Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage woke with a sense of loss and sadness. Numb. The way she always felt after the dream. The last nightmare had been months ago, but if anything that made the shock more acute. She rolled over to look at the bedside clock, groaned at the time, and then saw the message light on the phone blinking. She sighed as she sat up to swing her legs over the edge of the bed. She would play the message in a moment, but first she wanted to check on the children.
The morning light filtered into the house, the weak light of a stormy autumn day. Savage peered through the landing window into the garden where sheets of rain lashed down and saplings whipped back and forth in the wind. Beyond the garden the ground dropped to the sea where a mist of spray rose and fell with every wave that hit the shore. Farther away, out across Plymouth Sound, a couple of tankers and a navy supply vessel lay anchored behind the shelter of the mile-long breakwater that cut off the roadstead from the open sea. Huge rollers crashed over the breakwater rocks as the storm tried to batter the city into submission.
She climbed the stairs to the suite of rooms where the kids slept and paused at the door to Clarissa’s old room, now used as an office, and the familiar twinge down in the pit of her stomach returned. She closed her eyes for a moment and there, right on the edge of her consciousness, she heard the little ding-ding of a bicycle bell. When she opened her eyes she was almost tempted to go to the window and look out, thinking she might see Clarissa riding in circles on the patio. Silly. Life went on, things got easier, but they never got put right. She shook her head and went to check on Samantha and Jamie. Of course they were fine. Samantha beginning to wake, a tangle of red hair painting the pillow, her limbs akimbo and the bedclothes half on the floor. No doubt she would soon be protesting about having to get up and dressed. The scattering of teen mags, the posters on the walls, glitzy clothing and the mess on the floor said the room belonged to a fifteen year old. Savage had to remind herself that Samantha was only thirteen, still her baby girl for a few more years yet.
In the adjoining room the mess belonged to Jamie. He’d come along only six years ago, time that seemed to be measured in a mere blink. Unexpected, unplanned, it had surprised Savage how much she loved him. Not a love she’d had to grow and nurture like she had with Samantha and Clarissa, but an instant, protective love as powerful as it was scary. Savage moved over to the bed where Jamie lay curled in a tight ball, knees pulled up to his face, almost as she had left him the previous night. He reminded Savage of a hedgehog hibernating for the winter, protected from anything outside its own little world.
It was Sunday, so she would let them sleep some more. She would go downstairs and defrost some bagels, make tea, grab some orange juice, jam and butter and carry the whole lot to her bedroom where they could cuddle up and watch the storm develop through the big window that looked out across the sea. When Pete was home they’d do the same, and Savage reckoned it was good to stick to the routine when he was away. Keeping the children sane and secure while he was on patrol was something they had both agreed was important. Groundwork, her own mother had called it. With strong enough roots a tree could stand any gale, she had once said.
Down in the kitchen the base station on the phone blinked. She pressed the button on the unit and the Irish lilt of DC Patrick Enders rang out. His upbeat tone wouldn’t have been out of place introducing a programme on a children’s television channel, but the grim contents of the message belied his cheerfulness: a woman’s body had been discovered over at Wembury beach. As the DC recounted the details, Savage wondered what kind of tragedy this might represent and for whom. Was somebody somewhere waiting for a knock on the door to tell them what had happened to their loved one? Or – more depressingly – was the woman unloved and not missed? Enders didn’t elaborate other than to say that a recovery operation was going to take place at the next low tide and Detective Superintendent Hardin had requested Savage attend.
She’d have to phone Stefan and ask if he would come round for a few hours to mind the kids. Sunday was supposed to be his day off, but looking out at the rough water in the Sound Savage didn’t think he would be racing.
Finding Stefan had been a godsend for the family. They had discovered him one August morning down at the marina moping about waiting for the Fastnet Race yachts to finish. He was meant to have been crewing on one of the boats but had broken his arm the week before. Chatting to Savage he had revealed he was from Sweden and a primary school teacher by trade. Really though, he lived for sailing. One thing led to another and two weeks later Stefan had been installed in the granny annexe as the family’s unofficial au pair. Now, with Pete away commanding his frigate on an Atlantic voyage and Savage working long hours, having him around to help out made all the difference.
Savage deleted the message on the phone and then glanced at the fridge where a printout of the week’s tides hung clamped in the jaws of a green and purple magnetic dinosaur. Low tide Devonport was eleven thirty-seven. She smiled to herself; still time enough for those bagels.
Rain continued to drive in from the southwest in bands and the low clouds threatened to roll back the daybreak. The drive from her house to Wembury, a village a few miles to the southeast of Plymouth, had been treacherous. Water lay everywhere and twice Savage had to brake sharply to avoid fallen branches that half-blocked the road. With some relief she pulled into the car park at the beach and stopped the engine. Now the sheer force of the wind became apparent and the car shuddered as a gust spilled up from the shoreline, the rain drumming the windows even harder. She remembered back to a spring day many years before when she and Pete had been to a friend’s wedding at the church on the cliffs high above the beach. The view had been spectacular, with the sea looking an impossible holiday-brochure blue, sparkling in the bright, early sun. With the joy and laughter of the occasion the place had seemed like something close to heaven. In late October, with yet another deep Atlantic low moving in, nirvana lay out of reach, redemption impossible. Unless you were already dead, that was.
On the other side of the car park a huddle of uniforms stood next to the shuttered café. They were there to prevent people from going down to the beach or along the coast path. Not that they had anything to do. The blue and white tape they had strung up oscillated in the wind, achieving nothing much other than to catch the attention of the occupants of an arriving car, the kids in the back seats pressing their camera phones to the windows in the hope of capturing a glimpse of something sordid or shocking. An ambulance was parked next to the café too, its light strobing in the gloom, the crew standing at the rear with their fluorescent coats drawn around them.
Savage got out of the car and retrieved her waterproofs from the boot, both jacket and trousers, since the rain was near horizontal. The jacket tried to become a kite before she managed to zip it up and pull up the hood, stuffing wayward strands of red hair in at the sides and pulling the cords tight around her face. She walked across the car park and ducked under the tape held up for her by one of the bobbies.
‘Morning, ma’am. You’ll find a grim business down there.’ The young officer’s face appeared pale and drained of colour. Savage wasn’t sure if that was because of the weather or what he had seen.
‘Thanks. Nice day, huh?’ Savage smiled at him. ‘Who’s attending?’
‘DI Davies.’ He spat the name as if he had dirt on his tongue. ‘TAG are here as well. D section. With their bloody big RIB.’
The Tactical Aid Group provided operational support, with D section responsible for the marine side of things. Inspector Nigel Frey led the team, and as an officer she rated him highly. Like Savage and her husband he was a keen sailor and they’d raced each other many times out on the Sound, the inevitable disagreements that close-quarter yacht racing brought always resolved later over a pint. Pity about Davies though.
Savage nodded and walked down the path leading to the beach. Only it wasn’t really a beach, just a strip of wet, grey sand surrounded by jagged rocks and half-covered by seaweed and a few plastic bottles, soggy chip wrappings and other debris. Popular with locals in the summer, and on fine winter days a good spot for walking the dog, today the place was deserted.
She continued across the sand, dodging windblown balls of foam that rolled along like tumbleweed swept down the street in an old Western movie. On the other side of the beach she had to clamber up onto a plateau of rock. The seaweed, slime and the spray in the air made progress across the rock difficult and twice she had to drop to her hands and knees. Eventually she reached a finger of sand threading its way into the plateau from the sea. She jumped down off the rock and approached the four men standing in a group: DI Philip Davies, DC Little John Jackson – one of Davies’s cronies, and two white-suited CSI officers. Davies kept his back to her as she neared, a dig suggesting that even though he held the same rank as her he thought he was by far and away the superior detective. His attitude didn’t bother Savage. Silly little boys played silly little games.
Davies turned in time so as not to appear too rude. He sneered at her from a rough, pocked face which had a nose that had been broken more than once.
‘Charlotte, dunno what you think you are doing here?’ He scratched at the two-day stubble on his chin, grey like his hair, and shook his head. ‘This is murder. Not a few girls getting their knickers all soiled because they had a bit too much to drink and went home with the wrong guy.’
‘Cut the crap, Phil.’ Savage pushed past and looked into the sea where a couple of divers bobbed at the outer edge of a huge, rough chunk of concrete wall, a remnant of wartime defences. The waves here were smaller than back at the beach because a lee was formed by the Mewstone, a small island lying half a mile out to sea. At low tide the rocky ledges leading to the shore became exposed, providing some protection from the open ocean, but even so a heavy swell rocked the divers up and down and threatened to pulverise them against the concrete. Twenty metres offshore the dive support RIB manoeuvred back and forth holding station like a concerned mother hen. At the helm Nigel Frey raised one hand to wave at her. She waved back; the howling wind made conversation over that distance impossible.
Some sort of pipe, perhaps a metre in diameter, lay half-sunken in the churning water. It emerged from the concrete and ran out into the sea and the divers concentrated their efforts around its end. The swell covered and uncovered a submerged object trapped in the pipe, an expanse of black plastic and something pale, white and waterlogged.
‘Low tide,’ Davies explained. ‘A fisherman spotted her late last night. What the fuck they were doing fishing out here at that time in this weather I don’t know.’
‘Her?’
‘Can’t see now but a few minutes ago you could. Long hair, tits, or what remains of them.’
Jackson tried to emulate Davies’s sneer and muttered something that caused them both to laugh. Savage guessed what he had said was offensive, but a gust of wind snatched the words into the air, no doubt hiding a multitude of sins.
‘Anyway they say she’s a woman,’ continued Davies, nodding at the divers. ‘And I don’t think she came down here for a picnic.’
One of the divers first swam and then walked to the shore where a CSI officer handed him some sort of tool resembling a giant pair of pliers. He waded back in and disappeared beneath the surface, bubbles of air rising round the pipe and the water boiling in response to unseen movement.
‘Huh?’ Savage turned to the guy who had produced the tool.
‘Bolt croppers,’ the man said. ‘She was wrapped in bin liners, bound with tape and then chained to the grating.’
‘Grating?’
‘There’s a metal grille back in the pipe. About a metre in. The body is well jammed in the pipe now the tide has turned.’
The diver surfaced and flung the tool back to the beach and he and his partner began to wrestle the body from the pipe entrance and towards the shore. Using each wave for assistance they half-swam and then half-waded, dragging the inert mass behind them.
‘Shit.’ Jackson swallowed hard and turned away for a moment. Davies just smirked.
Between the strips of black plastic and silver tape the body appeared to be in a considerable state of decay. Crabs or friction had torn away vast swathes of skin and only puffy and bloated patches remained. Where the skin should have been pieces of stringy flesh and muscle had gone white in the water the way a boil-in-the-bag fish changes colour when you cook it. Shrimps and lice crawled across limbs, and the rotten lips parted to reveal a manic smile.
The divers had the body in the shallows now and it lay face up, the belly swollen with gas making it look like a stranded whale. As each wave came in to the beach it moved in the water, the arms and legs rising and falling like a floundering swimmer captured in slow motion. Now Savage could tell the corpse belonged to a woman but it was difficult to know much else since the water-wrinkled skin gave no clue as to her age.
With some difficulty, the divers, along with the CSI officers, began to move the body out of the water and onto a waiting body bag. Savage stepped forward to make a closer inspection.
‘Jesus, look at the hole in her head!’ Jackson had moved closer too and Savage understood why he was regretting it. A lot of the hair on the scalp had gone and white bone was showing through. Just above the right temple was a neat, round hole about the size of a penny.
Savage noticed a flash of metal around the neck. A little cross on a silver chain. Blind faith had never appeared so pathetic, she thought.
‘Could you?’ she asked one of the white-suited CSIs, pointing at the cross.
He bent over and held the cross in his gloved hand, turning it over to reveal an inscription.
‘RSO,’ the CSI said.
‘Rosina Salgado Olivárez,’ Savage said. ‘Our missing student.’
‘Bugger. Hardin will be livid,’ Davies grunted. He said nothing else. Just pulled his jacket collar up against the driving rain and stomped away, Jackson scampering after him like a terrier after its lowlife master.