Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel by Mark Sennen

more.
… as for the cowardly …
    A coward is the worst kind of sinner. By failing to have courage and conviction, the coward spits in God’s face and denies His existence. Cowards must experience the love of God and repent before Him.
    The Shepherd returns to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. It’s half past six and the radio station is repeating the story about the body in the tunnel. Poor lad. The Shepherd can’t help but think the Lord has missed a trick. The pure evil which the boy faced is still out there, free to wreak havoc.
    He reaches across and switches the radio off. It isn’t his duty to question God. He merely has to carry out His wishes. And His wishes are clear.
    Dead clear.

Chapter Ten
    Near Bovisand, Devon. Thursday 22nd October. 6.30 a.m.
    The alarm on her phone went off at six thirty, Savage reaching across to silence the crescendo before the noise could wake Pete. She blinked in the darkness and then got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Peered at herself in the mirror. She hardly recognised the eyes which stared back. The past few months had changed her, she thought, and maybe not for the better. She’d come close to killing Owen Fox, a young man who, it turned out, was innocent of anything but protecting his girlfriend. If it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of Kenny Fallon, she’d have pulled the trigger on the gun. Would she be feeling better if she had? Would she be staring at herself in the same way?
    An hour later and the melancholy was subsumed by the usual pre-school hell and the need to get the children ready. Samantha had lost her phone and was refusing to leave home without it, while Jamie had – in his own words – ‘bastard growing pains’. Savage had dosed him with Calpol but was more concerned with his ever expanding vocabulary of bad language.
    ‘I’m innocent, officer,’ Pete said, holding his hands up before scouring through the debris on the kitchen table as he searched for the phone. ‘He didn’t get the word from me. Must be on the National Curriculum list.’

    ‘Right.’ Savage replaced the bottle of Calpol in the cupboard and put the spoon in the dishwasher. ‘Sam?’
    ‘Huh?’ Her daughter looked up from a pile of schoolwork and shook her head. ‘Not me, Mum.’
    Samantha gathered up her things, stuffed them into her bag and left the room.
    ‘You all right?’ Pete said. ‘This kid and all?’
    ‘Not really.’ Savage shook her head. She’d told Pete about finding the boy in the tunnel when she’d crawled into bed in the small hours. ‘I’ve got to attend the post-mortem this morning and you know how I hate them.’
    ‘But it’s not just that, is it?’ Pete moved across the room and stood beside Savage. ‘Love, you’ve either got to let go of Clarissa or accept you can no longer work these type of cases. Tell HR it’s affecting your health. Any sense they might have to pay some sort of compensation and they’ll move you like a shot.’
    ‘But there’s the rub, I don’t want to be moved. I want to get the bastard sicko who’s responsible.’
    ‘Bastard?’ Pete grinned. ‘Well there’s one case closed at least.’
    ‘What?’ Savage managed a half smile. ‘Oh, right.’
    ‘Look, however many nutters you bang up, she’s never coming back, is she?’
    ‘No.’ Savage remembered the look on her face in the mirror that morning. ‘I thought things would change after …’
    ‘After what?’
    ‘After …’ She sighed. Pete knew nothing of her involvement with Simon Fox and his son. Perhaps one day she’d need to come clean. But now wasn’t the time. ‘After the girl on the moor.’
    ‘Which one? You saved that Russian woman from the Satanists. Then there was the lass captured by those twins. Not to mention the girl you pulled from that psychopath’s freezer. How many does it take before the guilt’s gone?’

    Savage shook her head. She didn’t like the way the conversation was heading.
    ‘Face it,