Mark Sennen - Touch

Savage thanked the officer and drove on. To the left the moor towered upward, disappearing into mist and cloud. To the right a patchwork of fields cascaded downward to meet a line of trees marking a river. Beyond the trees the fields grew larger and Savage guessed the river marked the boundary between a small farm and a bigger one. A mile farther on several vehicles were pulled off the road on a grassy verge. She parked the car and struggled into her waterproof jacket, recalling Hardin’s parting words to her.

‘Charlotte? I don’t need to tell you these are crazy times. With these rapes, the Olivarez murder and now this. I want you to go softly softly on this one because believe me we are already up to our necks in the brown stuff. One wrong step and we might slip under. All of us.’

Hardin’s words seemed appropriate as she stepped out of the car into a squelch of mud. The rain poured down and the cloud seemed even lower, threatening to engulf her in its chilly grip. All around, the hedgerows and trees were fading to brown and up on the moor the bracken had turned a light tan colour. Winter was coming, a cold and harsh one, if you believed the forecasters. Savage shivered at the thought. She didn’t like the winter with its short days and long, dark nights. With Pete away life became difficult. The children went stir-crazy if they couldn’t be outside, and even with Stefan to help out they were a handful. After they had gone to bed for the night Savage should have been able to relax, but she rarely could. She either had stacks of paperwork to complete or, worse, nothing to do but think. And that wasn’t relaxing at all. This year would be different though. At Christmas Stefan would be returning to his family in Sweden, like he always did. But Pete was due back end of November. Touch wood.

The door of the car parked in front opened and a young man in his late twenties got out. Tall and athletic with gelled blond hair that shook off the rain like a duck’s back, he stuck out a hand, his friendly smile concealing the reason they were both here.

‘DC Craig Newlyn, ma’am. Totnes. I think you’ll find the whole thing a little confusing.’

‘Morning, Constable. Who discovered the body?’

‘Found by a local farmer,’ Newlyn said. ‘He spotted the tracks in his field, figured they belonged to poachers or vandals, went down to investigate and bingo. Name of Gordon Isaacs. He owns the land around here. His farm is along the road a bit, up on the left.’

‘What time?’ asked Savage.

‘Last night. Only he didn’t alert us until this morning, said he had work to do.’

‘What? Well that’s not a good start.’ Savage glanced back up the lane where the tower of St Michael’s poked up through the mist. ‘We will need to get statements from everybody in the village ASAP. TIE and all that.’ TIE meant Trace, Interview and Eliminate. Unlike when an incident occurred back in the city, the task didn’t appear too arduous out here.

‘We have got a couple of extra bods coming from Totnes, should be arriving soon.’

‘Good stuff.’

‘Ma’am, are you the SIO on this one?’

‘No, that will be Detective Superintendent Hardin. I am here for a first look. We’ve got a lot on our plates back in Plymouth.’

‘So I’ve been reading,’ Newlyn said.

‘Hardin is on his knees and praying this one can be cleared up without any fuss.’

‘I don’t think so, ma’am. Not from what I have seen.’

Savage shook her head. If possible she wanted to get to the scene, have a quick scout around and return to operation Leash. She didn’t want to consider the alternative right now.

She let Newlyn get back in his car out of the rain and walked up the lane to where a white van straddled the tarmac, parked slap bang in the middle of the road as if acting as a windbreak. Behind the vehicle the crime scene manager was a guy she recognised but couldn’t place and he clung to a large umbrella in the gusting wind. The rain slashed down as determined as ever and neither the van nor the brolly were doing much of a job protecting a white-suited CSI kneeling on the verge in a gateway. The officer had placed a tape measure on the ground alongside some tyre impressions and footprints and was in the process of taking a couple of photographs. Next to the gate a section of fence had been removed to allow access without having to go through the original entrance. A line of blue and white tape snaked across the ground and led down the side of a grassy field marking out a path along which they could walk without disturbing potential evidence.

‘John Layton,’ the man held out his free hand as Savage approached. Layton was mid-thirties. Dark hair poked from beneath the brim of a Tilley hat and framed an angular face with an Aquiline nose. The hat dripped water onto a tan coloured Columbo-style rain coat. He pulled the scene log from a coat pocket for Savage to sign. ‘Hardin said he was sending you.’

‘He knows I enjoy a nice summer jaunt in the country,’ Savage said, indicating the autumn storm howling overhead. ‘What have you got there?’ She gestured at the mass of mud at Layton’s feet.

‘Tyre prints and footprints. The whole thing is a bit of a mess because we have got the farmer’s as well but we might get something. Lifted a couple of good fingerprints off the gate too.’

‘Can I go down?’ Savage nodded towards the tape running down the field.

‘Sure. One of my guys and a couple of photographers are at the scene already.’

‘Pathologist?’

‘Stuck on the A38 somewhere.’

‘If it’s Nesbit he won’t be happy.’

‘It is Nesbit, and no he didn’t sound too pleased when he called to tell me he was late.’ Layton paused and looked down at Savage’s feet. ‘The field is a complete bog. Got some wellies in the back of the van if you’d like?’

Savage said she would and Layton dug out a pair of yellow boots as well as the obligatory white coverall. Her feet slid around inside the over-sized boots, but as she walked down the side of the field she was grateful for them. The cattle had made much of the pasture a quagmire and the saturated ground oozed underfoot.

She followed the blue and white tape down to where it was tied to a small aluminium step ladder the CSIs had put up to span the fence. A few metres farther on fence posts and netting lay in a flattened tangle and Savage noticed tyre tracks leading from the pasture into an earthy field where green shoots of wheat or some other crop poked up through the soil. The tyre marks crossed the neat tramlines of tractor tracks and curved left down towards a small patch of woodland at the bottom of the valley.

Savage climbed over the ladder into the next field and followed the tape again. As she neared the trees the clouds seemed to crowd overhead, darkening the sky even more. A stile led into the copse and to its right some more fencing had been removed. She walked through the opening into a little grove with towering old oak trees and slender young ash.

A sudden flash of harsh white light from a camera lit up a white crime scene tent and through the open end Savage could see a pale body lying like a sleeping nymph from a fairy tale. Two people stood next to the body on plastic stepping plates, one taking the pictures, the other with a small video camera. She recognised the photographer as Rod Oliver. His silver hair and craggy, weathered face showed he was getting on in years, but he knew his job. A year or so ago he had gone independent and filled in his spare time doing wedding shoots. Two more disparate sets of clients were hard to imagine. At the far edge of the clearing another figure in white combed the scrub with a long metal probe, teasing the long grass and nettles apart. Savage didn’t go any closer but she could see the corpse belonged to a young woman, late teens or early twenties. White skin, no clothing, hands by her sides, legs apart. She didn’t appear dead, just as if she was resting for a while. Her angelic face stared skyward towards heaven, but although the nakedness hit Savage like an electric shock, there was nothing else of note.