit once he’d dealt with three items. The white envelope had been addressed in block capitals, with his full name – without rank – at the head. A first-class stamp sat in the top right corner and was franked with yesterday’s date. The letter had been posted in Plymouth.

He noted the details without really thinking about them, the result of half a lifetime as a detective, but when he opened the envelope his interest was piqued. The letter inside had been handwritten in a Gothic script with eloquent curls and flowing lines. The Fs, Ps, Qs and Ys were nothing less than calligraphic perfection. This, Hardin thought, was somebody who thought presentation was as important as content.

Having read the first few lines, he was swiftly disabused of the notion. The content was waffle and he’d barely skimmed through half the letter before dismissing the message as the mad ramblings of somebody who needed psychiatric help.

Hardin stuck his tongue out over his bottom lip, as he always did when he was deep in thought. The letter had been addressed to him personally and began in an overly familiar fashion.

Dear Conrad …

He paused and started from the beginning again, once more struggling to make any sense of most of the content. However, towards the bottom of the page a line stood out.

How about your sense of duty, PC Hardin? What about your sense of respect? Do you have any left? Are you ready to repent?

PC Hardin?

It was a long time since he’d been a police constable. For a moment Hardin smiled to himself, memories flooding back. He looked up from the letter, his eyes drawn to the map of Devon on the wall. He’d started out at Kingsbridge nick, what – twenty-five, thirty years ago? Things had been very different then. He’d patrolled the town on foot, the lanes and nearby villages on a bicycle. If he was lucky he went out with a colleague two up in a squad car. Stopped for lunch in a sunny layby with a view of the sea. Back in the eighties the area had hardly entered the twentieth century. A few drunks, the occasional burglary, some Saturday night argy-bargy after closing time. So different from the inner-city problems he had to deal with now.

He stifled the smile and bent to the letter again.

You probably won’t recall me, but you must remember what happened all those years ago. When you were just a bobby on the beat. Before you became a DETECTIVE. Who could forget that face in the photograph?

Of course he remembered. The event was imprinted on his memory. He’d pushed the details as far back into the recesses of his mind as he could, but every now and then an echo came sliding to the surface, like a body rising bloated from the depths of a lake.

How about your sense of duty, PC Hardin?

Duty? He’d done his duty back then. Ever since, too. What was this joker hinting at? Were they trying to scare him? Was this some kind of blackmail scam or a threat, even? He’d put away dozens of criminals in his career, many of them dangerous, and yet it seemed unlikely the letter was from one of them. No professional felon would act in such a way.

A prank then. A prank or a madman.

He read the final paragraph.

Last time you failed them and you failed me too. Back then you obeyed your superiors and followed orders, but now we’re going to start afresh. We’re going to play a game, PC Hardin, and this time we’re going to play by my rules.

Hardin shook his head and then refolded the letter and placed the piece of paper back in the envelope. Really he should report this, get John Layton and his CSIs up here to examine the thing. By the book was Hardin’s motto. He tapped the envelope with a fingertip and stared at his name, wondering how he could possibly explain the circumstances to Layton. He shook his head once more and sighed. Then he opened one of his desk drawers, popped the letter in, and slid the drawer closed.

As a young kid, Jason Hobb had liked playing out on the mud next to the old hulk. His grandad had told him the wreck was a pirate vessel which, one dark night, had foundered in the shallows as the crew argued with the captain about the division of their loot. While they bickered, the falling tide left them stranded and by the time dawn broke the game was up. They were arrested by customs officers and, after a quick trial, five of the crew were hanged and the rest thrown into prison.