The Boat House

The Boat House
Mark Sennen

***A SHORT STORY AND EXCLUSIVE SNEAK PREVIEW TO HIS NEXT BOOK***No one’s seen him in years…An isolated boat house. A reclusive old man. A body.DI Charlotte Savage’s first ever case as a detective.AN 11-PAGE SHORT STORY, INCLUDING AN EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT OF TELL TALE.

THE BOAT HOUSE

Mark Sennen

Copyright (#ulink_8cf1b256-a708-530a-91d1-0a665c9fceba)

AVON

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014

Copyright © Mark Sennen 2014

Cover design © Susie Bell

Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © December 2014 ISBN: 9780008130619

Version: 2014-12-05

Contents

Cover (#u7b43df20-522b-56e8-82ca-aa6b24b23ef2)

Title Page (#u029c632d-5353-5030-99a0-dac08ae03f6b)

Copyright (#u25db6562-3835-5f9b-8f47-f5cbe5862e5f)

Tuesday 26th February 2002. 4.05 p.m. (#u3d7ef06c-c022-5231-9bf1-0be89066421b)

Exclusive extract of TELL TALE (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Mark Sennen (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Tuesday 26th February 2002. 4.05 p.m. (#ulink_40dbee72-9f95-562d-8c36-c8ae96fe52e3)

The call came late afternoon on her day off, just as the twins were finishing their milk and marmite on toast. She left them with her mother, visiting for the week, and moved into the hall.

‘It’s tonight’s match, see,’ the voice on the end of the line said. ‘Argyle and Exeter. All available uniforms are at Home Park or mopping up the trouble makers in the centre of town. Down to you I’m afraid. You and a lad from D Section.’

D Section she thought, so it must be somewhere on the water. The officer gave her the details. Yes, she said, she’d be there. Twenty minutes. Half an hour max. She hung up and stared at her reflection in the mirror. The woman who stared back was mid to late twenties, red hair, bright eyes full of excitement, casual clothes. Time was if she’d received a call to go into work she’d have had to get changed. Put on a uniform. Not anymore. Not as of five days ago.

Detective Constable Charlotte Savage.

As a rank it was technically no better than that of PC, still …

Becoming a detective was something she’d dreamed of since joining the force. After three years on the beat she’d taken maternity leave and on her return she’d made her mind up. She’d studied, passed the exams and now, as of Monday, she was a detective on the Major Crimes team.

She blinked and pulled herself together. No time to be smug. Back in the living room she checked her mum was OK to look after the girls for a couple of hours and then grabbed her waterproof and left the house.

*

Twenty minutes later she was clumping along a pontoon down at Mountbatten, waterproof zipped up against a steady rain. At the end a large RIB pushed itself gently into the pontoon. Constable Nigel Frey sat at the rear of the boat, the wheel hard over, the motor idling.

‘Hurry up, Charlotte,’ Frey said, passing her a life jacket as she stepped into the RIB. ‘The tide will turn soon and we’ll not have long there. Plus I don’t want to be navigating back in the dark.’

‘Keep your knickers on, Nigel,’ Savage said, smiling. She’d been on the beat with Frey as a young probationer and they’d teased each other mercilessly. She accepted the life jacket and put it on. ‘I can always walk back.’

‘I doubt it. The place is only accessible by boat.’

Savage sat down as Frey moved the boat away from the pontoon. He turned and then headed out into the Sound. A light wind had fluffed up little wavelets, but was doing little to disperse a low mist that hung over the bay.

‘Fifteen minutes I reckon,’ Frey said as he pushed the throttle forward. The RIB rose up onto the plane and began to bounce over the waves. ‘We’ll take the inside route past the Mewstone and then wend our way up the estuary to Cofflete Creek.’

‘And it’s a body, you say?’

‘Yes. Usually a couple of uniforms would go over the fields to check, but—’

‘The match, I know.’

‘Cheer up. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?’

Savage glanced back as a splash of water came over the bow. The spray caught Frey in the face and he grinned.

Within a few minutes they were at the entrance to the narrow inlet that led to the twin villages of Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo. Come summer, the place would be packed with visiting yachts, but at the moment many of the moorings were empty. A little way beyond the entrance the estuary divided, the right arm heading between the two villages – one on each bank – while the left arm plunged into a thickly wooded valley, the trees running all the way down to the creekside, where mud and rock lay exposed by the now falling tide. Frey turned the boat left and navigated up through a double row of moorings, the boats straining on their chains as the water ebbed.

‘We’ll not have long there,’ Frey said. ‘Not if we don’t want to be stranded.’