Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(33)

Chapter 15


Raymonds looked across the table at Eileen and picked up his spoon. He smashed the crown of his soft-boiled egg with the back of his spoon, picked up his knife, and sliced through the top half of the egg in one clean strike. He looked up at her and smiled watchfully.

‘Is something the matter?’ she asked, and he could see the mistrust in her eyes.

‘Yes. These eggs are underdone. They need to be timed – it’s not a haphazard thing, boiling an egg. It’s not difficult, for Christ’s sake.’

Eileen went to delicately open the top of her egg by carving but it was too soft – she crushed it as she held it. She scraped up the slimy egg that had splattered across the table. Raymonds paused mid-spoonful and watched her with disgust.

‘You’re putting me off my food.’

‘Sorry.’

Raymonds sighed. If there were a way of bullying his wife out of behaving like a victim he would have found it by now. They finished their meal in silence. Raymonds picked up his plate, scraped the remainder in the bin, and stacked it away in the dishwasher.

‘I’m going out.’ She nodded but didn’t answer. She went to look out at the back garden.

He followed her gaze. A pile of logs littering the pathway obstructed the usually neat and tidy pathways. ‘I’ll tidy that up when I get back,’ he said.

‘Don’t you want me to put the logs into the store?’ she asked. ‘It might rain.’

‘Don’t touch anything. I’ll be a couple of hours, it can wait till then. Don’t let anyone in if those people come back.’

‘The coloured girl?’

‘Yes. She’s a police officer from the Met. I always said no good would ever come of the Met. He’s just as bad. They don’t know how to conduct themselves properly. If they think they can come down here and lord it over everyone, they’re much mistaken.’

‘What did they want?’

‘They want to find that missing boy, of course. What do you think they want?’

‘Are you going to see Marky?’

‘Why?’

‘Just that he said he’d come and see me yesterday and he didn’t. I’m worried that he’s not opening the shop like he should. People are talking about it.’

‘What, what – spit it out.’

‘I don’t know, I’m just worried about him, that’s all. Can you have a word?’

Raymonds went into the hallway, picked up his keys from the hall table and went outside. He smiled as the cold air hit him, fresh from the Atlantic. He pressed the fob on his key ring and the garage door shuddered and then whirred open. His cars waited shiny, immaculate, sitting neatly in the double garage. At the back of the garage there was a wall of drying logs. He’d spent all morning stacking them neatly on top of one another, like a drystone wall. Each log had its place but now he’d been interrupted it could wait. His mind was on other things.

He heard the helicopter overhead and listened intently. His eyes went skyward and stayed as he clenched his fists, his body going rigid. His face had become so strained that it looked mask-like as his mouth set into a grimace and stayed. He waited until the helicopter had moved on and then he got into the car on the right – a 1970s Ford Cortina 1600 E in metallic grey. He had restored it himself. He called it the Silver Fox. He started the engine, slightly rough and throaty – it was a sports model in its time.

Raymonds sat there for a minute, waiting for the car to warm up, before easing out of the garage and down the driveway, then turning and taking the main road towards the village. He turned in the car park behind the Surfshack and took a look around for the detectives’ car but it wasn’t there. He parked up and got out, walking round the back of the Surfshack onto the main street, looking into the Surfshack as he passed. It was a large cabin-type shop with broad wooden steps that usually had surfboards strapped to the railings. In the summer, racks of wet suits were wheeled out for people to hire; suntanned girls and boys skipped up and down the sandy steps. Its windows were full of posters of bronzed surfers. Usually it made Raymonds feel good just to be near it, but not today.

He looked inside and saw Marky waxing down a surfboard. Raymonds walked up the steps and shut and locked the door behind him. Marky stopped waxing as he watched his father approach. He was trying to gauge his father’s mood, but Raymonds had perfected the expressionless face. As he got close, and without warning, Raymonds raised his hand and whipped his open palm against the side of Marky’s head so hard it knocked Marky off his stool and sent the surfboard crashing to the floor. Marky began crawling backwards like an upside-down insect trying to get away.

‘I know what you’ve done.’ He caught hold of him as Marky tried to get away. ‘The whole village will suffer if you don’t get rid of it. Those are police helicopters up in the sky now. The whole of the UK is watching us. You think you’re going to come out of this, you and Jago? Think again. This has Jago written all over it and you just went along with it, didn’t you? It’s a stupid idea, stupidly executed.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Raymonds took another swipe at Marky, who ducked.

‘I fucking saw you at the motorway services after the funeral. Now the police are going to look at every angle of every CCTV camera trained on that services and they will see you. Get rid of it. You hear me?’ Raymonds tightened his grip on his son’s shirt and twisted it tightly around his neck until Marky began to gasp.