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He put the drink on a side table and lay back and closed his eyes. Memories swirled in his head. A dream of another garden, another time, a time when he had felt something. Felt something for someone. What was she? Seventeen, eighteen? He’d been younger, having turned fifteen a few weeks before. They’d been in the back garden, his parents out somewhere, Kendwick left behind as usual. The girl had been from across the street. Lithe, leggy, confident of what she wanted. Still, he’d scoffed when she’d suggested a game of hide and seek. Wasn’t that for kids? ‘Depends what you’re seeking, doesn’t it?’ she’d replied with a coy smile. So he’d stood there, counting …
Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred! Ready or not, here I come!
He whirls round, scanning the garden. Beginning to search. Over by the rose bushes? No! Standing straight behind the big old oak? No!! Hiding beneath the tarpaulin which covers the wood pile? No!!! Where on earth is she? He shakes his head and turns round once more. He spies the shed. Of course! He creeps over the lawn and clicks open the door. There she is!
Found you!
She doesn’t move. Just lies there, her eyes closed but a smile gracing her lips, her pretty summer dress rucked up round her waist, her knickers round her ankles. He steps inside the shed and pulls the door shut. Darkness. A slant of golden light from the crack in the door running up her thigh. He breathes in. The air tastes dry and dusty, but there’s a hint of something else too, something sweet and intoxicating. He slips one foot across the wooden floor, then another. Now he’s standing over her. Marvelling at her stillness. He lowers himself to the floor of the shed and lies beside her. She doesn’t move. He reaches out with his finger and traces a line on her thigh, following the shaft of light. His heart is beating ten to the dozen, his breathing coming in tiny little gulps. She, on the other hand, only betrays the fact she is alive with an almost imperceptible heave of her chest, her breasts swelling with each intake of air. She is passive but so very powerful. So utterly bewitching.
He pushes himself up and lies on top of her, trying to support himself with one hand while the other fumbles with his trousers. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, only knows that this was meant to be.
The girl’s eyelids flutter for a second as he enters her and then she sighs, a long exhalation of air, the breath warm on his face. Then she is still again and he’s the only one moving, his gasps now matching his rhythm, her face frozen but serene.
‘Oh God!’ he cries, as mere seconds later his body convulses. Now he falls on her in utter bliss and amazement, moaning in her ear, telling her that he loves her more than anything and will do so forever and ever and ever.
She says nothing and her eyes stay shut as he continues to whisper to her, to promise her his heart and soul. And then she blinks at a sound from outside.
Voices.
She pushes him off and stands, hurriedly pulling up her knickers and tidying her dress.
‘Stay,’ he pleads. ‘Stay with me!’
She shakes her head, nothing in her eyes but contempt. She moves across the shed, flings the door open, and vanishes into the garden.
He turns to the door, pulls it shut and then slumps back down to the floor. The moment has gone and he wonders if anything can recapture the feeling he had as she lay there beneath him.
The next day he goes to the girl’s house. Knocks on the door. Her mother answers. No, he can’t come in. Her daughter doesn’t want to see him. The mother raises her hand as if to shoo him away like a bothersome fly. He stares past her into the hallway where huge cardboard boxes sit in stacks. He can see a roll of carpet sticking from the door of the front room. The windows in the bay are bare, the curtains lying in neat folded piles. He gets it then. The family are moving. The girl is leaving. She tricked him.
Kendwick shook his head, pulling himself into the present and his current predicament. He reached for his glass and took a sip of his drink. The girl in the shed had engendered a terrible feeling of rejection, a feeling he’d known since he was a baby and she had reinforced.
‘Bitch,’ Kendwick said, not entirely sure if he was referring to the girl in the shed, the woman who’d smiled over the garden fence a few minutes ago or DI Savage. It didn’t really matter. They were all the same. Sweetness and light and flashing a smile or a bare patch of skin so they could take control of his emotions. And then, when they’d got what they wanted, they simply walked away, leaving him lusting after something he couldn’t have.
He’d learned to get the better of them by turning on the charm himself, but deep inside he couldn’t kid himself. He always felt weak when he saw a woman he desired, weak because of the power she held over him, weak at the thought of what he might be able to do to her. If, of course, she’d let him.
And if she wouldn’t let him?
Well, Malcolm Kendwick had ways of dealing with that.
Chapter Six (#ulink_d76eb13f-69f3-5f5f-814a-f5d291661e77)
Combestone Tor, Dartmoor. Saturday 22nd April. 4.43 p.m.
The Smith family liked to get out in the wilds on a weekend. It was part of the reason why Nathan and Jane Smith had decided to move to Devon. Weekend life before Devon, or BD, as Nathan put it, had involved a trip to the local park or, if they were lucky, an outing on the South Downs. Then, years ago now, Nathan had won a prize in a magazine competition. A Valentine’s weekend at the Gidleigh Park Hotel, on Dartmoor. The hotel was well out of their price range and the novelty of sleeping in a huge four-poster bed in a suite of rooms was wonderful. The place had a Michelin star and the food was, not surprisingly, out of this world. The break was only for two days, but the idea of a dirty weekend was fun and Nathan had imagined they would spend most of the time between the sheets. Jane had insisted on leaving the hotel, though. A stroll on the moor would burn off some of the calories and leave them re-energised and refreshed for the next bout of lovemaking.
Whatever, Nathan had thought. They’d been to Canada the previous year, South America the one before that. A walk on Dartmoor was hardly going to compare with Niagara Falls or Machu Picchu. And yet, when they’d ventured out into the cold February morning, the light had sparkled in an odd way. They’d driven up onto the moor where mist hung in the valleys as the sun brushed the tops of the tors. This wasn’t like the South Downs at all. There was nothing manicured about the countryside here. As they parked the car and got out and clambered up the heaving granite mass of Haytor, Nathan felt something stir deep inside. And when they stood on top of the rocks holding hands, he turned to his wife, and without really thinking, he said he’d like to live here. Me too, Jane had replied.
Neither of them had thought much more about the conversation until they’d driven to a nearby town and looked in an estate agent’s window. While for locals the prices might have seemed steep, for Nathan and Jane, who at the time lived in a nice Victorian semi-detached house in Guildford, nearly every property looked like an absolute steal.
After browsing the particulars for one idyllic place set in its own valley, Nathan’s hand strayed down to Jane’s stomach. He patted her.
‘Be better for him, wouldn’t it?’ Only the week before they’d come on the trip, Jane had announced she was pregnant. Nathan had been thrilled.
‘Or her,’ Jane said.
That had been over ten years ago. They made the move within six months of that February, shortly before their daughter Abigail had been born. Luka, their son, followed a year and a half later and now they were well settled, the South-East all but forgotten.
Today, the family were on an expedition to bag a couple of tors they hadn’t been to. The first, Combestone Tor, was slap bang up against a road, but Nathan had announced that driving to the tor was way too easy. They’d parked across the far side of the valley a good couple of miles away and walked over. Now, as they slogged up towards the tor, Luka was flagging.
‘Come on,’ Nathan said. ‘Iron rations when we get to the top.’
Ever the clever one in the family, Abi piped up. ‘I thought you said eat before you’re hungry?’
‘Stop before you’re tired, wrap up before you’re cold, eat before you’re hungry.’ Luka repeated the words like a mantra. ‘Abi’s right, Dad.’
‘OK then.’ Nathan stopped and reached into his pocket for a packet of glucose tablets. ‘Time for go-faster sweets.’
‘Yeah!’ Luka said.
‘And the first one to touch the rocks gets an extra biscuit.’ Nathan handed out the sweets and smiled at his wife. ‘On your marks, get set …’
Neither Abi nor Luka waited for the ‘go’. Instead, they sprinted away from their parents, attacking the hill with an energy born from youth rather than experience. Nathan and Jane laughed and began to plod up the slope, knowing they’d catch up with their children before long.
‘Great this,’ Jane said. ‘Precious moments, never to be repeated.’
‘Bloody good job.’ Nathan paused for a second and put his hands on his hips. ‘I’m all out of puff.’
‘There’s a solution for that. We need to get out more often, get you fit.’ Jane moved across to her husband and looped her arm round his waist. She pushed her fingers into the first sign of his middle-aged spread and then moved her hand down to Nathan’s crotch and gave a little squeeze. ‘There are other benefits to being fit too.’
‘Stuff sex.’ Nathan smiled. ‘Right now I’d settle for a cup of tea and a scone with plenty of cream and jam.’
‘Mum! Dad!’ Abi’s voice drifted down towards them. Nathan turned his head to where his daughter stood atop the tor. She waved her arms. ‘Hide and seek! Come and find us!’
With that she dropped out of sight, disappearing behind the huge hunk of granite.
‘Shit. That’s all we need.’
Nathan and Jane strolled the short distance to the rocks. Nathan suggested they should split up, Jane going to the right and him to the left. Once his wife had disappeared round the side of the tor, Nathan unhooked the rucksack from his back and dropped it to the floor. He opened the top flap, pulled out a bottle of squash and took several swigs of liquid. Then he packed the drink away, hoisted up the rucksack and set off again.
‘Ready or not, here I come!’
Instead of circling the rocks, he headed straight to the tor and began to clamber up. He pulled himself onto a large boulder and then edged round between two more until he could climb up the rock his daughter had been on a couple of minutes before. He stood for a moment and then slowly turned on the spot. He saw his wife on the far side of the tor but there was no sign of the children. He jumped down and began to navigate between the granite columns. He thought about putting on a monster voice, but then reasoned against it. Luka, in particular, might panic and slip and hurt himself. Instead he repeated his shout of ‘ready or not, here I come’.
He’d just squeezed into a narrow passage between two rocks when he heard something which made his blood curdle. A scream. Long, drawn-out and unmistakably belonging to his daughter.
‘Abi!’ Nathan yelled as he pushed through the gap and then, finding himself with more space, spun round trying to find the direction the scream had come from. ‘I’m coming, Abi. Stay where you are.’
Nathan scrambled up and over a couple of smaller boulders, at the same time thanking God he’d packed the first-aid kit in his rucksack that morning. He just hoped his daughter hadn’t hurt herself too badly.
The scream came again, this time accompanied by the voice of his son.
‘Dad! Come quickly.’
Nathan hauled himself up a final piece of granite and saw, as he did so, that his son and daughter stood together on a large plateau of rock. Relief flooded over him as he realised that neither appeared to be injured. The relief quickly turned to anger.
‘What are you doing?’ he said. ‘I’ve told you we don’t joke about being hurt when we’re on the moor. Fooling around’s OK at home but when—’
‘Dad!’ Luka shouted again and pointed into a large crack between two boulders. ‘Down there.’
For a moment Nathan felt a wash of horror as he wondered if it had been his wife who’d slipped and fallen. But then Jane appeared a few metres away. She moved across to the children and stared down at where Luka was pointing.
‘My God!’ Jane reached her arms out and turned Abi and Luka away.
‘What is it?’ Nathan took a couple of strides and jumped across to the plateau the three of them were standing on. He looked at his wife for an explanation. ‘A sheep or something?’
Jane shook her head as she began to push the children down from the rock. ‘We need to phone the police.’
‘The police?’ Nathan stepped forward to peer into the shadows. He squinted and tried to take in what he was seeing. A hand with bright red fingernails, an arm leading to a bare shoulder and the round curve of a partially exposed breast, the skin pale and white. The rest of the woman’s body was hidden from sight beneath an overhanging ledge and for a split second Nathan found himself craning his neck in an effort to see more. Then he changed his mind and hurriedly stepped away, following his wife and kids down off the rocks and at the same time pulling his phone from his pocket.
Early Saturday evening found Savage standing in the kitchen with a glass of white wine in one hand, a bottle in the other. Pete worked vegetables back and forth in a large wok on the cooker, steam billowing up into the extractor hood. For somebody who’d spent several years commanding a frigate and having all his meals prepared for him, he wasn’t a bad cook. He reached out for the bottle of wine and took it from Savage, pouring a generous measure into the wok.
‘Careful,’ Savage said. ‘You’ll get the kids tipsy.’
‘Good, might help Jamie sleep,’ Pete said. ‘He seems to spend most of the small hours in our bed these days.’
‘Nightmares. It’s common enough at his age.’ Savage took a sip of her wine, thinking she could do with some sort of sedative too. Malcolm Kendwick had wormed his way into her dreams, his grinning face miraculously appearing as soon as she shut her eyes at night. ‘He’ll get over it.’
‘Well, I hope—’ Pete stopped mid-sentence as Savage’s work mobile rang. He cocked his head and sighed. ‘There goes another evening.’
By no means every call to her phone required immediate action, but Pete had an uncanny knack of guessing which did. Ten to seven on a Saturday evening, and it was a pretty good bet he was right. Savage moved over and picked the phone up from the kitchen table.
‘DI Savage,’ she said.
‘It’s DC Calter, ma’am,’ the voice on the end of the line said. ‘We’ve got a suspicious death on the moor. A young woman. From the sound of things it wasn’t an accident.’
Savage blinked, seeing Kendwick’s face fashion itself in the steam from the wok, mocking her for a second before dispersing. She listened as Calter explained the details and then hung up.
‘A pound in the cop box then?’ Pete said, referring to a piggy bank Jamie had plonked on the kitchen table one evening when Savage had been out. The fund, added to whenever Savage was called away, provided Jamie with crisps and sweets, a consolation – albeit a poor one – for the absence of his mother.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Savage said, nodding at her husband before knocking back her glass of wine and walking from the room.
The girl had been found at Combestone Tor, a lone set of rocks standing high above the steep-sided River Dart valley. Savage drove at speed along the A38 to Buckfastleigh and then turned off and negotiated the narrow lanes up onto the moor. Forty minutes after leaving home she was driving across the dam of the Avon reservoir and following a winding road which climbed towards the tor. As she neared the top, the last rays of sunlight were caressing the tip of the tor as the day took its leave. It was as if rocks were being devoured by a great black shadow, the warmth and brilliance of life being slowly extinguished. She knew photographers called this time of day the golden hour, a time when the light was warmer and redder. For police officers the term had a quite different meaning. The golden hour referred to the period immediately following the discovery of a crime. During this time information was available to the police in high volume and every effort had to be made to secure that information. Decisions made now would have consequences for the investigation later. Savage wondered about her own role and whether she would make the right choices.
The odd jumble of rocks which comprised the tor lay just a short walk from a gravel car park, but she could see that John Layton, their senior Crime Scene Investigator, was taking no chances. The road had been blocked off some two hundred metres from the tor where a couple of laybys provided parking for police vehicles. Hundreds of metres of blue and white tape lay pegged to the ground, the tape extending in a rough circle around the tor. Savage stopped the car and got out. DC Jane Calter was standing next to one of Layton’s white vans flirting with a young-looking CSI. The CSI had pulled his mask away from his face, but was otherwise fully clad in a white protective suit. He laughed at something Calter said, the laugh curtailed as Savage walked across.
‘Evening, ma’am,’ DC Calter said, her strong South-West accent somehow at one with the rural surroundings. She nodded a greeting, her blonde bob curling round the edges of her face. Calter was late twenties but highly experienced. An old head on young shoulders. She gestured towards the tor where the rocks were now almost devoid of sunlight, the shadow line moving across the moor on the other side of the valley. ‘Just waiting to be allowed up there. They’re finger-tipping a route in and once they’ve done that we can go through.’
Savage nodded and then turned to the CSI. ‘Anything for me?’
‘A female,’ the CSI said. ‘Late teens or early twenties and she’s in a sparkly dress. Not the kind of thing you’d be wearing up here. No ID or anything like that. No obvious signs of trauma, but she’s wedged down in a deep crevice so we won’t know much about cause of death until we get her out.’ The CSI waved at a colleague a hundred metres away. ‘Look, you can go over there now. Keep between the strips of tape.’
Savage thanked the CSI and she and Calter went to get kitted up. Ten minutes later and they ambled up between the two lines of tape towards the distinct clusters of rock, the tallest twice the height of a man. Over by one, several white-suited figures worked in a line, circumnavigating the rocks like a giant clock hand. At the tor, an aluminium ladder leaned against a pillar of granite. Savage’s eyes followed the ladder upward to the top of the rock where another man stood surveying the view. Like the other CSIs he wore a white suit with bootlets and blue gloves. Unlike them he had a grubby Tilley hat perched on his head. As he turned his head he spotted Savage and raised a hand and tipped the hat.
‘Charlotte!’ John Layton’s voice boomed out across the hillside. ‘Come on over.’
Savage and Calter continued between the parallel tapes until they reached the ladder. Layton stood at the top looking down, his angular face silhouetted against the pale sky.
‘I’m pretty sure they didn’t come this way,’ he said. ‘So it’s safe for you to come up. But be careful, hey?’
Savage moved to the ladder and began climbing. At the top Layton offered a hand, but she scowled at him and stepped onto the rock.
‘I’m a woman, not a bloody invalid. What’s got into you?’
‘Sorry, I was only trying to help.’
‘Well don’t.’ Savage looked past Layton to a tripod arrangement with a pulley and a rope. The tripod straddled a crack in the rocks. ‘She’s down there?’
‘Self-evidently.’
Savage narrowed her gaze, trying to penetrate the gloom in the crack. Two metres or so down, a shelf of granite overhung a patch of bare earth. Sticking out from beneath the rock was a bare foot, mud and dirt on the sole, bright-red varnish on a toenail. Savage moved her head to try to see more. Sparkles came from a silver dress, another flash of light from something clutched in an outstretched fist.
‘A nail file,’ Layton said as Calter joined Savage at the crack. ‘Only I don’t think she was up here for a spot of manicuring.’
‘Self-defence, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘Which means this was no accident. And she’s not exactly dressed for a day on the hills, is she? Not dressed for anything much, to be honest.’
‘No.’ Savage glanced back to the car park, just a stone’s throw away. ‘What about a lovers’ tiff which got out of hand? They drove here for a smooch up on the rocks and something went wrong.’
‘A smooch?’ Calter smiled. ‘You’re showing your age, ma’am. I think people go in for more than smooching these days.’
Savage ignored Calter’s jibe. ‘This is surely too close to the road and too public a place to try and conceal a body.’
‘Might have looked different in the dark.’
‘True. But would anyone come here if they hadn’t already visited?’ Savage stood and turned to Layton. The crack was so narrow a full-grown man couldn’t fit down. ‘How are you going to get her out?’
‘Barbara.’ Layton pointed to where a petite woman in a white PPE suit was cresting the top of the ladder. ‘She’s small enough. The only question is, whether she’s brave enough?’
It took the best part of half an hour to extract the body. DC Barbara Hooper was lowered into the gap and managed to attach a harness round the girl which enabled the body to be winched out. The process was painstaking, Layton keen not to cause unnecessary damage to the corpse. He signalled to Savage as the girl was carried down to ground level and laid on a body bag.
‘She’s not been here long,’ Layton said as Savage came over. ‘Twenty-four hours max.’
‘Rigor mortis?’ Savage said as she stared down at the girl’s right hand where the nail file lay in a tight grip. A sparkly dress woven from silver thread had split down one side, the round of a breast partially exposed. Long blonde hair framed a face which wore bright red lipstick and heavy eyeshadow and eyeliner. The make-up looked odd on the now-sallow skin. The girl’s right thigh had a graze down one side, rivulets of dried blood visible on the pale surface.
‘Yes.’ Layton gestured at the car park. ‘But I was thinking more along the lines that this is a popular place, especially at the weekend. During the day, there’d have been witnesses. Which means she was dumped here when it was dark, most probably last night.’
‘There’s no sign of serious trauma,’ Savage said. ‘A few grazes on the arms and legs. That brown mark on her upper thigh.’
‘Interesting.’ Layton nodded as he knelt beside the girl. He pulled out a polygrip bag and a pair of tweezers and began to lift fragments of something from the skin. ‘Red paint and rust,’ he said, once he’d finished. ‘As if she’d brushed against an old piece of metal at some point. The metal caused the graze and left these specks.’
