Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen

to emerge: Owen Fox, his wife, Lauren, and their solicitor. Owen had jet-black hair like his dad, but his facial features were softer. Lauren was blonde, her hair matching the curly locks of the baby in her arms. Both parents were early twenties, not far off the age Savage had been when she’d had the twins.

      ‘A difficult time, hey?’ Anshore said, following Savage’s gaze. ‘Tough for the family.’

      ‘Tough?’ Savage held herself stock-still, bristling inside once again. She wished Anshore would shut up, wished she was away from here. ‘I guess you could fucking say so.’

      With that she wheeled about and headed for her car, leaving Anshore standing open-mouthed.

      Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin had been at the inquest too. He’d listened to three days of evidence replete with a myriad of unwholesome revelations about Simon Fox. Now, back in his office at Crownhill Police Station with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, he could finally relax. The past few weeks had been a nightmare, but at least, he thought, his own officers had come through with flying colours. DI Savage in particular had handled the situation with a coolness he’d rarely seen in a woman.

      Hardin reached for his tea and slurped down a mouthful. A stack of mail formed an ominous pile next to the plate of biscuits. He took the first piece of mail from the pile, promising himself a biscuit once he’d dealt with three items. The white envelope had been addressed in block capitals, with his full name – without rank – at the head. A first-class stamp sat in the top right corner and was franked with yesterday’s date. The letter had been posted in Plymouth.

      He noted the details without really thinking about them, the result of half a lifetime as a detective, but when he opened the envelope his interest was piqued. The letter inside had been handwritten in a Gothic script with eloquent curls and flowing lines. The Fs, Ps, Qs and Ys were nothing less than calligraphic perfection. This, Hardin thought, was somebody who thought presentation was as important as content.

      Having read the first few lines, he was swiftly disabused of the notion. The content was waffle and he’d barely skimmed through half the letter before dismissing the message as the mad ramblings of somebody who needed psychiatric help.

      Hardin stuck his tongue out over his bottom lip, as he always did when he was deep in thought. The letter had been addressed to him personally and began in an overly familiar fashion.

       Dear Conrad …

      He paused and started from the beginning again, once more struggling to make any sense of most of the content. However, towards the bottom of the page a line stood out.

       How about your sense of duty, PC Hardin? What about your sense of respect? Do you have any left? Are you ready to repent?

      PC Hardin?

      It was a long time since he’d been a police constable. For a moment Hardin smiled to himself, memories flooding back. He looked up from the letter, his eyes drawn to the map of Devon on the wall. He’d started out at Kingsbridge nick, what – twenty-five, thirty years ago? Things had been very different then. He’d patrolled the town on foot, the lanes and nearby villages on a bicycle. If he was lucky he went out with a colleague two up in a squad car. Stopped for lunch in a sunny layby with a view of the sea. Back in the eighties the area had hardly entered the twentieth century. A few drunks, the occasional burglary, some Saturday night argy-bargy after closing time. So different from the inner-city problems he had to deal with now.

      He stifled the smile and bent to the letter again.

       You probably won’t recall me, but you must remember what happened all those years ago. When you were just a bobby on the beat. Before you became a DETECTIVE. Who could forget that face in the photograph?

      Of course he remembered. The event was imprinted on his memory. He’d pushed the details as far back into the recesses of his mind as he could, but every now and then an echo came sliding to the surface, like a body rising bloated from the depths of a lake.

       How about your sense of duty, PC Hardin?

      Duty? He’d done his duty back then. Ever since, too. What was this joker hinting at? Were they trying to scare him? Was this some kind of blackmail scam or a threat, even? He’d put away dozens of criminals in his career, many of them dangerous, and yet it seemed unlikely the letter was from one of them. No professional felon would act in such a way.

      A prank then. A prank or a madman.

      He read the final paragraph.

       Last time you failed them and you failed me too. Back then you obeyed your superiors and followed orders, but now we’re going to start afresh. We’re going to play a game, PC Hardin, and this time we’re going to play by my rules.

      Hardin shook his head and then refolded the letter and placed the piece of paper back in the envelope. Really he should report this, get John Layton and his CSIs up here to examine the thing. By the book was Hardin’s motto. He tapped the envelope with a fingertip and stared at his name, wondering how he could possibly explain the circumstances to Layton. He shook his head once more and sighed. Then he opened one of his desk drawers, popped the letter in, and slid the drawer closed.

      As a young kid, Jason Hobb had liked playing out on the mud next to the old hulk. His grandad had told him the wreck was a pirate vessel which, one dark night, had foundered in the shallows as the crew argued with the captain about the division of their loot. While they bickered, the falling tide left them stranded and by the time dawn broke the game was up. They were arrested by customs officers and, after a quick trial, five of the crew were hanged and the rest thrown into prison.

      Now, eleven and a half years old and somewhat wiser, Jason realised the story was entirely made up. After all, according to his grandad, the pirates had been hanged from the Tamar Bridge, their bodies dangling for days until the seagulls had picked the corpses down to the bone. By the time Jason had discovered the bridge had been built in the 1960s, his grandad had passed away, the little wink the old man gave whenever he told Jason something outlandish just about the only thing he could remember about his face.

      Right now, Jason leant on his spade near the wreck. He didn’t play so much nowadays, not since his dad had gone away. The area around the old ship was no longer a place of adventure. More often than not he came to the mud to dig for bait. He sold the ragworms to the local fishing shop in nearby Torpoint, the few quid he earned clattering down on the kitchen table and bringing a hint of a smile to his mother’s face.

      ‘You’re a good boy, Jason,’ she’d say, pocketing the coins and sometimes handing a couple back to him. ‘If only your old man had been as thoughtful.’

      While he was sad he no longer got to see his grandad, he couldn’t care less about his old man. His father, Jason had come to realise about the same time he began to doubt his grandad’s stories, was nothing more than a lazy, drunken fuckwit.

      Water began to slosh around Jason’s boots, the incoming tide sweeping over the mudflats. If he wasn’t careful he’d be getting wet. He pulled the spade from the mud and picked up his bait bucket. A dozen raggies wriggled in amongst the silt, no more. Hardly enough to make a journey round to the fishing shop worthwhile. Jason scanned the shoreline. Usually around this time there’d be a couple of fishermen setting up their gear in advance of the rising tide. Today there was no one. Jason sighed, wondered about tipping the bucket’s contents back into the sea. Then he caught sight of the old houseboat moored a couple of hundred metres along the shoreline. Larry the lobster fisherman lived there. As dusk fell, Larry liked to hunt for young boys. He’d capture them, keep them overnight in a huge crabbing pot, and then in the morning he’d slice them thinly and fry them in a pan with a few langoustines for his breakfast. At least that’s the story Jason’s grandad had spun him.

      Jason squelched towards the shoreline. In Torpoint the streetlights had begun to pop into life. This time of year, night fell quickly and in a few minutes it would be dark. As he reached the harder ground where the mud mixed with shingle, a car pulled up. Two men got out and sprung the boot of the hatchback. They began to unload