Cut Dead (3 page)

In the farmyard Savage found the incident room Transit van jammed between a stack of black-clad silage bales and a muck-spreader. Hardin and Detective Chief Inspector Mike Garrett sat inside, Hardin pouring coffee from a thermos into a plastic cup. Savage stepped up into the van and perched on one of the stools alongside Garrett, just touching distance to Hardin on the other side of the van. Garrett was an older detective, nearing retirement. His dress sense was as impeccable as his manners, his record as unblemished as his neat white hair. DSupt Hardin sat sideways to a desk, unable to get his bulk comfortable in the small space, his face reddened by the close atmosphere. On the desk sat two laptops and numerous files. One laptop showed the same large-scale map Layton had been looking at the previous night.

‘Thank goodness the bloody rain stopped earlier,’ Hardin said to Savage. ‘The hole was becoming like a swimming pool.’

‘Some swimming pool,’ Savage said. ‘Anything turn up overnight?’

‘Not much.’ Hardin took a slurp of his coffee, made a face and peered at some notes on one of the laptops. ‘Now, preliminaries: enquiry teams to interview the villagers and residents in outlying properties; widen the forensic search to include areas of interest both on the farm and beyond; go over our records and see what the hell we missed last time around.’

Hardin stopped. Nodded with a wry smile at Savage.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said, lowering his voice and reaching across and tapping the laptop screen. ‘Which means this thing has the potential to go worldwide. Unless we’re careful the investigation will balloon out of control and we’ll no longer be able to set the agenda. That’s why I want you, Mike, on the media side of things. They won’t mess with you. You’ll need kid gloves though. One wrong word and you’ll see it repeated across a million copies of The
Sun
. You and Charlotte will share the deputy role with me as Senior Investigating Officer. Charlotte, you’ll liaise with your old boss, ex-DCI Derek Walsh. He, of course, was the lead last time around.’

‘Last time around. I’m guessing you’re talking about the cuts on the body?’

‘Yes. Nesbit’s retreating a little now. Wants to get through the post-mortems first. Won’t say one way or another. Me? – I think our notorious cold case just turned hot.’

He’s back, Charlotte, he’s back.

Savage recalled the pathologist’s whisper to her as he bent his wiry frame into his car in the small hours of Sunday morning. He’d closed the door, and for a moment she’d seen a haunted look in his eyes before he started up and pulled away into the night.

‘The Candle Cake Killer,’ Savage said, for a second feeling an icy chill. ‘I was on maternity leave and on my return I joined Vice for a while so I wasn’t on Walsh’s team. Of course I know all about the case.’

‘Charlotte,’ Hardin said, pointing an accusing finger at her. ‘I do not, repeat
do not
want that moniker used again, understand? First, we don’t know for sure if this is the same killer, and second, the name is too cheery by half. As if there was something to celebrate.’

Savage nodded, seeing the pit and the mud and the grey forms lying in the sludge, thinking Hardin was right, cheery wasn’t it at all.

‘Now, these bodies,’ Hardin handed them each a checklist and then scratched an ear and grimaced. ‘Three of them. I was hoping,
praying
even, they were all from way back. If this investigation remained a cold case we could simply assign a few officers to it. New evidence, fresh look, blah, blah, blah. Perhaps we might come up with a lead, perhaps not. No matter. Job done, public satisfied. However, from what I’m hearing from Nesbit, that’s not the case. Two of the victims could be the missing women from the original case. They disappeared in 2007 and 2008. But Nesbit says even considering the favourable conditions, the third body wouldn’t have survived so well-preserved. The corpse is much more recent. We’ll have to wait for the post-mortem but it’s likely been buried just a year or so ago.’

‘Which means trouble,’ Garrett said, looking across at Savage and smiling. ‘Media-wise. They’ll say he might have been killing all this time.’

‘Unless he has been away somewhere,’ Savage said. ‘Prison, abroad.’

‘Possible,’ Hardin said. ‘Let’s hope so. Otherwise there are a whole load more bodies buried somewhere.’

‘There’s another problem with the media,’ Garrett said. ‘No escaping the issue either. A ticking time bomb.’

‘Well?’ Hardin’s fingers drummed the table. ‘Spit it out.’

‘The date,’ Savage said, spoiling Garrett’s punchline. ‘The killer takes his victims on the longest day of the year. There’s just six days until the twenty-first of June. Meaning that’s how much time we’ve got before he strikes again.’

Hardin looked down at the screen on his laptop, eyes moving to the bottom right-hand corner. He clicked. Stared at the date in the pop-up window. Shook his head, as if not quite believing he had missed something so blindingly obvious.

‘Fuck,’ he said.

A specialist recovery team had arrived at the farm along with the light on Sunday morning. They’d brought with them vanfuls of equipment and a temporary roadway to allow access across the now quagmire-like field. The twin strips of the aluminium track undulated their way over the ground, down to the dump site where a yellow JCB stood. The digger’s bucket hung in the air, suspended over a new hole which ran parallel to one side of the crime scene tent. Savage clumped down the metal track to where Layton stood talking to one of his CSIs. Off to one side a large patch of concrete – the remnants of some old building – provided a convenient and mud-free storage area for several of Layton’s crates and much forensic equipment.

‘John?’ Savage said pointing to the new hole. ‘What’s that?’

‘Control trench,’ Layton said. ‘The ground’s not been disturbed there, you can see the layering and the way the soil is compacted. There’s also mature tree roots from the nearby hedge. The trench marks the boundary and we’ll dig back in from there once the recovery crew have finished.’

‘How long will they be?’ Savage said, looking across at the tent, inside which several figures worked.

‘Another hour or so. We’ve removed the first victim but the other two are in a very delicate condition. The crew are having to bring much of the mud along with the bodies. From what I’ve seen they’re well-preserved but fragile. That deep, there were no worms or anything and they existed in an anaerobic state. With no air, there was little decay. They’re the consistency of butter though.’

Savage walked forwards and peered through the entrance of the tent. Unlike Nesbit and the CSI team from last night, the recovery crew were taking no chances, and the two people down in the hole wore drysuits with breathing apparatus. They moved back and forth, sluicing, shovelling and wiping the mud from the two remaining corpses. Little by little they were exposing the bodies and inching a large stainless steel tray beneath each one. Once the bodies were atop the trays, they could be lifted and taken to the mortuary.

‘You think you’ll get much from there?’ Savage said as she moved back to Layton. ‘Forensics I mean.’

‘When the bodies are out we’ll begin to sift through the spoil and then dig out further in all directions. The first thing it would be nice to find would be the heads. If you’re talking about something which might point to the killer we’ll have to wait and see. The killer might be forensically aware but on the other hand why bother taking precautions here? I would have thought it was likely they assumed the dump site would never be found.’

Savage pondered Layton’s point as she went back up to the farmyard. It was possible the killer chose the burial site because of the remoteness, but in Devon there were numerous places just as remote, if not more so. Most of them didn’t involve having to trespass on private land, with all the risks that would bring. Which meant the choice of dump site was a decision the killer had made for other reasons; something, perhaps, to do with the farm. There was also the matter of the practicalities of burying the bodies. How were the victims buried over so many years, without the farmer knowing?

If
she didn’t know, that was.

Joanne Black had spent the night at a friend’s house at the far end of the village. The constant noise and commotion had become too much. That, and the thought of the horrors in the field. She’d returned to the farm in the morning and shown willing, answering questions and attempting to provide teas and bacon butties for the never-ending stream of police and ancillary workers who continued to arrive.

By lunch time she was exhausted, so when Jody suggested they head up to Yelverton to the Rock Inn for a pub lunch she jumped at the chance. It was only after they’d finished their meal and Jody was on his second pint of Jail Ale that she posed the obvious question.

‘Where the fuck did those bodies come from, Jody?’

‘Hey?’ Jody raised an eyebrow and turned his head to take in a nearby family with preschool children. They’d heard the profanity, if nothing else. He nodded over to an empty table tucked away in a far corner. ‘Over there, Ms Black. Be better. Anonymous.’

Anonymous was not something she’d ever be again, Joanne thought. Infamous more like. Once the news filtered out. Tongues wagging, curtains twitching, rumours spreading like foot rot in a flock of sheep.

‘So?’ Joanne whispered once they’d relocated. ‘What do you know?’

‘Nothing, Joanne.’

‘You’ve been at the farm, what? – twenty years?’

‘Longer.’ Jody smiled. Shook his head, as if not quite believing the passage of time. ‘Twenty-five this August. Left school at sixteen and my dad said I had four weeks to find a job or else he’d find one for me. I was sweet on a girl up Calstock way so I spent the time chasing her instead of looking for work. First week in August Dad told me to come and see your uncle. Been here ever since.’

‘Well, Jody, I couldn’t have made the farm the success it is without your help.’

‘It was nothing.’ Jody smiled, winked and then took a sup of his beer. When he lowered the glass the jovial expression had gone. ‘But if you’re implying I know something about them people down in the hole then you’re wrong.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Well then, what are you on about?’

Joanne stared at Jody for a moment. Held his eyes. Then she looked around. Dark wood, brass trinkets on the red walls, black and white photographs from pre-war Devon. Parts of the pub, she knew, even went back as far as Drake.

‘History. My uncle. Things which happened at the farm long before I took over.’ Joanne picked up her glass and drained the remaining beer in one. ‘That’s what I’m on about.’

Savage didn’t catch up with the farmer until mid-afternoon. As they walked down to the crime scene together, she made a visual assessment of Joanne Black. In her early fifties, she had hair matching her name. Dark in thick strands, streaks of grey in there, but glamorous with it. The Hunter boots and stretch jeans helped, as did a figure kept in shape by manual work. The woman’s face wore the signs of days spent outside and under the sun but Savage thought the lines around her eyes showed far more character and beauty than the smooth glacial skin of a Photoshopped cover model ever would. She strode down the track, chatting to Savage about the farm. Casual and confident, but a hint of nervousness. Perhaps that was no more than to be expected.

A couple of paces behind them DC Patrick Enders puffed along, unwrapping and eating a Mars Bar as he walked. How the young detective managed to retain his boyish good looks on the diet he ate, Savage had no idea. Maybe his wife ensured he ate healthily at home. Then again, the lad had three young kids. Savage knew from her own experiences that burgers and chips would appear more frequently on the menu than three-bean salads.

As the three of them carried on down the track Joanne explained to Savage that the field had been used for silage, swedes and wheat over the past few years. However, the odd little corner formed by the river edge and the railway line as the embankment approached the bridge had always been left to scrub. The patch was not only tight to get the tractor in but there was also a spring which made the ground cut up something awful.

The spring explained the need for the pump, and as they approached the tent the noise of the generator drifted across. They left the metal track, their feet sucking in the mud with every step until they reached the pallets. Joanne paused some way from the tent and turned to Savage.

‘They’re gone, right?’ she said. ‘I really don’t want to see anything like that ever again.’

‘Yes,’ Savage said. ‘The bodies were removed an hour or so ago.’

Two CSIs were poking around in the nearby hedge, but there was nobody in the tent as Savage pushed the flap to one side.

‘We don’t need to go in. I just wanted you to see how big a hole had to be dug. It will give you some idea of the disturbance that must have made when the bodies were buried.’

‘Urgh, to think they’ve been there all the time.’ Joanne shook her head as she glanced into the tent, then turned away and looked back up the field to where they had come from. A number of police vehicles clustered in the farmyard, alongside a big green John Deere tractor. ‘But the distance. We’d never have heard anything at night and the scrub here would have shielded any digging from the eyes of whoever was working the field.’

‘Even high up in the tractor?’

‘With the mess you lot have made it’s hard to imagine what the ground was like.’ Joanne pointed over to the hedge. ‘See there. The nettles and brambles are almost head height.’

‘I guess it would also depend on the time of year, right?’ Savage said. ‘I mean, how often would you be driving past the corner?’

‘This has been down to winter wheat the last two years. We drill in the autumn. Then we spray several times and spread fertiliser too. That would be up until May or June. We harvest in August. But you’re too focused on the job in hand to be looking around you.’

Savage did just that. Looked around. The hedge Joanne had pointed to was thorn, thick on the field side with brambles and nettles. Down at the bottom of the field the estuary mud came right up to the edge. At any other time than spring high tide access from the water would be near impossible. The fortnightly spring high tides in Plymouth occurred in the morning and evening. Meaning, Savage reckoned, that apart from in the depths of winter, it would be daylight at high tide. If the killer hadn’t come through the farmyard then the only other way in was to carry the bodies along the railway line. It would have been hard work, but flat.