BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

The position, high on the eastern side of the Sound near Bovisand, was incredible. Surrounded by fields on three sides, and on the fourth, the sea. Cliffs plunged to the surf line, and were home to numerous birds, including the occasional marauder, the eponymous peregrine. The only downside to the position was the westerly wind which battered the house in bad weather.

Right now the air was still, the sky clear and cold. Pete went to start the car and Savage shouted in at Jamie not to forget his scarf and gloves. Jamie came running out of the front door whirling the scarf around his head and then skidded on the lawn, landing on top of a molehill.

‘I’ll get some diesel,’ Pete said, climbing back out of the car. ‘That will teach the little blighter. Half a litre and he’ll think twice about doing it again.’

‘Diesel?’ Stefan came out onto the porch, raised his eyebrows and held the front door open for Jamie as he trooped in to get a fresh pair of trousers. ‘Is that the British way? Wouldn’t be allowed in Sweden.’

‘The mole, you daft turnip. You pour it down the hole and they bugger off.’ Pete grinned. ‘Although now you mention it perhaps I could spare a bit for Jamie. Might have the same effect.’

‘Cool,’ Samantha said emerging from inside, fingers pressing keys on her phone as she spoke. ‘I’m going to post that right now.’

Savage stood on the doorstep, shaking her head at her family’s antics, reaching for her own phone as it trilled out.

‘DC Enders, ma’am,’ the voice said. ‘We’ve found Franklin Owers.’

‘Great. Are they taking him to Charles Cross? Tell DC Calter I’ll meet her there and we can work out an interview strategy together. Make sure DCI Garrett is informed too. Better get onto his MAPPA contact as well.’

‘He’s not going to the custody centre. He’ll be going to Derriford,’ Enders said.

‘Resist arrest did he? Get hurt in the struggle?’ Savage followed Jamie upstairs to help him get changed. ‘Well make sure somebody stays with him at the hospital, we don’t want him slipping away.’

‘Not A and E, ma’am, the mortuary,’ Enders said. ‘He’s dead.’

In a tower block in Plymouth city centre, Jackman glanced at the bedside clock. He groaned. Despite his intentions of the previous night he’d stayed over, phoning his wife and telling her he’d met an old colleague and they needed to catch up. After his meeting at Jennycliffe he’d returned to his flat, woken the girl and entered her, fucking her slowly for a good thirty minutes. Afterwards he had done a few hours’ work while the girl slept and then they’d ordered some food in, fucked again, slept.

Fantastic, last night. And not just the stuff with the girl.

He couldn’t resist viewing the material once more, so he heaved himself out of the bed and, naked, padded across to the desk next to the window where his laptop sat. He glanced out for a moment, taking in the grey morning, before he flipped up the lid on the machine and logged in. Last night he’d transferred the movie from the poacher’s phone to his computer and deleted the original file. Now he navigated to the folder he wanted and opened the new copy.

Full screen on the laptop the quality of the video was worse than ever, but after a few seconds the image was unmistakable: a woman stood next to the wreckage of an upside down car, bathed in a headlight beam coming from somewhere off-camera. Her bright red hair nicely foretold what was about to happen, Jackman thought, as he heard a man’s voice echoing out, pleading for help. The woman ignored the pleas and turned and walked away. A little later the car exploded in a fireball which overloaded the camera’s sensor in a white flare, before the exposure compensated and the raw beauty of the yellow and orange flames became visible. For a few seconds an awful screaming rent the air, but the noise didn’t last long. Jackman knew from the newspaper reports that there hadn’t been much left by the time the fire brigade had arrived; only a set of charred bones, the flesh and fat having burned and bubbled away.

Even though he had watched the film several times the footage was still causing Jackman’s heart to thump. Not that he was concerned about the man in the car. No, he’d been a murderer and burning was almost too good for him. What raised Jackman’s pulse, what made him think life might be about to get even sweeter, was the woman. She shouldn’t have walked away and she shouldn’t have lied about doing so either. Not when she was a Detective Inspector with Plymouth CID.

Jackman closed the movie file, flipped the lid on the laptop down and smiled. Power and control was what the movie gave him. Given the situation with Redmond, the poacher’s night-time encounter had brought some timely good fortune.

Thinking of Redmond, his mind turned to the girl. He looked over to the bed and feasted his eyes on her body. Curves not yet fully developed, face angelic, mind uncorrupted. He liked them that way. She was seventeen and legal, of course. He was no pervert and it was best to keep things above board, even if the affair with the girl – his niece – would be an unforgivable misdemeanour. Especially for a married man who was the deputy leader of Plymouth City Council, and a member of the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Panel.

Two words were all the directions Savage needed from Enders to reach the crime scene: ‘The Hoe.’ Fifteen minutes later and she drove up Hoe Road, swung past the army fort and turned right up the narrow access ramp onto the Hoe. A row of flagpoles bordered a huge expanse of tarmac, the flags hanging down, sad and unmoving. In summer the place thronged with pedestrians, kids on bikes, roller skaters, skateboarders and dog walkers. A grassy slope to one side of the tarmac was a fine place for picnicking and offered fantastic views over the Sound. Right now the area was deserted apart from a BBC outside broadcast car, a cameraman taking some establishing shots, and a pretty young female reporter in a hideous purple coat. Behind them stood the iconic red and white lighthouse. Whether it acted as a beacon or a warning probably depended upon your view of the city.

Savage parked alongside a patrol car, a van and Layton’s Volvo. Layton stood next to the car, phone pressed to ear, his free hand agitated, the crime scene manager doing most of the talking. As Savage got out he looked across at her, nodded and pointed over towards the public toilets. The toilets lay at the eastern end of the Hoe, not far from the Hoe Lodge Restaurant, which, notwithstanding the grand name, was in reality nothing much more than a snack bar. Despite the weather a number of people were sitting outside, DC Enders and a uniformed PC weaving between the tables, taking statements.

Savage retrieved her PPE kit from the boot and struggled into a white coverall before crossing the tarmac to the path which led round to the toilet block, a low, brick building which had a number of roof lanterns poking up from a flat roof. One of Layton’s CSIs stood next to a couple of poles with blue and white tape and he proffered a log, which Savage signed, before pointing down the path to the male toilets. DC Carl Denton was waiting at the entrance, a couple of strands of his hair falling loose from the hood on the white suit.

‘Ma’am, shall we?’ Denton rubbed his hands and stamped his feet as Savage approached. ‘Only I’ve been here for ages and I’m dying for a cup of coffee.’ He nodded in the direction of the Lodge. ‘I hear the café is giving out free ones to our lads.’

‘Is it Mr Owers?’ she asked as she led the way in, padding across the damp floor of the entrance and into the toilets proper.

‘I think so. The body matches the description anyway. Take a look. Third one along,’ Denton said. ‘Not that you need telling.’

‘So somebody caught up with him before we did,’ Savage said. ‘Rough justice.’

‘Not really rough. All things considered.’

‘No.’ Savage thought of Simza Ellis. Missing, presumed drowned. Never, until Monday morning, assumed sexually assaulted and murdered by some pervert. ‘You’re right. Simply justice.’

The man’s body almost filled the cubicle, a mass of flesh the colour of lard prostrate before the toilet. On the seat a dusting of white powder contrasted with the black plastic, but the man’s head was bent forwards, away from the powder, his face down in the bowl, as if he had been trying to get a drink of water, like a cat lapping up milk. His faded blue jeans and grey boxer shorts had been pulled down to his ankles, exposing a brown mess which had exploded from the deep cleavage of his bottom and been smeared all over the buttocks. The left arm hung down and brushed the wet floor while the right one lay at a funny angle up by the head, as if trying to grope for something. Impossible, since the forearm ended with two sticks of bone surrounded by ripped and bloodied flesh.

Jesus, Savage thought, life or death didn’t get much more appalling than this. Or if it did, she really didn’t want to know about it.

‘Glad I’m not doing the recovery, ma’am,’ Denton said. ‘They’ll need a bloody crane to get him out.’

Denton was right, Savage thought. The man must weigh thirty stone at least. Extracting him from the toilet would be tricky. If they were to use any sense of decorum in retrieving the corpse the team would need to dismantle the cubicle. The alternative would be to dismember the body.

Savage moved closer, not wanting to, but needing to see more. She held onto the door for support as she leant in. Franklin Owers, definitely. The mugshot which had been distributed hadn’t been a good one, but there was no mistaking the round face, the receding hairline and the little goatee beard. Now she was closer she spotted a short piece of black cardboard, rolled in a tube, protruding from the man’s left nostril. Gold print ran across the glossy surface, but Savage couldn’t make out the words.

‘He’s got a business card shoved up his nose.’ Savage pointed to the powder on the seat. ‘Do you think that’s cocaine?’

‘Forgive me, ma’am. Given the circumstances, I didn’t want to taste it to find out. However, down in the bowl there’s a bag floating in the water and it’s stuffed with white powder too. I’d say the bag contains four ounces or so.’

‘A hundred grams? That’s several thousand pounds street value. Tends to suggest whoever killed this guy didn’t care for drugs.’

‘If it’s coke. Anyway, the stuff has gone in the bowl. Would you want to use it?’

‘Not really. Besides, red wine and caffeine are my drugs of choice.’ Savage moved back from the corpse to where Denton stood next to a row of urinals, her nose detecting a sweet smell of citrus lemon mingled with piss. ‘Who found him?’

‘The attendant. Came to unlock the toilets at eight-thirty this morning and found they were already open. He noticed water overflowing from inside one of the cubicles and went to investigate. He swears the body wasn’t in the loos last night when he closed up after the place had been cleaned. He’s sure the door was locked properly too.’

‘Well the victim didn’t squeeze in through a window, did he?’ Savage glanced up at the narrow slits above the urinals and at the overhead roof lanterns. ‘But then again he didn’t walk in here either. You saw the hand?’

‘I saw one hand.’

‘Exactly. I wonder what the pathologist will make of that.’

Minutes later and the white-suited figure of Dr Andrew Nesbit shuffled in, displaying his characteristic stoop and offering a little homily by way of a greeting as he glanced over the top of his glasses.

‘Wednesdays are all very well, Charlotte, but they are only two better than Mondays. Whether you like them depends if you are a glass half full person or not.’ Nesbit edged round a large puddle of water and peered into the cubicle at the body. ‘What have we here? A suicide?’

‘That’s what the toilet attendant thought when he phoned triple nine. But us amateurs guess not.’

‘Let’s see then, shall we?’ Nesbit put his black bag down in a dry patch and shuffled closer. He spotted the white powder. ‘Drugs OD?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Ah, no!’ Nesbit had seen the arm. ‘Silly me. Not a suicide either. I don’t think anyone would choose to kill themselves by cutting their hand off and if they did, my hunch is they would find it impossible to walk very far once they’d done so.’

‘Doc?’

‘He didn’t die here.’ Nesbit moved the left arm. ‘He’s in rigor, but he must have been brought here before the stiffness set in. And there is no blood, or very little. With both the ulnar and radial arteries in the arm severed, blood would be gushing everywhere. I can see some splatter marks on the man’s right leg but not much on the floor. The hand was removed somewhere else.’

‘How long before rigor sets in?’

‘A few hours, but look at the lividity in the lower legs and the left arm. Some blood has oozed from the right too. I’d say the body was moved shortly after death. One to two hours at the most. To sum up, before rigor mortis but prior to livor mortis.’

‘And the severing of the hand caused death?’ Savage asked.

‘Too early to say that, Charlotte, but it is possible.’ Nesbit stared at the body for a moment and then reached forward and pulled the man’s right sleeve up. ‘There’s something else here. Strange.’

Savage moved closer and Nesbit pointed at the forearm. There was a rectangle of skin marked with black and white stripes in a crude pattern resembling a zebra crossing.

‘Appears to be paint,’ Nesbit said touching the arm with a gloved finger. ‘Dry too. Never seen anything quite like it.’

‘Not a tattoo?’

‘No, this is on the surface of the skin.’

‘Can you get that thing out of his nose? The business card?’

‘Let’s see …’ Nesbit reached for the black tube and teased it from the nostril and then flattened the card and showed it to Savage.

‘Fastwerk Bookkeeping,’ Savage said. ‘Notte Street. That’s close to here, back down Hoe Road.’

Nesbit turned to Savage. ‘Can you pass me my thermometer and some wipes from my case please. An evidence bag too. I am going to take a rectal temperature reading, but I’ll need to clean up a bit first.’

Savage opened the bag and found the thermometer unit with its remote probe and a packet of wipes. She handed them to Nesbit. Denton grimaced as the pathologist began to wipe the excrement from between the man’s buttocks.

‘And I used to think nappies were bad,’ Savage said.

‘How’s Pete, Charlotte?’ Nesbit said in an upbeat tone, the question sounding the sort which might be posed at a dinner party. ‘I completely forgot to ask you on Monday. Rude of me, I know. I read in the paper he’d returned. Hero’s welcome, razzmatazz and all.’

The switch from professional to personal matters caught Savage off guard, but she knew Nesbit was prone to small talk in an effort to distract from the task in hand.

‘Fine. Getting cabin fever from being ashore, but the kids love him being back. I am trying to persuade him to swallow the hook.’

‘Hey?’

‘Meaning to give up his command. A desk job would be better for the children and my stress levels.’

‘Come on, Charlotte,’ Nesbit stopped wiping and turned to give her a quizzical look. ‘Pete giving up the sea would be like you giving up all this.’

Nesbit returned his attention to the body and shoved the white probe of the thermometer between the man’s buttocks.

Savage burst out laughing.

Budgeon played the pressure-washer jet across the concrete floor of the barn. Full power, red water sluicing away in rivulets, specks of white bone gliding along them until they disappeared down the drain. As he worked, a distant ache inched its way across his forehead, all the time diminishing until the feeling became not much more than a mild irritation.

It felt good. Fucking good.

At last, things were in motion and he’d made a start. Wheels were turning, the freight train on the move. Nothing was going to stop him now. Nothing.

The last of the fat bastard’s blood swirled around the drain cover, a gurgling echoing Frankie’s last sounds.

Please, Ricky, please!

He’d screamed plenty before the final words, blood spurting everywhere as he thrashed around like a fat, sloppy fish flapping on the riverbank. He’d talked too. Plenty. Facts and figures. Everything Budgeon needed to know about Big K’s business, from turnover to throughput. Budgeon had been impressed. Big K had quite an operation running and Budgeon’s South American friends would be keen to get some of the action.

Payday.

Budgeon tidied away the pressure washer and went inside. He’d recorded the local lunchtime news bulletin, and now, back in the house, he played the programme back on the big screen above the fireplace. He sat down on the sofa, cradled a glass of Scotch in his hand and sat back to watch the show.

An establishing shot panned across the scene before the girlie reporter did her piece to camera. Behind her a sign read ‘Public Conveniences’ and the viewer’s eye was drawn over her shoulder, following in the sign’s direction to alight on the dank building in the background. You could almost smell the piss.

Nice camerawork, he thought. The guy should win an award. Nice use of the words ‘toilets’ and ‘paedophile’ by the reporter too. And when they cut away to Lester Close and pictures of the little girl flashed up, Budgeon knew the stuff with Frankie had been genius. The message was clear, and there were those out there who would understand it all too well.

You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.

Lexi, Big K. They knew the code. And they knew the consequences if you broke it. The thief would lose his hand, the betrayer his life.

He rubbed his forehead, aware of a slight discomfort, then he touched the remote, pausing the playback as the reporter began to hand back to the studio.

He took another swig of his drink and swirled the liquid across his teeth before swallowing. The reporter stared out from the TV, smile frozen. She was a pretty one, for sure. A local girl made good, but she wouldn’t be around here for long. London calling and all that.

London.

Another home, and more memories.

After prison, London had seemed the best place to start again. You were anonymous up there, nobody nosing into your affairs, no history to worry about. He’d done fine, made a lot of money. Enough to buy some investment property out in Spain and start to think about retiring to the sun. But then he’d been well and truly screwed and that was what this was all about too.

Why him? It was a question Budgeon had asked himself before. Did he look like the type of guy who enjoyed taking it up the arse? Did he look like a pushover? Of course not. Just the opposite. The only explanation could be that those who’d wronged him were stupid or mean, or both.

Tossers.

The discomfort had turned into a soreness now, a prickly feeling he knew presaged another attack. A few more gulps of Scotch eased the tension and then he pushed himself up from the sofa. He went over to the fireplace, picked a log from the basket and placed it on the fire. A shower of orange sparks flared for a moment before being sucked up the chimney. He glanced up from the fire to the screen just a few inches from his head. This close the pixels on the display were distinct, like thousands of coloured crystals on some sort of collage, each one a part of a bigger picture. If he pressed ‘play’ on the remote, the scene would spring into action again, people would move, speak, smile. Life would go on.

But that wasn’t going to happen. Not for those who’d crossed him.

Budgeon reached across for a phone on a nearby table. Punched out a number, and when someone answered, he spoke.

‘The cop. We set him up next.’

He hung up and put the phone down. Then he took up his glass and gulped the rest of the Scotch, unable to suppress a smile at the serendipity of the situation. He supposed he ought to thank the Herald for printing the picture. A minibus full of kids from North Prospect, Chelsea scarves waving, the pig standing there smiling, along with a couple of PCSOs. Who would have thought he would turn up right on the doorstep like a meek lamb walking to the slaughterhouse?

He returned to the sofa, pointed the remote at the screen and pressed ‘standby’. The reporter’s frozen smile beamed down for a moment before the screen went black.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.