Mark Sennen: BAD BLOOD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

Savage said there wasn’t and asked about the mix-up. Had his men got the wrong address?

‘No, love.’ Serling looked over to the house where two CSIs were carrying a large box of equipment round to the rear. ‘I was here last week speaking to Mr Evershed. Went into the back garden and he explained exactly what he wanted doing. He’d been let down by another builder, apparently, and needed some groundwork done quick in preparation for a conservatory. The company were coming to erect it later this week and he’d told them the patio would be cleared and the area readied in time.’

‘Mr Evershed denies that,’ Savage said. ‘He says he never asked you to do any work. In fact he denies even knowing you.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Considering what my lads have found.’

‘And you’re positive there couldn’t have been some mistake?’

‘Yes.’ Serling closed his eyes and kept them shut. ‘There’s a patio round the back. Stretches the width of the plot. Kitchen door’s pale green with a glass panel, in need of a paint. I noticed some rising damp to the right of the kitchen window, probably caused by the downpipe from the guttering not discharging into the drain properly. I asked Mr Evershed if he wanted me to fix it. He said “no”, he was quite capable of doing that himself. He said he would have lifted the patio slabs, but at his age he needed to start to take it easy. I said “me too” and we had a laugh about that.’

‘At his age? What sort of age would that be?’ Savage replied.

‘Hey?’ Serling opened his eyes. ‘About mine. Mid-forties. Looked pretty fit to me. Short and stocky, not much hair, but plenty of muscles, not running to fat like most of the rest of the world.’

‘What about payment? Contact details?’

‘He gave me a mobile number and he paid cash, upfront.’

‘Isn’t that unusual these days?’

‘Yeah,’ Serling smiled. ‘But not without some advantages.’

‘Tax?’

‘Yes. Forget I told you.’ Serling raised a hand and brushed his hair. A few pieces of sawdust fell on to his shoulder like flakes of oversized dandruff. ‘Mr Evershed said he was going to be away for a while and thought it best to settle up beforehand. Seven fifty in an envelope. He said he was trusting me and that I wasn’t to mess him around. The job had to be done Monday, come rain or shine. Well, I thought, for seven fifty you could add in hell or high water too.’

‘Wasn’t it over the odds? Seven hundred and fifty?’

‘Yes. Although to be fair it was going to take my lads all day to lift the slabs and dig out to the required depth.’

‘Have you still got the envelope or the money?’

‘What? You want it back?’

‘For fingerprints. You’ll get a receipt.’

‘Yes. It’s at home.’ Serling smiled again. ‘I wasn’t going to bank it, was I?’

Savage thanked Serling and directed Calter to go with him, retrieve the money and take a full statement. Then she went back to the rear of the house where the entire panoply of police resources were now in evidence. Three of Layton’s team of CSIs were working on excavating the rest of the patio, carting barrow-loads of soil round to the front of the house where they were sieved into a skip. A photographer recorded any item recovered as it was removed and an exhibits officer bagged and catalogued those of interest. Away from the patio a woman pushed what looked like a small grass mower back and forth over the lawn.

‘Ground-penetrating radar,’ Layton said when Savage asked. ‘Should tell us if anything else is buried there. Let’s hope she’s wasting her time.’

‘And inside?’

‘We’ll see.’ Layton turned to look at the house. ‘The place is due for a refurb which means, luckily, the decor hasn’t been touched for years. We should be able to ascertain if anything has been disturbed recently. And before you ask, no, nothing in the loft. Thank God.’

DCI Mike Garrett turned up an hour later, looking, as always, as if he had arrived direct from an upmarket tailor. Not so much as a piece of fluff on the dark surface of his suit, his shirt brilliant white, the collar starched, tie perfect, Garrett’s hair not far off the colour of the shirt. Unblemished was a moniker which could be applied to the older detective’s career too. He had taken a while to climb to the rank of Chief Inspector but had done so without stepping on toes, without getting his fingers dirty. Colleagues respected him and he was well-liked among all ranks. Sometimes though, Savage found him a little too stuffy.

Once Garret had clambered into his protective clothing, he came round to the back armed with a friendly greeting and a name for the operation.

‘ Brougham ,’ he said, as he stood over the hole, gazing down at the rubble. The plastic crate and its contents had gone, accompanied to the morgue by Nesbit and Layton, but several numbered markers lay scattered around, and Garrett’s eyes moved from one to another as if he was playing a perverse game of join the dots. ‘I’m Senior Investigating Officer,’ he said to Savage, ‘you’re my deputy. As you can imagine, Hardin wants a quick result on this one. Have you seen the Herald ’s special on their website?’

‘No.’ Savage shook her head. She hadn’t seen the local paper’s website but she guessed the media would be one reason Hardin had made Garrett Senior Investigating Officer. Garrett wasn’t exactly media-savvy, but he played with a straight bat and had the appropriate gravitas. And then there were those suits he wore: black with no colour. The murder of a child – if that was what this was – had to be handled differently. A soft tone, but serious, determined and with a get-the-bastard-whatever-it-takes attitude.

‘Cromwell Street is what they are saying. House of Horrors. That sort of thing. Someone spotted the plastic box being loaded into the mortuary van. Body parts being the inference.’

‘Layton doesn’t think there are any more.’

‘Really?’ Garrett looked up to the lawn where the GPR operative was packing away her equipment, then turned to Savage and arched an eyebrow. ‘I hope he’s bloody right. If he is we might just keep the national media away from this one. Have you traced the previous occupier yet?’

Savage told Garrett what she knew from Mr Evershed and his wife. Prior to their purchase the house had been a rental property. The landlord, fed up with ongoing repairs, had been wanting to get the house off his hands. The couple had no idea who the last tenant was, but they knew the name of the letting agency.

‘Dream Lets,’ Savage said. ‘It’s just round the corner, top of Efford Road. I’ve been leaving messages on their phone for the last couple of hours. Nobody has got back to me yet. I’m going up there now.’

‘Dream Lets?’ Garrett said, glancing up at the brown pebble-dash house and then back to the hole where the bones of the dog poked out of the sludge. ‘Do you think we should do them under the Trade Descriptions Act?’

Dream Lets sat above a bookmakers’ at the top of Efford Road. The location didn’t do much to lend any credence to the salubrious name, nor did the young woman smoking a cigarette next to the agency’s entrance. Short skirt, big tattoo on a bare calf above a gold ankle chain and blonde hair from a bottle, with four weeks’ worth of dark roots showing. She glanced over as Savage and Calter approached, hacked out a globule of phlegm and then flicked the cigarette butt to the floor before opening the door and going inside.

Savage caught the door before it closed and she and Calter followed the woman up some stairs to a small office, where a handwritten notice on one wall announced what was obviously the agency motto: ‘We Let, No Sweat.’ The woman didn’t seem to be surprised to be followed and she manoeuvred her large frame in past a filing cabinet and a bookshelf. She plonked herself down at a desk, scrabbling amongst a mess of papers and folders until she found a biro.