Mark Sennen - CUT DEAD - A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said, lowering his voice and reaching across and tapping the laptop screen. ‘Which means this thing has the potential to go worldwide. Unless we’re careful the investigation will balloon out of control and we’ll no longer be able to set the agenda. That’s why I want you, Mike, on the media side of things. They won’t mess with you. You’ll need kid gloves though. One wrong word and you’ll see it repeated across a million copies of The Sun . You and Charlotte will share the deputy role with me as Senior Investigating Officer. Charlotte, you’ll liaise with your old boss, ex-DCI Derek Walsh. He, of course, was the lead last time around.’

‘Last time around. I’m guessing you’re talking about the cuts on the body?’

‘Yes. Nesbit’s retreating a little now. Wants to get through the post-mortems first. Won’t say one way or another. Me? – I think our notorious cold case just turned hot.’

He’s back, Charlotte, he’s back.

Savage recalled the pathologist’s whisper to her as he bent his wiry frame into his car in the small hours of Sunday morning. He’d closed the door, and for a moment she’d seen a haunted look in his eyes before he started up and pulled away into the night.

‘The Candle Cake Killer,’ Savage said, for a second feeling an icy chill. ‘I was on maternity leave and on my return I joined Vice for a while so I wasn’t on Walsh’s team. Of course I know all about the case.’

‘Charlotte,’ Hardin said, pointing an accusing finger at her. ‘I do not, repeat do not want that moniker used again, understand? First, we don’t know for sure if this is the same killer, and second, the name is too cheery by half. As if there was something to celebrate.’

Savage nodded, seeing the pit and the mud and the grey forms lying in the sludge, thinking Hardin was right, cheery wasn’t it at all.

‘Now, these bodies,’ Hardin handed them each a checklist and then scratched an ear and grimaced. ‘Three of them. I was hoping, praying even, they were all from way back. If this investigation remained a cold case we could simply assign a few officers to it. New evidence, fresh look, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps we might come up with a lead, perhaps not. No matter. Job done, public satisfied. However, from what I’m hearing from Nesbit, that’s not the case. Two of the victims could be the missing women from the original case. They disappeared in 2007 and 2008. But Nesbit says even considering the favourable conditions, the third body wouldn’t have survived so well-preserved. The corpse is much more recent. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem but it’s likely been buried just a year or so ago.’

‘Which means trouble,’ Garrett said, looking across at Savage and smiling. ‘Media-wise. They’ll say he might have been killing all this time.’

‘Unless he has been away somewhere,’ Savage said. ‘Prison, abroad.’

‘Possible,’ Hardin said. ‘Let’s hope so. Otherwise there are a whole load more bodies buried somewhere.’

‘There’s another problem with the media,’ Garrett said. ‘No escaping the issue either. A ticking time bomb.’

‘Well?’ Hardin’s fingers drummed the table. ‘Spit it out.’

‘The date,’ Savage said, spoiling Garrett’s punchline. ‘The killer takes his victims on the longest day of the year. There’s just six days until the twenty-first of June. Meaning that’s how much time we’ve got before he strikes again.’

Hardin looked down at the screen on his laptop, eyes moving to the bottom right-hand corner. He clicked. Stared at the date in the pop-up window. Shook his head, as if not quite believing he had missed something so blindingly obvious.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

A specialist recovery team had arrived at the farm along with the light on Sunday morning. They’d brought with them vanfuls of equipment and a temporary roadway to allow access across the now quagmire-like field. The twin strips of the aluminium track undulated their way over the ground, down to the dump site where a yellow JCB stood. The digger’s bucket hung in the air, suspended over a new hole which ran parallel to one side of the crime scene tent. Savage clumped down the metal track to where Layton stood talking to one of his CSIs. Off to one side a large patch of concrete – the remnants of some old building – provided a convenient and mud-free storage area for several of Layton’s crates and much forensic equipment.

‘John?’ Savage said pointing to the new hole. ‘What’s that?’

‘Control trench,’ Layton said. ‘The ground’s not been disturbed there, you can see the layering and the way the soil is compacted. There’s also mature tree roots from the nearby hedge. The trench marks the boundary and we’ll dig back in from there once the recovery crew have finished.’

‘How long will they be?’ Savage said, looking across at the tent, inside which several figures worked.

‘Another hour or so. We’ve removed the first victim but the other two are in a very delicate condition. The crew are having to bring much of the mud along with the bodies. From what I’ve seen they’re well-preserved but fragile. That deep, there were no worms or anything and they existed in an anaerobic state. With no air, there was little decay. They’re the consistency of butter though.’

Savage walked forwards and peered through the entrance of the tent. Unlike Nesbit and the CSI team from last night, the recovery crew were taking no chances, and the two people down in the hole wore drysuits with breathing apparatus. They moved back and forth, sluicing, shovelling and wiping the mud from the two remaining corpses. Little by little they were exposing the bodies and inching a large stainless steel tray beneath each one. Once the bodies were atop the trays, they could be lifted and taken to the mortuary.

‘You think you’ll get much from there?’ Savage said as she moved back to Layton. ‘Forensics I mean.’

‘When the bodies are out we’ll begin to sift through the spoil and then dig out further in all directions. The first thing it would be nice to find would be the heads. If you’re talking about something which might point to the killer we’ll have to wait and see. The killer might be forensically aware but on the other hand why bother taking precautions here? I would have thought it was likely they assumed the dump site would never be found.’

Savage pondered Layton’s point as she went back up to the farmyard. It was possible the killer chose the burial site because of the remoteness, but in Devon there were numerous places just as remote, if not more so. Most of them didn’t involve having to trespass on private land, with all the risks that would bring. Which meant the choice of dump site was a decision the killer had made for other reasons; something, perhaps, to do with the farm. There was also the matter of the practicalities of burying the bodies. How were the victims buried over so many years, without the farmer knowing?

If she didn’t know, that was.

Joanne Black had spent the night at a friend’s house at the far end of the village. The constant noise and commotion had become too much. That, and the thought of the horrors in the field. She’d returned to the farm in the morning and shown willing, answering questions and attempting to provide teas and bacon butties for the never-ending stream of police and ancillary workers who continued to arrive.

By lunch time she was exhausted, so when Jody suggested they head up to Yelverton to the Rock Inn for a pub lunch she jumped at the chance. It was only after they’d finished their meal and Jody was on his second pint of Jail Ale that she posed the obvious question.

‘Where the fuck did those bodies come from, Jody?’