Cold Justice (28 page)

‘Lauren’s coming along for the ride.’

‘Okay, no problem. As long as you don’t mind waiting around a bit?’

‘No, that’s all I’m doing at the house anyway.’

They drove past the field where Kensa’s caravan was and up over the brow of the hill. The farmland stretched down towards the sea to the left and to the right the road wound round, fenced in by high hedges as thick as the lanes they bordered. Occasionally gateways opened up and then the countryside spread out in hills.

‘There’s a sign for Stokes’ farm on the left,’ Willis said as they passed a small crossroads where the road turned right into the nearby market town of Wadebridge or on to a fishing village along the coast. ‘We go down this way – I want to go back to the farm.’

They took the track and Willis looked back at Lauren to see her with a map spread out on her lap.

‘This is the cottage where Marky and Jago live.’

They pulled up outside a white-painted workman’s cottage. To the right of it was a dumping ground for cars and farm vehicles.

Lauren got out of the car. ‘Is it okay if I have a wander?’ She held the folded map in one hand and Russell’s lead in the other.

Willis turned to Lauren. ‘Fine, see you back here in about thirty minutes? If we’re out early I’ll phone you.’

Lauren nodded as she set off up the lane.

The door to the cottage opened and Marky stood stripped to his waist.

‘Sorry, were you showering?’ said Carter. ‘Can we have a word?’ Marky stepped back from the door.

Carter looked at the machines waiting for repair beside the house. ‘So, which one do you drive? You starting a collection of old farm machinery?’

‘I drive the Suzuki jeep,’ Marky replied. He didn’t look happy. ‘The rest I look after for the farm.’

‘Which one has this space?’ Willis asked as they stood in front of a car-sized gap and different tyre prints.

‘That’s Mawgan’s car, she parks it here sometimes.’

‘Where is it now?’

‘I really don’t know.’

‘Has she asked you to look for it?’ asked Willis.

‘No.’

‘Mind if we come in?’ Carter asked as they followed Marky back into the house. Inside the cottage it was dark and smelled of unwashed boys mixed with the ripe smell of farm.

‘Are you going to open the shop again today?’ asked Carter.

He shook his head. ‘This time of year – most of my time is spent making and mending surfboards.’

Carter looked at Marky as he began searching through the washing pile. He saw a rolled note coming out of a pair of trousers. Marky hastily covered it up.

‘You must get on well with the Stokes family to rent a cottage and a workshop space from them?’

‘I help mend the farm machinery in exchange for renting the workshop. Jago’s just moved in with me.’

‘You’re a mechanic then as well – very impressive.’

‘Look, we already spoke this morning? I need to get on.’

‘Yes, and then we spoke with Jago. Perhaps you have too? Did he just phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘I bet. You want to get your stories right, I expect.’

‘We don’t have any stories.’

‘What about the fact that you sat in a service station for half an hour. The same service station where an item of Samuel Forbes-Wright’s clothes was found.’

‘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.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ replied Marky. ‘We just wanted a bit of fun. Towan got nasty with her and Ella had been a girlfriend of his. He hadn’t got over it. I don’t remember what happened. I was too drunk.’

‘No you weren’t, Marky. You were all looking for a fight that evening – fuck or fight, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’

‘No, I didn’t touch them. I wouldn’t. I don’t remember anything.’

‘But you were happy for Toby to be blamed for this attack on Kensa?’

‘It wasn’t up to me. I was told that it was down to him and I accepted it.’

‘Of course you did, it got you and the others off the hook. And afterwards no one spoke of it?’

‘No.’

‘Kensa just forgot about it?’

‘No . . . she changed. She got into drugs, sex with just about anyone and everyone. She didn’t seem to care about anything any more.’

‘Do you think she is capable of snatching Samuel?’

‘I guess so – what does it take? I don’t know. She’s probably angry enough.’

‘If she took him, where would she hide him?’

‘Kensa knows all the stone huts and the deserted second homes. At some time she’s been in a lot of them. That’s where he’d be, in someone’s second home.’

‘And, if not Kensa, is there anyone else here that you think could have had a personal reason to want to take Samuel?’

‘No, why would they?’

‘As some kind of retribution? Some form of blackmail? Revenge? Some people in this community are very aggrieved that Toby has inherited the house.’

‘I don’t know why you’re saying this to me. I’m not responsible for any of it. I don’t know where the boy is.’

Lauren stood where she was and then took one careful step after another towards the scarecrow. She didn’t know why, but she knew she couldn’t bear to walk any further into the field. She could turn and run but something held her there. Something in the way the gulls opened their beaks and screeched at her both mesmerized her and repulsed her. Something in the way they watched her. She tucked Russell under her jacket as they swooped down to attack him.

The scarecrow had a farmer’s hat but it was tilted to one side where the seagulls’ wings had flapped so hard and dislodged it. The scarecrow’s head hung down. He seemed to be focused on the space ten feet ahead of him. His arms were not outstretched, they were caught behind him, tied to the pole. He had on a blue checked shirt with patterns of red. As she walked further forward the seagulls became more aggressive. They stared at her with their beady eyes and now she saw the crows, black and shiny, their long thick beaks stabbing at the scarecrow’s feet. They hopped about the red churned soil and lunged at the angry seagulls. They turned to glare at Lauren.

She was within twenty feet of the scarecrow now and she couldn’t keep her eyes from it. Its head drooped forward and down. The seagulls jabbed their beaks at its head. Pulling at the straw. But there was no straw. This was a Guy Fawkes type of scarecrow, it was meant to represent a man. She tried to see what they had used for a face. Its head was too obscured by warring gulls and opportunist crows to see properly. The scarecrow wore baggy old trousers under his shirt. He had a watch on his wrist.

Lauren took one more step and a seagull pecked furiously at the head of the scarecrow and the hat came off and the head was jerked and jolted between the gulls as they fought over it. White and grey feathers so bright in the gloom of the day; so sharp-edged and brightly contrasted against the black crows.

Mommy . . . Mommy . . .
She gasped.

She could hear it in the screams of the gulls.

I’m here. I’m here . . . Mommy . . . Mommy.

Their voices so angry, and they flew at her to ward her off. They scratched her face with their sharp, blood-specked beaks and when she touched her face there was blood on her fingers. Russell tried to wriggle free and run. He was squealing in fear.

Now she was within ten feet of the scarecrow and the more she looked at its hands and feet the more she saw blood. She tried to look away but the screaming gulls seemed to both repel her and compel her to come closer.

Here, here, here . . .

She could hardly breathe. So caught in the middle of the swirling gulls and the black crows that at first she didn’t see the scarecrow’s head tip backwards and she saw he had no features, just blood and white gristle and loose-hanging shards of flesh.

As Willis and Carter walked along the lane towards the farm they heard the deafening cacophony of gulls and crows – and in among the sound was a woman screaming.

Carter called Pascoe aside to talk in private. Pascoe excused himself from the doctor who had come from Penhaligon to certify the death. Stokes’ body was still attached to the post.

‘SOCOs are on their way, sir, they are coming from Truro,’ he said as he got near to Carter.

‘Okay, I need them to start working on the scene, but I’ve asked for my colleague from the MIT team to come down and he’ll be taking over when he arrives first thing in the morning.’

Pascoe looked at him curiously. ‘We have a specialist team, they can handle it.’

‘I know and I appreciate that, but I have my reasons. This farm is of interest to us in the abduction case. I don’t want anything overlooked while we’re investigating two separate cases.’

‘It’s up to you, sir.’ Pascoe looked slightly put out.

Carter went to find the Stokes family and Marky in the farmhouse kitchen.

‘My sympathies,’ he said, standing in the doorway.

‘Are you going to cut Martin down?’ asked Marky. ‘You can’t just leave him tied to the post. It’s not right.’