Cold Justice

by Lee Weeks

  ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘Because your dad has just been murdered and any grieving son who hasn’t been inside for GBH would be at home getting pissed on his own, not in a bar with his enemies. Now drink up and be gone. I can tell everyone how upset you are.’

  ‘I don’t need you to talk for me.’

  ‘Course you don’t – but you’re going to be my next business partner and I want people to have respect for you.’

  ‘Yeah – about that – I want some proof. I want something in writing.’ People began to look at Raymonds and Towan. Raymonds was beginning to sweat through the smile.

  ‘Did you find the ledger?’

  ‘No – the police have it.’

  ‘Shit.’ Raymonds scowled and then smiled, tight-lipped. ‘I’ll think of something. Leave it to me. You have the numbers and names somewhere of your contacts in Penhaligon?’

  ‘Some, yeah – lots I just gave to Dad to deal with after they’d been here once.’

  ‘Okay, well, that’s your job, you get straight on that again and start remembering.’

  ‘That’s all my job is, is it?’

  ‘For now, and I left a few Surfshack bags for you out on the path to Garra Cove. I need you to take them down and throw them weighted into the water for me. I can’t risk being seen. You’re quicker on your feet than me.’

  ‘What’s in the bags?’

  ‘You’re better off not knowing.’

  ‘Is it the boy?’

  ‘Would it matter if it was?’

  ‘No, I’m just asking, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s some papers I don’t want them finding if they search my house.’

  ‘If you are aiming to set me up, Raymonds, I’ll feed you to my pigs, I swear.’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’

  Towan muttered a few choice expletives at Raymonds then he left half of his drink and slammed the door on his way out of the bar. He walked back down the steps and the air was filled with the roar of the waves breaking onto the cliffs below. He passed Raymonds’ car. The Silver Fox was sleek and fine; Towan took out his key and was about to scrape all along the side when he changed his mind and tried the door.

  Chapter 46

  Sandford’s idea of starting at Kellis House in the morning hadn’t panned out. He’d decided he had too much on his plate to delay and if he could give his team something to get working on then he could hop between the sites.

  He let himself into Kellis House and flicked the switch in the hall. It reminded him of a nutty stately home he’d been in once where it turned out the architect was out of his skull on opium. It was dark and so wood-panelled it was like being inside a coffin. He changed into his forensic suit and had a look at Carter’s request. The bathroom was a definite for ripping out, so was the downstairs front room that overlooked the driveway at the front. Sandford opened his forensic kit and mixed the bottle of Luminol, a fluorescent chemical, with the same amount of distilled water, then decanted it into a spray with a fine nozzle. He walked into the front room, rolled up the rug and used a crowbar to lever up three planks in equidistance on the floor. He sprayed the Luminol and shone an ultraviolet torch into the area. It was so sensitive that it could detect blood present in such small amounts – one part per million, even on walls that had been painted over and on floors that had been thoroughly cleaned. He found nothing. He walked down towards the back room with the veranda and into the kitchen area. The kitchen had the usual amount of blood you’d expect from an area that saw animal blood spilled in food preparation. He walked up the stairs slowly as he sprayed the chemical and shone his torch into the crevices of the stairs. He took a brief look into the bedrooms and then went into the bathroom marked on Carter’s plan. He’d had his team drop off some tools before they left for the evening. They were staying in Penhaligon. There were too many of them to lodge at the hotel.

  He was about to get started with seeing the best way to lift the floor when there was a ring on the doorbell. Carter stood there with a couple of beers in his hand.

  ‘I figured you’d start work this evening, and I’d be grateful if you’d let me help. I know there’s going to be a fair amount of pure wrecking-ball stuff and I’m your man.’

  ‘Come in.’

  Sandford didn’t want to seem too grateful for the help. He knew it was Carter’s way of saying he was sorry for the enormous amount of work he had lumped on Sandford’s shoulders. Offering to break up a few tiles and coming armed with beer didn’t really make up for it, but then Carter produced a nice bottle of cold Chablis that had cost him thirty pounds from the sour-faced barman, and Sandford warmed to him.

  ‘Okay, where shall we start?’ Carter said as he donned a forensic suit and booties and stood on the other side of the bathroom door waiting for orders. He handed Sandford a glass of cold white wine and it was accepted. He took one good-sized glug then set it aside as he made up a fresh solution of Luminol and sprayed liberally around the bathroom floor and walls. They turned the lights down and Carter watched while Sandford shone his light around.

  ‘There’s a small amount on the walls, a spray, could have come from the toilet area.’ Sandford knelt down to examine the feet of the bath. ‘There’s definitely blood between the detail on these feet and the nearer you get to the floor the stronger the smell of bleach.’

  ‘It’s not normal to clean tiles with bleach.’

  Sandford picked at the grouting between the tiles and shone his torch into the scraped-out groove. ‘We’re going to have to get these tiles up after all.’

  Carter grabbed a pickaxe.

  ‘Not with that. We chisel in between the grouting on the floor tiles and we do it systematically. We start at the furthest corner and work our way backwards. You’re on the left, I’m right.’

  It took them two hours until they’d finished getting all the floor tiles up and neatly stacked on the landing outside the bathroom.

  ‘Okay, here we go.’ Sandford shone his torch into the plastic layer that housed the heated-floor system. They stood in the semi-darkness and watched the light trace the outline of a rectangular area, the out-sides of which allowed blood to seep through, and it pooled onto the plastic.

  ‘You want to record this for posterity?’ Sandford handed Carter the video camera for low light and Carter scanned slowly around the room as Sandford continued to spray and uncover new areas of blood saturation.

  ‘My thoughts,’ said Sandford, ‘are that someone started to try and cut up a body in the bath but couldn’t do it, so they dragged it into the middle of this floor and began the dissection. Here we can see the major bleed-out. There are those minor blood splatters around the walls, which might indicate a small power tool was used. The section where the body lay would indicate this was a person of about five feet tall. This blood has been here for about six weeks.’

  Raymonds got into the black Honda Jazz at five in the morning and drove along the road to the layby opposite the path down to Garra Cove. He unlatched the gate and walked a few strides in before pulling out the bags from where he’d hidden them in the hedge that met the road. He was seething with anger. The thought of Towan driving his car had kept him awake most of the night. Towan had gone too far. He’d made a fatal error in not doing as he was commanded. Now Raymonds had to take matters into his own hands. He crossed the road and put the Surfshack bags into his boot, then he drove towards Stokes’ farm.

  Marky couldn’t sleep. He tried so hard, but the last few days he’d increased his cocaine up to a gram a day. The less he slept, the more he took, until he was beyond exhausted. His body felt as weak as a baby’s, but his mind was racing at a million miles an hour and he couldn’t close his eyes for more than a few seconds. He decided to get up and go in his workshop.

  Raymonds caught Marky as he was coming out of the cottage. Marky froze in the doorway when he saw his father. It was too dark to make out Raymonds’ expression but he was rigid with anger.

  ‘We’ll walk and talk,’ h
e said to Marky as they moved along the lane. ‘Who’s in the house?’

  ‘Mawgan, Kensa and Cam are in there. The forensic guys have gone.’

  ‘We’ll stay away from the house, then. I don’t want them to hear what I’ve got to say to you. Did they look in your workshop?’ Raymonds opened the gate to the paddock on his right.

  ‘What for?’ They climbed over the gate towards the pig field. ‘They won’t find anything in there.’ He looked across to gauge his father’s meaning. ‘I told Jago to get rid of it, like you said,’ he lied.

  ‘You told Jago? So you’re the boss of this little drug-peddling outfit, are you? You’re the one dishing out the orders?’

  ‘No. I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Jago can run rings around you, boy. Jago looks on you as thick as one of these pigs here. Thick as shit.’ Marky didn’t answer. ‘Well, I’ve found your stash and I’ve got it in my car and I intend to dump it in the sea.’

  ‘We can’t do that, Dad.’

  ‘We can’t?’

  ‘Please. We owe a lot of money. I made a big mistake, I admit it. I got the drugs on account. If I don’t sell the drugs, I’m screwed. I’m as good as dead. Don’t do this to me, Dad. I promise you, I’ll straighten out. This is the last mess, I promise. Dad, I will make it up to you, please help me.’

  ‘See, the thing is, son, I’ve realized you are everything I despise. You’re weak-willed, easily led and you’re a sneaky bully under all of it.’

  ‘I am what you made me.’

  ‘Now we get to the truth behind it all. Let’s blame someone else for the way I am, huh? You’re a sad excuse for a human being and I won’t carry you any further down this road. You’re on your own and I’m washing my hands of you. I’ve changed my mind about those bags of drugs. I’m taking them to the police station now and I’m telling them the truth. That’s all the evidence they’ve been waiting for. They’ll lock you away with all the other losers and throw away the key. I won’t even let your mother come and see you. It would kill her anyway. But, you don’t care about anyone but yourself.’

  ‘That’s not true. I’ve always tried to please you, to be like you.’

  ‘Don’t you fucking insult me, boy. You’re nothing like me. You hear me?’ Raymonds pushed Marky ahead of him. ‘Get over there with the pigs where you belong. Go on.’

  ‘Don’t, Dad, I’m not taking this from you any more.’

  ‘Not taking what? You’ll do as you’re told, you always have.’

  Marky raised his fist and stood, sweating and shaking, in the middle of the field.

  ‘Come on, then, if you think you’re hard enough,’ Raymonds laughed.

  At seven that morning, the search teams were parked in the driveway of Kellis House. The sun hadn’t long been up and there was a cold sharpness to the frosted landscape.

  Willis was in the bathroom when Carter came to find her. She was wearing her forensic suit.

  ‘How was your night at the cottage?’ asked Carter.

  ‘Cosy. Russell liked it.’

  ‘How’s Lauren?’

  ‘She talked about Toby coming down today; she seems relieved by the idea.’

  She turned to look at Carter from her kneeling position by the bathroom entrance. ‘I see you were busy – I would have come and helped.’

  ‘I know, but you have a big enough job as our stand-in FLO. We uncovered more complications than we needed here. I don’t know why, but I was hoping to uncover something historical. I thought Ella Simmons?’

  ‘I know, but this might explain the suicide, if he had something like this to cover up?’

  ‘Yeah, Bowie’s not going to like it, though – another tangent.’

  ‘We don’t know whether there’s another layer to this yet, guv. What’s under the heated floor?’

  ‘Sandford’s already done the tests, there’s nothing.’

  ‘We should have Sandford look upstairs in the master bedroom. If JFW killed someone here, they probably started off there, there might be blood or semen traces.’

  ‘You go and see him, he’s up there now.’

  Willis climbed the stairs and stood waiting for Sandford to turn round. He was dusting the window for prints.

  ‘There’s not a lot of blood down there,’ Willis said.

  ‘Morning, Ebony. They laid the victim out on a plastic sheet; there’s the faint shred of black plastic caught on the heating mat.’ Sandford looked at her with a wry smile. ‘Do “banging”, “head” and “brick wall” come to mind? You have everything but the boy?’

  ‘Absolutely. Any semen?’

  ‘What, me?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled, embarrassed. She knew Sandford loved winding her up. There weren’t many people he liked enough to bother, so she felt honoured. ‘The bed, the floor, the en-suite?’

  ‘Haven’t got there yet.’ He looked down at the common. ‘That wouldn’t be my ideal choice for a place to bury a body, but at least it’s never going to get sold for development. It’s probably protected by the council.’

  ‘Difficult soil to dig?’ asked Willis as she came nearer and they stood together looking down at the common below. The sea was frothing and grey in the distance. Overhead, the bulky blankets of grey cloud sat wedged on one another. Each looked so full of rain and thunder it was almost biblical.

  ‘Sandy soil; you’d want to go deep but it’s not impossible,’ said Sandford.

  ‘Yes, and plenty of water to start the decomposition process off,’ added Willis.

  ‘The dogs have been let loose now, are you going outside?’ asked Sandford.

  ‘I’ll wait. There’s just as much of interest in here,’ replied Willis.

  ‘Thanks, but you know I’m married.’

  Willis rolled her eyes and turned to leave. ‘If I can help, please just tell me.’

  ‘Ebony, you should retrain as a forensics expert. You love it and you’re good at it: you have a degree in it, for Christ’s sake. You’ve been a DC for how long now?’

  ‘Ten years.’

  ‘Do you think there is some reason why you’re not getting promoted?’

  ‘I want to stay in the MIT team.’

  ‘But what about your plans for the future: a house, a family some day? You’re thirty?’

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’d better think about it, Eb. You should think about doing Robbo’s job or mine. Not literally, of course, you’d have to work for another MIT team.’

  ‘I’ll think about what you’ve said; thanks.’

  She went to find Carter. ‘What shall we do about the baby’s body from the farm?’

  ‘Pascoe’s taking it to the lab in Penhaligon.’

  ‘We should tell Kensa,’ said Willis.

  ‘We will, but we’re still waiting for confirmation on the DNA. It’ll take a couple more hours. If it turns out to be Kensa’s we will have a service and a proper burial.’

  ‘That’s good. We have Jago and Marky coming in this morning at the same time as Raymonds, guv. Which do you want to interview first?’

  ‘Definitely keep Raymonds waiting while we talk to Jago, then Marky. Are you all right, Eb? You seem a little tense.’

  ‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’

  Carter stepped back as someone shouted for him from the door. ‘Dogs are on to something.’

  Willis and Carter went via the veranda and walked across the garden through the gap in the shrub bushes and onto the common. The shroud of mist had dissipated so that it was wispy between the gorse bushes. Dogs’ tails could be seen wagging frantically as the cadaver springers hunted, nose to the ground. They congregated on a six-foot-long patch, which had neither gorse nor tree and only the creeping wild flower across the ground. Carter and Willis walked towards the spot.

  Carter looked at the search team and gave his okay to start the digging.

  As the sun rose higher in the sky and the wind and cloud gathered momentum the dig began. The sandy soil was still loose around the boar
ds that had been laid to shore up the grave. As they reached down to lift the planks that went across width-ways, they uncovered the dismembered remains of a young adult. The white limbs were laid out in the bottom of the grave, the head had rolled from the blackened torso and it was resting against the sides of the grave.

  ‘We need to collect a selection of the worms,’ said Willis as she eased herself down inside the grave and gently rolled back the head by its black hair. The eyeless head was alive with insects.

  ‘It’s a white teenage male. I estimate he’s been in here less than eight weeks,’ Willis continued. ‘Decomposition has been fairly fast because of the amount of water in this ground but the cold air will have helped to slow it a little. The grave is approximately four feet deep and has been supported with planks inside as well as above the body to stop the grave collapsing as the body rotted.’

  Sandford picked up one of the lengths of wood and set it to one side to take with him, then he reached inside and handed Willis the camera.

  Chapter 47

  After they left the common, Willis and Carter drove down to the beach side and the police station.

  Pascoe came in and handed Willis a note just as Jago Trebethin made himself comfortable and looked around the interview room as if he felt completely at home and it was all very normal for him.

  ‘Martin Stokes was a nice old man – it’s a terrible shame,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘You were at the farm that morning?’ asked Willis.

  ‘No, you know I wasn’t, I was surfing. I saw you.’

  ‘What about before you went in the water, or when you left us?’

  Jago smiled at Willis: she was staring at him. She was trying to work out if he was the sort of man who could stick a man through the base of the spine with a spike. She thought Jago would be a lot more discreet than that. Perhaps drowning might be more his style, or poison. Nothing too messy, she decided. The expensive shirt would be ruined.

  ‘Talk to others about it, Raymonds for a start.’

  ‘We will talk to Raymonds. I thought you’d feel quite close to him,’ Carter continued.