Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel (20 page)

Layton hadn’t been kidding about the length of time it would take to dig up the floor. Within ten minutes several square metres had been broken into large slabs. The sound had been unbearable and Savage, not having ear defenders, retreated upstairs to the kitchen. A little while later, Layton called her back down. She descended into a miasma of dust, the air thick with particles of concrete and a smell Savage knew from experience was anything but wholesome.

In the little room, the broken concrete had been piled into one of the dumpy bags. The halogen lights shone into the resultant hole, illuminating a thick tar-like gloop.

‘You can smell it, yes?’ Layton said. ‘Unmistakable.’

Savage sniffed the air and nodded. Adipocere. A substance formed from the body’s fat during decomposition in wet and anaerobic conditions. Sealed under the concrete, the adipocere had persisted for over two and a half decades.

‘Anything in there?’ Savage leant forward and stared at the dark liquid. The liquid had an almost mirror-like quality, the white lights reflecting on the black surface.

‘One of the lads has gone to get a pump. We’ll get a hose in here. Won’t take long to drain the water.’

Again Layton was right. Once the pump had been brought in, the liquid was soon sucked out.

‘Got a filter on the end,’ Layton said as he knelt at the hole and moved the hose around in the rapidly diminishing puddle at the bottom. ‘Haven’t come across anything yet though.’

The hose made a slurping sound as the last of the black gloop disappeared. Layton positioned the hose to one side of the hole, where it continued to gurgle away. He leant over and braced himself with one hand on the other side of the hole. He reached down with the other hand, feeling around in what was now just mud. He pulled out a handful of debris and one of the other CSIs held out a bucket.

Savage tried not to show her disappointment as the bits of stone and concrete splattered into the bucket. Maybe the smell was just a broken sewer pipe. Maybe she’d got this completely wrong. She sighed.

‘Don’t worry, Charlotte.’ Layton turned his head, precarious above the hole. He smiled at her. ‘We’ll take this outside and sieve it. You know my motto. We’ll find something, we always do.’

Savage nodded and left Layton to it. She went outside to find the sky darkening. A persistent drizzle swirled in the air, almost as if the dank weather was mimicking the atmosphere in the cellar. She returned to her car and waited as the CSIs brought out bucket after bucket of sludge from the house. After a while, Layton came over and tapped on the window. Savage opened the door.

‘There was more than at first sight,’ Layton said. ‘Kept bubbling up from the bottom of the hole. Probably some sort of watercourse down there. A spring maybe. You want to come across? We’re going to start sieving the material now.’

Savage got out of the car and followed Layton to where the sludge had been poured into two large plastic builder’s trugs. Someone had rustled up a length of hose and connected one end to an outside tap and now two CSIs were beginning to process the black goo. Bit by bit they scooped the sludge from the trugs onto a sieve and one of them worked the hose back and forth, washing the mud away.

Savage’s heart jumped as she saw bits of white reveal themselves in the mud. Layton shook his head, explained the bits were pieces of concrete. The work continued, the CSIs painstaking in their attention to detail. As they reached the bottom of the first trug, Layton lowered his shoulders and shook his head.

‘Maybe I was wrong,’ he said. ‘Maybe we won’t find anything this time.’

‘Never mind, John—’

‘Ma’am?’ One of the CSIs was sieving the last of the material from the trug, washing dirt from yet another piece of concrete debris. Only this wasn’t concrete. He pointed down to the sieve where the clear water swirled over something brown. ‘Here we go.’

‘What is it?’ Savage peered down. The thing looked like a little stick.

‘Bone.’ Layton picked the stick from the surface of the sieve. ‘At least, a fragment of bone.’

‘Human?’

‘No idea, we’ll need to get it to Nesbit.’ Layton held the fragment between his thumb and forefinger. ‘But given the circumstances, I’d say it might well be, don’t you think?’

Savage left Layton to his work and drove the short distance to the village. Now there was potential evidence, Elijah Samuel had some questions to answer. The property was his, after all. Since he had been a resident at the home, then the caretaker and now the owner, it seemed inconceivable he didn’t know at least some of what really went on there.

A knock on the oak door of the thatched cottage brought Samuel out into the drizzle. He stared beyond Savage towards the home, something like hatred in his eyes.

‘You again,’ he said, continuing to gaze into the murk. ‘I told you before that you’ll get nothing from me.’

‘We’ve found a bone, Mr Samuel. In the cellar. My chief CSI reckons it’s human. Given your connection with Woodland Heights, that puts you in the frame.’

‘In the frame for what?’

‘Murder, Mr Samuel.’ Savage glanced back at the house. ‘You told me it was hell in there. You need to explain what you meant by that. You can invite me in or you can come down the station and make a statement. Your choice.’

‘Fine.’ Samuel pushed the door wide and gestured for Savage to enter. The door opened directly into a living room. A large inglenook held a wood burner, an orange glow visible through the glass door. Two armchairs and a sofa sat arranged around the room, a TV in one corner. On one wall hung a number of photographs. Blokes in army gear on mountain tops. Some on a beach with palms in the background, a blue ocean looking a lot warmer than the sea off the Devon coastline. A group shot with a desert and ruined buildings in the background.

‘You said you were in the army,’ Savage said, indicating the pictures. ‘When was that?’

‘After the home closed down.’ Samuel seemed to relax slightly. He indicated that Savage should sit and took the armchair closest to the fire for himself. ‘Four Two Commando.’

‘Right.’ Four Two Commando were based at Bickleigh Barracks, not far from the Shaugh Prior tunnel where Liam Clough’s body had been found. Savage pointed to the desert picture. ‘Iraq?’

‘Yeah. My last tour.’

‘And then?’

‘Property development. Being handy means I can do up places myself. Started with just one, but I’ve got several properties now.’

‘Including Woodland Heights?’

‘Not for long. I had dreams of renovating it, now I just want shot.’

‘You said it was hell there, Mr Samuel. What did you mean?’

‘What I said. It wasn’t a pleasant place. Parker was a right one. Ruled with a rod of iron. And I mean that literally.’

‘So why did you stay on and become the caretaker? I mean, if it was as bad as you said, why didn’t you leave?’

‘You wouldn’t understand, love. Family, weren’t they? Maybe not Parker, but the others. His wife, the boys.’ Samuel turned to the fire and held out his hands to the warmth. ‘Besides, I had nowhere else to go. It seemed as good an option as any. I went to college a couple of days a week and learnt a trade. Carpentry. Turned out to be useful back then, and now. When the home closed, I found a new family in the army. There were tyrants there too, but you stick with your mates and look out for one another. I guess that’s why I stayed at the home despite Parker. I was looking out for my mates.’

‘Right.’ Savage pulled out her notebook and flicked over the pages. ‘Liam Hayskith and Jason Caldwell. They went missing on the night of twenty-sixth of August 1988. I believe you were called to the home on the following morning to repair a window in one of the storerooms. The glass had been smashed, right?’

‘Yes.’ Samuel nodded. ‘I lived in a house in the village just up from here. Me and two of the teachers. The boys had used a can of baked beans to break the pane.’

‘Because all the doors and windows were locked and this was their escape route. Makes sense. And yet checking the witness statements has brought up one or two anomalies. The first of these is the fact that, although you say you were summoned to the home, none of the other statements corroborates this. Nobody else remembers ringing you and asking you to come in on the Saturday. Mr Parker’s statement says, “I might have, but I honestly can’t remember.” Aside from him there’s no one.’

Samuel stared at the glowing door on the wood burner. ‘People were running around like crazy. It was hectic that morning.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ Savage said. ‘But no crime had been committed, had it? The police were only called because these two boys were runaways.’

‘And later, when they couldn’t be found. Then there were more questions.’

‘Yes, but by then the exact details of what happened on the morning had become blurred. For instance, although the baked bean can lay on the grass outside the window, the glass itself had somehow mysteriously fallen inward. And the housekeeper, Miss Bickell, said she hadn’t stocked a tin that small. She insisted the larder only contained catering-size tins. I’m trying to get my head around what might have happened to Liam and Jason and I’ve come up with a theory, specifically concerning you. Would you like to hear it?’

Samuel continued to stare at the fire as he made an almost imperceptible nodding movement.

‘I believe you smashed the window. For some reason you came to the home early in the morning and broke the pane with a tin of baked beans you’d brought with you. You hadn’t thought through your actions clearly, so when the glass fell back into the storeroom you left the tin on the ground outside as a visual clue to reinforce the idea that someone had been breaking out. Now, do you want to tell me why you smashed the window?’

‘How …?’ Samuel turned from the fire. ‘I can’t tell you. Anyway, what does it matter now? Those boys never turned up, did they? They’re dead. Long dead. I liked them, you know? I was a good few years older, of course, but we had some fun. They used to help me out with odd jobs. Them and Parker’s son. We built things like bird boxes, a bench for round the back, compost bins for the veg garden. We made a go-cart one year. Powered by an old moped engine. The thing got out of control and smashed through a fence, but the lads put it all back good as new. Most of the boys were helpful in that way. You’d get the occasional troublemaker, someone born wrong, but the majority were at the home through circumstance. Bad luck can strike anyone, can’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Savage said, trying not to think on her own piece of bad luck. ‘But that’s not how Mr Parker tells it.’

‘I’m sure it isn’t. ’Despite the warmth from the fire, Samuel shivered. ‘The thing was, whatever misfortune brought the boys to the home, it was compounded when they got there. Parker was a cruel and strict disciplinarian, but that wasn’t the worst of it.’

‘Are we talking abuse, Mr Samuel?’

‘I couldn’t say. All I know is Liam and Jason wanted out of there.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you report the situation? You could have gone to the police, education authorities, the newspapers or somewhere else. Instead you did nothing.’

‘I didn’t do nothing, did I?’ Samuel paused and took a deep breath before continuing. ‘On the night they vanished I made sure the front door to the home was unlocked last thing. I let Liam and Jason know so they could slip out in the middle of the night. I was guilty of not being brave enough to confront Parker, but I tried to make amends by giving the boys a chance of freedom.’

Savage stared at Samuel. She wondered if this was the truth of what had happened on that August night. Could there be some other explanation for the bone in the cellar? Perhaps Layton and his team of CSIs were wasting their time.

‘And you saw Liam and Jason leave the home?’

‘No, I didn’t.’ All of a sudden Samuel was aggressive. ‘But where would they be if they hadn’t escaped?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I can’t because I’ve told you the truth.’

‘So you never saw either of them again?’

‘I …’ Samuel paused. ‘No. They vanished. Into the waves down at the cove.’

‘The sea story is all too convenient. I believe the reason Liam Hayskith and Jason Caldwell never turned up is because they were murdered, Mr Samuel. And you helped cover up the murders, didn’t you?’

‘No!’ Samuel stood, towering over Savage, his head almost touching the oak beams. ‘No! No! No!’

‘Are you saying they weren’t murdered or that you didn’t cover up the crime?’

‘I told you, they disappeared! Parker rang me about three in the morning. Instructed me to get round to the home and make it look like somebody had broken out. He had no idea I was the one who’d left the door unlocked.’

‘So you didn’t worry about covering for him because it obscured your own tracks.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You did as he said and kept your mouth shut.’

‘You don’t understand.’ Samuel jabbed a finger at Savage.

‘Oh but I do,’ Savage said. ‘In my job you get to hear all the excuses under the sun. “They made me do it,” “She led me on,” “It was a long time ago,” “I’d been drinking.” I could go on but I won’t, because I’m sick to death of excuses. What I want is answers.’

‘Well I’ve given you the only ones I know.’

‘Maybe you have.’ Savage stood. ‘But I can tell you I’m going to find out the truth.’

Savage made to leave. At the front door she stopped and turned.

‘Think on it, Mr Samuel. You can come clean and be on the right side of the law or you can go down for conspiring to pervert the cause of justice. Your choice.’

Samuel held her gaze until she turned again, opened the door and left the cottage.

The sound of the stone being moved woke Jason from a fitful slumber. He blinked in the darkness. He had no idea how long it had been since the man’s last visit. A day? Two days?

‘Are you there, boy?’ the voice from above said. ‘Are you ready to be friends yet?’

Jason pushed himself into a sitting position, but didn’t answer. He wondered if keeping quiet was the right thing to do. He’d watched enough movies with Ned Stone to know the best way out of a kidnap situation was to befriend your abductor. And wasn’t that exactly what the man at the top of the tube wanted?