Cold Justice

by Lee Weeks

  Carter phoned and put Robbo on Skype. ‘What’s the latest, Robbo?’ he asked.

  ‘I rang the escort Louisa – nice girl. Privately educated.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That she’d lost one of her best clients in Jeremy Forbes-Wright. She met him when she offered gentlemen’s lunches from her flat in Knightsbridge.’

  ‘Did she ever come to Cornwall?’

  ‘No, but she said he invited her several times, but she didn’t want to; she’s a busy woman. She did, however, recommend others to him and she knows one girl who went a few times.’

  ‘Can we have her number?’

  ‘She’s trying to find it – she lost touch with her a while ago. She’s being fairly cooperative – I’m hoping we’ll get something useful from her.’

  ‘Interesting. So when he came down here it was to party?’ asked Carter.

  ‘It would seem so, wouldn’t it? Does the house give that impression?’

  Carter turned to Willis to answer.

  ‘Yeah – it fits that he didn’t rent it to families,’ she said. ‘The bedrooms are more like plush, short-stay motel rooms. It’s all a bit “in your face” – the kind of place that lends itself to swingers’ parties. I’ll search the place thoroughly when I get back.’

  ‘How is Lauren holding up, Eb?’

  ‘She’s one of those “doers” and not “sayers”. She doesn’t want sympathy, she wants action. She wants a role in finding her son.’

  ‘Jeanie has been talking to Toby again.’

  ‘Did we find out if they took more than just a photo out of the Canary Wharf flat?’

  ‘Toby said he let Gareth take whatever music he wanted; didn’t see the harm in it. Jeanie has told him to get it back.’

  ‘How is Toby?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Jeanie says he’s falling apart, unravelling. He seems to completely blame himself for Samuel’s disappearance.’

  ‘What about surveillance on him?’

  ‘Up and running. It’s been confirmed that he’s having intimate conversations with Gareth Turnbill but there’s been no sign of anything concerning Samuel’s whereabouts. There was talk about the father’s apartment – it sounded like even Turnbill didn’t know what they were looking for. He keeps asking Toby to let him help but it sounds like Toby is beginning to close up shop, waiting for the ground to open up and swallow him.’

  ‘We need to push him hard and find out the truth. I think he’s lying about what happened in Cornwall. Apparently, according to the Sheriff, Kensa refused to press charges and Jeremy Forbes-Wright took his son home that day.’

  ‘You’d think they would have been only too happy to prosecute. By what you’ve said, he hates outsiders.’

  ‘Exactly. But, as people keep stressing to me, he’ll do anything for the good of Penhal. We think he brokered some sort of deal,’ said Carter.

  ‘We had another session looking at the footage from the funeral. We think that your new friend Kensa was there. Pascoe provided a photo of her for me. She’s well known to the shopkeepers in Penhaligon – has a habit of stealing. Have a look at this.’

  Willis held it for them both to see.

  ‘On this footage, you can see Mawgan Stokes comes out of the chapel and is standing with her father and then she gets distracted. Follow her line of vision and there is a woman standing at the far side, out of sight of most of the mourners. She’s hanging about there. We haven’t got a clear shot yet but we’re looking for one. It’s definitely someone that Mawgan doesn’t think the rest of the funeral-goers will want to see because she waits a while and then she says her goodbyes and slips off, then doubles back around the back of the chapel and we see her here talking to the same woman.

  ‘I’ve looked at the CCTV footage of the funeral again. I’m getting very familiar with identifying the faces and placing them in their groups.’ Robbo shared a cut from the film on the screen. ‘Here we see Mawgan leaving the group after the funeral. She is walking away and heading back around the reverse side of the chapel.’ Robbo switched to another viewpoint. ‘Here is Mawgan heading straight for that person now. We can see her walk between the cars. Look at this.’

  He froze the frame. There was a woman wearing an oilskin coat.

  ‘Recognize her?’ Robbo asked.

  ‘Yeah – it’s Kensa Cooper,’ said Willis.

  ‘It’s the woman who is supposed to be too mad to look after herself but she can somehow get to London,’ added Carter.

  ‘The CCTV from the Gordano services is interesting too,’ said Robbo. ‘We can trace all of the Cornish cars that stopped here. Raymonds, alone, does what he said, went in for a coffee, came out, used the cashpoint. That’s at seven forty-six. But he hangs about a long time, a whole hour. Almost as if he’s waiting for someone. We see him twice get out of his car and walk to the far end of the car park.’

  ‘I suppose we were never going to get lucky enough to see him get a kid out of the back,’ said Carter.

  ‘No, we can’t tell if there’s anyone sleeping on the back seat – it’s still possible. We don’t see him actually in his car at the car park, we just see him when he walks towards the entrance. Martin Stokes was there with Mary-Jane and Towan. This is at ten past nine. Towan does seem to wait until everyone else is inside the services before he gets out and wanders around the car park. We pick him up twice. He needs looking at more closely, I would say. The last surprise I have for you is a car that came during the time Raymonds was hanging about. At eight thirty-one here come two men – Jago and Marky. They don’t even use the services – they wait in the car for thirty minutes and then they leave.’

  ‘I’m looking at all the cameras on that exit and along the motorway, seeing where they go. I’ll let you know as soon as I have it.’

  ‘Sorry, I have to take this,’ Willis interrupted as she looked at her phone and the name on the screen. ‘Hello, Lauren? Everything all right?’

  ‘Ebony, can you come back now? I’ve just seen the woman who was outside our flat in London.’

  ‘On my way.’

  ‘Just one more thing,’ said Robbo. ‘Before anyone else arrived, a yellow Fiat registered to Mawgan Stokes came in for petrol at Gordano. That was at seven thirty. The footage shows that while Mawgan goes in to pay for petrol, Kensa is opening the boot. We don’t see any more.’

  Chapter 26

  Jeanie rang the buzzer and waited. Toby Forbes-Wright came to the door. His breath smelled of stale wine, he was a mess. She noticed that he had on the same clothes as the day before. It was nine thirty. When Jeanie followed him into the lounge she knew he’d slept in there. The room was rank and stale. There was a blanket on the sofa.

  ‘You need to make sure you get a good night’s sleep, Toby.’

  Jeanie followed him into the kitchen and filled up the kettle. She started washing up the dishes and stacked the empty wine bottles in a carrier bag to take out with her when she left. She heard the sound of him crying as she turned off the taps and finished washing the dishes.

  She gave him a hug and he held on tightly to her. He didn’t want to let go. Jeanie patted his back as if he were a child while he sobbed. When he seemed to be drawing breath she pulled away. She’d seen it before – how sometimes such sorrow was confused with the need for sex. It was comfort.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Toby. We haven’t found Samuel but there have been some developments in Cornwall. I think it might be a good idea if you and I decamp and go down there. Lauren needs you.’

  He started shaking his head before she’d even finished saying it.

  ‘No way. I feel safer here.’

  ‘Safer?’

  ‘Yes. Even walking back from Gareth’s was too much. I saw people staring at me. I can’t leave this flat again. I need you to bring me what I need to stay in here until it’s over.’

  ‘Toby, you’re under so much stress – I understand. But you need to remember the main thing here is finding Samuel alive.’

 
‘He’s dead. I feel it, I know it. He’s dead and it’s my fault. Lauren has left me and Gareth is making me feel hemmed in. I’ll have nothing left to live for soon. My dad will win in the end.’

  ‘Toby, listen to me. I’ve been doing this job a long time. I’ve seen all sorts of people react in all sorts of ways when they are in the middle of a crisis. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve said what you just said to me, and they didn’t want to face anything, but they did face it and they did come out of it. You have to help me, help Lauren. You have to help Samuel.’ He didn’t answer. ‘Go and have a shower and get some clean clothes on while I tidy up and make some scrambled egg for you. We’ll sit down together and we’ll make a plan.’

  Toby shuffled off – he came back finished: showered and wearing a fresh T-shirt and clean tracksuit bottoms.

  ‘Better?’ Jeanie asked him as she placed some breakfast on the kitchen table for him.

  ‘I can’t eat anything. I overdid it last night.’

  ‘That’s the very cure for a hangover – scrambled egg, it soaks up the alcohol. Orange juice.’

  He sat at the table and she handed him the juice.

  He ate in silence while she tidied the kitchen. When she’d finished she suggested they had coffee and she sat down across from him at the table.

  ‘Toby, do you know a man named Raymonds? Do you remember him at all?’

  Toby’s face had a little more colour than when Jeanie had first arrived that morning but he looked mottled and puffy with the hangover. He was sweating. He blinked nervously as he gave a small nod of the head.

  ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘It was a long time ago in the house in Cornwall. The last time I ever went there. I was seeing this local girl called Kensa. There was a party on the beach and it got out of hand. A few of us went back to the house; my dad wasn’t going to be coming back that night. We thought we’d just chill out, raid the drinks cabinet. I knew it was risky when I said it. I told you, my dad and I didn’t have a relationship. I don’t know why he even took me to Cornwall that summer. He usually palmed me off on other people while he took his girlfriends.

  ‘I was in love with Kensa. We’d never done more than kiss. I wasn’t ready. Kensa was so brittle. She seemed so sad. I don’t know what went wrong that evening, I don’t know what I did to her but I woke up in the police station. I’ve tried so hard to remember things but there are large gaps.’

  ‘What had happened on the beach?’

  ‘Five of us hung round together. Me and Kensa, Ella Simmons, who was best friends with Mawgan Stokes, and Cam Simmons, Ella’s brother. It was a massive party, it was such a warm evening. Everything was just perfect and then it all seemed to go wrong. Locals came to cause trouble. They started fights. It was Marky Raymonds’ eighteenth. He was really aggressive. They’d been taking stuff. They were all off their faces.’

  ‘Who were they?’

  ‘Marky, Jago, Towan, a few more. They were the lads that lorded it over everyone. They were allowed to do what they wanted. They started really bothering Kensa and me. Marky really liked Kensa. It was obvious he didn’t appreciate her going with me. They got physical with her and Ella. Ella was a year older than us, she was sixteen; she’d dated Towan for a short while but he was one of the worst among them that night. We decided to leave the beach and go back to mine to get away from them.

  ‘I remember feeling so tired, like my legs were giving way, even on the way back from the beach. It seemed like I just couldn’t make it up the hill but I had to help Kensa. She was almost asleep. We weren’t drunk, we’d only had a couple of beers.’

  ‘Do you think your drink was spiked?’

  ‘Looking back, I think it must have been.’

  ‘What can you remember about your time when you got back to the house?’

  ‘Kensa was asleep on the sofa. I remember saying to Cam, “I’m sorry, I have to lie down.” I heard Ella scream and Mawgan was swearing at her brother. Suddenly there’s Towan in the house and dragging Mawgan out. I heard Marky and Jago threatening Cam. There was screaming and someone pushed me and that’s all I know. The rest is gone from my memory. I woke up in a police cell with such a banging head and I was so thirsty. I kept asking Sergeant Raymonds about Kensa and the others; he told me I’d attacked Kensa, raped her. That the others had seen me do it. They had proof. There was absolutely no doubt. My father came and got me out. We drove straight back up to London. We hardly spoke on the way up; he said he would handle it all. He never really wanted anything to do with me after that.’

  ‘Did he never discuss it with you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know what happened to Kensa. I never found out about that night. I never went back to Kellis House.’

  ‘She is still living in Penhal.’

  ‘Oh God, poor Lauren, now she has this as well as everything else. She must really hate me. She must think I’m a freak. I am a monster.’

  Toby stood and walked into the lounge. He stood by the window as if he wanted to jump off the balcony beyond. The Thames had taken on the colour of the blue sky. It could have been summer by its colour but it was a bitterly cold day in February.

  Toby spread out his hands on the cold glass behind him.

  ‘Toby – please – this is all about Samuel. No one is accusing you of anything. Kensa never pressed charges.’

  Toby shook his head. He panted with fear.

  ‘Toby, please . . .’ Jeanie held out her hand. ‘You’re okay. Please come and sit over here.’ Jeanie smiled and he took one backward glance before allowing himself to be led over to the sofa. She sat next to him and took his hand.

  ‘This all matters because somehow, some way, this may have something to do with Samuel going missing. Did your father ever say what he saw when he got back that evening?’

  ‘No. I don’t think he even realized I was in the house. It was as if I hadn’t been. It was all of it like a bad dream from the moment things went wrong on the beach.’

  ‘Listen, Toby, what if Kensa wanted to see you?’

  He looked at Jeanie as if she was making a bad joke.

  ‘I can’t see her now. I can’t take any more. I’d rather stay here. I feel like I’m falling apart.’

  ‘Toby, at some time you’re going to have to face it.’

  ‘Believe me, I would never have hurt Kensa. I loved Kensa.’

  Chapter 27

  ‘Lauren needs me, guv.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll drop you back at the house,’ said Carter. ‘I’ll talk to the shopkeepers down there.’

  ‘What shall we do about this new information and Mawgan Stokes?’ Willis asked.

  ‘You go and see her. Go carefully with her, but make sure she knows this is her chance to tell us the truth before she’s arrested. I don’t want anyone making a rash move where Samuel is concerned.’

  Jeanie phoned them as they were driving back.

  ‘I think this rape allegation is remarkable, to say the least,’ she said over the speaker phone. ‘Toby was fifteen at the time, a virgin, probably more gay than straight, and it’s more than likely his drink had been spiked.’

  ‘Yeah, the only versions we have of the story are Raymonds’ and Toby’s, so we need to ask around.’

  ‘He’s listed a few people that were there at the time,’ Jeanie said. ‘Jago, Marky, Mawgan and a few others. Those were some of the funeral-goers, weren’t they? He also mentioned a male called Cam. I don’t remember seeing his name on the list of funeral-goers.’

  ‘Raymonds mentioned his name – we’ll look into it. Thanks, Jeanie.’

  Carter dropped Willis at Kellis House and then he turned back to park at the car park behind the shack.

  The shack was open, Marky was putting stock on shelves behind the counter. He turned, saw it was Carter and turned back to continue his task. Carter browsed among the rows of expensive fleeces and tried on a few sunglasses. The Beach Boys were playing in the background. Carter looked around. The cabin had an expen
sive feel to it, and someone had spent a lot of money on the build.

  ‘Thought you surfers took off to do a bit of snow-boarding this time of year?’

  ‘Been already,’ Marky answered him but didn’t turn. Carter continued browsing. Marky watched him in the mirror behind the till.

  ‘So you’re just waiting for the season now, I suppose?’

  ‘There’s a lot to get on with. I spend most of the winter in my workshop mending and making boards, plus the big waves are good this time of year.’

  ‘I get it – so you have the perfect life, no matter what month it is, you’re out there having fun?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask you, is this what you always dreamed of doing?’

  ‘Yep.’

  Carter laughed. ‘Come on – I’m a London lad – I need to understand what keeps you here – you can really see yourself waxing surfboards when you’re sixty?’

  ‘Don’t see why not.’

  ‘I can see the appeal, except I’d have thought you might like to set up somewhere else? Isn’t it a bit close to home, living here under your parents’ noses? I mean, wouldn’t you prefer to take the money it took to set this up and go to say Newquay or the North Devon Coast? Croyde, for instance.’

  He shrugged. ‘I’m thinking about it. What is it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘Oh, mainly chit-chat.’ Carter smiled. He took a fleece from the racks and held it up against himself at the mirror.

  ‘Suits you,’ Marky said.

  ‘Yeah – I’ll have to come back with my kid when it warms up a bit here. I can see the appeal of living here – I honestly can.’ He turned on his heels on the wooden floor and nodded, impressed. ‘Except, as much as I love my mum and dad, I wouldn’t want my father breathing down my neck.’

  ‘Ha . . .’ Marky shrugged it off with a smile. ‘He’s the Sheriff – I expect you heard?’

  ‘The Sheriff, yeah. I bet he’s quite the ball-buster when he wants to be?’

  Marky sprayed the wooden counter with polish and began dusting. ‘He is what he is.’