Mark Sennen - BAD BLOOD - A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

Savage filled Hardin in on the details, noting his eyes narrowing with anger when she told him about the pink training shoe, as if somehow the physical object made the horror more real.

‘Any ideas who she is?’ Hardin gritted his teeth and reached for his mouse. ‘And more importantly, who put her there?’

‘We’ve got a hunch she could be a girl who was thought missing after supposedly falling from a cliff down in Cornwall. As for a suspect, a previous tenant at the property turns out to be on the register. Committed a serious sexual offence a few years back. Layton and his team are all over the man’s place now, but there is no sign of him as of yet.’

Savage continued talking as there was a knock and DCI Garrett entered. Garrett, despite having spent the day tramping around a muddy patio and attending the post-mortem, looked immaculate as ever. Savage went on to outline the steps the inquiry was taking, Garrett nodding every now and then but seeing no need to interject. At the end of Savage’s summation Hardin looked at Garrett for his opinion.

‘A tragedy,’ Garrett said, ‘but no accident. Preliminary findings from the PM suggest the girl was strangled. Nesbit couldn’t say if she was sexually assaulted or not, but if we assume she was I don’t think we’d be going out on a limb. Could well be this Franklin Owers is our man, but first we’ve got to find him.’

‘To which end,’ Hardin said, ‘the media is not bloody helping.’

Hardin reached to one side of his desk where a folded newspaper stuck out of his wastepaper bin. He pulled the paper out and laid it on the desk. Dan Phillips’ headline had done the Herald proud. ‘Get Him!’ Below the headline was a picture of Franklin Owers’ grafittied front door, with an inset thumbnail of Owers himself. Hardin thumped the desk and then pointed to a subheading beneath the pictures: ‘Police Clueless in Hunt for Paedophile Killer.’

‘That,’ Hardin said, looking at Savage and Garrett in turn, his face beginning to redden, ‘is nonsense, isn’t it?’

Savage said nothing.

The Sternway meeting went ahead at six-thirty in Briefing Room A, the acronym for which never failed to raise a smile from the more infantile of the Crownhill officers. Darius Riley liked to think he was above such things.

He’d spent the afternoon summarising Kemp’s final report and dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s on a longer document which pulled together a whole mass of intelligence from numerous sources. Now he slid copies of the document across the table to DSupt Hardin, DCI Garrett, DI Phil Davies and DI Savage. Savage smiled at him and Riley thought she looked happier than she had for a while. Her husband had returned from a long stint away so maybe that was the reason. It could certainly explain the sheen of her red hair and the smartness of her attire; Riley couldn’t remember seeing her appearing quite so attractive before.

He leant back in his seat and wondered if he might be considered infantile himself for thinking his boss was looking sexy. Davies sat opposite and he glanced at Savage and then looked across at Riley and winked. There was no chance of anyone thinking Davies was sexy, Riley thought. He slumped down in his chair in a crumpled brown number which Riley wouldn’t have been surprised to learn had come from a charity shop running a discount promotion for items they couldn’t clear. Even from across the table Riley could smell several nights’ worth of beer and fags in the clothing.

Mike Garrett’s clothing had, literally, been cut from a different cloth. Riley didn’t think much of the older detective’s abilities – the man was too cautious, too rule-bound – but he’d always admired his suits.

Hardin was Hardin. Bursting out of his shirt, almost knocking over the pot of coffee when it arrived, and then grabbing a couple of biscuits with one hand while typing on his laptop with the other.

‘OK, Sternway .’ Hardin turned to his laptop and clicked again. He reached out and adjusted the angle of the screen, and for a moment Riley feared he was going to swing the computer towards them and show one of his dreary PowerPoint presentations. Instead he leant back in his chair and ran his tongue over his lips before continuing.

‘So, Darius had his final meeting with our undercover officer earlier, nom de plume Mr Martin Kemp. Mr Kemp is returning to his force and Darius,’ Hardin nodded over at Riley, ‘is off on holiday in a couple of days. Now we’re just waiting on the intel. As soon as Kemp gets the word he’ll let us know. I’m pleased to say Sternway is finally drawing to a close and there will be no happy ending for Mr Kenny Fallon. Not this time.’

Riley switched off as Hardin began to map out the final stages of the operation. He knew the details back to front, had worked on them with Kemp and Hardin. As the DSupt elaborated on the endgame Riley hoped his words wouldn’t come back to haunt them, since Hardin had been placed in charge of Sternway precisely because of the failure of previous investigations. Usually an operation focusing on somebody such as Fallon would have been dealt with by SOCIT – the Serious and Organised Crime Investigations Team – however, rumours had been spreading of one or two bad apples within the police, someone even going so far as to distribute flyers around city car parks which accused the team of corruption. The allegations were without any evidence or reason, but the brass over at force HQ in Exeter had panicked and decreed the next major operation dealing with organised crime would be run independently of SOCIT and by someone with an unimpeachable record. Enter DSupt Conrad Hardin, mates with Simon Fox – the Chief Constable, friends in the local military and bogey golfer who could cheerfully lose to the worst. With Mr Clipboard, checkbox, do-it-by-the-book Hardin in charge, what could possibly go wrong?

Riley blinked as he heard Hardin mutter his ‘bloody good policing’ catchphrase and peer over at him for an answer. He had no idea what he was talking about but he managed a ‘yes, sir’, and Hardin continued.

‘If our intelligence is correct, the cargo vessel we are interested in may even now be loading in Rotterdam. At some point in the next few days the vessel will be passing approximately ten miles south of Plymouth, where it will drop a package overboard. Once the vessel is well clear, Gavin Redmond will head out in one of those f-off yachts of his and pick up the goods.’

When Riley had first come onto Sternway and heard of the arrangement he’d had to concede it was clever. The pickup boat never had to go more than a few miles offshore and never anywhere near the ship which dropped the drugs. All it required was knowledge of the tidal streams and a short-range tracking device. Plus a little faith from the crew on the cargo vessel that the millions of pounds worth of drugs they were heaving overboard were going to end up in the right hands. All Customs and Excise’s fancy plotting equipment – which mapped out the closest point of approach of suspect vessels and watched for small boats making regular trips across channel – proved useless against such a tactic.

The ploy might have gone unnoticed if Fallon hadn’t made the mistake of using Tamar Yachts and Redmond as a way of washing money too. Tamar owned a subsidiary charter company in Nassau, out in the Bahamas. A swish website showed a number of top-end crewed yachts costing tens of thousands of dollars a week to hire and every month a payment appeared in Tamar’s bank account, the funds originating from a Bahamian bank. Twice a year Tamar Yachts paid Fallon a hefty dividend from his shares, the sums involved matching the supposed income from the charter business. An HMRC investigator, risking the wrath of her boss, decided to take an unauthorised trip to the Bahamas. She discovered nothing. Literally. The charter company didn’t exist, other than as a managed office sharing an address with hundreds of other companies. It was then that HMRC had contacted the police, realising the income flowing in from the dummy charter operation was most likely drugs money.