Mark Sennen - Touch

Savage reached to move the lid back into place before remembering she shouldn’t touch anything. Then something soft and white inside the font caught her eye. Material of some kind. She peered in.

The lid cast a dark shadow but she could distinguish what the material was now. Cotton. A pair of white cotton knickers and a plain white cotton bra. Something else too, wrapped in the knickers, reddish-pink with little rivulets of blood. Something resembling a small piece of steak if you wanted a slim-line dinner for one.

Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Monday 8th November. 10.14 am

Despite the latest developments Savage had managed to take Sunday afternoon off. She had been glad to spend half a day away from the case at home with the kids. They had played some board games, romped in the garden, made a big chocolate cake and watched a DVD. The rest of the weekend had been taken up with administration. These days each case produced a mountain of tasks to complete, forms to fill in and procedure that had to be followed. Hardin had dumped the lot on her, pleading a weekend long engagement he couldn’t get out of. Golf, Savage suspected.

Monday morning brought her back to earth with a bump. The elation from the conclusion of the Leash case was proving short-lived now operation Zebo had another body to contend with. Over the weekend more staff had been drafted in and the incident room was becoming rather crowded. An extra-large photograph of Simone Ashton now adorned the main whiteboard. Blonde tresses, cuddly jumper, a pout on her lips like she had blown the room a ‘thank you’ kiss. And startling eyes, deep blue, intoxicating. Those eyes had seen the killer when she had been picked up, when she had willingly gone with him. Those eyes had gazed upon someone who had reassured her. Those eyes had been deceived. But by who?

The post-mortem on Simone had taken place over the weekend and Nesbit confirmed signs of freezing were present. Worse, the girl’s mouth had been mutilated with a knife and Nesbit had identified the piece of flesh Savage had discovered in the church font as the girl’s tongue. Nesbit had also, in his words, ‘double fast-tracked’ the toxicology. The results only served to further dampen the mood: As with Kelly, Simone’s hair had traces of GHB in and the segmentation analysis suggested that she had only lived for between seven to fourteen days after it was administered.

‘Alice Nash went missing two weeks ago this afternoon. Time is running out. We need a lead and fast.’ Savage sat at a desk with Calter and Enders, indulging in a spot of brainstorming. ‘Kelly, Simone, possibly Alice. All disappeared without any sign of an abduction. No struggle, nobody notices anything, in broad daylight?’

‘They knew the abductor?’ Enders said.

‘Thank you, Patrick, that much is obvious. But the problem is who?’

‘There are so few male staff at these places. We’ve eliminated them all.’ Enders scanned a printout of names and Calter peered over at the sheet.

‘Different places anyway,’ Calter said. ‘We are looking for connections. Someone who can access all the nurseries and who arouses no suspicion.’

‘OfSTED?’ Enders said, a half-smile on his face.

‘I want you to check when they made their inspections and get a list of the people involved,’ Savage answered. ‘No stone as they say.’

Enders groaned and now Savage went off on one. She wanted lists of cleaners, caretakers, plumbers, builders, entertainers, anyone who might have cause to visit more than one of the nurseries. She got up and crossed the room to one of the whiteboards on which she drew a checkerboard of lines.

‘Names of nurseries along the top, possibles down the side, a cross where we get a result. Two crosses and we are interested, more than two and we have a definite suspect. We put the data in the system and this is what the results will look like graphically. The important thing will be not to miss anybody.’

‘They’ll have been CRB’d, ma’am,’ Calter said.

‘Good, the CRB check will make it all the easier to find them and eliminate them.’

‘How are we going to be sure we get everyone?’

‘We will start with the accounts. Staff and other workers will all get paid. Anyone from outside doing work at the nursery, like builders for instance, send in invoices and the details will be in the ledger. After that we can develop any other possibles. Like OfSTED.’

‘Ma’am?’ Enders said. ‘One group of people who use the nurseries won’t have been CRB checked and that is the parents.’

‘You are right and we mustn’t overlook them. But the nurseries should hold accurate records so we will be able to see any correlations.’

‘You think some dad took a fancy to one of the girls?’ Calter asked.

‘That is entirely plausible.’

‘At different nurseries?’

‘People move house, children are unhappy, lots of reasons to change nurseries.’

‘But you think a parent could do what this guy has done?’

Savage paused. Parents killed, of course they did, but in this situation? You drop your little Jake off, wait outside and when one of the girls comes off duty you pick her up, take her somewhere and rape and kill her?

‘I would hope not, but if you put a stop sign at the end of an avenue you can’t drive down the road can you? We can’t start with any preconceived ideas about who we are dealing with.’

At that moment DS Riley came into the incident room. He stood at the door with his hands on his hips, out of breath. He had sweat on his forehead and worry on his face, but excitement in his eyes.

‘Ma’am, someone got stabbed on the terraces below the Hoe last night.’

‘So I heard.’ A stabbing wasn’t unusual. Neither, for that matter, was a glassing, a bloody good kicking or anyone of the other possible ways to hurt someone when you’d had one too many and somebody had knocked your drink over, glanced at your missus or just stepped on your toes. Late night Plymouth did violence like West End London did shows.

‘The victim is one Ben Robbins. He happens to be Simone Ashton’s boyfriend.’ Riley stood with his hands on his hips, trying to get his breath back. ‘And we have a witness.’

*

When Riley explained the witness they’d found was Done That Danny, a well-known police time-waster, Savage sent Enders off to deal with taking a statement. Danny’s evening meal often consisted of a bag of soggy chips washed down with half a dozen cans of Tenants Super, so it wouldn’t be altogether surprising if the lead turned out to be nothing but a drink induced fantasy. Something to get Danny a bit of attention and maybe some free biscuits and a cup of tea, five sugars.

Enders had trooped off to the cliff-side terraces wearing the sort of hang-dog expression Savage was used to from her junior officers when put on house-to-house duties, but he called through breathless and excited an hour later and insisted Savage ought to see what he had found.

She had dutifully got in a car and driven to the Hoe to find out what Enders was on about. He stood at the gap in the wall where Simone’s boyfriend had been attacked and he led her down a twisting path toward the sea.

Danny waited on the beach, hands in the pockets of his threadbare raincoat, head bowed, his greasy black hair shaking off the drizzle. He had an expression of sublime resignation on his face, a look Savage had seen many times before on the faces of those used to having the world push down on them day after day. It was a weary acceptance of the way things were, a humility in the face of greater powers, a perceptive understanding of the fact that although things would happen and the years would pass, in the end nothing would ever change.