BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

‘A couple of long’uns? You must be fucking joking.’

‘I don’t carry five K around. You’ll get the rest once Kenny’s seen it.’

‘But I need my phone. Anyway, how do I know I can trust you?’

‘It’s not me, it’s Kenny. He plays fair. And when he doesn’t play fair he sends someone round to kick your head in. You don’t have a choice. You’ll get your phone back tomorrow.’

‘Alright.’ The man grunted, retrieved his phone and dumped it in Jackman’s hand, in exchange for the money. ‘Five thousand. Remember?’

‘Sure,’ Jackman said pushing the door open and gulping fresh air. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

The engine started up as Jackman slammed the door and the car jerked forwards and then slewed out of the car park.

Jackman stood still for a moment. Let out a breath. Felt in his pocket for the phone. The smooth surface tingled the ends of his fingers, almost as if there was something magical about the object. He smiled, glanced up to the doggers at the top of the hill and then thought of the girl waiting for him back at his flat.

‘You lucky, lucky boy,’ he said to himself as he climbed back into his car.

Chapter Six

Nr Bovisand, Plymouth. Tuesday 15th January. 6.45 a.m.

Tuesday morning, Savage was roused early by Jamie snuggling into the bed and wanting to know when Father Christmas was coming again. Pete muttered something along the lines of ‘never, if you don’t let him get some more shut-eye’, but by then Savage was wide awake, all chance of further sleep gone.

Down in the kitchen for breakfast Pete stifled a yawn, let it slip into a smile and then put his arm around her when she came over. He was finding it difficult, she knew. Adapting to a permanent life ashore was always going to be tricky after the routine of his previous existence. He loved Samantha and Jamie as much as she did, but often he’d only seen them at their best. Day-to-day was a totally different experience for him.

As Savage drove in to the Stonehouse area of the city to catch up with the inquiry teams, she let her thoughts mill around. Concluded that although things could be better, they could be a whole lot worse too.

By the time she arrived the sun had crawled up over the horizon into a clear sky, a smudge of cloud off to the south-west and a change in the wind direction hinting at an end to the cold conditions of the last couple of days. A call to DCI Garrett informed her that yesterday’s door-to-door trawl hadn’t produced anything fresh, so she made her way back to Owers’ flat at one twenty-one Durnford Street. John Layton’s Volvo stood alongside a resident’s parking sign, an ‘On Police Business’ sticker on the inside of the windscreen. Layton sat in the front passenger seat, spooning something from a pot into his mouth.

‘Yogurt and muesli,’ he said as the window slipped down. ‘A bit nineteen eighties but still as good for you now as it was back then.’

‘Sorry,’ said Savage. ‘I messed up. Too eager I suppose.’

‘And I apologise for getting angry,’ Layton said, finishing the last of the yogurt and stuffing the plastic pot and spoon in a paper evidence bag. He took his Tilley from the dashboard, got out of the car and plonked the hat on his head. ‘I blame it on my daughter. Ever since she was born … well, you know, don’t you?’

Savage did know. When her own daughters, the twins, Samantha and Clarissa, had been born, something had changed in the way she approached police work. Cases involving violence towards the innocent or powerless became magnified in their importance. The crimes became personal, as if they had been committed against her own family, and the anger and despair could only be ameliorated by catching the perpetrators. Or, as in the case of the man who’d tried to abduct her daughter Samantha – the serial killer Matthew Harrison – seeing that he received a fiery retribution.

‘Can I go in?’ Savage asked, swallowing a lump of emotion.

‘Yes, of course. I’ve nearly finished so there’s no need to worry about suiting up this time. Just about to check the U-bends in the bathroom and then I’m done.’

‘U-bends?’ Savage said. ‘As in plumbing?’

‘Yes. You get hair and nail clippings and all sorts in them. You should have a gander at yours sometime, you’d be surprised how much gets stuck down in amongst the sludge and gunge.’

‘Yuck,’ Savage wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t want to think about it. If I want to get them cleaned I’ll call a plumber.’

‘If you can find one.’

They went down the steps and into the basement flat where Layton disappeared to his plumbing duties. Savage went into the living room, where a set of floodlights on a stand illuminated several boxes of papers and files stacked ready for dispatch to the station.

She wandered out of the living room and down the corridor. Floorboards had been pulled up in places and a section of plasterboard cut away from a wall where a patch of paint appeared fresher than the rest of the flat. In the bathroom the white floor tiles gleamed under the glare of another set of lights. Layton’s legs sprawled across the tiles, scrabbling for purchase on the shiny surface. His body was wedged under the bath where he’d removed a panel from the side. Banging, huffing and the occasional swear word came floating out. Savage left him to it and moved onto the bedroom. The bed had been stripped of the Barbie cover and sheets and the tea chest Owers used as a linen bin contained nothing but air. Savage wasn’t sure what she was looking for; Layton and his team usually went through a crime scene like locusts through a field of crops and it was unlikely they would miss anything.

She stood in the centre of the bare room, thinking how Owers’ life was being taken apart. He’d probably killed Simza Ellis so he deserved all that was coming to him, but it looked as if he had been living a bleak, empty existence for years. He may have gained some perverse pleasure from his paedophilia, but was the pleasure so great it was worth sacrificing everything for?

She went back into the living room again. The blanket covering the sofa had gone, however the Freemans catalogue remained. The catalogue no longer lay open but sat placed on one arm of the sofa, as if someone had forgotten to pack it away in one of the boxes. Savage went over, picked it up and began to flick through the first few pages. As she perused the dresses she looked at the models – teens and early twenties most of them – and thought about herself at a younger age. Back then, when she’d first got together with Pete, she remembered he’d often teased her about her scruffy attire, but then conceded he preferred her without clothes anyway.

Savage smiled to herself at the memory and then shook her head. For too long her life had been on autopilot, her relationship with Pete the same. Passion had been fuelled by distance, love by his absence. Now he was back for good they’d have to work on things, make an effort. She wondered if that might include needing a change of wardrobe.

She moved on through the various sections, but nothing grabbed her. Then she reached the children’s clothes, spotting the page which had been open the first time she had seen the catalogue. She flicked on, and a few pages later the catalogue opened at a slip of paper wedged deep in the seam. At the top of the page two girls dressed in vests and knickers stood against a pastel background. Savage removed the paper. Nothing on either side. She looked back at the catalogue. Near the seam there was a hollow space, a recess cut away, inside which was the distinctive shape of a USB memory stick.

After handing Layton the catalogue with the cut-out and the USB stick, Savage left the property, strolled down Durnford Street and then up to Admiralty Street, looking to see where the inquiry teams had got to. At St George’s Primary the shrieks of children floated out from the playground at the rear. They were out of view, safe from the prying eyes of a pervert like Owers, but a minor inconvenience like that wouldn’t stop someone like him. He’d find a way. The question was, had he gone down to the Lizard in Cornwall for just that reason?

Up the street she could see two members of the inquiry team talking to Enders. Enders waved and then jogged towards her, a wide grin on his face. He reached her, breathless, words pouring out. Savage told him to calm down. Take it slowly. Enders explained the two officers he’d been talking to had scored big time.

‘We’ve got a reliable sighting of Mr Owers. He was seen scuttling up the cut at the back of Admiralty Street early Sunday evening, something about a confrontation with two other men. Then a white van drives off at speed.’

‘Have we got anything else on the van?’

‘Of course.’ The grin widened and Enders nodded over at a small sign attached to a nearby lamp post. ‘Neighbourhood Watch. The van was double-parked near the school and somebody snapped a pic with their phone. We’ve got the index.’

‘And?’

‘Registered owner is a Stuart Chaffe. Turns out he has form. Major. Went down for assaulting a police officer after being stopped on the motorway during a drugs bust. The assault was a knifing. Sliced the officer open and pulled the man’s guts out with his bare hands. Chaffe spent five years in Broadmoor before being moved to an ordinary prison to complete his sentence. He was only released last year after an eighteen-year stretch inside.’

‘Sounds like he could be old enough to be our mystery man, the one who impersonated Mr Evershed. Do we have an address?’

‘Southway, ma’am. Kinnaird Crescent. Since he’s only just out of the nick he’ll have a probation officer. Shall I try to make contact and get some sort of lowdown before we head out there?’

Savage thought back to an incident a couple of years ago. In a similar situation she’d gone by the book and had a quiet word with somebody on the offender management side of things. When she’d turned up at the suspect’s house – a youth wanted for attacking a mum-to-be with a hammer – the door had been opened by a local solicitor, the lad already briefed to keep his mouth shut.

‘No,’ Savage said. ‘Better if our visit comes as a complete surprise to Mr Chaffe, don’t you think?’

Kinnaird Crescent lay on the northern edge of the city in the maze of Drives, Closes, Walks and Gardens which made up the district of Southway. Stuart Chaffe lived in a block of flats on the north side of the crescent, one of a number of five-storey blocks dotted every fifty metres or so. The road traversed a slope and the flats had been built on the lower side, meaning the ground floor – which consisted of garages – and the first floor lay below street level. Each block had a concrete bridge which led across to the entrance door. Net curtains adorned the lower windows of the flats, hiding away whatever grimness lay within. Depressing, Savage thought, as Enders drove along the crescent, past block after block of identical buildings.

Halfway along they came to the correct block. They parked up and strolled across the strange little bridge to the glass-fronted lobby area, where a list of names ran down a column of bell-pushes to the right of the locked door. ‘Chaffe’ had been scribbled in pencil alongside the number ‘324’. Three presses of the bell later, the third with Enders keeping his finger held down for a good thirty seconds, and a lanky figure shuffled down into the foyer from a stairwell to the right. Stuart Chaffe wore ill-fitting jeans and a denim jacket, his wrists and ankles protruding from the sleeves and the bottom of the trousers, as if he was a kid growing too fast for his parents to keep him in clothes. In his early forties, he appeared older, with greying hair and bloodshot eyes, his skin bearing an unhealthy pallor, as if he had returned from a long sea voyage where fruit and vegetables were in short supply. He gazed through the glass before leaning against the wall next to a bare noticeboard.

‘If you are from the good Lord Jehovah you can fuck off.’ Chaffe rubbed his eyes and yawned.

‘I have heard my boss called many things, Mr Chaffe,’ Savage said, ‘but God isn’t one of them.’

‘Pigs then? These days only pigs and religious folk dress like you two twats.’

‘Let us in, Stuart,’ Enders said, pressing his warrant card up to the glass. ‘We want a word. Or two.’

‘I was right then. All that time inside and I’ve still got a good sense of smell for crap.’ Chaffe made no move to open the door, instead he straightened and gestured around the hall. ‘Talk away. No one around to hear, just a few deaf old coots. The rest are out at work.’

‘And you, Stuart?’ Savage said. ‘Have you got a job?’

‘The name’s Stuey, not Stuart, and “Had” is the word. Gutting chickens in a factory wasn’t my idea of fun. Not after having spent the last eighteen years in a battery farm myself. Jacked it. You should have seen my proby’s face when I said I’d had enough, you’d have thought I’d knocked one out over her.’

‘Let’s talk about this inside, Stuart. You can make us a nice cup of tea and we can ask you a few questions.’

‘Tea? You’re joking, right? Believe me, sweetheart, when you’ve done a stretch like I have the last thing you are going to be drinking on the outside is tea. So, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go back and fix myself something a little stronger before you guys bore me back to sleep.’

Chaffe turned and began to move towards the stairs. Enders grabbed the door handle and rattled the door, the noise echoing around the bare hallway.

‘You own a white van,’ Savage said. ‘Were you out and about in it on Sunday evening? Maybe around the Stonehouse area?’

‘So what if I was? Got to make a living somehow.’

‘Do you have any friends who live over that way, Stuart? On the gross side, the type who like to play with kiddies?’

‘Hey?’

‘A man known as Franklin Owers. You’ll likely as not have seen his picture in the Herald. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him, have you?’

Chaffe stood for a moment, a smirk creeping across his lips. Then he turned and walked across the hallway, his beanpole-like frame disappearing as he went down the stairs.

‘Ma’am?’ Enders had stepped back from the door and pointed to a white plate on the outside wall of the flat. ‘Says numbers two ninety-four to three twenty-four. Which means Chaffe’s flat is on the top floor, and if you remember he came down the steps.’

‘Shit.’ Savage moved back onto the bridge and peered over. A row of windows marked the first floor flats and then, below, the grass slope led down to rendered wall with a couple of smaller windows and some pipes. Somewhere out the back of the flats an engine coughed into life, followed by a squeal of tyres.

Enders was already running for their car, key fob in an outstretched hand. A white transit van came from behind the flats, shooting up the access road and sweeping round and up to join Kinnaird Crescent proper. The vehicle skidded into the road, turning sharp left and roared back towards where Enders was crossing over. He dashed across, diving for the pavement as the van sped past, Chaffe leaning forwards in the front seat, mouth hanging open, eyes wide. Enders picked himself up as Savage arrived at the car and jumped in the passenger side. Enders was in the car and starting the engine as Savage reached for the radio.

They had parked facing the direction they had come so Enders floored the accelerator and spun the wheel. The back end of the car slid round but not quite enough to prevent him from having to engage reverse gear and back up. Then they were going forwards again, Savage spotting the van disappearing over a rise a couple of hundred metres away. The crescent curled up to the right, meeting the larger Clittaford Road at a mini-roundabout. Chaffe went left, screeching across the roundabout and clipping a car parked a short distance up the road. Enders had the headlights on and the grille-mounted blue strobe flashed in response to the warble of the siren. A motorcyclist came from the right and Enders had to thump the horn to prevent the rider from venturing into their path.

‘Idiot!’

Savage had control on the radio and swore when the dispatcher said the nearest unit was at the Crownhill station. It would be at least a couple of minutes before back up would arrive.

Clittaford Road had speed bumps for the first quarter of a mile, but Enders took them at full pelt, the car’s suspension bottoming with a jar each time they hit one. Another mini-roundabout marked the end of the residential area and the start of an industrial complex on the right, a number of vast warehouses standing like sad monoliths. The road continued to bend to the right, looping in a great circle until houses once again appeared on the left and the road came to the much busier Southway Drive where a queue of cars waited at a red light.

Up ahead, Chaffe swung over to the wrong side of the carriageway and steamed by the queue, hanging a right and speeding onto the main road. Enders followed and they joined the road just in time to see Chaffe slow down and take a sneaky left up a side street.

‘Got him,’ Enders said, flooring the accelerator once again. They shot along the main road and Enders took the left turn at speed, careering round and bumping the curb. Out of the corner of her eye Savage spotted a sign: two figures holding hands – one taller than the other – inside a red triangle.

‘No!’ she screamed.

The dad in the middle of the road grabbed his three-year-old and leapt for the pavement, but an older child stood rigid with fright. Enders wrenched the wheel and stamped on the brake pedal. The ABS juddered as the car began to turn and then the whole of the vehicle was sliding sideways, the back end swinging round so when they stopped they were pointing back the way they had come.

Savage looked over her shoulder but couldn’t see the child. She jumped out and ran to the rear of the car. The girl knelt on the ground crying, pointing down into the road where a little black cat lay squashed under a wheel, a mass of polystyrene beads escaping from the soft toy’s stomach.

By the time they had waited for a Traffic unit to arrive so the incident could be logged and assessed – the attending officers taking photographs and measuring the marks on the road as well as interviewing the available witnesses – the day was fast disappearing.

When Savage had seen the little girl standing there she had been transported back through the years to when her daughter Clarissa – Samantha’s twin – had been killed in a hit and run up on Dartmoor. The accident had been altogether different, of course: Clarissa had been on her bike and the driver hadn’t been a skilled officer who had completed several pursuit courses but a maniac handling his car with no respect for other road users. The investigation had been much more involved too, but despite numerous leads the driver had never been traced, Clarissa’s death – or murder, as Savage saw it – unattributed and unavenged.

Savage took the wheel for the short drive back to Crownhill and as they drove away from the scene, Enders stared down at his lap. She knew Enders understood about Clarissa and he also had young children of his own.

‘It’s OK, Patrick. She didn’t have a mark on her. The only thing damaged is your pride.’

‘Inches, ma’am, inches.’ Enders shook his head. ‘I should have made a judgement of the risk. Time of day, the weather, danger to other road users, the seriousness of the offence the suspect we were pursuing may have committed …’

‘Textbook rubbish. Impossible for us to do if we were to have any chance of catching up with Chaffe. Anyway, I think murder is serious enough for a high-speed pursuit, and Chaffe is mixed up in this somehow.’

‘You think Chaffe is a paedophile like Owers? Maybe involved in killing Simza Ellis?’

‘No idea. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t think the fact he’s done eighteen years makes him a reformed character. He doesn’t exactly look like a complete innocent either, does he? And if he is, then why on earth did he do a runner?’

The call had come from a policeman in Plymouth. Unexpected.

‘Simza,’ the voice said; Tony Ellis listening but not needing to know, not wanting to know either.

‘Back then,’ the policeman continued. ‘Well, it turns out you might have been right all along.’

Ellis opened the front door and stepped on to the veranda of his little park home, out of earshot of Lisa, his wife. A cold dampness touched his face and he heard the roar of the traffic on the M5. A blur of cars and lorries sped by on the embankment above, the monotonous whooshing like waves pounding a beach.

Back then. Last summer. No beach, but a series of jagged rocks at the bottom of the steep cliffs of the Lizard. A huge swell from a distant storm way off in the Atlantic crashing into the shore, the spray misting his face but the water warmer than today’s drizzle. Rainbows dancing in the morning sun, and Simza laughing as he had thrown sandwiches out into the void where gulls swooped and caught them.

Then she was gone. Just like that, when their backs had been turned for one moment.

Within minutes the Lizard lifeboat had been launched, the orange craft rising and falling on the waves as it searched the water below the cliffs. Fifteen minutes later and a rescue helicopter roared overhead, the tourists gawping at the free airshow. Within an hour a coastguard cliff-rescue team and half a dozen police officers were scouring the clifftops too, guys in harnesses abseiling down to check unseen ledges, voices crackling in radios.

‘That’s a negative down here, repeat, negative.’

‘What about the fat guy with the camera?’ Lisa had whispered to him. The one with the strange smile, all-too friendly as he patted Simza on the head as he passed by on the coast path.

A word to the officer in charge had brought a shake of the head. That sort of thing didn’t happen down here. Not in Cornwall. He promised to organise a search of the nearby car parks and maybe station a patrol car up the lane. However, when Simza’s pink trainer was plucked from the sea by the lifeboat crew all efforts were once again concentrated on the water.

‘But he’d been taking pictures,’ Lisa said. She remembered him leering from behind a white van parked down by the gift shop.

‘No, love,’ the officer said. ‘I can understand why you’d want to think that, to cling onto some glimmer of hope, but no, she’s gone over the edge. Happens every so often. It’s why we have the fence. People don’t realise how dangerous the coastline is.’

‘Mr Ellis?’ The voice was still on the line as Ellis collapsed onto the white plastic chair on the veranda. Now the officer was asking Ellis some questions, mentioning a name or two, did they sound familiar?

You might have been right all along.

‘Do they sound familiar, Mr Ellis?’

Ellis could barely hear the voice above the traffic roaring past on the motorway, the noise of waves pounding a beach. His fists pounding to a bloody pulp the face of some pervert who’d taken his little girl.

Chapter Seven

Nr Bovisand, Plymouth. Wednesday 16th January. 8.27 a.m.

Wednesday morning, and Savage stood outside with Pete waiting for the kids to emerge from the hallway for the trip to school. Pete was shaking his head, pointing at various bits of the house which needed attention. Roof, guttering, windowsills, the damp-proof course, they all needed work. He took Savage’s hand and smiled at her. Lucky he was going to be around for a bit, he said.

Peregrines was a sprawling structure, hardly beautiful except in its oddity. The original open-plan single-storey building had been added to over the years, growing various appendages until it had a number of different levels and wings and more resembled a bodged-up Greek island villa than a house. The previous occupant had been an admiral and at first Savage and Pete had rented the property from him while he embarked on a round-the-world sailing trip with his second, and somewhat younger, wife. Three years in, still not having fully explored the Caribbean, he decided he was never coming back and sold them the house. Over the years they’d reached the conclusion that the place hadn’t been so much a bargain as a gift horse, but short of doing what the admiral himself had done, Savage didn’t think they’d be leaving anytime soon.