Cold Justice (7 page)

‘The solicitor is dealing with all that,’ Toby answered, looking from one person to the other.

‘Yes, I understand that, but can we have your permission?’ Carter pushed. ‘It saves getting a search warrant – saves time.’

‘Of course you can, for Christ’s sake,’ Lauren spat out angrily as she came in from the kitchen. ‘You can do anything you want if it will help find our son.’

Carter watched as Lauren took several paces towards Toby and looked like she was about to hit him. Toby recoiled from her. ‘Just fucking do it, Toby. Just do it without thinking about yourself for one fucking moment,’ she screamed in his face. ‘You lost our son. You lost our son . . .’

Jeanie stepped towards her and led her away. Toby got up and left the room, and when he came back he handed a set of keys to Carter.

‘The solicitor gave me a set.’

Carter felt his phone vibrate and excused himself. ‘Willis, can you cover for me a min? I need to make a call.’

Carter left the door on the latch as he stepped outside onto the landing and stood looking over the view of the building site around them; the lift shaft was at his back.

‘Cabrina?’

‘Dan, I’ve been trying to get you for hours.’

‘I’m sorry, love – we’re in the middle of that missing-child case in Greenwich.’

‘Oh yes, I know. I heard about it on the radio.’

‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘We’ve had a break-in. I’m not sure what they’ve taken. It looks a mess here.’

‘Shit. Are you and Archie okay?’

‘Yes, we’re okay, it happened when I was at work and he was at nursery. Sorry to bother you – I know how big this case is but I don’t know whether to get the locks changed?’

‘How did they get in?’

‘Through the flat downstairs. They busted her window and then climbed up and through our landing window.’

‘Bastards.’

‘Yeah . . . horrible. I feel so angry.’

‘Look, I’m going to be late again tonight. I might just catch a bit of sleep here.’

‘Please, Dan, come home. You didn’t come home last night.’

‘I’m sorry, love – this is a crucial time. We’re all working flat out. Are you taking Archie to your mum’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll get Robbo on to it and send a couple of Archway officers round to see what needs to be done.’

‘There’s nothing they can do.’

‘We have to add our name to the statistics, love, otherwise we can’t claim on the insurance. I’ll get them to dust for fingerprints.’ There was a silence at the other end of the phone. He heard Cabrina sigh. ‘Can you manage?’

‘Of course I can manage, but that’s not the point, is it?’

‘Sorry, honey, I really am but . . .’

‘Yes, I’m sorry too. I’m just so upset and I need you. I know you can’t spare anyone to help. It’s nothing. I’ll sort it. I’ll get some help in to run the shop while I clear it up.’

‘That’s why I love you, Cabrina. Come hell or high water, I’m going to be sneaking into your bed tonight so you’d better warn your mum to put her earplugs in.’

Cabrina laughed.

‘The key will be under the mat and I’ll make sure Archie sleeps in with Mum and Dad. Love you, babe.’

‘I’ll see you later, honey.’

Jeanie appeared at the door to the flat and mouthed, ‘Can I have a word?’ Carter nodded. He watched Jeanie walk across towards him. She smiled and looked away. The awkwardness between them always caught her off guard. He knew it. Sometimes she was able to forget it, ignore it. Other times she looked like it was going to affect their working relationship but it hadn’t, because, in the end, she went home to Pete and he went home to Cabrina. He looked away. He didn’t want her to think he was still smarting.

‘Okay?’ he asked, as she got within hearing distance. She stood by the landing window and gave a small shake of the head. ‘What’s bothering you?’

‘He can’t sit still for a minute. He’s forever jumping up and going off into the next room. He makes calls that he’d prefer I didn’t hear.’

‘Shall we bug his phone?’

‘Yes, we have to. Willis told me that Lauren confessed her and Toby’s relationship is not the best. He definitely didn’t marry her to carry on his name.’

‘Why did he, do you think?’

‘Maybe he was trying his hardest to fit into a certain-shaped mould. Maybe he knows he can’t but he’s too frightened to face it.’

‘Gay, you mean?’

‘Gay, bisexual, apparently. Lauren suspects there could be someone else. He’s had relationships with men in the past.’

‘Most likely to be someone at work, if he doesn’t meet people online, that is. What are your thoughts about the missing suit found in the bin?’ asked Carter. ‘I’ve been thinking about what kind of person would risk changing the child rather than bundle him into a car and get away fast?’

‘They obviously didn’t have a car within a few feet,’ answered Jeanie.

‘But, they threw the suit in a bin nearby the scene. Didn’t they realize we would find it?’ Carter said.

‘I don’t think they could have,’ Jeanie answered.

‘Which means this is an amateur or a first-timer, do you think?’ asked Carter. ‘The established paedophile network is too slick to make a mistake like that.’

‘But if it was opportune?’ asked Jeanie.

‘Can’t have been, can it? Because they had a change of clothes ready and they had an exit planned.’

Back inside the flat, Willis was waiting for Carter. ‘Robbo’s come up with some interesting stuff to show you on film.’

‘Okay, good. I think we’ll grab ourselves a respite and regroup.’

They said goodbye to Toby, Lauren and Jeanie and drove towards the centre of Greenwich. They parked outside the
Cutty Sark
museum. When they walked past it, it was winding down for the day and a young male assistant was cashing up at the desk.

Carter cocked his head towards the entrance.

‘Let’s just go and chat; see how his day has been.’

Willis smiled to herself as she followed. She knew Carter would have many ‘off-piste’ episodes, as he called them, on the way through an investigation.

They walked across and Carter knocked at the window and showed his badge. The young man looked nervously around but Carter’s broad smile had opened many doors and the lad nodded and came forward to unlock.

They stepped inside. ‘Getting brass monkeys out here.’ Carter gave an exaggerated shiver. He showed his warrant card. Willis showed hers.

‘Okay if we take up five minutes of your time?’ Carter asked. The youth nodded cautiously. Carter wandered around the displays of London souvenirs and the plastic rats, the miniature glass bottles with tiny
Cutty Sark
models inside.

‘Do people still buy all this stuff?’

The lad nodded.

‘What’s your name, mate?’

‘Rex.’

‘Well, Rex, you’re obviously doing a grand job here. We’re not here to cause you any trouble. I just need your help with something. Yesterday, about this time in the afternoon, a man walked past here pushing a buggy. He was probably walking quite slowly. Look, let me show you a photo.’ Willis took out a folded sheet of paper, which had been given to the search officers, and opened it. It was a still from the CCTV cameras around the museum.

Rex studied it. ‘He’s the man whose kid was snatched?’

‘Yes, that’s him.’

‘I was already asked if I saw him and I didn’t.’

‘Good – good that my officers are doing their job, but I just want to ask you about the other people you had in that afternoon. Was it busy?’

‘It was. We seemed to have large groups of foreign tourists in. I think it must be cheap to come to London in February. We had a big party of Japanese, some schoolchildren from France. There was a Dutch tour.’

‘What about UK accents? Did you hear any of those?’

‘Yes, I did. Some people up from Cornwall.’

‘Cornwall? You’re sure, not Bristol, not Exeter?’

‘I’m a hundred per cent sure. I go down there all the time. My mum’s from there.’

They thanked Rex and walked towards the Cutty Sark pub on the corner. Willis ordered a Coke.

‘A large white wine, please,’ Carter ordered. ‘Something decent.’

They picked up their drinks and went to a table. Willis placed a black, mock-crocodile, zip-up file on the table. Carter picked it up between finger and thumb, swinging it gingerly in the air.

‘What’s this?’

‘I found it in the Incident Room. Just by my desk, no one claimed it.’

‘Yeah – you know why, Eb? There’s a bin at the end of your desk, isn’t there? Have you sprayed it – sanitized it?’

She rolled her eyes and ignored Carter’s scathing looks.

‘It’s fine. Must have been Jeanie’s, I think.’

Carter was taking a drink and nearly choked. ‘Don’t, for Christ’s sake, let Jeanie hear you say that. Jeanie has some taste – she would not be seen dead with a skanky file. Believe me. You ought to take a look at your habits. Good detectives are methodical types, not messy.’ Carter reached for his hand sanitizer and squirted some in his hand, then left it on the table with a push in her direction. Willis looked at him incredulously. He held his hands up. ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. Don’t pick things out of bins. You don’t know where they’ve been.’ He pushed the hand gel further towards her. She rolled her eyes but did it anyway.

‘Can I get on with showing you what’s been found?’ she asked.

‘Go for it.’

Willis opened her iPad.

‘Here’s the footage,’ she said as she turned the screen towards him so he could see it run. Carter watched the last of the funeral-goers leaving the chapel. ‘We’ve looked into nearly everyone on the list of people at the funeral,’ Willis said as Carter watched the screen. ‘We concentrated on the Cornwall lot because the politicians seemed unlikely. We found a few with records: kerb-crawling, GBH, a bit of robbery. But basically the village keeps itself very clean. One of the Cornish mourners was a retired police officer who used to run the station at Penhal until it closed. He still lives in the area. His name is Michael Raymonds. This is Raymonds again, here.’ She pointed to the slick-haired man standing at the church entrance talking to Toby. Willis pulled out a service photo of Raymonds from the early 1990s.

‘He hasn’t changed his style much,’ Carter remarked as he looked at it. ‘Just that now he has to dye his hair black. That’ll be me one day; probably not, think I’ll go for the silver fox look instead.’

‘If I rewind that, guv,’ Willis did it as she said it, ‘have a look at Toby’s face when he first catches sight of Raymonds.’

‘I see,’ said Carter, looking at the screen. ‘He can’t take his eyes off him, and Raymonds is all smiles by the look of it. He even takes hold of Toby’s hand.’

‘Yeah, and really keeps hold of it,’ said Willis. ‘Almost looks to me like Toby’s scared,’ she added.

‘What’s Raymonds saying, can we make it out?’ asked Carter.

‘I got someone to lip-read. It starts with sympathies about Toby’s loss but then he leans in and says something else; as he pulls back he says:
“Something something,
you need to start answering my calls.” ’

‘Look at Toby’s face – he is definitely trying to sort out something in his head,’ said Carter.

‘He doesn’t answer but then Raymonds says:
“Something . . . something . . .
things need clarifying. A great offer . . .” That’s where we lose it. It can’t be lip-read when he’s covering his mouth with his hand,’ concluded Willis.

‘Toby looks really flustered by it.’ Carter sat back and took a drink.

‘Yeah – I’m not sure if he hears it properly, or understands what it means – he doesn’t make a verbal response. Lauren comes into shot. Raymonds has to pull away from Toby. Notice – Raymonds didn’t talk to her.’

‘It looks like she’s busy placating Samuel, who’s obviously had enough. Anyone else get close?’

‘No, not that I can see.’

‘Toby was scared, felt threatened. Let’s get hold of Raymonds and talk to him.’

‘Do you want me to ring him?’ asked Willis.

‘No, we’ll drive down. We need a better view of what Jeremy Forbes-Wright was to the community anyway.’ Carter studied the film again. He peered closely at the screen and paused it mid-frame, looking at the striking man. ‘Do we know his connection to Jeremy Forbes-Wright?’

‘No. We don’t know that any of the people who came up from Cornwall are directly connected. Only the man who acts as the holiday letting agent. That’s about as near as we can get. He’s called Stokes.’

‘And we need to re-examine all the CCTV footage of Toby on his walk; see if we can spot any of these mourners. The man at the museum said he heard Cornish accents yesterday. Any sign of our mysterious woman?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Any news about the snowflake suit?’

‘No signs of blood. The bag it was found in is a Tesco carrier bag – there’s a small Tesco Metro here on the other side of the park. Robbo’s looking at the CCTV now.’

‘So someone got him out of his outfit as fast as possible and into new clothes. Is there a public toilet in the park?’ asked Carter.

‘There are a few. We’ll get the CCTV.’

‘I suppose if they had a buggy waiting they could have changed him anywhere on the park, there’s a lot of tree cover. We need officers asking questions of anyone who crosses the park and see if there is any mobile phone footage that could be useful.

What were the impressions from the statements taken from the staff at the Observatory?’

‘That Toby is a loner. He is well thought of, quiet. Very keen on his work.’

‘Does he socialize at all?’

‘Yes, with his workmate Gareth Turnbill, who phoned him before the walk.’

Carter looked at his phone as it vibrated on silent on the table top. He raised his eyes to Willis as he answered the call.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Can you talk?’ Bowie asked.

‘Go ahead.’

‘I’ve had a call from the Home Secretary regarding Jeremy Forbes-Wright. I started asking questions about his reasons for deciding not to run for the Kent constituency and was warned off. The Home Secretary said that Jeremy had debts and liked a lavish lifestyle. He wasn’t keen to relocate to Kent. He would have had to sell his house in Cornwall to do it. So he decided that wasn’t an option and withdrew his candidacy a week before he killed himself.’