Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(17)

‘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.