Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(41)

‘So, Mr Forbes-Wright never made any money from letting out the house?’

‘Maybe, but I don’t see how. He may have charged his friends on the times he was here with them. As I said, he didn’t always rent it out.’

A woman came round from the other side of the wall, wiping her face with her sleeve. She stomped along, a tear in the top of her boot that flapped as she walked. She looked at Willis and stared hard at Carter. Stokes shouted at her as she passed: ‘You knows you shouldn’t go in there.’ He shook his head, annoyed. ‘Mawgan. Mawgan . . . come here.’

She kept on walking towards the stable block at the back of the house.

‘Next time she bites me, I’ll slit her throat, put her in the freezer,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘We’d like a word please, Mawgan,’ Carter called out.

She nodded as she turned away and kept walking.

‘Let me see to my leg.’

‘Well, get a move on,’ Stokes shouted after her, receiving a glare in return. He laughed it off.

‘She’s a good girl on the farm. She can do anything a man can do and do it just as well.’

‘You have a son too, don’t you, Mr Stokes?’

‘I have a son, yes, Towan. He mainly works here on this farm with Mawgan or he runs the shop.’

‘Is this Mawgan’s main job?’ asked Willis.

‘She does a few jobs. She cleans for folks. She works in the farm shop. She helps out here and there.’

‘It’s a busy farm, isn’t it?’ said Carter, looking around.

‘We do a bit of everything here, we supply a couple of farm shops with the pork and beef. We have a couple of fields of veg. We have a hundred longhorn cattle – good for eating.’

‘We saw some barns that belong to you, further up the road.’

‘Those will be the old ones. I keep meaning to get around to emptying them.’

‘It’s dangerous, apparently, a fire risk?’ said Willis.

‘Hay, that is, not straw. Hay ferments. Anyway, those bales have been stacked up there for the last twenty years at least. If they were going to cause harm they’d have done so by now.’

Mawgan eyed them up suspiciously as she walked towards them. She had on an oil-skin green jacket, caked in mud. She was a strong-looking woman with a square jaw and piercing blue eyes. She had short red hair.

‘Hi, Mawgan.’ Carter introduced himself and Willis to her. ‘I expect you’ve heard that a little boy has gone missing, Jeremy Forbes-Wright’s grandson, Samuel.’

‘I heard.’

‘We’d like to ask you about when you went up to Jeremy Forbes-Wright’s funeral.’ Stokes was watching her. ‘How did you get there?’ Willis asked.

‘I caught the train up.’

‘From here?’

‘There’s no station here. I went to Bristol on the Sunday and stayed there with friends. I caught the train up Monday morning.’

‘Which station in Bristol did you go from?’

‘I don’t know – Bristol Temple Meads?’

‘What time was your train?’ Willis had her notebook open and she was writing down the answers to her questions.

‘Uh . . . I had to get there by half eleven so it was about nine.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘No.’

‘Where’s your ticket?’

‘I threw it away.’

‘How did you pay for it?’

‘Cash at the station.’

‘How much was it?’

‘I don’t remember. About twenty pounds.’

‘Did your brother go up by train?’ asked Carter.

She glanced at her father, who was watching her closely.

‘Towan went with me,’ said Stokes, still glaring at Mawgan.

‘After the funeral, what did you do?’ Willis asked her.

‘Went into Greenwich, had a look around. Walked along the Thames looking at places, really. Saw the Shard. Walked across a bridge or two. Don’t ask me where – I’m not familiar with any of it.’

‘On your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about Towan?’

‘Towan took off to see some mate or other: don’t ask me what he did. As for Dad here – I don’t know where you went.’ She looked at her dad with a hint of a smile.

‘Oh, I just stayed near the car most of the day. I had a good look at the cemetery, then went for a coffee. I had a meal. I just stayed around the area until people were ready to go home. Towan came back with me and so did Mary-Jane Trebethin.’

‘How did you get back, Mawgan?’

‘I got a train back.’

‘Why didn’t you come back with the others?’

‘I didn’t feel like it.’

‘Why did you go up for the funeral?’ asked Willis.

She looked at her father and shrugged. ‘I was told to, I suppose.’

‘Well now, that’s not strictly true,’ her father interrupted, riled. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Mawgan since she started talking. ‘You said you wanted to go. You told me.’ She didn’t answer her father.

‘Did you know Jeremy Forbes-Wright very well?’ asked Willis.