Two Evils: A DI Charlotte Savage Novel by Mark Sennen Page A

name, no other contact details. The call logs show that was the only call from or to the number.’
    ‘The wife found out then. Blew her top and went a little OTT. Or maybe it was this Sarah’s other half.’ Riley thought of his own girlfriend. Wondered about the kind of jealousy he’d feel if he discovered she’d been having an affair. ‘Do we know who this Sarah is?’
    ‘No. As I said, there’s no other details on Sleet’s phone and all calls to the woman’s number go through to voicemail. The phone is a pay as you go, but we’re working on tracing it.’ Collier shrugged and pointed down to the sheet of paper on the desk. ‘Meantime, see what you can come up with.’

    As Collier strode away, Riley glanced down at the paper and took in the full details. Perry Sleet had disappeared some time on Tuesday afternoon. He’d been up Tavistock way in the morning and kept two appointments. He’d had lunch at the Elephant’s Nest, a mile or so from the village of Mary Tavy – the receipt was in Sleet’s wallet in a jacket on the back seat – but had failed to turn up for a three o’clock meeting. His car had been found at the end of a little-used lane a few miles to the north-west of his lunch stop. A walker, suspicious that the door was open and nobody around, called 101. By six the local policing team had become concerned enough to send for the Dartmoor Rescue Group.
    Riley turned to the next sheet where Collier had helpfully added a couple of photographs harvested from Sleet’s Facebook page. The Sleet family on holiday. Catherine – the wife – with two young kids; Perry himself, grinning as he rode a jet ski. Riley focused on the picture of Catherine Sleet. High cheekbones, brown eyes matching her wavy shoulder-length hair, a see-through shift over a bikini revealing full breasts. This, he thought, wasn’t a woman you’d want to cheat on. Was she, though, somebody you might kill for?
    Jason woke to a night so dark that there was nothing but black. He opened and closed his eyes but it made no difference. If anything, the grey milkiness when he scrunched his eyes tight shut was more comforting than the blackness. If the absence of any light was frightening, so too was the lack of any sound. When he shifted his body he scraped on some kind of wooden floor, but that was the only noise.
    He lay still, listening, His heart thumped, but the thud, thud, thud was a sensation rather than anything audible.

    Silence. Deathly silence.
    Jason stared as hard as he could but the blackness was still absolute. This was a dream, he thought. He’d wake up soon. Then he reached down and pinched himself on the thigh, his fingers slipping on his jeans before he managed to catch a bunch of skin underneath.
    Ouch!
    This was no dream. Even though there was nothing to see, he was wide awake. He quivered slightly. Recently, he’d stayed up watching movies with Ned Stone. Not Disney though. These had been horror movies. Zombies, vampires, dead things which came in the night and dragged you screaming from under your duvet. Now he wished he’d listened to his mother who’d kept telling him to go upstairs to bed.
    He pushed himself up and sat for a moment or two. He tried to recall what had happened. The last thing he could remember was being on the shoreline with his bait bucket. He reached up and touched his neck. Sore. Somebody had grabbed him. Was it Lobster Larry or some other pervert? Perhaps his grandfather’s stories had a ring of truth about them after all. Still, it was no good worrying now. Wherever he was, he needed to escape. He’d watched enough of Stone’s movies to know that at some point they always came back. The perverts, the zombies, the grey ghouls frothing at the mouth.
    Jason tried to stand and promptly smashed his head on something above. Fuck! He tried again, feeling his way with his hands. Shit. He was in some sort of tunnel, probably no more than a metre high. He began to crawl instead, but his hand