Mark Sennen - Tell Tale - A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

‘Pardon?’ An elderly woman sitting at the next table looks across. ‘Did you say something?’

‘Huh?’ Chubber says and then crunches his nose in a sneer. ‘My business. Not your business. You mind yours and I’ll mind mine, OK?’

He scrapes his chair around so he won’t have to look at the crone. Concentrates instead on the waitress. He can see her in the cafe, talking to a customer. Then she slips behind the counter. Uses a pair of tongs to retrieve a cream éclair from the cake cabinet. The tongs squeeze the cake, the cake lets out a long sigh and the cream oozes out.

‘Ah!’ Chubber says. ‘Lovely. What a lovely, lovely girly girl.’

A snuffle comes from behind him. Chubber hopes the old dear is choking on her dentures. He pauses. He really shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t even be here. If Antler Man knew, he’d be angry. Very angry. Still, he can’t know, can he? Chubber reaches into his pocket and pulls out his pencil. Licks the tip. Takes a napkin and flattens it. Bends to the table and writes a note to the waitress. She’ll read the note and maybe next time he comes into the coffee shop she’ll ask him out.

He slips a ten-pound note on top of the napkin and moves back his chair. The girl looks over from another table, mouths a ‘thank you’ and starts to move towards him.

‘Oh Chubber-Chub-Chubs,’ Chubber says as he hurries away. ‘Chubber’s been a bad boy. Naughty Chubber. Bad Chubber.’

He doesn’t look back as he pushes across the plaza. He kicks the side of a pushchair as a young mum comes by. Barges past an elderly man who is as slow as a snail on coarse-grit sandpaper.

Sand again, Chubber? It’s slip, slip, slipping away. Marking time. Hours rushing past.

‘Busy, busy, busy,’ Chubber says as he skitters away and turns off the plaza, heading down Royal Parade. ‘Got things to do today. At home. Best get back. Kettle on the boil. Things on the go. Deary, deary, deary me my Chubber-Chub-Chubs.’

Major Crimes operated out of Crownhill Police Station, located on the north side of the city, away from the centre. The building was a modernist brute of a structure in brown concrete, the colour choice not lost on the officers within or on a number of the more quick-witted of their clients. Savage arrived back from the moor mid-afternoon and went straight to the crime suite, where a DC informed her that DSupt Hardin wanted to see her.

‘Pronto, ma’am,’ the DC added. ‘As in, now.’

Savage about-turned, headed to Hardin’s office and rapped on the door. Hardin’s ‘enter’ came with a splutter and when Savage pushed the door open she found him attempting to pat himself on the back with one hand while wiping up a pool of coffee on the desk with a bunch of tissues held in the other. The DSupt’s bulk filled his chair and most of the space behind the desk. He was a big man, often mistaken for an ex-rugby player. However, Savage reckoned Hardin would never have had the dexterity for ball games; tug-of-war would have been much more his thing.

‘Just had a phone call, Charlotte,’ Hardin said, screwing up the tissue paper and chucking the soggy mess in the bin. ‘Dan-bloody-Phillips, the crime reporter on the Herald . He tells me they’re going to town with this one. “Moorland Killer on the Rampage” is to be the headline. Nightmare.’

‘“Killer”? Where did he get that from? I’m still hoping the girl is alive and there’s some rational explanation for her disappearance.’

‘Hey?’ Hardin raised one eyebrow. ‘Come on. You and I both know it’s only a matter of time.’

Savage sighed. ‘Yes, sir. You’re right. But how does Phillips know that?’

‘That photographer of his. He’s been up at the reservoir. Got some shots of Frey retrieving the webbing strap. Phillips reckons lorry driver. Only he’s made the leap from there to killer. He tells me the Yorkshire Ripper was a truck driver. That right, Charlotte?’

‘Yes, but it’s a stretch isn’t it?’

‘Not really.’ Hardin leant over the desk, careful to avoid the damp patch. ‘You see, Phillips reckons the presence of a certain female officer lends credence to his argument. DI Charlotte Savage is, apparently, Devon’s hotshot detective. When she turns up, you know the bodies can’t be far behind.’

‘Fiction, sir. Headlines to sell newspapers.’

‘Of course,’ Hardin clucked. ‘Anyway, he wants an interview with you. A feature with pictures and everything. He told me he’s already come up with some taglines. “Killer Thriller”. “Red Handed”. “Juliet Bravo”. I’m thinking of passing this one to the PR guys. They love this sort of stuff. If you’re up for it?’

Savage cocked her head on one side and tried to read the grin that had appeared on Hardin’s face. ‘Respectfully, sir, I’d rather resign from the Force than do that sort of publicity shit.’

‘Ha!’ Hardin laughed. ‘That’s what I told him you’d say. Now, about this lorry driver business. Phillips may have something there. I’ve got the preliminary report on the webbing from John Layton. It’s a heavy-duty tie-down most often used by hauliers to secure loads. The hair is still being analysed, but the stain is most likely a commercial oil of some type. That does say lorry driver to me.’

‘Possibly. But he didn’t drive up to Fernworthy Reservoir in his vehicle, did he? The roads on that part of the moor are way too narrow. If you did somehow get up there you’d struggle to turn around. And whoever dumped Ana’s clothing up at Fernworthy Reservoir knows the area well. I think they’re local.’

‘What about these boys on North Hill? Reckon it could be something to do with them?’

Hardin was referring to an as-yet unidentified group of men who were targeting female students walking home from the centre of town. The police suspected that the men were using mobile phones to communicate information about women who looked so drunk they could barely walk. They’d identify those women as easy targets and one of the gang would home in and persuade – or force – the victim to have sex with them.

‘There have been a number of rapes, but nothing like this.’

‘Maybe something went wrong. The girl banged her head or choked on her own vomit. Somebody decided to hide the body.’

‘Possible, but there’s no evidence to suggest she was out on that night. True, if she was she would have walked home along North Hill, but Fernworthy is a heck of a long way to go to dispose of a body. If, of course, a body is what we are looking for. But then the clothes by the lake are pretty conclusive. She had no transport of her own so I can’t see how she could have got there without someone else’s involvement. This doesn’t look like suicide to me, nor do I think she’s gone back home to Hungary.’

‘So where the hell do you think she is?’

‘Well, Inspector Frey is almost positive she’s not in the reservoir. Which just leaves the woods, the rest of the moor and anywhere else that might have taken the killer’s fancy. I understand the search and rescue teams are out today and the helicopter is going to be taking a second look too, but to be honest, sir, Frey is right when he says searching for her without a better idea of where to focus is a complete waste of time.’

‘Bloody gun-touting idiot. I’ll decide whether it’s a waste of time or not. The man’s not happy unless he’s steaming in somewhere with a machine gun nestled under one arm and an Andy McNab paperback under the other.’

Savage tried not to smile. Hardin’s view of the tactical support group was that they were a bunch of trigger-happy nutters.

‘The police search adviser pretty much concurs, sir,’ she said. ‘Until we get some more information, we are better off not spreading our resources.’