Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(112)

‘Toby? I’ve been waiting for you, for so long.’

‘Please, I’m begging you, let Samuel go. Tell us where he is.’

‘He is in the safe place. I never loved anyone but you, you know? I know you would never have hurt me, it was all lies.’

‘I wasn’t capable of harming you, I loved you.’

Kensa gasped as if someone had kicked her in the chest.

‘You don’t love me any more?’

‘I will always love you, but I’ve realized I cannot control who I love. Lauren understands too. I’m sorry.’

Kensa pulled Lauren towards her and Carter could feel the tension as twenty officers got ready to fire. Kensa moved closer to the edge of the cliff, taking Lauren with her.

‘Don’t do it, Kensa, don’t do it,’ pleaded Mawgan, ‘otherwise no one will ever believe our stories. No one will ever care what we have to say; they will just remember us as those “mad ones” on the cliff top. They’ll never know what we did to stay alive, what we suffered. Kensa, don’t do this to me, don’t do it to us. Step away from the edge. Let Lauren go.’

Lauren took a step away as Mawgan stepped forward.

‘We deserve better. All the pacts we made as kids. We knew we had to stay alive at all costs, didn’t we? I’ll go to court and tell them about my dad, what he did to us. I’ll make sure the town knows what happened to us. Things will be different now.’

Kensa turned and looked out to sea. The Atlantic raged and churned.

Mawgan held out her arms and reached for Kensa.

‘Come on, we’ll face this together, like we’ve always done.’

Kensa smiled as she cried. But her eyes still burned. She was distracted by Toby. He had begun walking away.

‘Kensa, please,’ Mawgan said as she saw Kensa getting anxious again. She held the gun tight.

‘Toby, stop where you are,’ Carter shouted.

‘Give me the gun, Kensa,’ Mawgan said, and walked forwards, reaching for it.

Kensa fired, and the bullet hit Mawgan full on. She was blown backwards. Carter held up his hand to stop the officers from firing.

Cam knelt and held Mawgan on the ground as he looked around blindly for help.

‘I came back for you, Mawgan. I came back to be with you. I would have done anything to make us happy.’

Her eyes were losing their focus as she smiled. ‘It’s not our time, is it? Run to the safe place, Cam, that’s where the boy will be.’ Mawgan looked at Cam to see if he understood – he nodded. Then she passed away. Cam bowed his head and sobbed.

Kensa turned and opened her arms like a bird. Then she dropped off the edge of the cliff.

Raymonds looked around the room and thought how they had done a rather shoddy job in putting the place back as it was. There were still tourist posters on the walls advertising the Poldark Mine and the Traditional Cornish Village where time had stood still. He stood and went to the door and listened: no noise, no sound at all. He tried the door, it was locked. He stood in the middle of the room and for a moment he closed his eyes and he felt as if he were falling.

Outside in the street, Towan revved up Raymonds’ Silver Fox till it was smoking. Then he spun the Ford Cortina in the sand as he roared past the police station, spinning the car round in the entrance to the beach outside Cam’s café and then racing back along the road. He turned into the car park behind Marky’s Surfshack and lined up the Silver Fox with the bottle banks at the edge of the car park, beneath the sign saying not to feed the seagulls. He revved, and then he let her fly, and the Silver Fox smashed into the bottle bank.

Raymonds stood tall, breathing deep; he could still smell the old police station. Those were good times. He had no regrets. He’d made a few bad judgement calls, it was true. But he hoped that people would remember him for the good things he’d done. He’d always had the good of the community in mind. It was never about him.

He looked up at the ceiling. The strip lights of the original room had been replaced with a pendant light. He shook his head.

‘Shoddy.’





Chapter 51


‘What did she mean by the safe place?’ asked Willis.

‘It was a place where we hid where no one would find us,’ answered Cam. He stood watching them zip up the body bag with Mawgan inside.

‘Will you show us where that is?’ Willis asked.

Cam nodded as he turned away from the cliff top.

Pascoe left instructions for his officers while he took one of the police vans and, led by Cam, they headed away in convoy.

They drove back towards the Stokes farm but went off on a track before they got there and pulled up at the old barn that Willis and Carter had been to before, with Pascoe. It was still stacked with straw bales up to the ceiling. Carter went round to talk to Cam when he got out of the car and they opened the barn doors. The dust from the straw flew around them.

‘Are you sure this is the place?’ Carter asked incredulously.

Cam got out of the car and stood looking at the barn, pale-faced and shell-shocked as he tried to cope with what had happened. Carter put his hand on his shoulder. He nodded.

‘Thank you, Cam, we appreciate how hard this is for you.’

It was eerily quiet inside the barn, until a dove flew out from the roof cavity. It sent a shower of dust and then the barn settled again into silence.