TOUCH: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

And all that was Mitchell’s fault?

Mitchell had dragged him into his little circle of depravity and from then on in he had been slipping downhill. Actually it was like he was plummeting now. Freefall. Groundrush.

Drag, Harry? I don’t think the police would see it that way.

Of course they wouldn’t. Because they wouldn’t make allowances for his sensitivities. And the police didn’t know Mitchell and his way of twisting everything to his own advantage. That was how Harry had got involved with him in the first place. Mitchell had spotted Harry on the Hoe with his camera and guessed what he was doing. He followed Harry into the shopping centre and watched him take upskirt shots on the escalators. Mitchell had confronted him and sprung his trap.

At least his time with Mitchell made him realise about the other type of girls. The sluts. The ones struggling on Mitchell’s bed may not have been begging for it, but they knew the risks. They went out for the night with their flesh on display, just waiting to be touched.

Touched, Harry? They were raped.

Like he had been.

You expect sympathy? After what you have done?

Harry knew that it wasn’t his fault, that somehow, somewhere, everything had got all mixed up. Wrong. Broken.

So what are you going to do to fix things, Harry?

That was a good question. Harry pondered it for a few minutes. He had tried to fix things with Trinny. Only that hadn’t worked out and he’d had to get rid of her. There was also the little matter of Lucy.

Juicy Lucy! That slut! She makes me look like a nun.

Lucy had come back from the past the same way as Carmel and Trinny had so he had collected her too. He couldn’t risk losing her in the way he had lost Carmel. Now she was tucked away downstairs. Safe. The sad thing was that she was just about the same as Trinny. Dirty.

I told you, Harry. And the new girl will be no different.

Emma. Sleeping upstairs.

Thinking about her made him smile. The time with her on Monday had been such fun. They chatted and joked like old friends. He suggested a drink and they talked some more. She laughed and giggled and giggled and laughed and began to get a bit confused. After that she started to look a little tired and he had offered to take her home.

She accepted.

Chapter Seven

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Wednesday 27th October. 9.03 am

The vista from the operation Zebo incident room took in a line of white police vans and a few squad cars sitting on the car park. A crap view was no bad thing, Savage thought. At least all eyes would be on the job and not on the people walking past two floors below. Eight terminals, twice as many screens and a decent amount of spare desk space crammed into a few square metres. Cosy. DS Gareth Collier had been Hardin’s choice for office manager and Savage approved of the way the setup had progressed so far. Collier, always a stickler for procedure, liked things neat, well organised and locked down tight. He looked like he behaved, and with his greying hair trimmed in a parade ground cut he resembled a regimental sergeant major as he prowled the office searching for unfiled scraps of paper or terminals which had been left unattended but not logged out of. Luckily he also had a great sense of humour. The opposing facets were a perfect match and ensured smooth progress and a happy team. One without the other made work either dull or frustrating, and if both were missing an investigation didn’t stand a chance.

Gordon Isaacs was banged up in the custody suite at the station in the centre of town and according to DS Darius Riley he was looking pretty miserable after an uncomfortable night brooding. Riley sat at a desk fussing over a crease in his expensive jacket and then fingering his collar where his black skin contrasted with brilliant white cotton. Savage knew the shirt would most likely be from an outfitter on Jermyn Street in London – Hawes and Curtis or Thomas Pink – rather than from the local M&S, which was the brand the other male detectives favoured. When Riley had arrived in Plymouth a year or so ago those officers old enough to remember the US TV show Miami Vice had taken to calling him Tubbs after the show’s stylish detective. Riley had borne the practice with good humour until someone from Human Resources had got wind of it and panicked, detecting a lawsuit and headlines. Nicknames were now banned, the penalty a day on an attitude reorientation course.

Riley undid the button on his collar and made some comment about the central heating being way too high before explaining what they had on Isaacs.

‘He has confessed to removing the girl’s underwear and wan—, um, masturbating over the body, but swears blind he knows nothing else about her. For the moment we can do him under sexual offences section seventy. Turns out he’s got previous though, sex with a minor, however it was over thirty years ago. He was in his late twenties, the girl fifteen.’

‘The case was still on file?’ Savage asked.

‘No, he admitted it. There was no sexual offenders’ register or anything like it at the time, but I found the original records. He got off with a suspended sentence because according to the judge – and you’ll like this – there were extenuating circumstances. Different world back then but he’s pretty ashamed of himself now. I think he is so terrified of what the wife is going to do to him he just wanted to come clean.’

‘So to speak,’ Calter said.

Savage had selected Riley and Calter for the initial interview. She had figured the combination of Riley, tall, black and disarming, and Calter, who in her own words described herself as a ‘hard-nosed bitch’, would unsettle Isaacs. In fact, the interview plan had gone a little astray because Mr Isaacs claimed he had a history of mental illness and was on medication. A check with his GP had confirmed the fact and they had to get someone along from Social Services to sit in as an appropriate adult. Still, Savage was pleased with the results even though they’d had to adopt a softer approach than she would have liked.

‘What’s your hunch, Jane?’ Savage asked Calter.

‘I’m not sure, ma’am. Why would he call us and tell us about the girl? Why would he leave her on his land in the first place? On the other hand, he’s got previous and by assaulting the corpse he has put himself in the frame forensically.’

‘You don’t sound convinced though?’

‘Anything is possible, but all in all I don’t think he’s seriously up for it. Not at this early stage anyway.’

‘Really? If the sexual offence from thirty years ago had been committed today he’d be on the sex offenders list. That, and his mental condition, should make us look twice.’

‘He’s not right in the head, ma’am,’ Riley said. ‘One raisin short of a fruitcake, I’d say. When we asked him about the previous conviction he went off on some rant about how the whole world was becoming soft and filled with poofters and that we needed to get back to a time where men could be men and not ponce about like girls.’

‘We’ve got the underwear to consider too, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘I mean if the knickers and bra didn’t belong to the girl then where did they come from?’

When John Layton had arrived at the farm to collect the underwear he had shown Savage the clothing. Through the polythene of the evidence bag he folded the material, hunting for the label.

‘Sainsbury’s girls’ range, ma’am. Suitable for a twelve to thirteen year old. They wouldn’t be the right size for the victim.’

Now Savage thought about the underwear again. The knickers would fit her own daughter and although the young woman in the copse could have squeezed into them they didn’t belong to her.

‘But Isaacs has sworn he removed them from the girl,’ Riley said. ‘I can’t see any reason for him to lie.’

‘Unless he bought them to put on the girl,’ Savage said. ‘In that case he would want to remove the evidence after he’d had his fun.’

‘Some sort of fetish?’ Calter said, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.

‘Whatever. The search team are going over the farm at the moment in the hope of finding the rest of the girl’s clothing. Come up trumps and we’ve got him. You two can have another go at him later this morning. Some extra pressure this time, please, I want him unsettled a little bit more. If that’s possible.’

She could imagine poor old Isaacs squirming at the sight of his interviewers returning for a second round. A man like that, whatever he had done, had pride, and he wouldn’t be comfortable with Riley and Calter squashing him underfoot.

‘Ma’am?’ Riley pointed to the terminal in front of him on which he’d pulled up a map of the area in a browser window. ‘The underwear was from Sainsbury’s, right?’

‘Yes. So?’

‘The closest supermarket to Isaacs’s place would be the Tesco Megastore at Lee Mill, near Ivybridge. Sainsbury’s is much farther away.’

‘You are right. And the more I think about it the more I can’t imagine Mr Isaacs trooping up and down the aisles searching for girls’ knickers. I bet he doesn’t even do any of the shopping, that would be Mrs Isaacs’s job and she’d use the local shops. He’d be lost in a supermarket.’

‘Well, if he didn’t buy the underwear then he’s out of the frame, isn’t he?’ Riley clicked the browser window shut as if that was the end of the matter and that further questioning of Isaacs would be pointless.

The immediate priority, apart from dealing with Isaacs, was to identify the girl. Often murder victims knew their killers, so establishing the victim’s network could be the key to finding the murderer. Isaacs had said he had never seen her before he came across her in the wood, but if he was lying he would be in deeper shit than the muck in his farmyard.

A steady trickle of calls were coming into the incident room hotline about the girl and two officers logged the details into the system. DC Susan Bridge, an older officer recently transferred out of uniform, was raising actions on those calls, arranging for follow-up interviews or passing information to Savage if she wasn’t sure further investigation was needed. She was spot on when she had asked if they weren’t up against two problems at once.

‘I mean, ma’am, that we have a sort of reverse missing person case as well as the murder,’ she said. ‘We need to find out who the girl is, but that is being coloured by the fact she is dead.’

She was right. Already there had been a fair number of reports from people who claimed to know the girl, where she had been and what she had done. All of them, so far as the team knew, were plain incorrect. Well-meaning but misguided members of the public often did that sort of thing. They wanted a resolution to the story and the gaps were like missing an episode of EastEnders. In this case you couldn’t catch up on iPlayer or ask your friends what had happened so your mind filled in the blanks for you.

‘Ma’am?’ Enders broke into her train of thought. ‘I’ve got the results on screen.’

Savage had asked Enders to come up with a list of mispers reported in the last few weeks and now she went over to where he was sitting in front of a terminal navigating through the missing person register on the COMPACT MISPER system. Riley and Calter came over too and the three of them peered over Enders’s shoulders at the screen.

‘Four on my shortlist, ma’am,’ Enders said as if announcing the winner of the Christmas raffle.

‘Number one, Alice Nash. She’s sixteen, from Ashburton, a town close to Malstead and just along the A38 from Buckfastleigh. There seems to be some real concern about her. She left her work place in Ivybridge and never boarded the bus to Ashburton. When her dad realised that she hadn’t got her usual bus or the following two he called us. Some report of her possibly accepting a lift from—’

‘Idiot!’ Calter said, flicking the top of Enders’s head with her hand. ‘Read the date, Sherlock. She went missing Monday evening. Isaacs had found the body by then. Worrying for the parents, sure, but no way she can be our victim.’

Enders looked sheepish before carrying on.

‘Lindsey Nation, nineteen, I can see it’s not her. She’s blonde, not dark-haired like the girl in the wood.’

Enders clicked through his list.

‘Um, Jenny Smith?’

‘No.’

‘Simone Ashton?’

‘No.’

‘That’s your lot from round here.’

‘We need to widen the area or the timeframe or both,’ Calter chipped in.

‘Evidently.’

Enders went back to the search page where he changed some of the parameters.

‘Still sticking to Devon and Cornwall, but extending the date range to six months.’

‘That’s long enough. The girl died in the last week or so.’

‘Right.’ Enders hit the return key and data filled the screen. ‘Bloody hell. Eighty-four names.’

‘I’ll get some coffees, ma’am,’ Calter said as Enders began to scroll through the results.

Savage nodded and examined the list. They had searched for females between the age of fifteen and twenty-five missing in Devon and Cornwall in the past six months and the results were staggering. The figures would be distorted by the fact that the area was a tourist destination: many on the list would have gone missing while on holiday and turned up later back on their own patch. The problem was nobody bothered to inform the police. Even so the number seemed high. Savage knew a couple of hundred thousand people went missing in the UK each year but she’d always mistrusted the figure. Most would turn up, but the official guidance set down in procedure was clear: if the investigator had any doubt then they were to think murder. Her thoughts were interrupted by Enders jabbing at the screen.

‘Don’t bother with the coffees, I’ve found her.’

It was too late as Calter had already gone, but Enders was right. Savage looked at the record and the dead girl’s face stared out at her. Kelly Donal, eighteen years old, enrolled on an Early Childhood Studies course at the university with a work placement at Little Angels nursery. Her address was listed as Beacon Park, Plymouth. She had been reported missing thirteen weeks ago.

Enders gave a quick précis of the notes.

‘We have a report of an incident at the flat in the city that Kelly shared with a friend – this was the day before Kelly went missing – but by the time officers arrived it was over. According to the friend it was something to do with Kelly’s glamour modelling. A guy had turned up demanding to see Kelly and she wouldn’t let him in. There was a row in the street and a neighbour called the police. When they arrived a man known to them as David Forester was hanging about outside. He was allowed to leave when Kelly insisted she was not making a formal complaint. Forester had already received a conviction for ABH at the start of the year. Managed to avoid a custodial, got a Community Service Order instead. Before that he had a caution for possession. Let’s see, yes, registered address is in North Prospect. A right swillyite by the sound of it.’

‘If he’s implicated there is going to be some serious press heat,’ Riley said.

‘Yes, but for once it won’t be on us. Should have been banged up.’

‘Go on,’ Savage said. ‘There’s more.’

Enders continued reading from the notes.

‘Seems like Kelly told the flatmate she was going to a friend’s house for the weekend, something she often did. The next day was a Friday and the flatmate came back to find Kelly gone.’

‘And she didn’t worry because she thought she had gone away?’

‘Precisely.’ Enders pointed at the screen again. ‘It wasn’t until Monday evening that she called Kelly’s parents to ask them if Kelly had been there. They said that they hadn’t seen her and in turn called us.’

‘Appears we did bugger all,’ Riley said.

‘They were told to call again at the end of the week and did so. Seems like then someone decided the girl had gone off to London modelling. She mentioned something about an agent to the flatmate and in the weeks before she had fallen out with her parents. Further investigation led to the incident being classified as low risk with a flag to review the case and reassess it at a later date. As of today it doesn’t seem as if that has happened.’

Savage could understand why. The amount of resources needing to be deployed was not inconsiderable. They would need to get search teams into Donal’s property, obtain the necessary permission to access landline and mobile telephone records and bank accounts, liaise with the Met to see if there was any evidence she had ever made it to London, check with the UK Border Agency as to whether she might have left the country … Now those resources would be forthcoming, but Savage wondered if the officers on Kelly’s case had been hesitant in taking the investigation to the next stage because of cost worries or if the error was down to negligence.

‘This is all news to me,’ Savage said. ‘I think I was on holiday at the time.’

‘You’d flown out to Brazil to meet your husband,’ Riley said. ‘I remember the sun, sea and sand on the postcard made us all depressed.’

‘You shouldn’t have transferred down here if you like the weather sunny and warm.’

‘It was a little too hot in London, I was in danger of getting burnt,’ Riley said, without further explanation. ‘Anyway, where does Forester fit into all this?’

‘I’m on the case, Darius,’ Enders said. He typed and clicked and the results of a new search for male mispers came up. He pointed to the screen. ‘David Forester, twenty-nine, of North Prospect. Reported missing by his parents on the eighth of August.’

‘Damn. Why didn’t that get linked in with Kelly’s case?’ Savage said. The date was two weeks after Kelly’s disappearance, but there should have been some sort of flag in the system to draw attention to the previous incident; a definite mistake on somebody’s part.

‘Someone missed the connection,’ Riley said. ‘For a mispers case it doesn’t seem much of an oversight, but now we’ve got a body …’

‘Exactly. Forester is now the prime suspect,’ Savage said. ‘Right, we need to generate some action points on this. One, get family liaison to inform Kelly’s parents and arrange for formal identification of the body. Two, let’s get the Beacon Park officers involved in the domestic and ABH incidents in, plus those on the Kelly mispers case, we need their input. Three, get a search team into Kelly’s and Forester’s properties. Four, re-interview Kelly’s parents and her flatmate. Five, interview Forester’s parents and employer.’

‘He was unemployed,’ Enders said, pointing to the screen again. ‘Used to work at Tamar Yacht Fitters, but was dismissed after the conviction for ABH.’

‘Still, might be worth a word. You and DS Riley will take that one and I’ll see what I can get out of his parents. I also think we need to make an appeal for David Forester to come forward. This isn’t a missing person inquiry anymore, it’s murder. Let’s ditch the interview with Isaacs and ask the CPS if they want to charge him with the sexual offence on the body. Then we can concentrate on Forester.’

‘But taking Kelly all the way over to Malstead Down? Forester? We don’t know much about him, but he doesn’t seem the type to go to all that trouble.’ Enders sounded sceptical, as if he didn’t agree with Savage.

‘Taking her over there might have seemed like a good way of misdirecting us. But first we find Forester and then let’s see where we are. It is my guess he’s our man.’

Chapter Eight

St Ives, Cornwall. Wednesday 27th October. 10.30 pm

The damp shirt stuck to DS Kevin Tatershall’s skin as he shifted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. The heater had been going full-blast on the twenty-minute drive from Penzance but the fan hadn’t dried him much and he was still soaking. The downpour had started first thing in the morning and he’d got wet on the walk to work. He’d just about got dry when DI Peters came across with a piece of paper and a nasty smile, which Tatershall guessed meant an assignment outside of the station. The run from the building to the pool car left him at square one all over again.

In St Ives the rain continued to fall. Cats, dogs and pretty much everything else tumbled from the sky, and lashings of water filled the roads with runoff. Tatershall didn’t want to think about leaving the warm cocoon of the car and he pitied the tourists working their way up and down the streets with their odd shuffle, looking as if they were in harness rather than on holiday. They must be crazy to bother coming to Cornwall at this time of year.

‘I wish I was a tumble dryer, I’d run my program through.’ The soft, husky voice came from DC Kate Simbeck and she smiled as she continued her rhyme. ‘I wish I was a tumble dryer, I’d dry your clothes for you.’

Simbeck didn’t look too keen to get out of the car either, but apart from her long pony tail, which she wore on the outside of her over-sized Musto, at least she’d stayed dry. As they sat contemplating the rain the windows began to steam up and Tatershall drew a quick stick figure on the windscreen, completing the drawing with a hangman game gallows.

‘That DI Peters?’ Simbeck said.

‘Yuppee doodah. Can’t draw what I’d really like to do to him or we’d have the obscene publications law to deal with.’

Simbeck giggled and the noise and the way her cute little nose wrinkled caused butterflies in Tatershall’s stomach. He wished they had parked somewhere a little more remote and he wasn’t married with three kids. Maybe then she would say ‘yes’ if he asked her for a shag.

Driving somewhere remote wouldn’t be a problem. Within five minutes they could be out of town. Within fifteen Tatershall knew dozens of places quiet enough. The wife and kids were more of an issue though, and the chance of a pretty twenty-something girl saying ‘yes’ to an early fifties guy like him were in the arena of having a winning lottery ticket. Of course, if he’d won the lottery he wouldn’t be on some stupid mispers goose chase involving an elderly couple DI Peters had chosen to push his way. No, he’d be on a golden beach somewhere hot, rubbing suntan oil into Kate’s glorious—

‘Kevin?’ Simbeck pointed out through a patch of window where she had smeared a circular hole in the condensation. A well-filled uniform stood some way up the street looking wet, miserable and not a little angry.

‘Bugger.’ Tatershall sounded the horn, wound down the window and waved at the PC. ‘Over here mate.’

The PC jogged down the pavement, dodging umbrellas, baby buggies and a group of disgruntled tourists. The latter glowered at him as if the local police were responsible for the weather as well as crime. The officer arrived at the car puffing and leaned in, dripping rain and a palpable hostility.

‘You’re late. I was told half past.’

‘You got the keys?’ Tatershall ignored the jibe. ‘Only I’d hate to have made a wasted journey.’

He heard Simbeck stifle a laugh which the PC didn’t catch. The PC nodded and explained he had managed to track down a spare set held by a neighbour in case of emergency. The couple owned a gallery with a flat above, and it only became apparent they’d gone missing when the water company needed access to the rear of the property.

‘I’d noticed the gallery was closed in July,’ the PC said, ‘which I thought a bit odd considering we were at the height of the season. I forgot about it until yesterday when the neighbour called about the water people. I went in with the neighbour to check the flat just in case. Nobody. Fridge empty, place clean, nothing untoward. Well, they have been gone four months now so I thought—’

‘To call in the experts?’ Tatershall heard Simbeck snigger again. ‘You did right, lad. This sort of investigation can be incredibly complicated, but never fear, the Simbeck House Investigation Team Squad are here.’