much fun as that!’
Harry turned from Mitchell and ran into the blackness.
Chapter 17
Crownhill Police Station, Plymouth. Thursday 28th October. 2.38 pm
Hardin must have got indigestion from too much liquorice because he had been in a foul mood when Savage told him about Alice Nash, threatening to skin the officers who failed to follow up on the Donal case. Thank goodness those responsible weren’t on her team because those picked out for the Hardin treatment would get pissed on and the splashback would hit anybody within range. With the metaphor stuck in her mind she went for lunch, unsurprised when she found she didn’t fancy much apart from a pastry and coffee. She finished off the pastry in record time and took the coffee back to the incident room. The heating had been turned up and a distinct fug hung in the air. Officers bustled to and fro in shirtsleeves, oblivious to the weather worsening outside the windows, and the place felt like a haven from the brewing storm. DS Collier sat in front of a terminal showing Calter some reports of various sightings of Forester. The two of them looked an unlikely pair with the sergeant’s greying military-style hair and shirt and tie contrasting with Calter’s bouncy shoulder-length bob and casual outfit of distressed jeans and tight top. Collier had collated all the statements and they pointed to Forester disappearing sometime in early August. He had started to tell Savage about cross referencing the dates with the bank and mobile records when DC Enders called across from his desk with a flush of excitement on his face.
‘Ma’am, phone call for you. A guy with some information. Won’t give his name and won’t speak to anyone but you.’ Enders indicated a phone near where she was standing. ‘Line one.’
The whole room fell silent as Savage moved to the desk, plucked up the handset and punched a key.
‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage speaking, who is this please?’
A pause before a voice came on the line. A man’s voice, but muffled and quiet, a whisper almost. Maybe he was holding something over the mouthpiece?
‘It’s about Forester. I have some information. He murdered the girl. Poisoned her. You wouldn’t know from looking, but he killed her. From the inside out.’
‘Could I have your name please?’
‘No. I am not telling you that.’
‘Anything you say will be treated in the strictest confidence, but if you do not want to give your name that is fine.’
‘Good. Because I am not going to.’ Another pause. ‘You sail boats don’t you?’
‘Pardon?’ Despite the warmth of the room a cold chill slid over her for a second. Then she remembered the newspaper story about her and Pete again, the one Nesbit had mentioned. She continued. ‘Yes, when I get the chance.’
Silence. Savage sensed the man was waiting for something more, some elaboration and if she didn’t oblige the call would be over.
‘I sail a Westerly out of Plymouth, a little family boat, mostly coastal pottering, but we go down to the Isles of Scilly occasionally, across to the Channel Islands and Brittany if we have the time.’ Savage waited a moment. ‘You said you had some information about David Forester?’
‘Zero five zero degrees, thirty-seven point four five minutes north. Zero, zero, three degrees, fifty-nine point six one minutes west.’
Savage motioned to Calter, waving her towards the terminal on the desk as she scratched the numbers down on a pad.
‘Can you repeat that please?’
Then nothing but dead air and the sound of the caller hanging up leaving Savage repeating the numbers aloud and cross checking with what she had written.
‘Google this,’ Savage said, handing Calter the piece of paper. ‘Lat long.’
‘Sorry, ma’am?’ Calter crooked her head on one side and squinted at Savage’s writing.
‘The caller gave me those, a latitude longitude plot supposedly pointing to where Forester is hiding. Put it into Google Maps and we might just have a result.’
‘The position is on Dartmoor, ma’am.’ Enders, beaming and pleased with himself.
‘How do you know that?’
‘Well, it’s a bit, um, embarrassing. A little like trainspotting.’ The pleased look had turned sheepish, Enders staring at the desk.
‘What is?’
‘Me and the wife, we are into a bit of letterboxing.’
‘I am assuming this letterboxing is not some sex game involving post office uniforms and boxing gloves?’
‘No,’ Enders laughed. ‘All over Dartmoor are little boxes hidden in out of the way places and the idea is to visit them all. A bit like Munroe bagging.’
Savage had heard of Munroe bagging. It was something to do with trying to climb as many Scottish mountains as possible.
‘We do the modern version of letterboxing, called geocaching. The kids love the adventure and anticipation. We use a GPS to navigate our way to a spot where something has been hidden. Doesn’t take long before those numbers, the lat long coordinates, become real in your mind. I couldn’t tell you exactly where they point to, but the location is somewhere on the northern part of the moor, well away from civilisation.’ Enders stopped, as if aware of the implications of what he was saying.
‘He’s right, ma’am!’ Calter was at the computer. She had brought up a satellite image of Dartmoor and a little icon marked the position she had plotted into the search box.
Savage checked the coordinates Calter had entered with the ones she had written down. They matched.
‘It is in the middle of nowhere,’ she said.
‘Not only in the middle of nowhere, ma’am,’ Enders said, ‘there is nothing there.’
Calter clicked the mouse and the image zoomed in. Now they could see open moor. A couple of rock outcrops, some bog, a leat weaving along the contours, clumps of heather, patterns in the ground caused by winter run off; nothing else. No road, no buildings, no trees, just empty and desolate moorland.
No one said anything and Savage shivered again, aware of the rain and hail that had begun to spatter on the windows. Calter broke the silence in her own inimitable way.
‘What the fuck would anybody in their right mind be doing out there?’
The street lamps burned orange against a sky darker than it should have been at four o’clock in the afternoon and heavy rain slashed from the clouds. Their vehicle ripped through the floods and even before leaving the outskirts of the city Savage had decided that commandeering one of Traffic’s Landrover Discoverys, complete with an experienced driver, had been a good move. Rivers of water poured across the roads creating huge puddles everywhere and daylight seemed almost a memory. Cars ahead of them moved into the gutters, diving out of the way of the strobing lights and siren. Savage gripped the armrests, eyes front watching the road. Calter and Enders larked around in the back, the two of them behaving like children on a day out.
‘Be falling as sleet up on the moor,’ Enders said, sounding excited. ‘If not snow.’
‘Like this sort of weather, do you?’ Savage asked.
‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, ma’am, only the wrong sort of clothing. Something like that.’
It took twenty minutes to get out of Plymouth, along the A386 and onto the B3212 that led across the moor towards Princetown. Sleet was falling now, reducing visibility to a few car lengths and slowing their speed to little more than a crawl. The sleet swirled around in the wind and every now and then the Landrover would be bludgeoned by an extra strong gust that threatened to overturn them. The driver peered forward, concentrating hard and fighting to keep the vehicle on the road.
At Princetown their headlights reflected on the fluorescent strip on an otherwise invisible white Defender parked by the side of the road. The vehicle’s siren blooped out a greeting and Savage spotted the Dartmoor Rescue Group logo on the side. She had phoned ahead and requested their services to guide them onto the remote part of
