Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen

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СКАЧАТЬ she could see whatever it was had been pulled into a small recess. A few more steps and she stood next to the safety vest. Now when she flashed the torch into the recess she could see the tumbled form of a body. A boy, naked apart from Y-fronts and a pair of wellington boots on his feet. The body lay face down, dark fluid glistening on the ballast beneath the boy’s right hand.

      ‘Shit,’ Savage whispered to herself. She’d seen many bodies, some in the most appalling of states and circumstances, but she’d never become immunised to the shock. Here was somebody who a day or so ago had been walking and talking, feeling happy or sad. They’d been laughing or crying. Taking in the world through their eyes, nose, ears and fingertips. For the short time this boy had lived he’d been different from the soil and the rocks and the inanimate objects which were no more than a collection of atoms. Now he was just that. A bunch of decaying cells. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. A life gone, the poor kid’s consciousness extinguished forever.

      ‘You found the body then?’ Dawson’s voice brought her back to the tunnel. His words echoed off the stonework for a moment before being choked to nothing by the mass of rock around them.

      ‘Yes.’ Savage remembered to breathe. She slowly exhaled. She tried to suppress her anger and emotion and instead focused on the scene around her.

      ‘Why here?’ Dawson said. ‘They must have known the body would have been discovered fairly quickly.’

      ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Other cyclists must have passed through the tunnel today. It was just fortuitous that ours decided to stop and relieve himself next to this hole.’

      ‘It’s a refuge for railway workers,’ Dawson said knowledgeably. ‘If a train came, they could shelter as it passed.’

      ‘Don’t tell me you’re a railway nut, PC Dawson.’

      ‘No, ma’am. There’s an information board on the cycle route. Tells you all about the old line. Did you know that—’

      ‘No, and I don’t want to know either.’ Savage stepped away from the body and then turned and walked back to the PC. ‘Get along to the far side of the tunnel and stop any more cyclists coming through.’

      ‘Hey? Must be a couple of hundred metres and it’s pitch black, ma’am. I’ll probably brain myself. That’s if the killer is not waiting for me. I’d rather not.’

      ‘Don’t be stupid. Here, take this.’ Savage handed Dawson the torch. ‘I’ll make my way out and secure this end. I don’t want to think about what our chief CSI is going to say when he arrives.’

      Dawson huffed but reached out and took the torch. ‘You’ll be OK, ma’am?’

      ‘Yes, now go before anyone else comes through.’

      The PC shuffled off, his shadow dancing away in a circle of light. Savage turned to where a faint glimmer marked the edge of the tunnel. She took tentative steps on the concrete surface as utter blackness folded in around her. As the sounds of Dawson walking off grew fainter, she heard the drip, drip, drip of water falling from the ceiling. She tried not to think about the killer nor about the hundreds of tonnes of rock balancing overhead. This was a strange place to bring the body. Did the killer come here merely to dump the corpse or was this where some sort of assault took place? Did the tunnel have a special meaning or was the place just convenient?

      Lost in her thoughts for a moment, she stepped off the central concrete slab and onto the rough ballast at the side. She put her hands out to steady herself against the tunnel wall. The stones were rough, damp and slimy. She moved away from the wall, stumbling on something at her feet. She crouched and felt around in the darkness. There. A rustling. A plastic bag containing something soft.

      Savage put her hand in her pocket and pulled out her phone. She pressed a button on the side and the screen flashed into life. She turned the phone so the screen pointed downward. The bag contained a bundle of fabric. She used the phone to prod the bag open. Clothing. Tracksuit bottoms, a T-shirt, and a hoodie. Too much of a coincidence to belong to anyone but the boy.

      She stood and moved back to the concrete path. The whole tunnel would need to be fingertipped from end to end. They’d need arc lights, generators, dogs and God knows what else. Never mind, that would be down to Layton. It was just the sort of logistics problem he loved.

      ‘Maaaaaa’am! Are you in there?’ The echoing voice belonged to DC Calter.

      ‘I’m coming, Jane. Stay where you are.’ Savage moved forward again, aware of lights up ahead. Activity. The rest of the team. ‘What took you?’

      ‘The boss man.’ Calter stood at the entrance to the tunnel dressed in a high-vis jacket and wielding a large rubber torch in her right hand. She jerked a thumb behind her. ‘He insisted on coming but I had to wait for him to phone the Hatchet.’

      Savage peered up the railway to where a large round figure barrelled down the path from the road and staggered onto the track. Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin.

      ‘That you, Charlotte?’ The voice boomed across to Savage and then echoed down the tunnel. ‘Couldn’t have made it any more difficult, could you?’

      Hardin brushed some debris from his trousers and marched towards them, shoulders hunched, as if he was still playing front row forward for the Devon Police First Fifteen. Sadly, Hardin’s glory days on the rugby pitch were well in the past and ‘First Fifteen’ was now used as office banter, referring to the DSupt’s penchant for finishing an entire pack of chocolate digestives single-handed and at one sitting.

      ‘Sir,’ Savage said. ‘You didn’t need to come. You could have coordinated things from the station.’

      ‘Of course I needed to bloody come,’ Hardin said, puffing from the exertion. ‘The CC is keeping tabs. Next thing you know she’ll have a security tag around my bollocks.’

      When Maria Heldon had taken up her post, she’d instigated a full-scale, force-wide audit of operational procedures. The audit was yet to be completed, but Heldon had already decided there was a lack of leadership due to senior officers spending too much time in meetings and not enough time on the ground. Hence Hardin’s presence at the scene.

      Savage shook her head. The last thing she wanted was the DSupt poking his nose in.

      ‘Well?’ Hardin gestured into the tunnel.

      ‘Bad news I’m afraid, sir. He’s in there. Jason Hobb. And we’re not talking accidental death.’

      ‘Bugger.’ Hardin stared into the blackness as if he had some kind of superhero night vision. He shook his head and there was silence for a moment. Then he stuck his tongue out over his bottom lip before speaking again. ‘Where the fuck is that John Layton?’

      It was early evening before Riley managed to make his way over to Plymstock to interview Perry Sleet’s wife. Getting the CSIs organised and up onto the moor had seemed to take forever and by the time he’d returned to Plymouth and dropped Enders off at the station the streetlights were on and the rush hour over.

      Sleet lived in a new-build just off the A379 to the west of the River Plym, the estate set in a huge quarry. A sign announced to Riley that he’d arrived in Saltram Meadow, although the estate had been built in the old quarry workings and was next door to what had once been the local tip. Still, Sleet’s property wasn’t bad, a three-storey townhouse with what looked like a pretty decent garden out the back.

      Riley СКАЧАТЬ