Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(22)

‘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.’





Chapter 10


‘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.’