Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(6)

‘No one saw him on the walk back from the Observatory to his home?’

‘Not so far.’

Carter followed Willis down to the Enquiry Team office. Long desks housed detectives working diagonally across from one another, their monitors back-to-back. He negotiated his way across the busy office. The commotion of a full team working flat out made the room squawk and yell like a stock market on a ‘boom or bust’ day. All officers who had been working on other cases were now focused on Samuel Forbes-Wright’s disappearance. Everything else could wait. Carter stopped at the second of six desks from the left and looked over Willis’s shoulder at her screen. She was looking at CCTV footage from the camera outside the Cutty Sark.

‘Anything?’

‘It was very busy, that’s one thing.’ She tapped her pen on the list of names next to her: ‘Looking at the sex offenders’ register.’ Each name was accompanied by a duo of mug shots and a brief resumé. ‘All the addresses were around the Greenwich area. Number four on the list looks interesting – Malcolm Camber. He’s only just come out of prison and he went inside for child abduction – he kidnapped and assaulted a four-year-old boy, released him after four hours.’

‘Where did he let him go?’

‘Parkland near his home.’

‘Does he work alone?’ asked Carter.

‘He did then. We have no idea what friends he might have made in prison.’

‘Have you been in touch with his parole office?’

‘Yes, his parole officer said he called in sick the last few days.’

‘Did she go round to see him?’

‘She went round this afternoon but he wasn’t there.’

‘Put a warrant out – pick him up urgently. Anyone else?’

Ebony pulled out three files.

‘There are seven more living in the same area who are high priority.’

‘Get someone round to their houses with a search warrant now. I’ll head down to talk to Robbo.’

‘Yes, guv.’

Across from Willis was an empty chair, that of Jeanie Vincent, the Family Liaison Officer.

‘Jeanie been in touch yet?’

‘Not with me, maybe with Robbo?’ answered Willis.

Robbo looked up from his desk as Carter walked in. Robbo had worked in the force for over twenty years and sat next to his ‘work-wife’ Pam. He’d had a lifelong affair with Haribo sweets and great coffee but he was really addicted to work and had to be reminded that the purpose of work was to enjoy a better life and not the other way round.

‘How’s the father’s background looking?’ Carter asked Pam.

Pam looked over her leopard-print reading glasses as she answered: ‘Private education, the best. He went on to study Physics and Astronomy at Oxford. He’s been working in the Observatory, full time, sourcing and making the interactive exhibits for the last seven years. He’s extremely bright. The Observatory job is almost a volunteer post. He gets paid less than twenty thousand a year.’

‘It’s a hobby then,’ said Carter.

‘He’s capable of a lot, on paper.’ Pam scrolled down her screen and made notes as she went. ‘I mean, I’m not being funny, but if my kid had gone to Eton I would have wanted him to aim a bit higher, at least earn a good salary. That’s a hell of a lot of investment.’ She glanced up and over her glasses. ‘Not keen on living in the real world, maybe?’

‘And what about her?’ asked Carter.

‘Lauren Forbes-Wright works for an American drugs company with a research department over here in east London,’ answered Pam. ‘We are guessing that’s how they can afford to live in the middle of Greenwich; it’s the usual thing for Glastons to pick up the tab on their overseas workers. Toby and her married in 2011 and they produced Samuel bang-on nine months later.’

‘There’s a twelve-year age difference,’ added Robbo.

‘So she could have been looking at a ticking baby clock when she married him. And what about him? What was he looking for, do we think?’ Carter asked.

‘The mum he never had, maybe?’ answered Robbo. ‘She ran away to live in Argentina with a boyfriend when Toby was seven. His dad packed him off to boarding school soon after. Seems like Jeremy Forbes-Wright concentrated on his career, for all the good it did him.’

‘That’s the trouble when you set yourself up as Mr Traditional Values and spotless,’ said Pam, ‘and then caught with an underage escort.’

‘That was denied, and a long time ago,’ said Carter.

‘Maybe he just couldn’t pay his way out this time,’ said Robbo. ‘But is that enough to kill yourself over? Politicians have survived worse.’

‘I think he was banking on getting back into the Cabinet. He must have known he had no chance,’ Pam said.

‘The missing forty minutes, Robbo?’ asked Carter. ‘Any nearer to solving it?’

Robbo stood and used a marker to draw a balloon shape on the whiteboard behind his desk. ‘This is his verified route.’ Robbo drew in the Cutty Sark and the Royal Observatory. ‘Here’s his house. We know that Samuel and his dad Toby left the Riverview apartments on Thames Street at two thirty.’ He wrote the times on the map as he talked. ‘They were seen by a neighbour as they left. He was seen passing by the Cutty Sark and then he headed up to the Royal Observatory. We know Samuel was still inside the buggy at this point because work colleagues saw him in there. After Toby leaves the Royal Observatory at approximately ten past four and makes his way home we lose any sightings of the buggy until we pick him up again at just before five in the middle of Greenwich, here, and then again here. But we do not know whether he still had Samuel in the buggy then. At twenty past five he arrives home without Samuel.’