Cold Justice (39 page)

‘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 boards 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.

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.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Your mother and Raymonds? It’s a long-standing affair, I hear?’

A real flash of anger crossed over Jago’s face and then disappeared just as quickly. ‘Gossip, that’s all. This is a small town and tongues wag.’

He smiled and tapped the heel of his boot on the floor as if ready to leave.

‘We got it from a reliable source. Him and your mum go way back. In fact, it’s commonly understood that all your school fees, your uni fees, all paid by Raymonds,’ said Carter. ‘No wonder your dad left.’

‘My dad left because he found someone else. The affair didn’t start till after. What does it matter, anyway? I never asked him to do these things. I didn’t ask to be sent away to school.’

‘Better to get you out of the way, I suppose.’

‘Whatever – I had a good education out of it. For that, I’m grateful.’

‘I expect you came back here hoping to be one of Raymonds’ favourites but Cam seems to have worked his way in the back door. It looks like he’s set to build an empire for himself with his new restaurant on the beach while you struggle to get a licence for an icecream van, I think.’

He shrugged. His hands were clasped between his knees as he sat forward in the chair, occasionally pushing back his fringe with the heel of his hand.

‘Who knows? Dreams can come true,’ he said in a cheesy way.

‘Did Martin Stokes stand in your way?’

‘God, I wouldn’t waste my time killing an old farmer; he was always going to find a way to get that done without my help.’

‘He had a history of paedophilia, did you know?’

‘I knew, everyone knew.’

‘Why, because Kensa and Mawgan told you?’

‘No, I didn’t know it involved them. Kensa’s always had trouble keeping her legs together.’

‘Kensa was raped,’ said Willis. ‘You knew that.’

‘I knew the accusation had been flying about. But Kensa says lots of things. She’s a psycho.’

Willis opened her notebook and read from Towan’s statement: ‘ ‘‘After we got into the house, Jago raped Ella.’’ ’ Jago choked on the saliva in his throat and coughed uncontrollably for a minute. Carter pushed the water across to him.

‘Are you mad? Why would I need to?’

‘You wanted to teach her a lesson, maybe?’

‘I was drunk, hardly able to rape anyone.’

‘You weren’t drunk, though, were you? You were off your head, you’d taken a concoction of things. After all, it was Marky’s birthday and you and him were used to mixing it up. You were the local lads, weren’t you? You got away with things because Marky’s dad was the Sheriff. You got away with it until it went too far. You liked Kensa. Did you think you had the right?’

‘I didn’t touch her. Toby Forbes-Wright was the one responsible.’

‘What, a little fifteen-year-old virgin asleep on Rohypnol? I’ll tell you what may interest you, we found a baby’s skeleton and we’re running DNA tests on it at the moment. Those tests will show us not only if that’s Kensa’s baby, but who the baby’s father was.’

Jago shrugged.

‘Ella Simmons was there that night too,’ Willis said, taking out a photo of Ella and sliding it across. ‘She was sixteen at the time, a beautiful-looking girl.’ Jago nodded as he looked at the photo. He could not take his eyes off it. ‘After you kicked Mawgan and Cam out, and Towan left, you carried Toby up to his bed, then it was just you and Kensa and Ella Simmons, wasn’t it?’

‘Marky was there,’ he said, staring at the floor.

‘What went on that night?’

‘I didn’t rape anyone. Towan spent a lot of time arguing with Ella. I was with Marky and Kensa until he took her upstairs. I heard a lot of weird stuff going on. I didn’t know whether Ella had gone in there and was causing a fuss because of Marky doing her friend. I was thinking I better go when Marky came downstairs in a state and he said Toby had come round, seen them having sex, and gone berserk. He had beaten Kensa really badly. He’d raped her.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘He was really upset. I didn’t know what to think. I don’t suppose I had any reason not to believe him.’

‘Did you see her?’

He nodded. ‘I thought she was dead. She wasn’t conscious. Marky kept asking what should we do. I asked him where Ella was and he said she was gone. He said he’d knocked Toby out and he was on his bed. I went in and Toby looked pretty beaten up.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Marky called his dad. He kept saying to me that he didn’t want to get blamed for it.’

‘What was Raymonds’ reaction when he came?’

‘Raymonds told us to go home, he said he would sort it.’

‘Did you see Ella again that day?’

‘I didn’t see Ella again at all.’

Willis unfolded the piece of paper Pascoe had given her at the start. She re-read it and then handed it to Carter to read.

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ asked Carter. Carter looked out of the window and saw Raymonds’ black Honda Jazz park up outside.

Jago shook his head, still stunned.

‘Good news, you weren’t the father. Bad news, we saw you buy that shipment of Class A drugs from the Ukrainians.’

Willis took out a still from the film footage at Gordano services and slid it towards Jago as Carter cautioned him.

She looked at her phone as a text came through from Jeanie.

We are ten minutes away.

‘I’m having Jago taken straight over to Penhaligon now,’ said Carter. ‘He can be formally charged there. I think it’s better we stay out of it. You ready to interview Raymonds?’ Carter asked Willis as they got back to their desks. She was engrossed in something on the screen.

‘What is it?’ asked Carter.

‘I’m just looking at the samples from the farm that Sandford’s taken. We have a match to the mittens at Gordano. There are fibres that contain fibreglass residue, they match the ones found in Marky’s workshop – plus we have a small amount of dust particles that are a dry pig food. It’s the one used at Stokes’ farm. It’s confirmation that Mawgan’s got to be involved in some way. Nothing goes on in that farm without her knowing.’

‘What about Marky? Where is he? He’s supposed to be in here by now.’

‘Is it all right to bring my dog inside?’ Lauren stuck her head around the door to Cam’s café as Russell tried hard to pull her the opposite way.

Cam looked shocked to see her. He nodded.

‘Americano, please,’ she said after she came in and stood waiting for Cam to ask her what she wanted and it didn’t happen.