Cold Justice (38 page)

‘What date was the last visit by JFW?’ he asked.

‘He came at Christmas, sir,’ Willis answered.

‘Is that in the ledger? Was there anyone visiting with him then?’ asked Robbo.

Willis turned the pages.

‘He came alone but he had someone visit him who’s numbered at the back of the book: Bethany Smith, seventeen years old. DS Pascoe got hold of her – said she had a private arrangement with JFW – it was consensual.’

‘In my opinion, you should hand the ledger over to the locals and let them deal with it,’ Bowie said as he waited for Carter to enter into the conversation; he’d been a little too quiet as he mulled things over.

‘Carter, convince me you’re on the right track,’ said Bowie, ‘and then maybe I can convince my bosses.’ Bowie had been chewing the cuticle on his thumbnail. He sucked the blood as it came. ‘I’ve been asked to give another press conference to update.’

‘What about basing it on the reconstruction?’ said Carter.

‘We achieved very little with that. There is nothing new we really want to share with the press. The longer we can keep them away from Penhal, the better. What about ex-Sergeant Raymonds? Can we charge him with perverting the course of justice where the rape is concerned?’

‘If we charge him we take him away from the community he controls. The people will close ranks rather than give him up. He’s running around like a blue-arsed fly at the moment, trying to cover his tracks. He’s losing control of this community and that’s what we’re waiting for. We need to give this village enough rope to hang itself,’ said Carter.

Towan got out of the police station with a feeling of immense relief. He really hadn’t expected it. He didn’t usually get off so lightly. He dodged the spray from the sea crashing into the side of Cam’s café. It was a once-a-year phenomenon: high spring tides and Atlantic storms. There were thirty-foot waves expected the next day and a high tide that threatened to close Penhall off and flood the shops. He had left his Land-Rover in the car park behind the Surfshack. It was already a foot under seawater with the waves breaking over the defence. He took no notice of the shouts from excited teenagers who were pouring out of their homes to watch the waves crash in.

He jumped into his car and sped back up the hill and across to the other side. He pulled up outside Raymonds’ house and saw that his garage was open and the Silver Fox was missing, so he decided that at some time or other Raymonds would be driving it down to the bar, like he always did. Towan would wait for him down there. There were some things he wanted to have out with him. Too much of what the detectives had said rang true. What if Raymonds had no intention of allowing Towan to take over the farm or his dad’s share of Kellis House? What if he was just mugging him off? He parked up on the road outside the Penhal Hotel and had to hold on to his door as the wind came blasting off the sea and over the cliffs. Towan walked up the steps to the bar and looked around the usual local crowd. No one smiled his way. The whole bar thought he’d killed his father.

‘I’ll have a pint of the usual.’ Towan made some space at the bar. He didn’t mind the hostility too much. But it irked him that he’d spent all these months convincing people that he’d put his past behind him and now they were so quick to see him as a murderer.

Raymonds turned up when Towan was on his third pint and scowling into his glass. Raymonds stopped to hold court along the way and Towan watched him, half-amused but wholly angry, as Raymonds accepted all the sympathy over the death of his cousin, Stokes. There were nervous glances Towan’s way as people expressed their horror at his father’s killing. Raymonds spent his time reassuring them that they were safe – that the killer was almost caught, for sure. The killer was on borrowed time.

Towan’s eyes had become a little glazed from the beer and his face was a little red, his lips wet from the constant licking in anxiety. Raymonds had spotted him and was wondering how to manage the situation. As he got near to Towan, Towan called him over to have a pint. Everyone in the bar watched. Raymonds came near and slapped him on the shoulder.

‘You all right, Towan, bearing up? Let me buy you a beer on this sad night.’ He whispered in his ear, ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘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.

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,’ he 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.’