That was a good question. Harry pondered it for a few minutes. He had tried to fix things with Trinny. Only that hadn’t worked out and he’d had to get rid of her. There was also the little matter of Lucy.
Juicy Lucy! That slut! She makes me look like a nun.
Lucy had come back from the past the same way as Carmel and Trinny had so he had collected her too. He couldn’t risk losing her in the way he had lost Carmel. Now she was tucked away downstairs. Safe. The sad thing was that she was just about the same as Trinny. Dirty.
I told you, Harry. And the new girl will be no different.
Emma. Sleeping upstairs.
Thinking about her made him smile. The time with her on Monday had been such fun. They chatted and joked like old friends. He suggested a drink and they talked some more. She laughed and giggled and giggled and laughed and began to get a bit confused. After that she started to look a little tired and he had offered to take her home.
She accepted.
Chapter 7
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Wednesday 27th October. 9.03 am
The vista from the operation Zebo incident room took in a line of white police vans and a few squad cars sitting on the car park. A crap view was no bad thing, Savage thought. At least all eyes would be on the job and not on the people walking past two floors below. Eight terminals, twice as many screens and a decent amount of spare desk space crammed into a few square metres. Cosy. DS Gareth Collier had been Hardin’s choice for office manager and Savage approved of the way the setup had progressed so far. Collier, always a stickler for procedure, liked things neat, well organised and locked down tight. He looked like he behaved, and with his greying hair trimmed in a parade ground cut he resembled a regimental sergeant major as he prowled around searching for unfiled scraps of paper or terminals which had been left unattended but not logged out of. Luckily he also had a great sense of humour. The opposing facets were a perfect match and ensured smooth progress and a happy team. One without the other made work either dull or frustrating, and if both were missing an investigation didn’t stand a chance.
Gordon Isaacs was banged up in the custody suite at the station in the centre of town and according to DS Darius Riley he was looking pretty miserable after an uncomfortable night brooding. Riley sat at a desk fussing over a crease in his expensive jacket and then fingering his collar where his black skin contrasted with brilliant white cotton. Savage knew the shirt would most likely be from an outfitter on Jermyn Street in London — Hawes and Curtis or Thomas Pink — rather than from the local M amp;S, which was the brand the other male detectives favoured. When Riley had arrived in Plymouth a year or so ago those officers old enough to remember the US TV show Miami Vice had taken to calling him Tubbs after the show’s stylish detective. Riley had borne the practise with good humour until someone from Human Resources had got wind of it and panicked, detecting a lawsuit and headlines. Nicknames were now banned, the penalty a day on an attitude reorientation course.
Riley undid the button on his collar and made some comment about the central heating being way too high before explaining what they had on Isaacs.
‘He has confessed to removing the girl’s underwear and wan-, um, masturbating over the body, but swears blind he knows nothing else about her. For the moment we can do him under sexual offences section seventy. Turns out he’s got previous though, sex with a minor, however it was over thirty years ago.’
‘The case was still on file?’ Savage asked.
‘No, he admitted it. He’s pretty ashamed of himself now and I think he is so terrified of what the wife is going to do to him he just wanted to come clean.’
‘So to speak,’ Calter said.
Savage had selected Riley and Calter for the initial interview. She had figured the combination of Riley, tall, black and disarming, and Calter, who in her own words described herself as a ‘hard-nosed bitch’, would unsettle Isaacs. In fact, the interview plan had gone a little astray because Mr Isaacs claimed he had a history of mental illness and was on medication. A check with his GP had confirmed the fact and they had to get someone along from Social Services to sit in as an appropriate adult. Still, Savage was pleased with the results even though they’d had to adopt a softer approach than she would have liked.
‘What’s your hunch, Jane?’ Savage asked Calter.
‘I am not sure, ma’am. Why would he call us and tell us about the girl? Why would he leave her on his land in the first place? On the other hand, he’s got previous and by assaulting the corpse he has put himself in the frame forensically.’
‘You don’t sound convinced though?’
‘Anything is possible, but all in all I don’t think he is seriously up for it. Not at this early stage anyway.’
‘Really? If the sexual offence from thirty years ago had been committed today he’d be on the sex offenders list. That, and his mental condition, should make us look twice.’
‘He’s not right in the head, ma’am,’ Riley said. ‘One raisin short of a fruitcake, I’d say. When we asked him about the previous conviction he went off on some rant about how the whole world was becoming soft and filled with poofters and that we needed to get back to a time where men could be men and not ponce about like girls.’
‘We’ve got the underwear to consider too, ma’am,’ Calter said. ‘I mean if the knickers and bra didn’t belong to the girl then where did they come from?’
When John Layton had arrived at the farm to collect the underwear he had shown Savage the clothing. Through the polythene of the evidence bag he folded the material, hunting for the label.
‘Sainsbury’s girls’ range, ma’am. Suitable for a twelve to thirteen year old. They wouldn’t be the right size for the victim.’
Now Savage thought about the underwear again. The knickers would fit her own daughter and although the young woman in the copse could have squeezed into them they didn’t belong to her.
‘But Isaacs has sworn he removed them from the girl,’ Riley said. ‘I can’t see any reason for him to lie.’
‘Unless he bought them to put on the girl,’ Savage said. ‘In that case he would want to remove the evidence after he’d had his fun.’
‘Some sort of fetish?’ Calter said, wrinkling her nose in mock disgust.
‘Whatever. The search team are going over the farm at the moment in the hope of finding the rest of the girl’s clothing. Come up trumps and we’ve got him. You two can have another go at him later this morning. Some extra pressure this time, please, I want him unsettled a little bit more. If that’s possible.’
She could imagine poor old Isaacs squirming at the sight of his interviewers returning for a second round. A man like that, whatever he had done, had pride, and he wouldn’t be comfortable with Riley and Calter squashing him underfoot.
‘Ma’am?’ Riley pointed to the terminal in front of him on which he’d pulled up a map of the area in a browser window. ‘The underwear was from Sainsbury’s, right?’
‘Yes. So?’
‘The closest supermarket to Isaacs’s place would be the Tesco Megastore at Lee Mill, near Ivybridge. Sainsbury’s is much farther away.’
‘You are right. And the more I think about it the more I can’t imagine Mr Isaacs trooping up and down the aisles searching for girls’ knickers. I bet he doesn’t even do any of the shopping, that would be Mrs Isaacs’s job and she’d use the local shops. He’d be lost in a supermarket.’
‘Well, if he didn’t buy the underwear then he is out of the frame, isn’t he?’ Riley clicked the browser window shut as if that was the end of the matter and that further questioning of Isaacs would be pointless.
The immediate priority, apart from dealing with Isaacs, was to identify the girl. Often murder victims knew their killers, so establishing the victim’s network could be the key to finding the murderer. Isaacs had said he had never seen her before he came across her in the wood, but if he was lying he would be in deeper shit than the muck in his farmyard.
A steady trickle of calls were coming into the incident room hotline about the girl and two officers logged the details into the system. DC Susan Bridge, an older officer recently transferred out of uniform, was raising actions on
