by Lee Weeks
‘Mawgan, go and see to Kensa and take her upstairs. Stay with her till she settles down. Marky, you get back to your cottage and stay there – this has nothing to do with you. Towan, come with me, there’s a mess to clear up and a horse to bury.’
Chapter 32
Carter called Pascoe, who was already up in the helicopter. Carter could hear a distant drone.
‘I need the old police station available to me. I think it will be good to bring it home here.’
‘Okay, I’ll send officers over now to get it ready.’
‘Anything interesting from the video footage yesterday?’
‘We saw Jago and Marky doing a bit of beachcombing at Garra Cove. They saw us, which is the danger when we’re so obvious. I’m afraid we’re going to spook everyone.’
‘Yeah. How long till you’ve exhausted the search?’
‘Tomorrow will do it.’
Carter came off the radio and texted Willis where he was. She replied that she was on her way and then he walked across the street towards the dress shop.
Carter studied Mary-Jane Trebethin as he crossed the street. She was standing just by the entrance, leaning in to adjust a child’s outfit in the window display. She stopped fiddling with the display and stared at him through the glass; he thought there was something very quaint about her. She belonged in a dress shop in one of the more prosperous towns. Here she was queen bee with no one to impress. Here in this slightly shabby high street with sand blowing in and with poverty rife in the winter months. He wondered what kept her rooted to the seaside village.
‘How can I help?’ Mary-Jane said with a pinched expression; she had watched him coming and moved to the safety of the counter. Her bony hands and long, immaculately painted nails rested outstretched on the counter.
Carter gestured towards the Surfshack. ‘Gone surfing!’
‘Oh yes, I expect Marky has decided to catch some waves instead of working.’
‘But it looks like he’s done very well, owning the surf shop. It’s a big premises, nice-looking.’
‘Mmm.’ Mary-Jane turned up her nose as she picked at flecks of material that had floated onto her cash desk.
‘You don’t approve?’
‘Oh my goodness, I’m delighted for Marky. All the young people in the village deserve a big helping hand if we want them to stay here and make it their home.’
‘Have you lived here long?’
‘Since I married my husband, thirty-odd years ago.’
‘Is Mr Trebethin available for me to have a chat?’ Carter knew the answer but he was taking his time to study her. Her nose was so pinched it didn’t look real. She shook her head and frowned.
‘Mr Trebethin and I are no longer married. He moved to Australia. Now, how can I help, officer?’
‘You attended Jeremy Forbes-Wright’s funeral on Monday?’
‘That’s correct,’ she answered smugly.
‘Why did you go? Was he a special friend?’
‘I went to pay my respects, that’s all.’ She looked put out.
‘Did you hear about his grandson being abducted that afternoon?’
‘I did, so distressing. I don’t understand why you’ve come down here looking for him. I hope this village won’t become synonymous with a missing child. That’s the last thing we want.’
‘Let’s hope we find him soon then.’
‘You’d better go back to London and look.’
‘What did you do after the funeral?’
‘Uh, a bit of sight-seeing.’ The heat had come to her indignant face as she pulled out some cardigans from the shelves to her right and began refolding them.
‘Where?’
‘Greenwich, I think.’
‘Who were you with?’
‘Is this really relevant?’
‘I wouldn’t ask it if it wasn’t.’
‘Mr Raymonds and I took a look around Greenwich. We went into the Cutty Sark museum.’
‘But you didn’t come back with him?’
‘No, he had things to do, something came up. He left early and I went to join Mr Stokes.’
‘Whereabouts do you live?’
‘I live on the other side of the beach, above the cliffs.’
‘Near Mr Raymonds?’
‘Well, up the road from him.’
‘Your son Jago also went to the funeral, didn’t he?’
Her face transformed into a smile.
‘Jago wanted to go to the funeral.’ The smug smile had returned but this time it was accompanied by a slightly nervous tug at the corner.
Carter was half-watching the beach. He saw a VW van pull in with surfboards on the top. Carter watched Jago get out.
‘It must be great to have your son back home.’
‘It is.’
‘Are there many prospects for him here, do you think?’
‘He seems to manage very well. He picks up work here and there. He’s finding his feet.’
‘How old is your son, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘He’s thirty-one.’ Carter was watching Jago get into his wet suit and thinking that it probably wasn’t the time of life to just go surfing. Carter was a year away from forty and he knew how important his thirties had been, career-wise.
‘When you were in London, did you see anything of Kensa?’
‘No. Kensa didn’t go to the funeral.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why wouldn’t she have gone, when the rest of the village went?’
‘Well, I don’t know, I suppose Kensa didn’t have the same sort of relationship with the Forbes-Wright family.’
‘Tell me, do you know Cam and his sister Ella?’
‘Yes. Cam’s got the café on the beach. He’s doing well.’ She looked as if it hurt her to say it.
‘And Ella?’
‘I have no idea about Ella. She left here a long time ago.’
‘Tell me, Mary-Jane, how do you feel about Kellis House being sold? Would it worry you to see strangers living in it?’
‘No, I don’t think it would. I’m not sure I understand everyone’s reluctance to embrace the new. I’d like to see new blood here.’
‘Thank you for your help,’ he said to Mary-Jane. ‘If you get any children’s clothes going missing – the size that would fit a small two-year-old – please let me know at once.’
Carter stepped outside, walked back to his car and stood looking out towards the wild waves; they were breaking way out to sea. Their noise was deafening. Willis parked up beside him.
‘That sea looks freezing,’ Willis said as she got out of her car and rubbed her hands together, blowing on them. Carter gestured for them to get inside his car and talk. ‘Lovely to look at,’ Willis continued, once inside, ‘but frightening to get anywhere near – I’m not used to it, I suppose.’
‘It’s a bit like a dog,’ said Carter wistfully.
‘Huh?’ Willis frowned at him.
‘You know . . . it can sense your fear. If you’re not confident it knows. It can kill you just like that.’ He snapped his fingers in the air.
‘Thanks, very reassuring.’
Carter looked out of his side window. There were a couple of children digging away at the top of the beach.
‘This must be a great place to grow up in many ways.’
‘Yes, but it’s all a bit suffocating here, don’t you think? I spoke to Mawgan – she implies her childhood was anything but nice. She says the village is turning against Kensa. She admitted to travelling back with Kensa in the car.’
‘I saw you put out an alert for Mawgan’s car.’
‘Yes, hopefully it won’t be long till it’s found.’
‘Did Mawgan look like she knew where Samuel is?’
‘She said she didn’t see him in the car; could he have survived in the boot?’
‘Yes, wrapped up, sedated,’ answered Carter. ‘If Kensa did kill Samuel and dump his body in London before she left, she would
have known where she was going and how to get there unnoticed. There’s no sign of her at the local stations to the cemetery or Greenwich. Is she really capable of planning this? Are we really thinking she could have organized this?’
‘She’s not really as naive as we think. She manages to get herself dressed now and again. She goes to town by the sounds of it and she drove to the funeral. Maybe somewhere along the line she knows London,’ said Willis. ‘But also, she went there to talk to Toby and she didn’t achieve that at the funeral. She could have followed him back home and to the music shop and then chickened out, or got angry and decided she didn’t want to talk to him, she actually wanted to destroy him. His son is outside, left in the cold, and she snatches him. We know she has the car so she doesn’t have to carry him far.’
‘Robbo still hasn’t found any footage of her in Greenwich itself,’ added Willis.
‘It was a busy day; lots of crowds.’ Carter shrugged.
‘Revenge?’
Carter looked perplexed. ‘Possible, but she’s such a loose cannon. If she took him, God knows what she had in mind.’
‘She wants to see Toby – we should make him come down. She went all the way to London to speak to him.’
‘What about Raymonds? We know he was in Greenwich. He insisted on coming back on his own and he hangs about a service station, waiting for what? Marky and Jago, or someone else? Someone to take the boy off his hands maybe?’
‘He’s one of the prime suspects – he’s up there with about ten others,’ Willis sighed, ‘because then there’s Marky and Jago.’
‘Yeah, they called in at the services but didn’t even get out of the car. Where did they go then?’
‘Robbo’s finding that out.’
‘But if it’s Raymonds, then why?’ asked Carter.
‘It will be some power game that he’s playing,’ answered Willis. ‘It’ll be all about control and him choosing the rules of the game. He must be mad that Jeremy Forbes-Wright died like he did. He must have thought Toby wouldn’t dare alter the arrangement; after all, it’s haunted Toby all his life as well as Kensa’s.’
‘But they have no choice with death duties,’ said Carter. ‘The price offered – five hundred thousand – isn’t enough but it surprises me they have it in the kitty. I suppose the house must have been very lucrative, a lot of them must have been paying guests. What do you think, Eb?’
‘I think Jeremy Forbes-Wright wanted to make a statement in his death. He wanted to leave them all with a heap of problems. This was his idea of fun and maybe, in his own way, he was trying to make amends for the past.’
‘By leaving Toby in all this trouble?’
‘By exposing this place.’ Willis was looking at the sign beside them:
PLEASE DON’T FEED THE GULLS,
IT MAKES THEM AGGRESSIVE –
THEY SEE HUMANS AS FOOD!!
‘Nice!’ she said out loud. ‘Sums this place up – even the birds will rip you apart given half the chance. Kensa paints quite a picture of this community. Raymonds virtually told her that if she wanted to hold her head up ever again then she should forget about making any charges.’
‘Why would he do that when he hates Londoners coming down and spoiling his little world? It would have been a perfect opportunity to stitch up an MP? Now, with JFW gone, he must be trying to think of a way to salvage the situation. He’s maybe thinking about a little bit of blackmail if there were escorts involved and VIPs.’
‘Profit, lies, secrets – something happened in that house,’ answered Willis.
‘Absolutely,’ replied Carter. ‘Raymonds says that the community look after one another and to hell with everyone else. He may be retired from the Force, but he’s still the one dishing out the orders. He’s built himself quite a dictatorship here.’
‘That’s a lot to look after, guv.’
‘It’s a big responsibility, isn’t it? How long before someone tries to overthrow you?’
‘We know from Toby that there were five of them left the beach to come back to the house. Can we open an investigation into the rape?’ asked Willis.
‘We can, if we think it will get us something we need towards finding Samuel. But we have enough on our hands. Cam runs the café on the beach. Let’s go and talk to him. Jago is one we haven’t talked to properly yet, either,’ Carter said, straining to see something out at sea. ‘I watched him go in surfing earlier when his mother wasn’t looking. I reckon that’s him in the water – we can go down and see if we can get him out to talk to us.’
‘Shall we grab a coffee to go first and establish if that’s Cam?’ Willis looked over at the café.
‘Sure, you okay?’ Carter studied her for the first time since she’d got into the car. ‘You look a bit washed-out.’
‘I’m okay. Towan’s idea of a joke was to see if he could trample me in a stampede, but hey – maybe it’s a lack of a sense of humour on my part?’
‘Shit.’
‘I found out I can jump really high.’
‘We’ll have him arrested for that, the little bastard.’
‘No, I’m hoping it won’t happen again. But he definitely didn’t want me to talk to Mawgan. I think she would have a lot to say to me if she wasn’t so scared.’
Carter got out of the car and stretched his back with a groan.
‘The bed at the hotel is too soft. Normally it’s Archie – he usually ends up in our bed. I wouldn’t mind too much but he turns round like the hands of a clock all night.’ As he said it, Carter rolled his eyes and shook his head as Willis smiled. She knew he was thinking that he had everything to be thankful for; at least Archie was safe. He took out his phone.
‘Two minutes,’ he said to Willis as he walked away dialling Cabrina’s number.
When he returned to the car ten minutes later he was smiling, upbeat.
‘How’s she coping?’ asked Willis.
‘Typical Cabrina fashion. She’s rolled up her sleeves and got stuck in. New colour scheme, new curtains. Apparently she’s using our holiday in Morocco as an inspiration for the new theme. I hope not, that’s when the little blighter was conceived. We don’t need any more babies on the scene.’
‘You couldn’t get a better boy than Archie. Anyway, I bet it will look fab.’
‘Yes. Probably.’ Carter looked happy, calm. He’d managed to juggle work and home and he had a partner who could survive on her own, which was the main requirement if your other half was a detective.
Chapter 33
They walked across to the café. As they approached they could see a thin-faced man in his thirties looking at them through the glass – he looked like he would rather shut the shop than let them in.
‘Hello,’ he said, as they opened the door; his eyes didn’t smile.
‘Hi,’ said Carter. ‘Are you the owner of this café?’
‘Yes. My name’s Cam. I heard you were the officers investigating the little boy’s disappearance.’
‘That’s right, do you know the Forbes-Wright family?’
‘Well, I know of them. I’d met Jeremy Forbes-Wright a few times. You couldn’t really avoid him in this town.’
‘I see. Coffees, please, one cappuccino, extra everything, and one black double espresso.’ Willis was choosing a cake. ‘I gather you weren’t that keen on him then?’ asked Carter.
Cam got on with the coffees; he glanced back over his shoulder and gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘I didn’t really have an opinion.’
‘And you didn’t you go to the funeral in London?’
‘I went up that day but I didn’t actually go to it.’
‘Okay – why was that?’
‘I just fancied a day in London. It was going to be so quiet here anyway – I thought, what the hell – I’ll cadge a lift and go.’
‘Sounds fair enough,’ Carter replied. ‘Who did you go with?’
‘In the end, I decided to catch the train there and back.’
‘Are you open every day?’
&
nbsp; ‘Not for the whole day. There’s no point when there’s no one around. Weekends are busy.’
They picked up their order and walked down the beach towards the water’s edge.
Willis had a coffee in one hand and a pain au chocolat in the other.
‘Okay, well that’s another suspect added to the list then. How many more people thought they’d cadge a lift but not actually go to the funeral and then not actually cadge a lift?’
‘We need to pull his story apart when we finish with Jago,’ answered Carter. ‘I want to make sure we don’t miss him. I want to ask him about the beach party. Then we’ll go back and talk to Cam. Christ, where did that go?’ Carter turned round to see her stuffing the last of the pastry into her mouth. He picked at a blueberry muffin and then put it back into the bag. Willis pointed to a group of surfers only now visible as the waves subsided a little.
‘They seem to be just sitting out there.’
‘Yeah.’ Carter stood looking at the surfers lying on their boards. ‘That’s Jago coming in now, I think.’
‘When I met him he was a little too cocky and thought a lot of himself.’
‘I saw him the same night at the bar, definitely likes to think he’s a cut above the average here.’
They watched him ride a wave and paddle his board towards the shore. He got out shaking the sea-water from his ears, holding his board under his arm. He grinned at them.
‘Hello, you’ll have to take it in turns but you can borrow my board – the wet suit should fit.’ He smiled. Carter grinned and shook his head.
‘Hardly worth it if it’s messy like that, is it?’ Willis was impressed – Carter had been swatting up on surf lingo.
‘Ah . . . always worth it, just to get in the water.’
‘Hello again; you’ve met my colleague, DC Ebony Willis here?’ Carter introduced her.
‘Yes, but not properly. Jago. Jago Trebethin.’ He shook her hand with a firm, freezing grip, making sure he maintained eye contact as he did so. He was Carter’s height – five nine.