Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel Read Free

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