CUT DEAD: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel. Mark Sennen

sort of Stone Age rock have you crawled out from under? I work remotely for a Swiss company. Occasional meetings in London or Zurich, a lot of time on Skype, millions of emails.’

      ‘So no work colleagues to verify your story?’ Savage said. ‘A visitor to the house maybe?’

      ‘Without checking my diary I can’t tell you who I spoke to that day, but there’ll have been emails I’m sure.’

      ‘What about your wife, Mr Glastone?’ Savage turned her head to peer in through the open door. ‘Was she around back then?’

      ‘My wife?’ Glastone raised his hand to his mouth, a sure sign, Savage thought, of a lie or an indiscretion.

      ‘Your new wife. I believe you remarried after Mandy’s death?’

      As if in answer there was a clatter of dishes from inside, something falling to the floor and breaking. Savage made to rise from the table and go and investigate but Glastone waved her to sit down.

      ‘Carol?’ Glastone raised his voice. ‘What the hell’s going on in there?’

      A moment or two later and a figure ghosted out from the dark shadow and stood blinking at the door.

      ‘I …’ The woman paused at the sight of Savage and Calter. ‘I dropped a plate. Clumsy me.’

      A smile broke on the thin features of the woman’s face but it lasted only a second. She moved forward and placed a hand on Glastone’s shoulder, as if for support. She had mouse-brown hair and wore a bright summer dress with short sleeves. A shawl half-covered her arms which were slim and goosebumped, despite the warmth. Above the right elbow, a black and purple bruise encircled the arm. The woman drew the shawl across the bruise and looked at Glastone.

      ‘Police, Carol,’ Glastone said. ‘They’re still trying to fit me up for Mandy’s death all this time later.’

      ‘We are not trying to fit you up,’ Savage said to Glastone before turning to Carol. ‘If you can remember what you were doing around the twenty-first of June last year it would be very helpful.’

      ‘Last year? The twenty-first?’ Carol looked to Glastone yet again, as if he should answer, but then spoke for herself. ‘I’d have been at the school, I think. I help out most days as a teaching assistant. I’d be back here by four-ish and then I’d prepare the dinner.’

      ‘But you don’t know, you’re just guessing?’

      ‘No, I remember clearly now. We had some fresh fish I bought on the way home. We opened a bottle of Sancerre and I made a béarnaise sauce. I recall thinking it would be a lovely evening for eating on the balcony, knowing the light would be with us until late. The longest day, see?’

      ‘Yes,’ Savage said, thinking she had asked Carol to remember and the woman had remembered all too easily. ‘Is that Salcombe Primary? Where you work?’

      Carol muttered an assent and Savage and Calter got up.

      ‘We’re finished for the moment, Mr Glastone. If you could check your emails and send us a record of any you sent on the twentieth to the twenty-second of June, that would help. Any calls too.’ Savage placed a business card down on the table and nodded to Carol, catching the woman’s eyes and trying to appear friendly. ‘And anything else you would care to share with us, Carol, just get in touch. Anything at all.’

      As they walked down the steps to the road Calter leant close to Savage.

      ‘The bruise, ma’am, did you see it?’

      ‘Yes.’ Savage glanced back up at the house, but Glastone and his wife had already retreated inside. ‘Changed your opinion of Mr Glastone yet?’

      ‘No, but I’m going to check in the boot. See if there isn’t a pair of garden shears in there.’

      ‘No easy alibi for last year and I thought Carol was a little too quick to remember what she was doing, right down to the sauce she poured over their fish. Would you be able to do that?’

      ‘Easy for me, ma’am. It’s always vinegar. But I still contend beating his wife doesn’t make him a serial killer.’

      ‘No, but we need to get over to the school and check Carol’s story and if it doesn’t pan out then I want to talk to her alone. See if we can get her to open up. Glastone’s not off my radar just yet.’

       Chapter Nine

       Three beeps and then silence. The absence of noise makes you look up from your newspaper and you note that the dishwasher has run its cycle. You turn to the clock on the wall. Two hours and twenty-three minutes. So far so good, although on forty-five degrees eco mode the cycle should have gone on for another half an hour. You put the paper down and go and inspect the contents. The dishes are clean but there is a pool of dirty water in the bottom. You sigh and realise you will need to visit the repair man. He won’t like it much, but then you don’t like looking at the water with the scum floating on top. Why did he say he knew about dishwashers if he didn’t? He lied and you find lying worse than rudeness.

       The repair man will have to wait though. Other matters need to be attended to first. Your eyes flit back to the headline on the newspaper which lies on the table next to a half-eaten crumpet, the top brown with Marmite. Lovely, a crumpet with Marmite on. Nicer than strawberry jam. Perhaps not quite as nice as one with apricot but it’s a close run thing.

       Thinking about the crumpet toppings makes you realise you haven’t checked your jars recently and the next ten minutes are taken up with a rummage through the walk-in pantry examining the jams and relishes you have in stock. You take your special pad and pencil and double check the best-before dates. There’s a fine line you think, between everything turning out OK and it all going to pot. A few hours either way, the balance tilted, from delicious to total fucking crap.

       Finished with the jams, you cast a glance at the back of the pantry where there are some bigger jars, huge Kilners, a few of them not far off the size of a small bucket. Usually they are for preserves, marmalades and the like. These jars don’t contain anything sweet though, oh no. These jars contain things which were once far more dangerous. No longer though, not now you have neutralised them.

       You leave the pantry and make a shopping list in the margin of the front page of the newspaper. List done, your eyes shift to the main story. The article says the police have found some bodies. Your bodies. With the Special Day so close the news is worrying. What will you do with the next girl? It’s not right she can’t lie with the others. The location means everything. Especially after what happened to you.

       Geography. You respect it but other people don’t. They attempt to transcend space with emails and text messages. Electricity moving down wires, electrons buzzing through the air. What’s so wrong with a fucking letter?

       But back to the location issue. You’ll have to find somewhere else for her to go when you’ve finished. Not safe at the farm, not with all those police everywhere. Unless they’re gone by then, but you don’t think that’s likely. They’ll be watching. Expecting you to return because that’s what it says in the manual. On those television programmes too. The ones with policemen in them. You don’t watch that sort of thing. In fact you don’t watch anything because you don’t have a television. You guess that’s in the manual too: keep a lookout for people who don’t have a television. Likely as not they’ve committed a serious crime.

       A serious crime.

       Which brings your mind back to the girl.

       Verdict: guilty.

       Sentence: a trip to your place, a session with you and the Big Knife followed by some quality time with Mikey.

       If she’s lucky she’ll