LITMIR.BIZ

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death to cope with, Pete around for what seemed like mere fleeting moments.

      ‘You’re not,’ Pete said.

      ‘No.’ Savage moved over and hugged him, pressing her face into his neck and kissing him, aware of her floury hands making prints on his jumper. ‘I’m sad for you, of course, sad for your crew too, but I’m not sorry. Have you known long?’

      ‘Before the last voyage I got an inkling of what might happen. At least the old girl went on a grand final trip.’

      Pete had taken the frigate on a circumnavigation of South America, cruising down to the Falklands, through the Straits of Magellan and up the Pacific coast of Chile, using the Panama Canal to get back to the Atlantic. Before that the ship had been on patrol in the Gulf and seen action in Pirate Alley. As with every warship returning to Devonport after active service, she had steamed into the Sound to a hero’s welcome, although one unnoticed by anyone living outside the city.

      Now, as Savage poured water into the big blue teapot, she felt a warmth from knowing Pete would be in Plymouth and bound to a desk for the foreseeable future. With a more normal job perhaps they could have some sort of existence like a normal family. For years she’d coped on her own, but combining her job and home life was almost impossible. Having her and Pete’s parents living close by helped, and more recently they’d employed Stefan. It still wasn’t easy though, and with Jamie being six and Samantha thirteen, there was hardly ever a time when she could relax.

      The steam from the pot curled upwards and she chinked the lid in place, watching the final wisp of vapour dissipate, along with her thoughts, as the phone rang. DC Patrick Enders calling from Major Crimes.

      ‘Don’t you ever have days off, Patrick?’ Savage said.

      ‘It’s the overtime, ma’am. Worth its weight. If there’s any available I snap it up. I can always take a day off in the week when the kids are at school. So much more peaceful.’

      Enders was late twenties, already with three children and a mortgage and designs on a four-bedroomed place in Mannamead where his family could spread out. But then, Savage thought, when she’d been that age she’d had the same aspirations. When the twins were born, she and Pete had been lucky enough to find a large wreck of a house on the coast, before prices sky rocketed and such properties became unaffordable to all but the very few.

      ‘Well, what can I do for you?’ Savage said. ‘I’m just about to sit down with my own kids and have cake and tea so you had better not have something for me.’

      ‘No, just a reminder, ma’am. The DSupt says not to forget about the Sternway meeting tomorrow. He’s sending you a bunch of stuff, so check your email.’

      ‘Great,’ Savage said, without much enthusiasm. She already had a mountain of papers to read concerning Operation Sternway – the force’s long-term drugs operation – but she promised Enders she would check her email, hung up, and gave a silent ‘thank you’ that she didn’t have to rush out. The irony, given her recent talk to Pete about how much his job had taken over his life, wouldn’t be welcomed.

      The call from Enders reminded her there was other paperwork to complete too: notes for an upcoming PSD inquiry. The Professional Standards Department wanted to know why she had left the scene of a car accident in which a man had been killed. No matter that the man had been a serial killer who had tried to abduct her own daughter Samantha, Standards wanted answers. Over Christmas and New Year she had pushed all thoughts of the inquiry to the back of her mind, but now, with the interview looming, she knew she needed to spend time preparing.

      Savage sighed and then went back to the living room, to find Stefan teaching the kids some toilet humour. The scatological references sounded twice as funny in Swedish and soon all five of them were conversing in a mixture of languages, interspersed with prolonged periods of giggling. Savage turned from the mayhem and looked out through the big window. Shadows crept across the lawn, painting black shapes on the grass which glistened with silver moisture in the fading light. Beyond the garden, the cliff fell away to a mirror which stretched to the horizon where the sun was just kissing the sea, somewhere out past Edison Rocks. Sunday afternoon bliss.

       Chapter Two

       Efford, Plymouth. Monday 14th January. 8.35 a.m.

      On any other Monday, the three builders cradling mugs of steaming tea and sitting on the low brick wall outside seventy-five Lester Close might well have been discussing the weekend’s footie. Plymouth had gone down three-nil at home and the handful of points the team had collected in their last ten games wasn’t enough to appease the fans. A demo had been arranged and there were calls to sack the manager, the players, the board, the boot boy, anyone who could conceivably be to blame for the team’s recent abject performance.

      On any other Monday.

      Jed Rammel was the oldest of the three – twenty years the oldest – and he’d never seen anything like it. Except, of course, when he’d been over in Iraq, but that was different. You expected things like that there. Not here, not on a Monday morning when all you’d come to do was dig up somebody’s back yard to put some concrete footings in, preparatory work for a new conservatory. Jed guessed the owner would be cancelling the work now. Nobody in their right mind would want to be sitting out the back any more. Lying bathed in sunlight, relaxing, dreaming, and sipping a beer. Thinking about what had once been buried there. Give over.

      Jed scratched his head, slurped another gulp of tea, tried to forget the toothy smile showing from behind the dried-up lips, and those empty eye sockets which seemed to be staring right out at him.

      They’d started that morning at seven-thirty, with barely enough light to work by. Carted picks, crowbars, sledgehammers and shovels round the back. Jed had checked the instructions and marked out the limits of where they were to dig with lines of chalk powder and a couple of stakes. Young Ryan had first dibs, lifting the broken paving slabs with the edge of his pickaxe and then going ten-to-the-dozen with the crowbar on the old concrete beneath.

      Youth, Jed had thought, all now-now-now, no care for the future. And so it proved. Ten minutes later and Ryan was knackered, so Jed and Barry took over, breaking the concrete while Ryan shovelled the residue out the way.

      They’d found the bones of a small dog soon after. Nothing to get excited about, Jed said, even as Ryan began to lark around. The larking ended when they found the box nearby. Plastic, buried in the soil under the layer of concrete about two feet from the dog. Jed wondered if the thing wasn’t some sort of drainage sump, but when they took off the lid and saw the contents they realised it wasn’t. They’d thought the thing inside was a doll at first. A big doll, sure, but a doll nonetheless. Jed’s granddaughter had one, a large, lifelike thing he and the wife had bought the kid the Christmas before last. But no, it wasn’t a doll. They’d realised that when Ryan’s spade pierced a hole in the chest where he poked it. Crackled like parchment the skin had, and through the split the three of them had seen the bones of the ribcage.

      Definitely not a doll.

      Jed sipped his tea again. Thought about Iraq. About things he’d never told his workmates, nor his wife. Things he’d only shared with the men he’d served with. The type of horror he’d thought belonged thousands of miles away, in another country.

      ‘Losing three-nil,’ Ryan said. ‘At home. You can hardly fucking believe it, can you?’

      No, Jed thought, you couldn’t.

      Savage drove into the car park at Crownhill Police Station a little after eight fifty-five to see DC Jane Calter jogging over, her breath steaming out in the cold air. She pulled the passenger door open and collapsed in the front seat.

      ‘Off to a property in Efford, ma’am. Right next to the cemetery. Handy, because there’s a body under the patio. And I’m not joking. Wish I was.’

      ‘Who’s

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