Cold Justice (Willis/Carter #4)(93)

‘Lauren, we’d like to order a proper search of this house,’ said Carter. ‘I’ve ordered our Crime Scene Manager in here this evening – that means you two will have to sleep in the guest house up the road. We’ve commandeered nearly all the holiday lets in the area for our police teams. I’ve made sure you two get the places with heating. You going to show me round, Eb?’

‘Sure.’ They walked into the room to their right with the veranda.

‘Okay. Nice room.’

Willis moved swiftly on into the front rooms.

‘So here is where Toby and the others were when they came off the beach?’ Carter lowered his voice. They could hear Lauren washing dishes in the kitchen.

‘Most of this stuff is bought within the last ten years. He seems to have enjoyed adding bits all the time. The floor is original, the wallpaper hasn’t been changed in twenty years. There’ve been numerous paint jobs but no major work except to the bathrooms and his room at the top.’

Carter followed her up the stairs and had a quick look into the four bedrooms on the first floor.

‘I can tell why you didn’t sleep in either of those,’ Carter said, coming out of the ornate rooms and into Willis’s and Lauren’s.

Willis pushed open the door to the bathroom.

‘Wow.’ Carter stepped inside and squatted down. He touched the tiled floor with his hand. ‘Heated.’

‘Yes, a lot of money spent here, and it’s all been spent since 2000. It has a date on the instructions for the extractor and the shower; they were installed July 2000.’

‘Funny time to do major work inside your holiday house, right in the peak season?’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘This bathroom comes out, then, tile by tile.’

‘And let me show you upstairs.’ Willis led Carter up a separate set of stairs that took them to the top floor.

Carter stood in the doorway of the suite. The sun had come out and was streaming in via the long window that had replaced the original attic one and now afforded a breathtaking view of the coastline.

Carter stood looking out to sea.

‘Do we have enough to bring Marky and Jago in and charge them with the drugs?’

‘I think we need to wait, guv, till we find Samuel.’

‘Yes, okay, but Raymonds has to start really feeling the squeeze. I want him to understand we are closing in on him.’

Carter and Willis left Lauren and drove down to the police station. They pulled up and saw Pascoe’s car outside.

Pascoe looked up from his desk as they walked in.

‘All okay?’ asked Carter, putting his bag down on a desk.

‘Yes, I’ve made a good start. I’ve told the team in Penhaligon that I’ll be running the murder enquiry from here, but it will run alongside the abduction investigation. It will not take priority.’

‘Was there any problem with that?’ asked Carter.

‘Everyone understands that we need to keep it contained. We can’t end up with more officers than residents here. We solve one crime at a time. Plus, it’s unlikely to be an outsider. It wasn’t a random act.’

‘We’ll interview everyone who was at the farm,’ said Carter. ‘We’ll start today, but I don’t want them interviewed under caution for now. I want to keep people moving around here. I want us where we can still watch them. Okay, Willis will take the notes for us and make sure we all understand where we are. We’ve just had a development that at least discounts two of our possible suspects for the abduction of Samuel.’

Willis brought up the edited footage of Marky and Jago at Gordano services and turned it round for Pascoe to see.

‘Here we have Marky and Jago handing over a lot of cash in exchange for a lot of drugs.’

‘Jesus, that will destroy so many lives if that goes on the street down here,’ said Pascoe, almost choking on his coffee. ‘We have a big drug problem here as it is.’

‘We estimate, by the size and look of it, that these lads, Marky and Jago, have managed to buy themselves fifty grand’s-worth of what we think is probably a mix of cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin. That’s apparently what the brothers from Ukraine like to deal. But, what they also like to do is cut it with rat poison and horse tranquillizer.’

‘Shit. We have to find that stuff.’

‘You’ve seen them beachcombing, we can definitely pull Penhal apart to find it. Sandford’s up at the farm at the moment; I’ll tell him to test for these substances as well.’

‘We searched down the mine again, as you requested,’ said Pascoe. ‘If we want to drain it we could have a better look in there but you’re talking about an unsafe environment and it’s going to take a lot of time and resources.’

‘We’ll consider it,’ said Carter. ‘Where did Marky and Jago get the money to buy this stuff? Jago has no money and no real job and Marky is in the middle of the low season in his business.’

‘Does he own that Surfshack? Could he raise funds on it?’ asked Willis.

‘I’ll find out,’ Pascoe said.

‘Meanwhile we need house-to-house searches starting with all the people who were at the funeral or in London that day,’ said Carter. ‘We have to find Mawgan’s car.’