Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(75)

‘I was having a nap.’

‘Yes, Jago came up with that one, didn’t he? You seem a little edgy, you okay?’ Marky was shaking.

Lauren walked along the lane towards the farm. She looked at her map and cut left as she saw a path following the hedge around the field. Russell scampered alongside. The earth was ploughed and churned up ready to plant in the spring. The wind had died down but still the ferocious gulls screamed in the skies above her. They swirled over her head and attacked one another as they flew in circles above the field. She watched them and smiled to herself – much good the scarecrow was doing in the middle of the field!

As she felt the earth crumble beneath her feet she picked her way carefully and wished she’d worn her walking boots. She looked back at the gate that she’d come in by and almost turned back but then she felt the impulse to walk further. She looked at her map again. This was a short cut to the farm, then she could double-back and meet the cottage again along the lane. It wasn’t exactly ‘out of her way’. It wasn’t exactly ‘in the middle of nowhere’ either but her heart began to race. The screaming gulls made an eerie sound as they fought each other in midair. Russell came close to Lauren’s side.

‘You went to the funeral – why?’ asked Carter. ‘The Sheriff wanted to create a united front? Why was that, do you think?’

Marky shrugged and looked around for a shirt to put on; he smelled it and then decided it would do.

‘It’s no secret that my dad is fiercely loyal to Cornwall. He saw Jeremy Forbes-Wright as one of our community.’

‘Yeah, right. You’re all scared about something.’

Marky shook his head. He looked away.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Do you know Kensa well?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ve known her all her life.’

‘Were you ever a couple?’

‘No.’

‘But you would have liked to be?”

‘No. Years ago when we were young, then people thought we might have been together but it never happened. I love Kensa as a friend.’

‘Why didn’t it happen?’

‘How do I know? Things do or don’t happen,’ he said, exasperated.

‘It had nothing to do with the rape, the brutal attack?’

‘What attack?’

‘The one that was hushed up, the one on Saturday June the 17th, fourteen years ago? You were on the beach that night.’

‘No one ever said it was rape.’

‘Didn’t they?’

‘Seems to be common knowledge.’

‘It was covered up. Why, because it involved the police sergeant’s son? You were there that night. You forced your way into Kellis House when it was just Toby and four of his little friends. You were all off your skulls on drugs that you sold to people, you sourced. It started off as a laugh, then it all went hideously wrong, didn’t it? At what point did you call your dad in to help? Which one of you men raped your friend?’

‘I don’t remember any of it, and anyway, what’s this got to do with the little boy going missing?’

‘Because Kensa was up there on the day of the funeral: the same day the boy was snatched. The funeral of the man who paid Kensa off so that she wouldn’t press rape charges against his son. That’s why? But we don’t believe it was Toby who did it, you know why? Because his drink had been spiked and so had Kensa’s. He wouldn’t have been capable in a month of Sundays. Whereas you lot? You were off your faces on God knows what – the one thing you didn’t feel was tired.’

‘This is all crap. You’re talking to the wrong person.’ Marky shook his head. He looked as if he wanted to leave. ‘I was barely sober myself that night. I have no idea what went on. I mean – it was my eighteenth birthday.’

Lauren kept her eye on the scarecrow as she walked at the edge of the ploughed field. She wasn’t a lover of them. It had always scared her when she watched The Wizard of Oz as a child. The time when he was set on fire had made her scream. Still she couldn’t see the farm, but there was the top of a barn coming into view at the middle top edge of the field and she could see a gap in the hedge. She looked back at the gate again – it was further now to go back than it was to go on. All this trauma, tiredness, unbearable anxiety in her life right now had affected even the way she coped with quite ordinary events like a scarecrow in the middle of a field and screaming big orange-beaked gulls that seemed to have drops of blood on their beaks.

She stumbled over the clods of earth and fell on her knees. Russell jumped up on her. The earth was hard in peaks and she felt a sharp dig into her kneecap as she landed hard and awkward. As she went to push herself back up she felt the whoosh of feathers near her face and the scream of a gull as it flew so close to her that she could see its beady eyes glaring angrily at her.

Shit . . .

She stood and dusted herself off and looked towards the scarecrow, whose head seemed to move as the gulls came down and nestled over its face and bit chunks from its feet, hands and face. Lauren kept staring at it.

‘You wanted to beat the crap out of Toby and teach him a lesson for getting with Kensa? She’s a local girl, you said yourself you loved her in your own way – must have stung a bit? She chose some posh kid who was a piece of piss compared to you tough farm boys,’ said Carter.