TOUCH: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen

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’m 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’s 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’s 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 those calls, arranging for follow-up interviews or passing information to Savage if she wasn’t sure further investigation was needed. She was spot on when she had asked if they weren’t up against two problems at once.

      ‘I mean, ma’am, that we have a sort of reverse missing person case as well as the murder,’ she said. ‘We need to find out who the girl is, but that is being coloured by the fact she is dead.’

      She was right. Already there had been a fair number of reports from people who claimed to know the girl, where she had been and what she had done. All of them, so far as the team knew, were plain incorrect. Well-meaning but misguided members of the public often did that sort of thing. They wanted a resolution to the story and the gaps were like missing an episode of EastEnders. In this case you couldn’t catch up on iPlayer or ask your friends what had happened so your mind filled in the blanks for you.

      ‘Ma’am?’ Enders broke into her train of thought. ‘I’ve got the results on screen.’

      Savage had asked Enders to come up with a list of mispers reported in the last few weeks and now she went over to where he was sitting in front of a terminal navigating through the missing person register on the COMPACT MISPER system. Riley and Calter came over too and the three of them peered over Enders’s shoulders at the screen.

      ‘Four on my shortlist, ma’am,’ Enders said as if announcing the winner of the Christmas raffle.

      ‘Number one, Alice Nash. She’s sixteen, from Ashburton, a town close to Malstead and just along the A38 from Buckfastleigh. There seems to be some real concern about her. She left her work place in Ivybridge and never boarded the bus to Ashburton. When her dad realised that she hadn’t got her usual bus or the following two he called us. Some report of her possibly accepting a lift from—’

      ‘Idiot!’ Calter said, flicking the top of Enders’s head with her hand. ‘Read the date, Sherlock. She went missing Monday evening. Isaacs had found the body by then. Worrying for the parents, sure, but no way she can be our victim.’

      Enders looked sheepish before carrying on.

      ‘Lindsey Nation, nineteen, I can see it’s not her. She’s blonde, not dark-haired like the girl in the wood.’

      Enders clicked through his list.

      ‘Um, Jenny Smith?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Simone Ashton?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘That’s your lot from round here.’

      ‘We need to widen the area or the timeframe or both,’ Calter chipped in.

      ‘Evidently.’

      Enders went back to the search page where he changed some of the parameters.

      ‘Still sticking to Devon and Cornwall, but extending the date range to six months.’

      ‘That’s long enough. The girl died in the last week or so.’

      ‘Right.’ Enders hit the return key and data filled the screen. ‘Bloody hell. Eighty-four names.’

      ‘I’ll get some coffees, ma’am,’ Calter said as Enders began to scroll through the results.

      Savage