A rush of air washed over the girl now and Calter pulled the curtains to one side to let the warmth reach the skin. Savage knelt and felt the girl’s pulse again. It was weak and her breath was very shallow.
‘Right now would be a good time for the helicopter,’ Savage said.
On cue they heard the distant thump, thump, thump of the approaching aircraft and Enders went outside to signal to the crew. Savage looked at Alice Nash again. The helicopter noise was much louder now and the windows started to vibrate and the ground beneath her feet shook. Calter was shouting something, but Savage couldn’t make out what she was saying. Nor could she make out whether Alice’s chest was rising and falling any more. She touched the girl’s neck and now she was sure.
‘Defib!’ She screamed at Calter and began to perform CPR on the girl, counting aloud as she did so. ‘One, two, three, four…’
Calter rushed outside leaving Savage alone, the noise of the helicopter in her ears replaced by that roaring sound inside her head. The same noise she had heard in the hospital when Clarissa had died.
‘Twenty-nine, thirty.’
She bent down to give mouth-to-mouth and then resumed the CPR.
‘One, two…’
Then the paramedics were beside her, unpacking the defibrillator, readying drugs, one of them taking over the chest compressions. Calter helped her get to her feet.
‘They know what they are doing, ma’am.’
Savage nodded and sniffed, aware that she was crying.
‘My…’
‘I know, ma’am. You don’t need to say anything, I understand.’ Calter put her arm around her and the two of them went outside. The bright blue and red helicopter stood in a field to one side of the house, its blades rotating slowly. Enders was talking to the pilot. The black Mitsubishi Shogun had gone.
‘Jesus!’ Savage said, pulling herself together. ‘Where the hell is Harrison?’
*
Two hours later and the place was heaving. The Chief Constable had been onto one of his military chums and a team of engineers from the Royal Marines in Plymouth had erected a temporary bridge over the stream to allow vehicle access. John Layton and his CSIs had trundled across it in three white SOC vans and they had disappeared inside the house like kids eager to explore Santa’s grotto. Hardin had arrived along with Garrett, Davies and a car boot full of supplies purloined from the canteen.
‘An army marches on its stomach,’ Hardin said, mouth crammed full of sandwich, the diet abandoned in celebration. ‘We are going to be here for days so we have to keep morale up.’
Hardin had taken the last bacon butty so the rest of them got stuck into egg and cress and soggy cheese and tomato. Washed down with lukewarm coffee. Morale, at least where the late lunch was concerned, was tepid.
The air ambulance had long gone to be replaced by the yellow and blue air operations helicopter. It buzzed overhead, circling the valley taking pictures. Hardin asked about Alice Nash.
‘Just took a call from Derriford, sir,’ Savage said. ‘She is doing OK, all things considered.’
‘All things considered, I think you and your team deserve a bloody medal, Charlotte.’ Hardin wiped some ketchup from his chin and sucked it off his finger. ‘DC Enders for getting you here so quickly and you and DC Calter for tackling Harrison and saving Alice Nash’s life. Quick thinking to call the air ambulance too.’
‘Harrison got away, sir.’
‘Bah!’ Hardin dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand. ‘He hasn’t got anywhere to go now and every police force in the country is on the lookout for his car. We’ll have him before long.’
‘And then we’ll have some fun,’ Davies said, rubbing his hands together.
‘Quite,’ Hardin said. ‘Anyway, we have weathered the media storm and in the end the results show crime doesn’t pay. Mitchell, dead. Forester, dead. Richard Trent, banged up. Harrison soon to be apprehended. There have been victims, yes, but thank God there won’t be any more.’
Just then a movement at one of the upstairs windows caught Savage’s eye. It was John Layton. He was waving and fiddling with the latch, trying to open it. Finally he gave up and moved back from the window. The next thing the glass was shattering and he was shouting something about calling for an ambulance.
*
Layton had found them in the attic. A man and a woman in their seventies, half-naked, emaciated, the sort of thing you saw on the news when there was a famine somewhere. Or maybe in a documentary about the second world war where you got those flickering black and white images of the concentration camps after they had been liberated. Except this wasn’t on TV and it played before them in full colour.
Now the couple sat in the back of Hardin’s car wrapped in space blankets, the engine running, the heater going full blast. They had accepted water and sandwiches, only the man had wretched when he had tried to swallow his. The heavy chain that had been secured round their necks with padlocks had been removed. Layton had used a drill from his toolkit, the horrible screeching sound jarring Savage’s teeth as he worked on the locks. God knows what it had sounded like close up.
Savage, Hardin and Layton were standing some distance from the car, Hardin tapping his watch every minute, probably noting the response time for the ambulance.
‘Who the hell are they?’ Hardin said, as if their presence was an affront to the otherwise neat conclusion of the investigation.
‘They told me that they are Harrison’s parents, sir,’ Layton said.
‘What?’ Hardin puffed his cheeks out.
‘It fits, sir,’ Savage said. ‘It was DS Tatershall who called in the location of the cottage, remember? The parents were mispers from down in St Ives, Cornwall. They used to live here years ago before Harrison senior was convicted of abuse.’
‘I know where St bloody Ives is, thank you, Charlotte. What I want to ascertain is what the hell they are doing here?’
‘According to DS Tatershall the father has cancer.’ Savage glanced across to the car and lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he wanted to see his son again before he died?’
‘Fine. I can go with that. But why the fuck did Harrison chain them up in the attic and half-starve them to death? Jesus, have you seen them close up? They look like extras from some zombie movie.’
Hardin wasn’t big on sympathy, especially when it didn’t have tick-boxes alongside it. In this case Savage thought he was being harsh, but she said nothing. Instead she told him about the information Mrs Harbersher had given them and the planned liaison with the officers down in St Ives.
‘DS Riley is heading down there first thing tomorrow and he will find out everything they know. I will take DC Calter with me to the hospital tomorrow and we can get the full story from Alice Nash and the parents.’
‘Tomorrow? Can’t you…’ Hardin peered at the occupants of the car, gave an involuntary shudder and then corrected himself. ‘No, you are right. The state they are in it would be better to wait.’
It was getting gloomy now, dusk enveloping the valley, and when the ambulance arrived its light cast ghostly patterns amongst the trees, the shadows dancing like demons waiting to pounce. Hardin tapped his watch for the final time and muttered something about twenty-three minutes being bloody pathetic. Then he was all smiles for the paramedics, keen to get the old couple out of his car and into the ambulance so he could get away.
‘It’s my daughter’s birthday. She’s nineteen this week. Me and the wife are taking her out to dinner tonight. Late is not on the menu.’
Layton looked over at Savage and she could see he was thinking the same as her: if only. The CSI team would be working through the night and Savage knew that she would have to return to Plymouth to file some sort of preliminary report. When she would get back home she had no idea.
Chapter 36
Bovisand, Plymouth. Tuesday 9th November. 9.57 pm
The clock on the dash showed close to ten before she turned in off the lane and her car crunched over the gravel drive and into the garage. She sat in the dark for a few moments, enjoying the warmth of the car and the
