Mark Sennen - Touch

She led them through into the lounge, a simple, neat little room, probably unchanged for decades. Apart from the huge flat screen TV standing half in front of the fireplace. Older houses hadn’t been designed with such monstrosities in mind and it looked ridiculous.

‘Present from David,’ Mrs Forester said, noting Savage’s interest. ‘He was always good to me when he was around.’ She nodded at the sole picture on the mantelpiece. A teenage boy in football kit, one foot on a ball, hands on hips. Defiant.

‘Is that him?’ Savage asked.

‘Yes. Years ago.’ The old lady smiled. Then her face turned sour. ‘Before you lot started hassling him.’

Savage ignored the dig and began to ask about David’s childhood. It soon became evident Mrs Forester was not David’s mother after all, rather she was his grandmother. Savage asked her how she had come to care for David.

‘Clary, my daughter, had David when she was fifteen and still at home. By seventeen she had got bored with the baby and buggered off. We got the occasional letter for the first few years, then nothing. Don’t even know where she is now.’

‘So you had to bring up David all on your own?’

‘Well, with my husband Vic, but he wasn’t much help. He hit David hard enough but he never changed a nappy, never fed him, never read a bedtime book.’

Mrs Forester stared out of the bay window with a blank expression Savage had seen countless times before. The empty eyes almost always belonged to a woman, and Savage could usually sense regret and resignation in them. Regret at who the woman had married, resignation to their fate and the fact that prince charming was not about to rescue them.

‘And David? Bringing him up must have been difficult.’

‘Difficult! What would you lot know about difficult? Does your husband come home drunk and slap you around? Do the kids round you shoot cats with airguns? Do your neighbours fight on the street outside?’

‘Mrs Forester we are not here to judge you, we just want to find out what happened to David.’

The old lady ignored Savage and carried on.

‘Initiatives and targets then back to your nice house with a driveway and a bloody people carrier, I’ll bet. Good school round the corner where the teachers can teach rather than spend their time searching the kids for knives or drugs.’

‘We are police officers, Mrs Forester, we are not social workers or politicians. We are trying to find David and Kelly.’

‘Kelly? Oh, it’s about her is it? I seen on the news she was dead. No one cared before, no one bothered about what had happened to my David.’ The woman’s eyes filled with tears and her head went down, a hand scrabbling in her sleeve for a handkerchief.

Savage made a gesture to Calter and the younger officer moved to comfort the old woman. Savage left the room and went back to the kitchen to see about rustling up a pot of tea. The kitchen was a surprise after the staid lounge: modern, everything clean and tidy. Through the window to the back Savage saw a pretty garden. You’d have to be deaf to enjoy sitting out on the patio, but the plants appeared well-tended and a lot of work had gone into laying out the lawn and the neat flowerbeds. Mrs Forester must be proud of it. Savage wondered if she could say the same about her grandson.

When Savage returned with the tea Mrs Forester had composed herself. She had suggested to Calter that they might like to see David’s room.

‘Room?’ Savage asked. ‘I thought he lived at the flat in North Prospect?’

‘He does. But he only moved out three years ago and I’ve kept his room for him. He likes to crash here sometimes and he’s still got his photo stuff up there so he is round a couple of times a week. Or rather, he used to be.’

‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Forester, it might be useful.’

‘Not at all.’ The old lady’s face brightened for a moment. ‘First on the left at the top of the stairs.’

Savage and Calter climbed the stairs and heard Mrs Forester call out after them. ‘The pictures on the wall are all his own work. He’s quite good with a camera. He was with a club you know?’

‘Which club, Mrs Forester?’ Savage called down.

‘A photography club. I can’t remember the name, but it is in Plymouth. He used to go there before he got interested in video. After that he preferred to make movies.’

Calter mouthed a silent, ‘Did he now?’ to Savage as they entered the bedroom.

The single bed had a faded Chelsea duvet on it and football stickers covered the flat-pack off-white wardrobe and chest of drawers. Over to one side of a window that overlooked the back garden was a desk on which sat with three flatscreen monitors. A jumble of leads snaked down from the monitors to a computer base unit tucked away underneath. Calter moved to the desk and reached down to switch the unit on.

‘Result, ma’am. You don’t have three big screens connected to one machine just to waste your life on Facebook.’

Savage let Calter get on with searching the computer and scanned the pictures on the walls of the room. Large sized black and white prints of women, naked or partially clothed, dark shadows, pale skin, almost abstract and not in any way pornographic. They weren’t even in that category called tasteful, which was merely an excuse for sad wankers to display them without appearing sexist. These were innocent, naturalistic and the women were not looking at the camera. They wouldn’t have been out of place at a local gallery, except Plymouth didn’t do such things very well. Take them up to Salcombe or Dartmouth though and the grockles swarming round the streets in the summer would snatch them up.

Mrs Forester was right, her grandson had talent. But that didn’t square with what the manager of Tamar Yacht Fitters had told DS Riley. Savage looked at the pictures again. They were a world away from a sordid video of a girl shoving a beer bottle up between her legs.

‘Password protected, ma’am.’ Calter interrupted Savage’s thoughts. ‘I’ve tried the usual tricks but I can’t get in. Have to take it to the lads in hi-tech crimes.’

‘Right.’ Savage was browsing through some CDs on a tall rack. Nirvana, Stone Roses, Radiohead, REM. Pretty standard fare for a kid who was a teenager a dozen or more years ago.

‘What kind of twenty something year old has a Chelsea duvet spread?’ Calter asked. ‘And all those stickers? They are the kind of thing an adolescent would have, not a young man.’

‘You’re a profiler now, are you? Chelsea bedspread equals criminal behaviour?’

‘No, ma’am,’ Calter giggled. ‘A bit odd though.’

‘I agree.’

Maybe David Forester hadn’t grown much beyond a teen until something had changed him. Savage looked at some of the football stickers again. Stuck on the wardrobe was an entire set of the 2006 Premiership winning team. From the smiling faces of Lampard, Cole and Drogba to hard-core pornography, drug dealing and violence. In just a few short years.

Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Wednesday 27th October. 5.25 pm

The post-mortem on Kelly Donal had been scheduled for twelve thirty and DS Riley had been booked to attend. Savage said she would be along later. If being late had been her intention, missing the whole affair had not. Now that seemed possible because they got stuck in a jam on the A38 not long after they left St Budeaux.

On the dual-carriageway heading east cars sat nose-to-tail and according to their police radio the cause was a major RTC up ahead. Half a dozen ambulances and two fire engines blocked the road creating traffic chaos and leaving a good proportion of Plymouth in total gridlock. At one point even the air ambulance buzzed overhead to land somewhere out of sight, its distinctive blue and red livery striking against the tomb grey sky.