Mark Sennen - Touch

‘Ma’am, please tell me-’

‘No. It’s not.’

The freezer was filled with meat. Regular cuts of meat from the supermarket or a butcher. Savage had no idea what a human would be like cut up, but it wasn’t like this.

‘Look, half a lamb and a leg of beef. The beef has got a stamp on the side.’

Calter started to laugh her infectious giggle.

‘Thank God, I thought “Hannibal” for a moment.’

‘That’s a movie, Jane. This is Devon, cream teas and all that.’

‘Yeah? I hadn’t noticed.’

Savage brought the lid down and clicked the lock shut. The next freezer wasn’t switched on or locked. The lid swung up and a faint smell of disinfectant wafted out. The inside gleamed clean and bare.

‘Simone Ashton could have been in here. Or Kelly.’

‘Doesn’t bear thinking about, boss. Gives me claustrophobia just looking.’

The next freezer had a red light that was blinking on and off. Savage moved closer and realised the temperature alert had triggered.

‘Something is wrong with this one.’

‘Not sure I want you to open it, all things considered.’

Savage ignored Calter and twisted the latching handle. She swung the lid open until it popped up.

‘Fuck, ma’am! The Nash girl!’

Up one end a naked body lay curled in a foetal position. A strong smell of burned out electrics mingled with a more unpleasant odour of urine. Savage leant in and more out of procedure than hope she searched for a pulse.

She touched the girl’s neck and felt a tingle in the end of her finger, a faint throb, throb, throb. Almost undetectable, but there.

‘She’s alive!’

*

A little later and Alice saw light, a brilliant white luminescence surrounding her which could only come from heaven. She could feel herself floating on a wave of warm air even though her skin bristled with cold.

As cold as death.

Someone was coming for her, an angel calling her name as she floated down the corridor of light.

‘Alice. Alice. Alice.’

Her mother, her face smiling and radiant, her hair a flash of vermillion, just as it had looked before she had got ill. Arms scooped her up and embraced her and it was like when she had fallen over as a kid and mum had held her so tightly that she had known through the pain and the tears that everything would be alright.

Netherston, South Hams, Devon. Tuesday 9th November. 12.30 pm

Savage heaved herself up and into the freezer, standing inside and bending down to scoop up the girl in her arms. The girl’s skin felt icy and there was no noticeable response as Savage struggled to lift her up over the lip of the freezer. Cradling Alice in her arms Savage bent her head to the girl’s face. A faint movement of air from the nostrils touched Savage’s cheek and she saw a tiny flicker from the eyelids.

‘Get upstairs and call for help!’ Savage said to Calter.

Calter was already on her way, sprinting through the door. Savage had an afterthought and yelled after her.

‘Make it an air ambulance!’

Seconds later she heard Enders clumping down the stairs and he came through the door and helped Savage with the girl. They carried her out into the main part of the cellar and up the stairs.

‘In here, ma’am!’

Calter was in the living room and had ripped some heavy velvet curtains down from the windows and was spreading them on some cushions on the floor.

‘How long?’ Savage asked as they lay the girl down and covered her.

‘Flight time seven minutes. That was two minutes ago.’

‘Seven!’

‘Yes, we got lucky. The helicopter was already airborne on its way back to Exeter.’

Savage thought that Alice Nash deserved a bit of a break, but it would take more than luck to pull her through. Calter had done a good job with the curtains, but they weren’t going to warm the girl up. Savage looked around for inspiration and noticed a wooden wheel-backed chair on the other side of the room. A couple of leather belts criss-crossed through the dowelling on the chair’s back and behind it on the floor Savage spotted a fan heater. It was angled up to point at the chair.

She went over and pulled the heater out, moving it across the room as far as the cable would allow. Then she switched the unit on and turned the heat setting to the highest possible.

‘He would tie them to the chair and heat them up? Is that some sort of torture?’ Calter wasn’t getting it.

‘Defrost,’ Savage said. ‘He’d get them out of the freezer, give them a bath and stick them there to dry and thaw out fully. Then he’d have sex with them.’

A rush of air washed over the girl now and Calter pulled the curtains to one side to let the warmth reach the skin. Savage knelt and felt the girl’s pulse again. It was weak and her breath was very shallow.

‘Right now would be a good time for the helicopter,’ Savage said.

On cue they heard the distant thump, thump, thump of the approaching aircraft and Enders went outside to signal to the crew. Savage looked at Alice Nash again. The helicopter noise was much louder now and the windows started to vibrate and the ground beneath her feet shook. Calter was shouting something, but Savage couldn’t make out what she was saying. Nor could she make out whether Alice’s chest was rising and falling any more. She touched the girl’s neck and now she was sure.

‘Defib!’ She screamed at Calter and began to perform CPR on the girl, counting aloud as she did so. ‘One, two, three, four…’

Calter rushed outside leaving Savage alone, the noise of the helicopter in her ears replaced by that roaring sound inside her head. The same noise she had heard in the hospital when Clarissa had died.

‘Twenty-nine, thirty.’

She bent down to give mouth-to-mouth and then resumed the CPR.

‘One, two…’

Then the paramedics were beside her, unpacking the defibrillator, readying drugs, one of them taking over the chest compressions. Calter helped her get to her feet.

‘They know what they are doing, ma’am.’

Savage nodded and sniffed, aware that she was crying.

‘My…’

‘I know, ma’am. You don’t need to say anything, I understand.’ Calter put her arm around her and the two of them went outside. The bright blue and red helicopter stood in a field to one side of the house, its blades rotating slowly. Enders was talking to the pilot. The black Mitsubishi Shogun had gone.

‘Jesus!’ Savage said, pulling herself together. ‘Where the hell is Harrison?’

*

Two hours later and the place was heaving. The Chief Constable had been onto one of his military chums and a team of engineers from the Royal Marines in Plymouth had erected a temporary bridge over the stream to allow vehicle access. John Layton and his CSIs had trundled across it in three white SOC vans and they had disappeared inside the house like kids eager to explore Santa’s grotto. Hardin had arrived along with Garrett, Davies and a car boot full of supplies purloined from the canteen.

‘An army marches on its stomach,’ Hardin said, mouth crammed full of sandwich, the diet abandoned in celebration. ‘We are going to be here for days so we have to keep morale up.’

Hardin had taken the last bacon butty so the rest of them got stuck into egg and cress and soggy cheese and tomato. Washed down with lukewarm coffee. Morale, at least where the late lunch was concerned, was tepid.

The air ambulance had long gone to be replaced by the yellow and blue air operations helicopter. It buzzed overhead, circling the valley taking pictures. Hardin asked about Alice Nash.

‘Just took a call from Derriford, sir,’ Savage said. ‘She is doing OK, all things considered.’

‘All things considered, I think you and your team deserve a bloody medal, Charlotte.’ Hardin wiped some ketchup from his chin and sucked it off his finger. ‘DC Enders for getting you here so quickly and you and DC Calter for tackling Harrison and saving Alice Nash’s life. Quick thinking to call the air ambulance too.’