Cold Justice (9 page)

Willis turned back. ‘I don’t know. If we put too much pressure on Toby at this time he’ll crack up. But . . .’

‘Yes, I agree,’ Carter interrupted. ‘I just think – this is about his child, not him. This is not about what he should or shouldn’t keep from his wife. I want to ask him about Gareth.’

‘It’s your shout,’ said Jeanie. ‘But I don’t think it will serve any purpose to put them at each other’s throats at this hellish time.’

‘You’re right, it’s my shout.’ Carter took a step forward and passed Jeanie. ‘All I care about is finding Samuel. The child is my priority. I don’t care if they end up divorced so long as I get him back safe and sound.’

‘I heard about your burglary. Really sorry, Dan, is Cabrina dealing with it okay?’ Jeanie asked as she took a step closer to him and waited for his eyes to focus and stay on hers. ‘Are
you
okay?’

He smiled and gave her a hug.

‘You know me – I’ll be fine and Cabrina, well, she’s decided it’s a good excuse to redecorate.’

Jeanie left as Lauren answered the door; she looked exhausted. ‘Come in,’ she said wearily.

She nodded towards the lounge. Toby was sitting on the sofa staring at his laptop, headphones on. Carter threw a glance towards Willis and she went back to talk to Lauren.

‘Lauren, can I help you source a takeaway for your tea?’

Lauren took a few seconds to grasp what Willis meant. ‘No, it’s okay, thanks. I’m sure I can rustle up some pasta if we’re hungry.’

‘You have to eat, you know?’

Lauren snatched up some bedsheets to fold.

‘I know, I know, it all seems so normal, the only thing missing here is my two-year-old son. I don’t want it to be normal.’

‘I understand, but there is nothing you can do except do your best to stay sane and healthy and keep positive.’

Lauren smiled at Ebony and nodded as the detective took the other end of the sheet to help fold it.

Carter walked across the room behind Toby and glanced down to see what he was looking at on his laptop. He was on Facebook. Carter walked around to the front and waved in his face. ‘Facebook?’

Toby snatched the headphones from his head.

He looked caught out. ‘I thought that might have been one of Gareth’s playlists you were listening to?’ Toby shook his head. ‘Was that Gareth on Facebook?’ Carter persisted. Toby didn’t answer. ‘It’s just that we went to see him earlier this evening. He seems very fond of you. You’re good mates?’

Toby blinked at Carter. ‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘We met his mum,’ said Carter. ‘Seems she didn’t know you were married or had a kid.’

‘Why should she?’

‘Just wondered why you hadn’t mentioned it?’

‘It’s my private life. I like to keep it separate.’

‘Separate or secret?’

He shrugged. ‘I just don’t choose to share my private life with work colleagues, that’s all.’

‘Except Gareth – you took Gareth to your father’s flat.’

‘Well, he’s a friend. He had the afternoon off; he suggested it.’

‘Gareth suggested you have a look around your late father’s flat?’

‘Yes. He was free that afternoon.’

‘What did you do there then, you and Gareth?’

‘We didn’t
do
anything. We just went inside and took a quick look around. It didn’t feel right so I didn’t want to stay there.’

‘What didn’t feel right?’

‘I just wanted support, so I took Gareth.’

‘What did you find? What were you hoping to find?’

‘Nothing. Anything. Anything about my father. I don’t know. I was just really anxious.’

‘When was the last time you saw your father?’

‘Three years ago. I bumped into him in the street. He tried to ignore me but I wanted to tell him I’d just got married and Lauren was expecting, so I made sure he had to stop. He already knew about the marriage – Lauren sent him an invite, which he declined, saying that he was busy. I didn’t want him to come anyway. The whole conversation lasted about three minutes. He couldn’t wait to get away. He was charming but cold and excused himself. He tried to contact me a couple of times after that – he said he wanted to see Samuel, meet Lauren. He wanted to talk about the past. I didn’t answer. He didn’t deserve a relationship with me or Samuel.’

‘When was the last time he contacted you?’

‘About a month ago.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He phoned me, said he really wanted to make amends. I told him to go and hang himself. I told him he’d caused so much damage to me I’d never let him do that to my family.’

‘How did he take that?’

‘He did his usual thing of starting off sounding like a perfectly reasonable person and then suddenly turning into a man who just didn’t want to hear anyone else’s side of anything. More than that, he didn’t understand what made someone a human being. He just saw me as a wet little boy who couldn’t face up to life. He hung up on me in the end.’ Toby looked away as he wiped his eyes.

‘It still affects you, even though you’ve never been close?’

‘No.’ He shrugged it off. ‘I hated him,’ Toby said, as he stood and went to the window to gaze at the apartment blocks on the bank opposite with their bright windows.

Carter watched Toby intently. Toby shook his head, bewildered. ‘I thought I might find something to spark a memory at the flat. There was hardly anything personal. I could have been in anybody’s place.’

‘So you didn’t take anything, you didn’t empty his drawers?’

‘There was a photo on the sideboard in the dining room of my mother holding me as a baby. I took that; then we left.’

‘Do you have any contact with your mother?’

‘No, not since she left when I was seven. She moved to Argentina, where she still lives. I got in touch with her in my twenties. She told me that she’d tried to see me many times but that my father had prevented it. We were becoming close when she became ill. She didn’t come over for the wedding. She has full-blown Alzheimer’s now.’

‘Why did your parents split up in the first place, do you remember?’

‘No. I remember the pain in my mother’s eyes and her crying. I remember understanding that my mother was leaving me. I only know what relatives told me after that – they said she had caught my father with someone else. The implication was that he was a womanizer and a lover of swingers’ parties. Apparently it was something he expected my mother to enjoy with him. I saw my father with many women when I was young. Looking back, they were probably prostitutes – I remember thinking of them like dolls. Must have been the make-up, I suppose. They didn’t seem like real human beings to me.’

Toby moved away from the window. ‘I need to lie down, if you don’t mind?’

‘Okay, Toby.’ Toby’s energy seemed to completely desert him.

Carter went to talk to Lauren.

‘We’re going to leave you now for the evening. Try and get some sleep. You don’t have to sleep with the phone on – Jeanie will always come and tell you straight away if there’s any news of any kind.’

‘Marble must be so easy to look after,’ said Carter. ‘Where the marble ends the hardwood begins.’

‘It’s a bit too bling,’ said Willis.

‘Yes – it’s definitely flash . . . Cabrina would love it,’ Carter replied. ‘It’s a place made for partying: eight-foot dining table, a well-stocked bar.’

Carter and Willis stood on the wrap-around balcony on the sixteenth floor looking out over night-time London and getting a little buffeted by the arctic wind.

‘I’d love to be stood here in summer. If I ever win two and a half million on the lottery, Eb, this is what I’ll buy: gym, swimming pool, and valet parking. You even get your own sauna and plunge pool up here. There’s even some fake lawn for the dog to shit on, for Christ’s sake!’

‘He didn’t own this place though, did he, guv? You’d need someone to pick up the poop.’

‘No, it’s rented and, by the sounds of it, it was more than he could afford. But don’t spoil it for me now, Eb – I’m enjoying the moment.’

‘Guv, ever since I became your partner you’ve liked every house we’ve ever visited.’

‘No I haven’t. Only the ones that cost a million upwards.’ He sighed and turned back from the view. ‘Yeah, you’re right, Eb, shatter my dreams, why don’t you? Let’s get inside and make it quick. I have to meet the boss after this and I’ve promised Cabrina I’ll make it back before midnight tonight. We’re camping at her mum’s tonight and I need to go by the flat and salvage what I can, clothes-wise, for me to take tomorrow. Okay – sooner we’re in, sooner we’re out. If you look at the bedrooms and have a nosy, I’ll start with the study.’

‘It’s tidy,’ called Willis from one of the bedrooms, ‘but it looks like someone’s had a rummage. Drawers are left slightly open. The towel in the en-suite is used.’

‘Well, we know the housekeeper came in here to clean while JFW went to stay in the hotel. So someone’s messed things up since she was here.’

Willis returned from looking at the bedrooms.

‘Nothing worth noting – different-sized condoms in his bedside drawers, that’s all.’

‘Not averse to experimenting, then. He must have wanted us to see that – he knew he was going to a hotel to top himself. He knew we would come here.’

‘Definitely knew Toby would,’ Willis said.

‘So we have to imagine that he wanted us to find it exactly as it is now.’

‘One of the beds looks like it’s been made in a hurry, slept in – or on.’ Willis looked around at all the white marble and cream leather sofas. ‘It’s beautiful but much too flash, tasteless. I can’t imaging coming home on my own and feeling cosy.’

‘No, not even with the dog waiting for you to come through the door.’

Carter sat down at the study desk and pulled out the first of a set of four drawers. He rummaged inside. ‘Junk drawer, stapler, spare pens, that kind of thing.’ He opened the next two drawers in succession. ‘Correspondence, all recent. Mainly bills for caterers. He’s clipped the months together. I suppose he got to claim for a fair bit. He must have entertained visiting bigwigs in here. These clips have come undone in this drawer, I think Toby’s been looking through these.’

Willis came over to stand by Carter. ‘He implied that he just wanted to get the odd souvenir,’ she said as she peered into the fourth drawer with him.

‘Now, he’s made a mess in here. All these papers are just rammed back in.’ Carter lifted the bundle of correspondence carefully out and handed it to Willis. ‘Let’s look at it on the dining table, we can spread out.’

‘What are we looking for?’

‘Anything with reference to Toby, Samuel, suicide? I don’t know. You take half and get started.’

‘There’s nothing about Toby or the Cornish connection in my lot,’ Willis said as she finished looking through it.

‘Nor mine.’

‘Where else, then? Are there any long-term storage places here in this flat? I mean, he must have had belongings that he’d always kept?’

‘They may be in the Cornish house.’

‘I get the feeling Toby and Gareth spent some time in here. The ruffled bed?’ Willis wandered over to the CD collection. ‘They listened to music, watched the odd DVD? There are some gaps on the shelf here.’ Willis tilted her head to look at the titles.

‘Jeanie loves music, all kinds. She could sing something from all these albums,’ said Willis, who often babysat Jeanie’s little girl Chloe on a Saturday night and stayed over to spend Sundays at Jeanie’s house –no one made a roast like Jeanie’s husband Peter.

‘That’s for sure,’ said Carter. ‘Not like Cabrina who has ’80s music on all of the time – drives me frigging mad. It’s either that or she’s watching reruns of
Friends
.’

Willis turned to look at Carter. He went into the kitchen and looked inside the fridge. ‘It’s as if Jeremy Forbes-Wright had just stepped out.’ Carter stuck his head back out of the fridge. ‘There’s a half-drunk bottle of wine, a loaf of bread.’ He opened the wine and smelled it and then he rummaged through the rest of the cupboards before returning to the lounge.

‘Looks like they really did make themselves at home here,’ he continued. ‘They had a bite to eat, opened a bottle of wine. It’s all within its sell-by date in there. Considering JFW died a month ago. Interesting what Toby has started revealing about his childhood.’

‘Yes, I caught some of it as you were speaking to him. It sounds horrible.’

‘You have a lot in common. I’m sure boarding schools are not that different from kids’ homes.’

‘Both dreading going home, I suppose,’ said Willis.

‘Maybe we should leave you here and I’ll take Jeanie down to Cornwall?’ Carter and Willis locked eyes and he shook his head. ‘Maybe not.’

Willis took a call from Robbo. She put him on speaker.

‘A cleaner’s found some mittens that match Samuel’s at a services on the M5 heading south. They were in the car park, no sign of anything else.’

‘We need the place shut down, Robbo. Order the dogs sent in; we need a fingertip search of the area. He may have been dumped in the surrounding countryside, so helicopters as well. It’s a good lead. It’s a relief to feel progress.’

Carter looked across at Willis.

She nodded. ‘It narrows down the possible abduction route.’

‘I agree. Now we’re getting somewhere,’ said Carter. ‘Let me know the minute they find anything else, Robbo. Meanwhile, we need to trace the Cornish mourners on the way back and see if any stopped at the services.’

‘I’m analysing the CCTV footage. I’ll make this a priority; I’ll work on it overnight. By the way, Malcolm Camber, the child abductor from Greenwich, was out of town when Samuel went missing. He has an alibi that checks out. We’ve checked out the others of interest and drawn a blank. We’ll keep looking,’ Robbo said as they finished the call.

‘Okay, I’ve seen enough in here. Let’s talk to the concierge on the way out,’ Carter said as he prepared to leave.

They locked the flat up and took the lift down to the ground floor, past the waterfall walls and woodland sculptures in the reception area, to a semicircular bevelled glass station lit from beneath like an Olympic torch.

‘Hello, sir.’ Carter re-read the name badge.
Tyler Brooks.