Read Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel for Free Online Page A

wind. Was this part of the publicity stunt? If so, they’d certainly made an effort with the paper prop. The piece of broken china was another matter.
    ‘Nothing else in the tube then?’ Riley asked. Enders picked up the tube and stared inside. He shook his head. Riley pulled out his phone and held it out level in front of him. ‘Put the piece of china on there, would you? I want to look at it more closely.’
    Enders placed the little white object on the glass screen and Riley held the phone up close to his eyes. The surface wasn’t uniform, nor was the shape. It was around half an inch long and bulbous at each end.
    ‘This isn’t china,’ Riley said. He gestured at the item. ‘It’s a piece of bone.’
    The water was creeping round the edge of the houseboat when Savage arrived. A series of scaffold boards had been fixed to uprights sunk deep in the mud and rope hung between the uprights to provide some sort of notional security. She placed a foot onto the first board, feeling the wood strain beneath her, and walked out to the boat. ‘Boat’ was rather a grand title for what amounted to a bodge job of plywood, old window frames and off-cut timber. Beneath the superstructure lay the remnants of an ancient barge, black with layer upon layer of a tar-like antifoul. The boat didn’t look seaworthy and Savage doubted it could get anywhere under its own power. Likely as not this would be the barge’s last resting place and when the owner was dead or gone the boat would rot down to the frame in the same way as the one along the shore had.

    She stepped onto the deck. In front of her, a regular house door in white PVC plastic and glass stood incongruously between two pieces of salvaged teak. She was about to knock on the glass when she saw something move at the far end of the boat. Somebody was back there.
    ‘Hello?’ she said.
    The figure glanced up for a moment before disappearing from view. Savage edged along the side deck until she came to what she guessed must be the stern. Lobster pots and crab creels lay strewn about a large platform. To one side a dozen marker buoys stood in a jumble amid a nest of rope, their flags fluttering in the wind. Nearby there was a stack of white crates and a figure in a huge black cloak was sorting crabs from one crate to another. An unlit wooden pipe stuck out from a full beard.
    ‘If you’re after a lobby, you’re out of luck,’ the man said, the pipe jerking up and down as he spoke. ‘Shrimps I’ve got, or else one of these nice spiders.’
    ‘Police, Mr …?’ Savage moved from her precarious position on the side deck and onto the rear platform. ‘Just a few questions.’

    ‘Larry.’ Larry laughed to himself and then held out a huge spider crab towards Savage. The legs wiggled helplessly in the air while the claws snapped open and shut, searching for something to clamp onto. ‘Larry the Lobster.’
    ‘Detective Inspector …’ Savage leant back, avoiding the creature as Larry moved the crab nearer to her face. ‘Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage. We’re investigating the disappearance of a young boy. He was out digging bait next to the wreck.’
    ‘Gone under, has he? Should have learnt to read the tide tables. Can’t help idiots, I’m afraid.’
    ‘We believe he made it back to the shore. We found his bucket. We also found a pipe out in the mud.’ Savage pointed at Larry’s mouth. ‘You’re a pipe smoker.’
    ‘When I can afford it. And yes, I lost one out there the other day.’ Larry shook his head and then sneered. ‘You think I’ve got him, do you? Down below confined in a giant creel with the others?’
    ‘Larry, this isn’t a joking matter. The boy is eleven years old. He’s a kid.’
    ‘When I was only a couple of years older, I was working for a living out on the blue.’ Larry held up his right hand and Savage saw it had only fingers, no thumb. ‘That was how I lost this. Caught on a trolling hook as the line went over the transom.