‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Although I’m itching to know the destination for our little magical mystery tour.’
Riley nodded but said nothing more. He shifted in his seat and ran a finger up to his shirt collar where the bright white material met his black skin. The DS was, as usual, immaculately turned out, with his hair neat and short, his attire spotless. Savage had always figured that Riley had to go the extra mile to prove himself in a force which was overwhelmingly white. And prove himself he had. He’d been instrumental in the success of several operations including the capture of a multiple murderer which had nearly cost him his life. He’d also helped Savage track down the person who’d been involved in the hit-and-run which had killed her daughter, Samantha’s twin sister, Clarissa. Riley had become more than just a work colleague, he was a confidant and, she liked to think, a friend.
‘Ah, Charlotte.’ Hardin spun round, coffee slopping from the three cups as he tried to hold them in two hands. He squeezed his considerable bulk behind his desk and set the coffees down, before sinking into his chair. ‘Ready for the off?’
‘If I knew what the “off” was, it would be helpful, sir.’
‘In good time. I was hoping DC Enders would be here by now, but we’ll proceed without him. He’s only your driver so it’s not as if he needs to hear this briefing. You can fill him in later.’
‘Our driver?’ Savage glanced at Riley, but the DS only shrugged. He appeared to know little more than she did.
‘Malcolm Kendwick,’ Hardin said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. Savage and Riley sat there in silence for a minute while Hardin shuffled through a load of papers on his desk. He pulled a stack of documents from a large FedEx envelope. Several of the documents bore a header with the graphic of an eagle. Below the eagle, large text with the words US Department of Justice, marched officially across the envelope. ‘As I was saying, Malcolm Kendwick. Know who he is?’
Savage nodded. ‘Yes. Sort of.’
‘Sort of’ meant she’d read the headlines in the tabloids, the longer pieces in the quality press. Malcolm Kendwick was, if you believed the paper who’d bought the rights to his story, an innocent British citizen abroad. Framed for the murder of several young women in the US, he had surely faced the death penalty until he’d been let off on a technicality. Several other newspapers naturally took the opposing viewpoint. For them, Kendwick was a serial killer who, with his good looks and charm, was following in the footsteps of Ted Bundy. What’s more, he was going to be deported from the States, which meant he’d be returning to the United Kingdom where he would undoubtedly wreak havoc. No female within fifty miles of wherever he ended up would be safe.
Hardin snorted. He picked up a sheaf of papers and waved them at Savage.
‘Funny, isn’t it, how when one of our own is in a foreign country they’re innocent, and yet when a foreigner commits a crime over here they’re guilty as sin.’
‘Sir?’ Savage was keen to get to the bottom of what Hardin was on about, why she and Riley had been called in.
‘Well, Charlotte, according to this Kendwick is guilty.’ Hardin waved the papers once more to emphasise his point. ‘It’s a transcript of the confession Kendwick gave to the cop. You’ve read the story, what was her name …?’
‘Janey. Janey Horton.’ Savage hadn’t cared much about the Kendwick case, but she had kept up with the news on Officer Horton. ‘Tough cookie. Dedicated.’
‘Trust you to know her name,’ Hardin said. ‘Five thousand miles but peas in a pod, hey?’
Officer Horton had been with the Fresno Police Department in California. Her daughter, Sara, had vanished, and Horton had become convinced that Malcolm Kendwick was responsible. Evidence – hard evidence – had been in short supply, but that hadn’t stopped Horton. She’d kidnapped Kendwick and imprisoned him in the basement of her house. Over a period of several days she’d extracted a confession from him along with the location of her daughter’s body. Leaving Kendwick tied up, she went out into the wilderness of the Sierra National Forest to find her daughter.
‘She did what any parent would do, sir.’ As she spoke, Savage was aware of Riley casting a glance in her direction. ‘Horton simply wanted the truth about what happened and justice for the man responsible.’
‘Well, she didn’t get it, did she?’
No, Savage thought, but not for want of trying.
Horton had spent two days searching, eventually discovering the corpse of a woman a good while dead, but definitely not her daughter. She returned to her house to find Kendwick had escaped. She hurried round to his apartment, but he’d fled from there too. Using contacts in the police department, she traced his credit card to a motel on the outskirts of Sacramento. She drove to the place intending to recapture Kendrick, but the owner of the motel grew suspicious when he saw her dragging Kendwick screaming from his room.
Local officers, responding to a 911 call from the owner, arrived and Kendwick pleaded innocence, claiming Horton was carrying out a vendetta against him. The officers were all for arresting Horton until she showed them a video on her phone. The video was the confession from Kendwick and once they’d seen it they arrested Kendwick instead. And that should have been that, the whole thing done and dusted. On the video, Kendwick admitted killing Horton’s daughter and several other girls. A forensic team hurried out into the wilderness and quickly located the remains of five women, including those of Sara Horton. All that remained was a lengthy trial and, hopefully, a minimal number of years on death row before Kendwick crapped himself as he was strapped to a gurney and given a lethal injection.
It wasn’t to be.
The evidence on the phone was inadmissible. No room for doubt. This wasn’t some obscure technicality which Kendwick’s lawyer had come up with. It was obvious. Horton had tortured Kendwick and filmed herself doing so. She’d sliced him with a knife and poured battery acid on his feet. Held a gun to his head and threatened to kill him. Anything Kendwick had said in the video couldn’t be used as evidence, couldn’t even be used as a lead to point to other evidence. Kendwick was untouchable.
Still, Fresno detectives worked double shifts for no extra pay trying to sift through the material Horton had gathered in her initial search for her daughter. The material which had led her to Kendwick in the first place. The problem was much of the evidence was circumstantial: Kendwick had been spotted at a park where Sara Horton often hung out with friends. He’d been seen jogging past the clothing store where she worked. He had a membership at a gym where she once had a part-time job. None of which was particularly incriminating. It looked at first as if Officer Horton had followed a hunch, used a dollop of female intuition, perhaps consulted the grounds in her morning coffee. Then Horton told her fellow officers about a rucksack she’d found in Kendwick’s car. Inside were handcuffs, a full-face balaclava and a pair of gloves, a roll of gaffer tape, some rope, a hammer and several trash bags. Kendwick claimed the items were nothing special, but Horton told the detectives they comprised a rape kit. It didn’t matter. Horton’s search of the car was ruled illegal and the evidence couldn’t be used.
All hope of a conviction now rested on a scrunchy discovered in Kendwick’s apartment, a single strand of blonde hair entangled in the shiny red material. A blonde hair which DNA analysis proved belonged to Sara Horton.
Kendwick was questioned about the scrunchy, but, as advised by his lawyer, said nothing more than he’d picked up the hairband in the park one day. Since Kendwick had long hair himself, which
