Mark Sennen - Touch

‘Bugger.’

Hardin made a hissing noise between clenched teeth, the big man diminishing in front of her eyes like a balloon with a leak, before perking for a second.

‘Never mind. Let’s hope the VODS data gets us somewhere.’

Hardin paused and any remaining signs of the euphoric mood from earlier slid away as he read the agenda on his screen.

‘Now to something as pressing, if not more so. Alice Nash and Zebo. We located Forester, but he is dead so there is no chance he is our man. That would have made things easier all round, hey Charlotte?’

‘Not really, sir,’ Savage said. ‘I mean, Forester was killed by someone. He didn’t volunteer to go for a jaunt on the moor. Whichever way you view it a brutal murderer is on the loose.’

‘Ah, yes, I suppose you are right.’ Hardin hissed again. ‘Where are we at then? Any news on the girl?’

‘Last week she was seen getting into Forester’s 4x4, but Forester has been dead for weeks so we are mystified as to who was driving. You probably watched the appeal her father made on TV over the weekend. So far that has produced nothing but crank calls. No reliable sightings of her or the Shogun.’

‘She is only sixteen?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the forensics from over at Malstead put Forester’s car at the scene?’

‘I am afraid so. Tyre tracks and paint match. Whoever dumped Kelly’s body in the field picked up Alice a day later. Nesbit has a theory and if it is correct then things don’t look too good for Alice.’

‘Theory?’

‘He reckons Kelly was kept alive for anything up to fourteen days before she was killed. So far Alice has been missing for seven days.’

‘Jesus. This really can’t get any worse.’ Hardin pinched his top lip between his thumb and forefinger and made a sucking sound as he let it smack back against his teeth.

‘Let’s hope not, sir.’

‘What about Forester? You attended the PM this morning?’

‘Yes. The PM suggests Forester was run down and then beaten. There was little other forensic evidence and Nesbit isn’t hopeful of getting anything from the lab reports because the body had been out on the moor for some time and the foxes and rats have got at it.’

‘Lovely!’ Davies let out a little snort and grinned. ‘Wonder what the press will make of that when they find out?’

‘Quite,’ Hardin sighed. ‘If we hadn’t put out the appeal then they wouldn’t be able to make a connection between the Donal girl and Forester. They may have assumed his murder was some type of lowlife punishment killing.’

‘Still possible it is, sir.’ Garrett said. ‘The actual murders may not be linked at all. We’ve been picking up intelligence in recent months about some Bristol lads planning to make a move down here. They think the city is easy pickings; bit of a pushover is the word on the street.’

‘What, us?’ Hardin’s face creased, thinking about the headlines again no doubt.

‘No, sir,’ Garrett laughed. ‘The No Prospect lot. A complete bunch of smackheads. We can’t even produce any decent crimos round here.’

‘You could be right.’ Hardin looked hopeful for a moment. ‘Let’s keep our fingers crossed Doctor Nesbit can get some meaningful toxicology to give us something else to go on.’

It seemed to Savage that Hardin wanted to cling to anything that would steer them back to charted waters. He wanted something he understood, something he could deal with by piling in resources. A lone nutter was unfathomable and even a gang selling heroin to twelve year olds was better.

‘We wondered whether Forester was mixed up in a porn or prostitution ring,’ Savage started to explain. ‘We’ve despatched his computer to hi-tech crimes and are awaiting results, but for now we know both he and Kelly were into glamour photography and he had managed to persuade her to do some hardcore videos. He’s done that before with other girls so what the difference is with Kelly we don’t know.’

‘Did the shoot go wrong somehow?’ Garrett said. ‘Could she have been killed by accident? Or deliberately, some sort of snuff film?’

‘I don’t buy the snuff angle, ‘Savage said,’ but an accident is possible. However, whatever the reason for Kelly’s death Forester couldn’t have dumped her body. He’s been dead for weeks. A couple of my people are working up something around Mr Donal. Perhaps he killed Forester in revenge for Forester killing Kelly. How the theory fits in with Malstead Down, Kelly’s body being frozen and the picture that resembled Rosina Olivarez though…’

Hardin shook his head and made a final hiss, all the air gone out of him now. He didn’t move for a minute or so and Savage and the others sat waiting. Then he opened a drawer and fumbled in his desk for a moment. Savage half-expected him to pull out a bottle and offer it around. Instead he brought out a newspaper.

‘I am aware you guys laugh about my obsession with the media, but in this case it is no joke. Did anyone see this morning’s Sun?’

Hardin held up the paper in front of them. The headline wasn’t one of the clever ones, it was just three words, but they took up the whole of the front page and the effect was chilling. The words had been superimposed over an outline map of Devon and Cornwall and said: ‘West country ripper?’

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Monday 1st November. 2.05 pm

Hardin had said thank God for the question mark, and when Savage returned to the incident room and told Riley, Calter and Enders they burst out laughing.

‘What does he think they are questioning,’ Riley said, ‘the fact it is in the West Country or the fact there is a ripper?’

‘He’s going to doctor the page using Photoshop,’ Calter chipped in. ‘He’ll put a “T” in front of “Ripper” and tell the CC we might be expecting a good tourist season next year.’

That had them in stitches, apart from Enders who scrunched up his face in bemusement.

‘Huh?’

‘Keep taking the pills, Patrick,’ Calter said.

The banter was still going on five minutes later when a couriered package arrived for Calter.

‘The dump from Forester’s hard drive, ma’am.’ Calter opened the package and read the accompanying letter. ‘Seems hi-tech had an easy job. Forester didn’t take any special measures like encrypting his files or anything. They’ve written all the stuff to DVD, documents, emails, images and a bunch of movies. We’ve got a load of disks here, must be a couple of hundred gigabytes of material in total.’

‘Sounds like an interesting afternoon ahead of us,’ Enders said.

Calter turned up her nose. ‘If you enjoy filth.’

‘Depends if you are the main feature, babe.’ Enders put on a camp American voice and held his hands up, making a rectangle shape with his fingers and thumbs and peering through, like a film director working up shot angles.

‘Now, now folks,’ Savage said, ‘let’s get started on this then. And I don’t want to come over all politically correct, but remember we are dealing with rape and murder here so save the banter for the piss up we are going to have after we have caught this guy, OK?’

Savage grabbed every spare body and managed to get eight of them working on the material, two to a monitor. Text began to scroll across screens and images flashed by, movies played in little windows and the sound of sex filled the room. At first everyone concentrated, focussing on the task with an intensity Savage admired, but as the hours dragged, chairs tipped back and feet went up on desks. This much porn was just plain boring.

DC Carl Denton made the breakthrough. Denton had popped along from the Leash incident room and became ensconced at one of the screens with Calter and Enders. They had found a set of videos showing some very graphic imagery with girls blindfolded and tied to a bed in what appeared to be a mock rape scenario.