Mark Sennen - Touch

Back in town Savage drove them through Beacon Park, where Kelly had lived, and then into the adjoining area of North Prospect. The place had a reputation for being rough and crime-ridden, filled with youths who liked nothing better of an evening than indulging their passion for a bit of anti-social behaviour. Thanks to the efforts of community workers and the police the reputation diminished a little every year. Nevertheless, the council had plans to transform the neighbourhood, despite the protestations of many of the residents, by demolishing half the properties and refurbishing the rest. In Savage’s eyes it didn’t seem too bad; you would feel far more nervous walking through so-called good areas in London, and in the summer the place had an aura nearer to that of a leafy suburb than a location associated with high deprivation.

Appearances could be deceptive though, and in the mile or so distance from his parents’ house in St Budeaux to his flat in North Prospect David Forester had moved down the social scale, hitting rock-bottom with a grotty place on the ground floor of half an old council semi. Cracks in the pebbledash, metal window frames crusty with corrosion and a pile of junk in the minuscule front garden didn’t make it inviting, and inside was worse. Officers were trooping in and out with plastic boxes filled with what looked to Savage like rubbish.

‘Evidence,’ a member of the search team assured her. ‘Mind you, the place is a complete tip. Cigarette butts ground into the floor, empty cans of coke, Stella, half-eaten Indians, McDonald’s, pizza, you name it. And the whole thing nicely festering since it has all been sitting for a few months.’

‘Lovely.’

‘There’s worse. Dog shit everywhere as well and a thousand flies swarming around. We couldn’t figure out where they were coming from until the neighbour told us about Forester’s dog.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh yes! A staffy, as if you couldn’t have guessed. We found the corpse in the spare room under the bed. It was mostly maggots. A neighbour said she heard barking but was too scared of Forester to do much.’

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer breed of dog,’ Savage said.

‘My gran kept staffies,’ Calter said. ‘Me and my brother played with them when we were kids.’

‘Well, if they get anywhere near my kids I kick first and ask questions later.’

Calter shut up and went even deeper into her sulk while Savage asked the team leader if they had found anything linking Forester to Kelly. He stood at the edge of the garden and sparked up a fag, leaning over the wall to ensure any ash dropped outside his search cordon.

‘He’s got a couple of computer screens and a keyboard in his bedroom, but no computer. There must be a base unit or laptop somewhere, but we haven’t found it yet.’

‘Anything else of interest?’ Savage asked.

‘A hundred grams of smack and some small bottles of liquid that could be GHB.’

‘Really? Confirms he was a serious dealer then.’

‘Looks that way. We also found his mobile phone and there are a hell of a lot of contacts. We’ll download the address book and call logs and let you have them. Last call was made on the seventh of August.’

‘A good number of days after Kelly was last seen.’

‘Yup. And we found a Mirror dated the eighth on the kitchen table.’

‘So they didn’t disappear together then, we now know that at least. Let’s see if his parents can shed any light on where he might be.’

Alice Nash came round in pitch black, a cloying darkness smelling of damp, mould and mildew. Her head hurt like crazy and she felt groggy.

That would be the alcohol then, idiot.

She remembered having drunk too much, way too much. After work? With a friend? The memory flickered somewhere in her mind but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She reached out for the bedside clock to try and find out the time and her hand fumbled in the air. Nothing. No bedside table either, and as she groped farther — ouch — a wall. Now she realised she was lying on the floor. In her bedroom?

No, my room has a nice soft carpet with a couple of big sheepskins.

She felt the hard, wooden surface beneath her body, an uneven floorboard digging into her back. She shivered and hugged herself, touching the goose bumps on her arms and realising at the same time she was naked.

Naked!

An uncontrollable spasm shook through her whole body and she began to retch. Almost without thinking she put her hand down between her legs, but no, she hadn’t been raped and she hadn’t had sex.

She sat up and turned and saw a thin, horizontal glare of light at floor level. She blinked. The light came from a gap under a door perhaps two metres away and gave her some perspective. The slit cast a weak ray that fanned out across the floor and illuminated a space no bigger than a box room. The walls appeared to be rough plastered. An old house perhaps? That would explain the damp. But when she breathed in she detected a pungent aroma as well, a smell of something rotten. Next to her a mattress lay on the floor with no bed frame or anything.

Was I on that? Did I roll off in my sleep?

She eased herself across the floor and onto the mattress. Now she could see something on the mattress, a bulky, formless shape. She put out a hand and discovered a duvet. She pulled it nearer and gathered the soft material around her, grateful for the warmth and the privacy.

Privacy from what? From who?

She let out a little cry, involuntary; her instincts told her she should scream, scream at the top of her voice until someone heard, but she didn’t.

He would have thought of that.

He? It must be a ‘he’ mustn’t it? They always were. Apart from Rose West or the Myra woman who’d died in prison from cancer because they didn’t ever let anyone like her out.

She wished she hadn’t thought of that. Not just of those women, although the image of them was bad enough. It was also the thought of prison, being trapped in a small room and dying without ever knowing freedom again.

Hang on, who said you were in prison, stupid?

She shook herself and laughed at her wild imagination. Maybe she had crashed out at some party or dossed down in some student’s room. She moved off the mattress and stood up, wrapping the duvet around herself like an over-sized toga. She walked over to the door and reached for the handle. The cold metal made a slight squeak as she pushed it down and tried to pull the door towards her.

It was locked.

They drove from North Prospect to the top end of St Budeaux, the nicer part, which wasn’t saying much. However, on Waverley Road neat little bungalows and semis jostled for position and some care and attention had been paid to the properties by their owners. The line of mid-range cars — some new — parked on the road testified to the fact that the area had aspirations. Still on-street though, Savage noted. Only once you parked your car on your own land could you finally say you had arrived in true middle class suburban heaven.

Number sixty-two had a tiny pond in the front garden and a black and white porcelain cat dipped a paw in the water, intent on catching one of the goldfish swimming under the dying lily pads. The house backed onto some woodland, almost a rural idyll, Savage thought. But not quite. When she and Calter got out of the car the roar of the traffic became all too apparent. The A38 lay the other side of the trees and the noise of the cars rushing down the hill towards the Tamar Bridge crossing into Cornwall was quite intolerable.

The bright red front door reeked of fresh paint and was opened by Mrs Forester, an overweight woman in her seventies. She held onto the door for support with one hand and with the other tried to button her mauve cardigan against the chill. The cardigan was loose-knit and the sleeves looked like they had expanded over the years to accommodate her pudgy arms and body to the extent that the garment now resembled a purple fishing net. She gave up fumbling with the buttons and accepted the need for further questioning with a weary nod of her head. Savage got the impression the woman had dealt with the police many times before.