Mark Sennen - Tell Tale - A DI Charlotte Savage Novel

Savage paused at the front door, taking a moment to switch off and leave the day’s events behind. Her kids didn’t need to know that a girl was probably lying naked and dead in a shallow grave somewhere on Dartmoor. Her husband wouldn’t want to be filled in on the minutiae of misper procedures. Her role as a police officer ended at the threshold to the house. And yet she couldn’t leave behind everything that had happened today. Seeing Owen Fox, holding the pistol in her hand as she’d watched him go about his business, unfettered by guilt, had made her realise she couldn’t let things go on as they had. She owed it to herself, to her family and most of all to Clarissa, to find a way to make Owen pay for what he’d done. She just needed to think of a way to do it without endangering everything she loved. Savage took a deep breath and then went inside.

In the house she found Pete in the kitchen tossing a salad, an apron tied round his waist. Pete was the epitome of a good-looking, clean-cut naval officer, but he still looked ridiculous wearing the apron.

‘From absent husband to househusband in just a few months,’ Savage teased. ‘I might just be the only person in Plymouth grateful for the defence cuts.’

‘Careful,’ Pete said, waving a wooden salad spoon at her. ‘I still hold a high rank in the Navy and as such am in charge of an array of formidable weapons.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Savage ducked as Pete used the spoon to launch a cherry tomato across the room. ‘Mind you, I might be in need of some gunnery practice.’

Savage laughed and then picked the tomato up and lobbed it back at Pete, running from the kitchen before he had a chance to retaliate. In the living room, Jamie and Samantha were arguing over which movie the family were going to watch for their regular Sunday film night. Jamie wanted something with cartoon animals while Samantha was keen on anything with vampires and pale, unhealthy-looking males. By dinner time they’d plumped for some Disney movie and they sat with bowls of pasta on their laps, pigging out.

An hour and a half later, with the end titles streaming up the screen, Savage’s mobile rang. She pushed herself up from the sofa, reached for the phone and stumbled out of the darkened room and into the hallway.

‘Ma’am, it’s me.’ It was DC Enders, his Irish accent providing all the introduction needed.

‘Yes, Patrick?’ Savage said, closing the door to the living room to shut out the kids’ conversation as they played out the funnier bits of the movie.

‘The Hungarian girl.’ Enders paused, but Savage knew what was coming next. ‘We’ve found her.’

Savage sighed, the laughter coming from the children suddenly grating. She walked into the kitchen, opened the back door and went out into the garden. Pete had set a sprinkler to water the lawn and as she walked across the grass a fine mist caressed her face.

‘Tell me.’

‘At the reservoir. Not far from where the fisherman found her clothes. In fact, he was the one who found the body. Dodgy, if you ask me, ma’am.’

‘Right. Are you up there now?’

‘No, I’m at the station. John Layton and Inspector Frey are there though. The pathologist has been called.’

‘Thanks, Patrick. I’m leaving now, tell them I’ll be there in an hour.’

Savage hung up and stared across Plymouth Sound towards the lights of the city where, despite it being a Sunday, the night would be getting into full swing. A wash of tiredness swept over her. A fitful night had been followed by a long day. The stress of seeing Owen Fox had worn her out and the news about the Hungarian girl was the last straw. She felt as if she barely had the energy to climb the stairs to bed. For a moment she considered phoning Enders back and telling him she couldn’t make it, that a family crisis had intervened. Then she remembered the passport photograph of Anasztáz Róka. A blonde girl far from home. Lost and now dead. She was somebody’s daughter too.

‘You selfish cow,’ Savage said to herself.

Then she wiped the moisture from her face and went back inside.

Darkness had enveloped the moor when Savage arrived at Fernworthy. A patrol car guarded the lane to the reservoir, its blue strobing light casting pale fingers into the trees. An officer waved Savage through and she drove to the car park. Then she was directed to where the body lay, some two hundred metres west of the reservoir in dense woodland, in an area that had supposedly been searched at least once.

‘It’s not good enough, Nigel,’ Savage said, trying to contain her anger as she walked up to Frey in the near blackness beneath the canopy of trees. ‘The girl should have been found at the first attempt. Your search pattern was mucked up or somebody boobed.’

‘No,’ Frey said. ‘I won’t have that. You can see the paperwork if you like. The quadrants the PolSA laid out were dealt with methodically. I’ll stake my job on it.’

‘Well, you may have to.’

John Layton had insisted on a fifty-metre perimeter around the scene, and from where she stood Savage could see a patch of bright light in which several suited figures worked. The CSIs were moving away from the body, trying to establish a safe route back and forth. It was another thirty minutes before Layton came across to Savage and Frey. The senior CSI had abandoned the Tilley hat he was usually seen in because it wouldn’t fit beneath the hood of his white suit. As he approached, he pulled the hood down. Layton was mid-thirties, maybe a little older. He had dark hair and a slim face, beady eyes that missed nothing. The eyes flicked back and forth between Savage and Frey. Then he scratched his pointed nose and nodded at Frey.

‘You’re off the hook,’ he said. ‘She’s not been there long. An hour or two at the most. She’s lying on several fronds of bracken that have only been crushed recently. There’s no way she was here this morning.’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Savage said. ‘Are you saying she was dumped after the initial search?’

‘Yes. Right under our noses. Sense and science can sometimes contradict each other, however difficult that makes things for us.’

‘Nigel,’ Savage said, turning to Frey. ‘I guess I owe you an apology.’

‘Accepted, Charlotte,’ Frey said.

‘How long has she been dead?’ Savage turned back to Layton.

‘You’ll have to wait for Nesbit for an estimate, but nothing like a week for sure. The body’s in a bit of a state though. Little cuts and scratches all over her. Something like she was running through the woods naked and the branches and brambles scoured her skin.’

‘Cause of death?’

‘Haven’t got a whiskers. There don’t seem to be any major external injuries. I guess she could have been strangled. Do you want to take a look?’

Savage nodded and went to find a suit and all the other paraphernalia. Suitably attired, she followed Layton down the little trail he had prepared. Festoon lights had been hung between the trees, creating a corridor of luminance which wound through the woodland, almost as if the path was leading to a fairy grotto. At the end of the path the burning glare of several halogen bulbs turned night into day. Beyond the circle of light the surrounding forest disappeared into utter blackness. As they approached the CSIs, Layton put out a hand.

‘Close enough, Charlotte,’ Layton said. ‘We haven’t completed our detailed search of the immediate area yet.’

Savage nodded and stared through the undergrowth to where white skin contrasted with black peat. The body lay half in a drainage ditch, the face partially submerged in the dirty water. The right eye was open and gazed out across a film of scum and forest detritus, while the left was below the surface. The girl’s peroxide-blonde hair floated in a fan-like pattern, individual strands moving as a slight current washed past. A blob of dark mud had splattered one cheek and several pine needles had drifted into a nostril. Savage looked closer. The girl’s body was tumbled in an odd way. The right leg came out at a weird angle to the body while the right arm was twisted underneath her head. A contortionist would have struggled to adopt such a pose.