The Boneyard: A gripping serial killer crime thriller. Mark Sennen
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Название: The Boneyard: A gripping serial killer crime thriller
Автор: Mark Sennen
Издательство: HarperCollins
isbn: 9780007587919
isbn:
‘Interesting.’ Layton nodded as he knelt beside the girl. He pulled out a polygrip bag and a pair of tweezers and began to lift fragments of something from the skin. ‘Red paint and rust,’ he said, once he’d finished. ‘As if she’d brushed against an old piece of metal at some point. The metal caused the graze and left these specks.’
‘Where could they come from?’
‘No idea.’ Layton pushed himself up and turned to Savage. ‘One other thing I noticed when I was, er, down there. She’s not wearing any knickers. Do you think that’s suspicious?’
As one, Layton and Savage turned to Calter.
‘What are you looking at me like that for?’ The DC blushed. ‘I’m no expert.’
Savage rescued Calter. ‘She could have taken them off, and I guess the most likely reason for that would be to have sex.’ She peered down. Layton was correct about the lack of underwear; under the hem of the short dress, she could see the pubic area smooth and shaven, just a thin strip of hair above. ‘Perhaps this is a simple sexual encounter which went wrong.’
‘Dogging?’ Calter said.
Savage looked across to the rock. ‘An exciting place to do it. Up there. The dress suggests she’d been out somewhere, a club or a party. Could she have come here willingly with a lover?’
‘Too cold for me, ma’am, but I get your drift.’ Calter followed Savage’s gaze. ‘She climbed up onto the tor with her partner and then fell between the rocks. If the liaison was a risky one then whoever she was with may not have wanted to report the accident.’
‘Sounds unlikely,’ Layton said. ‘They could have at least made an anonymous phone call to alert someone. Plus an accident doesn’t explain why she’s holding the nail file.’
‘Ma’am?’ Calter touched Savage on the arm and gestured for her to step away. She lowered her voice. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking? The brief?’
‘What brief?’
‘The one from the FBI. Hardin circulated it amongst us junior detectives. More of an exercise than anything. Still, I remember reading that along with the human remains, the cops in the US found partially charred piles of clothing. Dresses, jeans, bras, shoes and socks. No knickers. The conclusion was the killer had taken the knickers away as some kind of trophy.’
Savage stopped a few metres from the body. She remembered scanning one of the FBI reports the night in the hotel. Tiredness had won over the reams of paper and hundreds of bullet points. She must have skipped over the section about the missing underwear. Now she turned back and looked at the girl and weighed the evidence. The victim had been dumped somewhere in the wilderness, had blonde hair just like the girls in the US, and was missing her underwear.
‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Malcolm bloody Kendwick.’
Combestone Tor, Dartmoor. Saturday 22nd April. 9.11 p.m.
In the gathering dusk, Savage walked away from the crime scene and over to one of the other sets of rocks. She clambered up to the top and checked her mobile. Yes, she had a decent signal. She called DSupt Hardin. He wasn’t amused to be disturbed.
‘I’m out, Charlotte,’ he blustered into the phone. ‘This had better be good.’
‘There’s a body on Dartmoor,’ Savage said. ‘Female, blonde and with missing knickers. Dumped.’
‘OK, but can’t you deal with this?’ Hardin’s voice came and went and Savage could hear the chink of glasses and the murmur of conversation in the background. ‘I’m at the theatre, just about to take my seat after the interval. I don’t want to miss the second half.’
Savage shook her head. Hardin plainly hadn’t understood the connection.
‘Malcolm Kendwick, sir. He’s a definite for this. I repeat: the victim is female, blonde, she’s not wearing knickers and she’s been dumped in the wilderness.’
‘Kendwick?’ Hardin appeared to have cottoned on. ‘Surely he wouldn’t be so arrogant to kill within a few days of arriving back in the UK? Besides, he dumped the bodies where he thought they’d never be found. This one sounds entirely different.’
‘Perhaps something’s changed inside him,’ Savage said. ‘Serial killers aren’t necessarily cold-blooded and rational. It could be the move from the US has triggered a need to do things differently. Or perhaps he simply craves the attention he’s been receiving recently and wants more of it.’
‘You mean we’re responsible?’
‘Us, the media, the police in the US. We’re not to blame, of course not, but Kendwick has an ego and maybe this is a way for him to flatter himself.’
‘Jesus, Charlotte, you want to arrest him? Tonight?’
‘I want to bring him in for questioning, yes. The sooner the better.’
There was a long pause and then she heard Hardin’s voice muffled and indistinct as if he had his hand over the phone. Eventually he spoke. ‘OK, but by the book. Any sense we’re harassing him and we’ll be in all sorts of trouble.’
‘I thought that’s what you wanted, sir? To harass him.’
‘I wanted to needle him. There’s a subtle difference in approach, do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ll keep you informed.’
‘You do that, DI Savage.’
Hardin hung up, leaving her staring across the Dart valley. The light had all but gone and to the east the moor spread like a dark, heaving morass. Here and there a few lights glowed from isolated farmsteads, but mostly there was a near-black nothingness which reached to the horizon. Above the skyline, a lone star hung in the north-east, twinkling against the grey background. Somewhere in that direction lay the town of Chagford, where Malcolm Kendwick would be snug in his little cottage.
Not for long, she thought.
Before she set off for Chagford, Savage called Inspector Nigel Frey and asked about the possibility of sending the Force Support Group to assist with the arrest. There’d be a short wait before they turned up, but she reasoned it would be worth hanging on for their arrival. Frey’s officers would be armed and come equipped to cope with any eventuality. They’d be able to break down the front door and subdue Kendwick should that prove necessary.
‘You think Kendwick’s dangerous?’ Calter asked as they drove away from Combestone Tor, the car’s headlights piercing the darkness. ‘I mean, he won’t resist arrest, will he?’
‘That’s not the point. I don’t think we’ll have a problem but if we go in there with the FSG it will lay a marker down which tells him we’re serious and are, in effect, as bad-ass as the guys over the pond.’
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