‘So the two killings are linked?’ Hardin’s hand hovered over his mouse, an almost imperceptible shake visible. A flush of red had seeped in across his nose and cheeks and Savage wondered if he was already imagining possible headlines for the local papers.
‘Linked is not the right word,’ Savage said. ‘Related is better.’
‘But the picture is not actually of the Olivárez girl?’
‘The likeness is uncanny at first, although when you look closer you can tell it’s not her. The photograph isn’t recent for one thing. On the back is a Boots Chemist watermark so we scanned a copy and sent it off to their head office. According to them the logo is from the late seventies or early eighties.’
‘Bloody hell. Are they sure about those dates?’
‘Pretty much. We are sending them a sample of the photograph so they can do some further analysis. Unfortunately they can’t say which of their labs did the developing. As for the content in the picture, well, you have seen for yourself.’
‘The girl is standing half-facing the camera. White underwear. The bed in the background and the other furniture suggest a bedroom.’
‘Yes. Appears to be a candid shot too, so not posed.’
‘But where and who? And what the hell has it got to do with the Leash case?’
‘Maybe nothing.’
‘Or maybe everything.’
Savage wriggled on the chair, smoothing her skirt and flicking a piece of fluff to the floor. She didn’t want to think about the possible connections because if true they had a murderer or murderers who had now killed twice. In all likelihood that meant they would do so again.
‘Right, Charlotte, I can tell you Zebo is going to be ramped up. Garrett stays on Leash but will lose some bodies to you. I will be SIO, but you’ll get a fair crack of the whip.’
Hardin began to run down a checklist on the screen in front of him, clicking items with his mouse as he went. He started waffling on about the PR angle, telling Savage everything had to go through the press officer. She wondered if he was more concerned with the image being projected than catching the killer.
‘I don’t need to tell you of the imperative to handle this one with care. We have already got massive media interest due to the discovery that Rosina Olivárez was murdered and now this.’
‘They like the naked girl bit. Spices things up.’
‘Creepy bastards. If I had my way I’d release nothing, keep them in the dark. It doesn’t make our job any easier having them snooping around, so the less we tell them the better. OK?’ Hardin looked at Savage, his head cocked on one side, his eyes expectant.
‘I’d like to put a national appeal out for David Forester to come forward.’
‘What? Damn!’ Hardin seemed to mull the idea over for a moment and a pained expression spread across his face. A finger quivered over the mouse button as he weighed up the pros and cons. ‘Do you think an appeal could work?’
‘It might. He has been on the run for weeks now and must be getting pretty fed up. If he’s not fed up himself then I bet the person or people who are hiding him are. From what Riley came up with it seems as if Mr Forester wasn’t much liked.’
‘OK, go ahead.’ Hardin did some one-fingered typing and then paused. ‘Can he be connected with Leash?’
‘I don’t know. We have got nothing to link him yet. Forester is involved in all of this somewhere, but I’m not sure he is Kelly Donal’s killer. As one of my DCs pointed out to me it doesn’t seem his style.’
‘Which is?’
‘GBH. In your face aggro. If he had killed Kelly, by accident or premeditated, she would have had bruises all over her. Then he’d have dumped the body in the river or the sea. Taking her over to Malstead Down doesn’t fit with what we know about him.’
‘What about this photography link?’
‘Forester was a member of the same club Kelly’s dad belonged to, the Plymouth Snappers. The club is legit, hundreds of members, everything above board. Anyway, according to Forester’s mother, he had moved into video, which explains the download Riley found out about at Tamar Yacht Fitters and the information coming out of North Prospect. It seems as if he was part of a porn movie-making operation. We don’t know where Kelly’s murder fits in as yet.’
‘Some sort of snuff film?’
‘It’s the stuff of fiction, respectfully, sir. There is very little evidence of real snuff movies ever having been made. Certainly not for distribution.’
Hardin was quiet again, his big frame still, an elephant acting like a snail. Then he spoke with a whisper.
‘You alright about this, Charlotte? I mean Clarissa, Kelly and everything?’
The sudden interest in her personal life took her aback for a moment. She had never considered Hardin as in any way empathetic. Perhaps he had picked up something from one of the management weekends he always seemed to be attending. Or perhaps she had misjudged him and the question showed genuine concern. Either way she was grateful for the chance to put the record straight and to stifle the idea that she wasn’t up to the task because of her overemotional behaviour. Such a label was unlikely to be applied to a man.
‘Fine. I am just going to do my job.’
‘Ah, er … excellent.’ Hardin shuffled some papers on the desk in front of him and made a couple of clicks with his mouse as if Savage was an item to be marked ‘done’.
The meeting was done too and Savage left Hardin to his liquorice stick and bottled water lunch.
Back in the Major Crimes suite a whole bank of the overhead lights had gone on the blink, leaving the windows and the monitor screens as the only source of illumination. The weak grey daylight and the computer glare washed out all the colour in the room and left people looking pale and half-dead. An electrician stood on a stepladder and fiddled with a ceiling panel. Savage went to her desk where a Post-it note stuck on the monitor said that John Layton had called. The CSI had got some information about the tyre tracks in the field at Malstead Down. Savage called him back.
‘Bridgestone,’ Layton said. ‘D689 size 265/70S15.’
‘Don’t keep me in suspense, John. Give me the make and model of car,’ said Savage.
‘What do you think we are, miracle workers?’
‘To put it bluntly, yes.’
‘The tyre is a road type, often fitted on a late model long wheel base Mitsubishi Shogun. We have checked the turning circle in the field and the other data indicate a Shogun as well.’
‘Anything else?’
‘The vehicle is black.’
‘How the hell did you find the colour from the tyre size?’
‘Didn’t. That would be a miracle. We had help from a piece of barbed wire in the fence. A tiny speck of paint got caught on a barb as it scraped down the side of the car. We are still waiting for the analysis on the sample, but I’ll bet my physics O Level the paint is from DuPont and commonly used by Mitsubishi.’
‘John, if you were here I would kiss you!’
‘I’m coming right over!’
Savage hung up with Layton laughing down the line and stood up to address the room. The information from Layton would go onto the system, but sometimes old-fashioned communication worked best. Her voice was instant, couldn’t be overlooked, nor misinterpreted.
‘Black Mitsubishi Shogun,’ Savage shouted out. ‘Ring bells with anyone?’
‘Boss,’ replied Riley. ‘Belongs to Forester. At least his employer told us Forester had one. Julie Meadows in North Prospect mentioned something about a 4x4 too. Need to check with DVLC.’
Riley was already tapping away at his keyboard, accessing the car licensing database. Meanwhile Calter looked worried, pale even, as if Savage had given her some news she really, really didn’t want to hear.
‘Jane? Have you got anything for me?’
‘Just checking, ma’am. Some detail I remember from yesterday.’ Now Calter was busy at a terminal as well, fingers a blur as she typed, tabbed and clicked. ‘Shit, I’m right! Alice Nash, the sixteen-year-old girl missing from Ashburton, we had her at number one on our misper list. Remember? She was seen accepting a lift from a man in a large black 4x4.’
‘A Shogun?’
‘The witness’s statement mentions a Japanese marque, so possibly.’
The clatter of keyboards stopped and a hush descended. A pin-drop silence lasted until Savage choked out a ‘well done everybody’ before slumping down in her chair to think on the implications of it all.
Forester had Alice Nash. Right now he might be raping her and soon she could be dead. Savage picked up the phone to call Hardin and hoped that given his lack of a proper lunch she wouldn’t find him in too bad a mood.
Alice tried not to breathe in too deeply because the room reeked of fermenting urine. She only had herself to blame. The glimmer of light coming from under the door had revealed a plastic bucket in one corner and she needed to go so she used it as a toilet. With nothing to act as a lid the air had become thick with the stench of piss.
A bad smell is the least of your worries, girl.
She still had no idea where she was. After she had tried the door and found it locked she crept back to the bed and pulled the duvet cover around her. Her limbs throbbed with a washed-out sort of tiredness, but the ache in her head wouldn’t let her sleep so she lay in the gloom thinking about her predicament.
You have been drugged and next you are going to be raped.
Sixteen years old, and mature for her age, she reckoned she dealt with most things that came her way in life. This was something else though, something beyond her experience. She hadn’t even had sex before, for God’s sake. Emotion welled up inside and she rubbed her eyes to try to stop the tears. She knew the first time would be brutal, a gang of men having her for their own pleasure with no regard for her feelings. She wished she had let Luke, her boyfriend, go further, because she loved him and now she would be spoilt. Maybe afterwards he wouldn’t want her anymore.
Afterwards. Would there be an afterwards?
The uncontrollable shaking returned, refusing to go away despite the warmth of the duvet.
Get a grip. Pull yourself together. If you are going to get through this you had better start thinking rationally and try to find a way out of here.
She stood up, letting the duvet fall from her, not caring about her nakedness now. The door didn’t offer any hope so she needed to find another exit. She couldn’t spot anything obvious, but the light from the door didn’t banish the deep shadows so she decided to try and work her way around the walls. Starting at the door she explored along one wall and the next, searching from floor level up to as high as she could reach with her fingertips. Along the third wall she found a set of doors to some sort of cupboard. Running her fingers over the wooden surface she discovered a little latch and she undid the bolt and opened the doors. Strange, the cupboard had no depth; the recess was only set a few inches into the wall and at the back her hand touched something smooth and cold. Then she realised why. The recess wasn’t a cupboard at all, it was a window with a pair of shutters on the inside.
No light shone through the glass. Nothing. Utter black. She ran her hands around the window. It had a metal frame but didn’t seem to open. She touched the glass again and noticed a slight texture and now she understood why no light was able to get through from outside: the glass had been painted.
Using a fingernail she started scratching at the paint until a pinprick of light flared in. She worked away and the paint began to flake and soon she had made a hole big enough to peek through. She pushed her face up against the glass, blinking against the harsh daylight on the other side.
She could see a green field bordered by a grey stone wall and beyond an area of woodland, the leaves of nearby trees all autumnal: burnt sienna, rust and gold. Behind those trees a dark forest of conifers climbed a steep hill. There was no sign of any other houses, no roads, no people. Her location must be remote, deep in the countryside.
Deep in the shit more like.
She focused on the ground below the window and realised she was on the second storey. If she smashed the window she would have to jump down ten feet or more and if she hadn’t sprained her ankle or worse she could run.
Where?
She scratched away at the paint again, expanding the hole until she had a better view of the back yard. A set of bean poles made a wigwam shape beside a neat row of raised beds not long dug over. A vegetable garden. In one corner a compost heap with a wheelbarrow upside down on top sat next to one of those dustbin incinerators with—
Shit!
A man stood throwing small sticks into the incinerator as flames licked out of the top. He had his back to Alice, but the black hair seemed somehow familiar. The fire roared away and the man kept feeding in sticks for a few minutes. Then he bent to pick up a cloth from a pile of rags on the ground, he held the material up to his nose and appeared to take several deep breaths before shaking his head and dropping the rag into the incinerator. Now he was stooping again and picking up something else, something bright red, an item of clothing. It looked like the blouse she had been wearing before—
Oh fuck!
It was the blouse she had been wearing, the one she had bought in the Debenhams’ summer sale. The pile of rags wasn’t rags at all, it was her clothing: her top, her cardigan, her jeans, her shoes, her underwear!
Alice turned from the window and collapsed on the mattress. She stifled a sob by biting her lip, but then the tears came and she let her emotions all out, just crying and crying and crying.
She must have drifted off to sleep because the next thing she was aware of was a sound at the door. A key turning in the lock. She grabbed the duvet and scampered under, like a snail retreating into its shell.
The door opened and a hand pushed a tray along the floor and into the room. The tray held a bowl of fruit – apples, bananas, grapes – and a bottle of spring water. The door swung shut.
‘Wait! Who are you? Please let me go!’ Alice jumped off the mattress and ran to the door.
Click. The key turned and footsteps walked off into the distance.