Tell Tale (20 page)

Savage shook her head and, despite herself, she half-smiled. Pete could read her like a book. He knew when to turn on his boyish charm so as to persuade her to do something, as well as when to leave her well alone. The boat wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment decision, she was sure. He’d thought about this all weekend.

‘She wouldn’t know how to tie the knots,’ Savage said. ‘So you’d better take me, hadn’t you?’

An hour later, they were on board
Puffin
, their little Westerly. She was hard on the wind heading across the Sound. Cawsand Bay lay directly ahead and, if the wind didn’t shift, they’d reach the anchorage in one tack. Water frothed over the leeward-side deck as the yacht yielded to a gust. Jamie whooped with delight, but Samantha screamed that her phone was getting wet. Pete stood wedged in the companion way, a watchful eye on the sails and nearby boats, while Savage was helming.

‘Better than moping around at home,’ Pete shouted without looking back at Savage. ‘The wind and the water, the kids, the boat. Us. Puts things in some kind of perspective.’

‘Yes,’ Savage whispered to herself. She glanced across at Samantha and Jamie and back to Pete. For a moment she had an overwhelming sense that all that was worthwhile was here on the boat. The world was just the four of them, cradled safely in
Puffin
’s arms, and being carried by the wind and rocked by the waves. Nothing else mattered. ‘It does.’

‘Hey? What was that?’

‘Yes!’ Savage shouted.

‘That’s more like it.’ Pete turned and looked back at her. Then he pointed to a yacht crossing ahead. He reached over and grabbed the rope on a nearby winch, ready to release it. ‘They’ve got right of way. Will we clear them or do we need to change course? Your call, Skipper.’

Savage weighed up the options. The other yacht was forging onward, but if she did nothing then they’d collide.

‘We’ll tack,’ she said, thinking once again how so very perceptive Pete was. ‘Ready about!’

Jon Anderson’s voice soared impossibly high as he implored the starship trooper not to tell a soul. In contrast to the music, Savage’s MG let out a guttural cough and backfired, stalling as she pulled into a space in the car park at Crownhill Police Station on Monday morning. Anderson and the rest of the band were silenced as she turned off the ignition.

The ancient sports car had an old cassette deck and Savage pressed the eject button to pop out the tape. The compilation had been a present from her dad a few weeks ago when the family had visited her parents in their North Devon home for lunch. ‘You know it makes sense,’ he’d said, pressing the box into her hand.

Having listened to the tape filled with Seventies rock tracks twice through, Savage wasn’t sure it did, but she knew her dad’s heart was in the right place. Like Pete he had, she was sure, sensed something was up. Most likely he thought the issue was some minor marital difficulty. He can’t have had an inkling her downbeat mood that weekend was to do with discovering who Clarissa’s killer was. And had he known Savage had held a gun to Owen Fox’s head, he would have been deeply, deeply shocked.

She got out of the car and stood staring up at the concrete cube of the station. Yesterday, sitting on the boat at anchor over in Cawsand Bay with Pete and the children, everything had appeared so simple. Owen Fox was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. He wasn’t worth bothering about any more. Now, arriving at the station, she found she felt differently once again. Inside the station her daily routine involved bringing criminals to justice and ensuring that they faced the music. A large part of her sense of wellbeing came from carrying out her job to the best of her abilities. There’d been rare occasions when she’d failed and on those occasions she’d had to meet with the victims or their families and tell them it was unlikely anyone would be prosecuted, that the offender would get off scot-free. That had sickened her. Now she was telling herself the same thing. She’d failed to bring Clarissa’s killer to justice. Even though she had the evidence. Even though she knew who the guilty person was.

Savage shook her head, slammed the car door, and headed inside. She had to focus on the case at hand.

As she climbed the stairs to the crime suite, she figured the day would be a chaotic affair. Since the discovery of the body in the kistvaen and the link to Anasztáz Róka and the pony killings, the various threads of the case had been tangled into one almighty knot. Ana had paid the lads from North Prospect to kill the ponies in three predetermined locations. And whoever the man in the kist was, he had spent his last moments writing Ana’s name.

Inside the crime suite, Riley appeared sceptical.

‘It doesn’t make sense, ma’am.’ The DS shook his head and stared at the picture of Ana that lay on his desk. ‘Why would she pay the North Prospect lads to carry out Satanic rituals?’

Riley was right; it didn’t make sense. Yet that it was true, Savage had little doubt. The story was so far-fetched it was beyond Howson’s ability to make up. In his written statement the lad had gone on to elaborate. He’d been introduced to Ana in a pub. ‘By some bint I used to shag,’ were his words. The ‘bint’ it seemed had moved on to better things and was now a student at Plymouth University. At some point she’d been a waitress at the Bean There cafe. Which explained the link to Ana. Ana had needed a job doing and didn’t know who to turn to. The student had suggested Howson and Howson, once he’d seen the money, had been only too pleased to oblige. The whys and wherefores he’d not been too bothered about, not when there was cash upfront. And they’d done good, hadn’t they? Howson said. Fooled the police completely.

‘What if she didn’t pay them to carry out any Satanic rituals?’ Savage said. Riley cocked his head on one side. ‘What if they merely prepared the scene for us to find? DC Denton comes across the first pony and calls you and Davies in. Devil-worshipping, you think. Ditto the second pony. Denton makes the connection to the third location. You note the stone on the kistvaen has been moved, which leads to us finding the poor guy beneath the stone.’

‘Seems a lot of effort to go to, to point out some random man’s body. She could’ve just called us and told us.’

‘Maybe she was distrustful of making such a direct approach.’

‘What do you mean?’

Savage lowered her voice. ‘I don’t want to get personal, Darius, but we all know what can happen when people in power try to protect themselves. Remember Ana was from a former Eastern Bloc country; that may have made her naturally wary of approaching the authorities.’

‘But killing ponies?’ Riley shook his head. ‘A girl like that?’

‘You mean because she looked cute she wouldn’t do such a thing? You’re being irrational. What did you have to eat last night? A burger? You didn’t worry too much about the cow, did you?’

‘Foreigners are less concerned about animal rights than we are, is that what you’re getting at?’

‘No. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. We, by which I mean British people, are over-emotional about animals. Ana may have been more concerned about what happened to the man in the kistvaen.’

‘Well it didn’t work, did it? We found him, but we’ve no idea who killed him.’

‘Likely as not the people who killed him are the same ones who killed Ana. The question is, who is he – and what did he do to deserve such an untimely and unpleasant death?’

Halfway through the morning, Enders blustered into Savage’s office holding a stack of printouts, red-faced and excited.

‘Found him, ma’am,’ the DC said. ‘The dead hiker. Easy. None of the stores stocked the jacket, but Cotswold Outdoor ordered one in for a customer a year ago. Had a contact name and number. A Martin Hedford. Did a reverse lookup on the number, which gave me an address here in Plymouth. Bretonside.’

‘Well done,’ Savage said. ‘And who is he, this Martin Hedford?’

‘At first I thought he was pretty unremarkable, to be honest. A Cambridge graduate. Lived abroad for a while in the Nineties. Married here in the UK in 2001. Had a kid a couple of years after. Nothing much unusual.’

‘But?’

‘I found some newspaper reports relating to him. 2008 and on.’ Enders waved the printouts at Savage. ‘The kid – a son – became ill. Some sort of brain tumour. There was an appeal in the local press to raise money for treatment in the States. The boy was flown over and underwent some kind of revolutionary operation. Initially the op was a success, but sadly the tumour returned, more aggressively this time. The boy died in 2012.’

‘Shit.’ Savage did the maths. Clarissa had died at roughly the same age. ‘So what happens next?’

‘I’m afraid the story gets worse, ma’am.’ Enders shook his head. ‘Much worse. Last year Hedford’s wife was killed in a car crash. I’ve checked the reports. Fog on the M5. Three others dead. No doubt the crash was an accident, but it’s rough on Hedford.’

‘That’s an understatement, Patrick. I can’t imagine what sort of despair he was in after a tragedy like that.’

‘Yeah. And now Hedford’s joined his wife and kiddie. No chance he could’ve pulled the rock over himself is there? Because any other way and I’d have reckoned on suicide as the number one explanation for his death.’

Martin Hedford’s flat on Bretonside overlooked Sutton Harbour marina. Pinnacle Quay wasn’t far from a main road where town centre traffic rolled by, yet the outlook was incomparable. Savage strolled along the quayside while Calter went to find somebody to open up for them. A young lad in charge of sales wasn’t happy.

‘He’s dead, love,’ Calter said. ‘The only way he’s going to give you any backchat is in your nightmares. So if you’ll be so good as to let us into the flat.’

‘Apartment,’ the man said he took them up one set of stairs and unlocked the door. ‘At least for marketing purposes.’

‘Thanks,’ Savage said, standing in the doorway to make it clear the agent wasn’t welcome inside. ‘We’ll drop the keys back when we’ve finished and if you could look for his mail. He must have a ton of the stuff.’

‘Today?’ the man asked. ‘Only I’ll need to get inside and check everything over.’

‘Unlikely. I’ll let you know, but we’ll be sealing the upper door so nobody is to enter the flat without our permission.’

The lad flinched, Savage unsure if it was her mention of the word ‘flat’ again or the idea of police officers sniffing around and annoying residents.

‘Idiot,’ Calter said as the man walked away. ‘They’re all the same. Them and car salesmen.’

‘And Wildlife and Countryside Officers? I’ve noticed DC Denton hanging around again.’

‘He’s not my type, ma’am. Too keen. Too nice. I want somebody I can
make
submit, not someone who lies down so I can walk over them.’

Savage pushed the door open. A waft of stale air came out.

‘Nobody’s been in here for months,’ she remarked as they walked in.

The flat was fitted out as a luxury apartment, wooden flooring stretching from the hallway and into a large open-plan area to their left. They went through to the living area. A kitchen of burnished stainless steel looked unused. Beyond, a low suite clustered round a glass table, a smart laptop open. On the far side of the room doors led to a balcony and a view across the marina.

‘Talking of DC Denton, ma’am,’ Calter said as she ran her hand along the top of the kitchen worktops. ‘If he can promise me somewhere like this, I’m his. Or anyone’s, to be frank.’

Savage strolled to the balcony, turned the handle and slid open the door. The sound of seagulls filled the air as a group of birds flocked over by the fishing quay. Closer, the tick, tick, tick of ropes frapping against yacht masts provided a soothing rhythm. Although she loved living in the countryside, Savage reckoned she could get used to a place like this.

‘Unfortunately this is a little above Denton’s pay scale,’ Savage said. ‘What do you reckon, three-fifty, four?’

‘Something like that.’ Calter had sat down at the glass table. ‘Laptop’s dead. It’s not plugged in so the battery must have gone flat.’

‘I’ll check out the bedroom. He must have some personal papers somewhere.’

Considering the luxurious nature of the flat, the bedroom was small and somewhat disappointing. A double bed occupied most of the space. Built-in wardrobes contained several expensive suits and shirts. Beside the bed was a little cabinet. Savage opened the top drawer. Envelopes. Hedford’s name and an address in Budapest. Savage thumbed through them. They all bore the same postmark: Totnes, Devon. She extracted the contents of the first envelope. It was a press cutting.
Woman Goes Missing
was the headline and the story detailed the disappearance of a thirty-one-year-old nurse from Tiverton. Savage reached for the next envelope. Another cutting and a similar story, only this time the missing person was from Taunton. A third cutting and a man had vanished from Barnstaple. Savage leafed through the rest of the envelopes, eleven in all. Each had a single cutting, each detailed a missing person. Savage glanced at the postmarks. All the letters had been posted between six months and a year ago.

In with the envelopes was a manila folder, several more cuttings inside. One story told of a cow butchered on Bodmin Moor, a second concerned yet another missing person. There was also an Ordnance Survey map. Savage unfolded the map, her eyes immediately drawn to the series of pencil lines criss-crossing the surface. Thick black crosses had been drawn in three places too.

‘Ma’am?’ Calter stood at the door holding a book. ‘A history of the occult. He’s got loads of other books on Satanism, paganism, witches, etcetera. Doesn’t look like he was up at the stone circle by accident. He was well into all this stuff.’

‘Not by accident, no.’ Savage pointed to the pencil lines. ‘These show ley lines and the crosses mark where the ponies were slaughtered. One of them marks the kist where Hedford was found.’

‘I thought we’d established the pony killings were the work of those North Prospect lads?’

‘Yes, I thought so too.’ Savage pointed at the spread of letters atop the bed. ‘There’s these to consider as well. Mispers. These people went missing from the area in the last couple of years. Somebody took it upon themselves to send these cuttings to Hedford.’

Calter glanced down at the book in her hand. ‘You don’t think they’re all victims?’

‘I doubt it. We’ll need to check but I wouldn’t mind betting a lot of these people have turned up. Doesn’t mean they all have though and it doesn’t mean Hedford wasn’t on to something – or at least thought he was on to something.’

‘Trafficking? That sort of thing?’

‘Could be. Whatever, it was serious enough to get him killed.’ Savage began to gather the pieces of paper from the bed. She looked again at the address on the envelopes. Savage placed her finger on one envelope, covered over the last couple of lines of writing and showed Calter. ‘He was living in Budapest. Know where that is, Jane?’

‘Wouldn’t normally have a clue, ma’am, but the question came up in a pub quiz a few weeks back. Hungary, isn’t it?’

Savage nodded, remembering back to when she’d arrived at Fernworthy Reservoir. The PSCO had flicked open Ana’s passport and pointed to the circle of stars around the country name: MAGYAR.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hungary.’

Savage reached into her pocket and found a little ziploc bag. Inside a brass key flashed in the light. She left the bedroom and went to the front door, opened it and placed the key in the Yale lock. The key fitted perfectly and when she turned it, the lock’s mechanism operated.

‘Bloody hell, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘John Layton found it in Anasztáz Róka’s room.’

‘
What
?’

‘After seeing Ana’s name on the side of the kistvaen, I had a hunch. Now we find she knew him well enough to have a key to his flat.’

‘His lover, ma’am, got to be.’

‘She was early twenties and he was near fifty.’

‘Mail-order bride?’ Calter gesticulated at the room and the furnishings. ‘He was well off. After losing his wife he went to Hungary for a few months to meet someone, brought her back?’