Savage took off her wet coat and hung it up on a peg next to a row of cassocks and surplices. Then she opened one of the PPE packs, put on the disposable suit and tied her hair back, pulling the suit hood up and making sure the elastic was drawn snug around her face. Next on went the paper face mask covering her nose and mouth and a pair of plastic overshoes. Finally she pulled on the nitrile gloves. These days you couldn’t be too careful.
The heavy oak door swung open without a sound and she left the vestry and entered the church.
A harsh light flared up at the altar for a split second and for a moment the two white cloaked figures there looked like angels, frozen in time as if they were on a giant canvas. The light flashed again and the angels moved about their business. The illusion was dispelled when one of them spotted her and called out a warning muffled by his mask.
‘Keep to the right if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am.’
The main aisle had been taped off, but she could walk up the right hand side of the pews and go behind the choir stalls to view the chancel.
As she emerged from behind the stalls she caught sight of the girl’s body. It was lying tumbled on the floor, half-covered by a white sheet or cloth. Savage looked at the face. Simone Ashton, no question about the identity this time. Simone’s beautiful blonde hair contrasted with the horrific mess of flesh at the mouth and Calter’s earlier comment about escalation came back to her.
‘Worse than last time, isn’t it?’ The voice belonged to Rod Oliver, unrecognisable behind the mask. No sign of his stupid assistant. ‘Same cut in the belly too, but like before it hasn’t bled and there is nothing else suggesting trauma.’
‘The CSM said the body had been moved?’
‘The casualty was underneath the body. The paramedics didn’t have a lot of choice. We believe it was on the altar wrapped in the white cloth.’
‘And Foxy’s mother-in-law pulled the cloth off?’
‘Yes, seems that way. Under UV we might be able to get some idea of how it was positioned. Turin shroud sort of thing.’
Savage left Oliver and wandered back the way she had come. A third CSI knelt on the floor near the entrance and he beckoned Savage over, pointing to a set of muddy footprints.
‘They are good prints and we believe the church was cleaned yesterday so they could well belong to whoever brought her here.’
‘They are certainly too large for the flower lady.’
‘Yup. And the print is something like a welly boot.’
The CSI told her they would be doing a fingertip search of the church once Rod Oliver had finished taking his photographs. In the meantime she could walk around if she didn’t touch anything and kept away from the entrance, the aisle and the chancel.
Savage moved towards the rear of the church to view the whole tableau. At the back there were several stacks of chairs and a little play area with a soft rug and some plastic toys she thought would have occupied Jamie for precisely two and a half minutes. Next to the play area the font stood atop a stone pedestal. The font itself was an elaborate marble affair with many carvings on the outside. The wooden lid lay half-open, balanced on the edge in a precarious position.
Savage reached to move the lid back into place before remembering she shouldn’t touch anything. Then something soft and white inside the font caught her eye. Material of some kind. She peered in.
The lid cast a dark shadow but she could distinguish what the material was now. Cotton. A pair of white cotton knickers and a plain white cotton bra. Something else too, wrapped in the knickers, reddish-pink with little rivulets of blood. Something resembling a small piece of steak if you wanted a slim-line dinner for one.
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Monday 8th November. 10.14 am
Despite the latest developments Savage had managed to take Sunday afternoon off. She had been glad to spend half a day away from the case at home with the kids. They had played some board games, romped in the garden, made a big chocolate cake and watched a DVD. The rest of the weekend had been taken up with administration. These days each case produced a mountain of tasks to complete, forms to fill in and procedure that had to be followed. Hardin had dumped the lot on her, pleading a weekend long engagement he couldn’t get out of. Golf, Savage suspected.
Monday morning brought her back to earth with a bump. The elation from the conclusion of the
Leash
case was proving short-lived now operation
Zebo
had another body to contend with. Over the weekend more staff had been drafted in and the incident room was becoming rather crowded. An extra-large photograph of Simone Ashton now adorned the main whiteboard. Blonde tresses, cuddly jumper, a pout on her lips like she had blown the room a ‘thank you’ kiss. And startling eyes, deep blue, intoxicating. Those eyes had seen the killer when she had been picked up, when she had willingly gone with him. Those eyes had gazed upon someone who had reassured her. Those eyes had been deceived. But by who?
The post-mortem on Simone had taken place over the weekend and Nesbit confirmed signs of freezing were present. Worse, the girl’s mouth had been mutilated with a knife and Nesbit had identified the piece of flesh Savage had discovered in the church font as the girl’s tongue. Nesbit had also, in his words, ‘double fast-tracked’ the toxicology. The results only served to further dampen the mood: As with Kelly, Simone’s hair had traces of GHB in and the segmentation analysis suggested that she had only lived for between seven to fourteen days after it was administered.
‘Alice Nash went missing two weeks ago this afternoon. Time is running out. We need a lead and fast.’ Savage sat at a desk with Calter and Enders, indulging in a spot of brainstorming. ‘Kelly, Simone, possibly Alice. All disappeared without any sign of an abduction. No struggle, nobody notices anything, in broad daylight?’
‘They knew the abductor?’ Enders said.
‘Thank you, Patrick, that much is obvious. But the problem is who?’
‘There are so few male staff at these places. We’ve eliminated them all.’ Enders scanned a printout of names and Calter peered over at the sheet.
‘Different places anyway,’ Calter said. ‘We are looking for connections. Someone who can access all the nurseries and who arouses no suspicion.’
‘OfSTED?’ Enders said, a half-smile on his face.
‘I want you to check when they made their inspections and get a list of the people involved,’ Savage answered. ‘No stone as they say.’
Enders groaned and now Savage went off on one. She wanted lists of cleaners, caretakers, plumbers, builders, entertainers, anyone who might have cause to visit more than one of the nurseries. She got up and crossed the room to one of the whiteboards on which she drew a checkerboard of lines.
‘Names of nurseries along the top, possibles down the side, a cross where we get a result. Two crosses and we are interested, more than two and we have a definite suspect. We put the data in the system and this is what the results will look like graphically. The important thing will be not to miss anybody.’
‘They’ll have been CRB’d, ma’am,’ Calter said.
‘Good, the CRB check will make it all the easier to find them and eliminate them.’
‘How are we going to be sure we get everyone?’
‘We will start with the accounts. Staff and other workers will all get paid. Anyone from outside doing work at the nursery, like builders for instance, send in invoices and the details will be in the ledger. After that we can develop any other possibles. Like OfSTED.’
‘Ma’am?’ Enders said. ‘One group of people who use the nurseries won’t have been CRB checked and that is the parents.’
‘You are right and we mustn’t overlook them. But the nurseries should hold accurate records so we will be able to see any correlations.’
‘You think some dad took a fancy to one of the girls?’ Calter asked.
‘That is entirely plausible.’
‘At different nurseries?’
‘People move house, children are unhappy, lots of reasons to change nurseries.’
‘But you think a parent could do what this guy has done?’
Savage paused. Parents killed, of course they did, but in this situation? You drop your little Jake off, wait outside and when one of the girls comes off duty you pick her up, take her somewhere and rape and kill her?
‘I would hope not, but if you put a stop sign at the end of an avenue you can’t drive down the road can you? We can’t start with any preconceived ideas about who we are dealing with.’
At that moment DS Riley came into the incident room. He stood at the door with his hands on his hips, out of breath. He had sweat on his forehead and worry on his face, but excitement in his eyes.
‘Ma’am, someone got stabbed on the terraces below the Hoe last night.’
‘So I heard.’ A stabbing wasn’t unusual. Neither, for that matter, was a glassing, a bloody good kicking or anyone of the other possible ways to hurt someone when you’d had one too many and somebody had knocked your drink over, glanced at your missus or just stepped on your toes. Late night Plymouth did violence like West End London did shows.
‘The victim is one Ben Robbins. He happens to be Simone Ashton’s boyfriend.’ Riley stood with his hands on his hips, trying to get his breath back. ‘And we have a witness.’
*
When Riley explained the witness they’d found was Done That Danny, a well-known police time-waster, Savage sent Enders off to deal with taking a statement. Danny’s evening meal often consisted of a bag of soggy chips washed down with half a dozen cans of Tenants Super, so it wouldn’t be altogether surprising if the lead turned out to be nothing but a drink induced fantasy. Something to get Danny a bit of attention and maybe some free biscuits and a cup of tea, five sugars.
Enders had trooped off to the cliff-side terraces wearing the sort of hang-dog expression Savage was used to from her junior officers when put on house-to-house duties, but he called through breathless and excited an hour later and insisted Savage ought to see what he had found.
She had dutifully got in a car and driven to the Hoe to find out what Enders was on about. He stood at the gap in the wall where Simone’s boyfriend had been attacked and he led her down a twisting path toward the sea.
Danny waited on the beach, hands in the pockets of his threadbare raincoat, head bowed, his greasy black hair shaking off the drizzle. He had an expression of sublime resignation on his face, a look Savage had seen many times before on the faces of those used to having the world push down on them day after day. It was a weary acceptance of the way things were, a humility in the face of greater powers, a perceptive understanding of the fact that although things would happen and the years would pass, in the end nothing would ever change.
‘Tolds yur, dinna I?’ Danny raised his head and smiled, touching his cap with his hand in a deferential manner belonging to another century, another era.
‘Told us what, Danny?’ Savage said.
‘Tolds yur guys about the flash and seeing the knifing. I saw a man with one of those dickable cameras. Flash, and then I heards a scuffle and fawt that’s one of them poofters getting buggered, I did.’
‘Sometimes used as a cruising area, ma’am,’ Enders said.
‘Yes, I know. So what is this about a camera?’
‘Well, it wasn’t one of those poofters, was it? No, it was attempted murder by camera, Mrs Savage. That’s what I was trying to tell your boys, only they wouldn’t believe me.’
‘OK, let’s get this straight, what exactly did you see?’
‘I was sitting on my bench up there ‘aving a leetle drink, trying not to get me head blown off by the fireworks.’ Danny gestured up at the terracing. ‘Then I sees a white flash and I thinks who’s messing me evenin’ up? So I jumps up and has a good look. That’s when I sees it.’
‘What, Danny? You saw what?’
‘I sees blood, Mrs Savage. That’s when I thinks that’s a pretty amazing camera, something I ‘aven’t seen before.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘I runs. I don’t forget me beer, mind you, but I gets out of there quick. I heads into town and I don’t stop until I gets to me spot at the back of the Sainsbury’s car park. Then I sleeps with scary dreams.’
Scary dreams and cardboard boxes, Savage thought.
‘Ma’am?’ It was Enders. ‘The long and the short of the story is that Danny told me about this camera flash he saw. Now there were a lot of people on the Hoe taking pictures of the fireworks and it could have been Danny saw one of them or an explosion from a rocket or something. However, Danny was insistent and he said he could prove his story was true.’
‘I did, Mrs Savage. I told Detective Constable Patrick that I knew where the killing-camera was because the man had dropped it.’
‘
What?
’
‘I came down to the beach with Danny and we hunted around until I found this wedged in a crevice just above the tide line.’
Enders reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a compact digital camera, Canon brand.
‘What is really amazing is the camera is still working after tumbling down here.’ Enders fiddled with the controls through the plastic and the screen on the back lit up. A hand was reaching out, partially obscuring a face. The face of Ben Robbins, Simone Ashton’s boyfriend.
‘Bloody hell, Patrick. Good work. You too, Danny.’
There’s more, ma’am.’ Enders flicked a control on the camera and navigated through a series of images.
‘Oh God, oh no!’
It was Simone Ashton herself. She was reclining in some kind of weird chair, all black plastic and shiny stainless steel, the sort of thing you might find in a hospital or maybe a prison. Her arms were tied above her head, her legs apart, her feet restrained on some kind of footrests with leather straps. She was naked and the look of absolute terror on the girl’s face was something Savage would never forget.
*
By the time Savage got home that night Jamie had gone to bed.
‘Shattered. Not him, me,’ Stefan said as Savage came into the kitchen.