Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(55)

Carter phoned and put Robbo on Skype. ‘What’s the latest, Robbo?’ he asked.

‘I rang the escort Louisa – nice girl. Privately educated.’

‘What did she say?’

‘That she’d lost one of her best clients in Jeremy Forbes-Wright. She met him when she offered gentlemen’s lunches from her flat in Knightsbridge.’

‘Did she ever come to Cornwall?’

‘No, but she said he invited her several times, but she didn’t want to; she’s a busy woman. She did, however, recommend others to him and she knows one girl who went a few times.’

‘Can we have her number?’

‘She’s trying to find it – she lost touch with her a while ago. She’s being fairly cooperative – I’m hoping we’ll get something useful from her.’

‘Interesting. So when he came down here it was to party?’ asked Carter.

‘It would seem so, wouldn’t it? Does the house give that impression?’

Carter turned to Willis to answer.

‘Yeah – it fits that he didn’t rent it to families,’ she said. ‘The bedrooms are more like plush, short-stay motel rooms. It’s all a bit “in your face” – the kind of place that lends itself to swingers’ parties. I’ll search the place thoroughly when I get back.’

‘How is Lauren holding up, Eb?’

‘She’s one of those “doers” and not “sayers”. She doesn’t want sympathy, she wants action. She wants a role in finding her son.’

‘Jeanie has been talking to Toby again.’

‘Did we find out if they took more than just a photo out of the Canary Wharf flat?’

‘Toby said he let Gareth take whatever music he wanted; didn’t see the harm in it. Jeanie has told him to get it back.’

‘How is Toby?’ asked Carter.

‘Jeanie says he’s falling apart, unravelling. He seems to completely blame himself for Samuel’s disappearance.’

‘What about surveillance on him?’

‘Up and running. It’s been confirmed that he’s having intimate conversations with Gareth Turnbill but there’s been no sign of anything concerning Samuel’s whereabouts. There was talk about the father’s apartment – it sounded like even Turnbill didn’t know what they were looking for. He keeps asking Toby to let him help but it sounds like Toby is beginning to close up shop, waiting for the ground to open up and swallow him.’

‘We need to push him hard and find out the truth. I think he’s lying about what happened in Cornwall. Apparently, according to the Sheriff, Kensa refused to press charges and Jeremy Forbes-Wright took his son home that day.’

‘You’d think they would have been only too happy to prosecute. By what you’ve said, he hates outsiders.’

‘Exactly. But, as people keep stressing to me, he’ll do anything for the good of Penhal. We think he brokered some sort of deal,’ said Carter.

‘We had another session looking at the footage from the funeral. We think that your new friend Kensa was there. Pascoe provided a photo of her for me. She’s well known to the shopkeepers in Penhaligon – has a habit of stealing. Have a look at this.’

Willis held it for them both to see.

‘On this footage, you can see Mawgan Stokes comes out of the chapel and is standing with her father and then she gets distracted. Follow her line of vision and there is a woman standing at the far side, out of sight of most of the mourners. She’s hanging about there. We haven’t got a clear shot yet but we’re looking for one. It’s definitely someone that Mawgan doesn’t think the rest of the funeral-goers will want to see because she waits a while and then she says her goodbyes and slips off, then doubles back around the back of the chapel and we see her here talking to the same woman.

‘I’ve looked at the CCTV footage of the funeral again. I’m getting very familiar with identifying the faces and placing them in their groups.’ Robbo shared a cut from the film on the screen. ‘Here we see Mawgan leaving the group after the funeral. She is walking away and heading back around the reverse side of the chapel.’ Robbo switched to another viewpoint. ‘Here is Mawgan heading straight for that person now. We can see her walk between the cars. Look at this.’

He froze the frame. There was a woman wearing an oilskin coat.

‘Recognize her?’ Robbo asked.

‘Yeah – it’s Kensa Cooper,’ said Willis.

‘It’s the woman who is supposed to be too mad to look after herself but she can somehow get to London,’ added Carter.

‘The CCTV from the Gordano services is interesting too,’ said Robbo. ‘We can trace all of the Cornish cars that stopped here. Raymonds, alone, does what he said, went in for a coffee, came out, used the cashpoint. That’s at seven forty-six. But he hangs about a long time, a whole hour. Almost as if he’s waiting for someone. We see him twice get out of his car and walk to the far end of the car park.’

‘I suppose we were never going to get lucky enough to see him get a kid out of the back,’ said Carter.

‘No, we can’t tell if there’s anyone sleeping on the back seat – it’s still possible. We don’t see him actually in his car at the car park, we just see him when he walks towards the entrance. Martin Stokes was there with Mary-Jane and Towan. This is at ten past nine. Towan does seem to wait until everyone else is inside the services before he gets out and wanders around the car park. We pick him up twice. He needs looking at more closely, I would say. The last surprise I have for you is a car that came during the time Raymonds was hanging about. At eight thirty-one here come two men – Jago and Marky. They don’t even use the services – they wait in the car for thirty minutes and then they leave.’