An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Smith didn’t try to conceal his surprise.

  ‘Are you saying someone tried to revive him? And then put him back in the water when it failed?’

  ‘No. I’m saying that the only ti-’

  He waved away the rest of the reply, acknowledging his error.

  ‘It is possible that…?’

  ‘It’s what I suppose you would call circumstantial evidence of that possibility.’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘An even more remote possibility but I suppose…’

  She was staring at the bruise on the boy’s head. Smith did the same but the colours had changed since the photographs were taken and he could not make out any shape at all now.

  ‘Well, we’re in no-man’s-land again. Not enough to go on, but just too much to let it go. Thanks, Olive.’

  ‘It has always been a pleasure, Mr Smith,’ entirely avoiding his sarcasm.

  She already had the camera ready on the adjacent table.

  ‘Yes, get some snaps before it all fades away. I don’t want the last place I see this to be in one of my nightmares. Email it up to me. Good work, Dr Markham.’

  Outside on the paving slabs again, he lit up a cigarette and breathed in the first smoke deeply. Why couldn’t the smoke ever stay like that to the end? Because each draw contaminates that which is yet to come – the longer you smoke it, the less enjoyable it becomes. The day was cooler and the sky greyer than yesterday, and the hot weather of just a week ago was already a memory. August was almost over. He drew on the cigarette again and breathed one word through the smoke as it left his mouth.

  ‘Christ!’

  Chapter Five

  If he had thought about it at all, Christopher Waters would have imagined that a Detective Sergeant, ex Detective Chief Inspector, with at least thirty years of service, would have owned a better car. He had walked on past the early model Peugeot diesel saloon in the station car park and Smith had called him back to it – and the passenger door had opened with a creak, a little reluctantly, as if it was not used to visitors. Inside, he noticed the CDs pushed into the glove compartment, scraps of paper, the pencils, the loose change accumulating in the well designed to take a cup – a very continental touch – the AA membership book that was a couple of years out-of-date, and the scattering of gravel in the driver’s foot-well. The interior of the car was not dirty, not disgusting, but neither was it that of car that was loved; it had a job to do, this car, and probably just got on with it without too many complaints.

  Waters knew well enough why DC had suggested that he send for and watch the video from the diving team, and he made no attempt to hide the effects of seeing it through three or four times. When Smith reappeared in the office, he had simply said, ‘Alright?’ and Waters had nodded – they had not discussed it since. Waters had spent some time completing his training logbook, while Smith retrieved the folder and spent a good while re-reading all the statements made during the initial investigation. After lunch, Smith had asked him if he’d found the canteen alright; when Waters asked where he had eaten, Smith had said that he hadn’t much appetite today – a gesture of solidarity perhaps, an admission that he too had been affected by his visit to the mortuary.

  As they left the town, Smith took him through the plan of action for what they were about to do. As far as the two students were concerned, they were going to be spoken to briefly at Melanie Carter’s home about their statements, as a matter of routine – but what Smith wanted was to take them out to Vine’s Drove, to the spot where Wayne Fletcher had last been seen alive. They might object – they might not. If parents were at home, they might want to get involved… It could go all sorts of ways. It was important that no-one gave or got the impression that the youngsters themselves were under any kind of suspicion.

  ‘Are they?’ Waters asked.

  ‘It’s like I said earlier. We don’t rule any possibilities out – but I very much doubt whether these two are hiding anything other than who brought the blow to the party.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The cannabis or skunk or whatever they were playing about with.’

  ‘So what’s the idea in taking them back there?’

  ‘I want to see it for myself, and I want to be able to ask them questions about it there and then – saves a lot of time and phoning people up again.’

  Waters was silent, thinking it over.

  Smith continued, ‘And yes, I want to see how they behave. It’s possible that being back there, they will recall some small detail which they think, which they thought at the time, was unimportant.’

  He hadn’t told Waters about the bruising on the body, just in case he let something slip; the last thing Smith wanted was a rumour going around that Wayne Fletcher’s death was not a tragic accident. In a day or two, the boy would be moved on anyway; no sense in getting him over-excited about a potential murder investigation, was there?

  That was the first time that Smith had allowed himself to think the word in connection with the case. Before then it had been simply a shadow in the half-light, a glimpse of a figure on the edge of his vision, a sensation in the pit of his stomach that he had never expected to feel again.

  As Smith turned into Vine’s Drove, he felt the tension rise amongst the other three occupants of the car. It was a straight track of some two hundred yards – he could see the rise at the end where it passed over the flood-bank and onto the water meadow where people parked their cars in the summer months. And as the car passed over the rise, Smith noticed a small piece of black and yellow tape attached to a barbed wire fence and fluttering in the breeze – ‘Police Investigation – Please keep Away’ it would say if they stopped to read it. Some idiot had not cleaned up properly.

  It was not the girl who had objected, after all, but Steven Neale; the youth had tried to make it seem as if it would be too distressing for her but it was clear enough that he himself did not fancy going back there. ‘Really, Steve, it’s OK,’ she’d said, and the boy’s eyes went from her to Smith. Anger and fear were there, and it was difficult to say which came first.

  They stood close to the car initially, as if it offered some sort of safe point, a reconnection with the normality that had eluded them since the death, and Smith deliberately let the moment extend itself into uncertainty. Waters was uncomfortable, too. Smith looked away down the river, saying nothing but thinking grimly to himself that their three ages combined together barely added up to his own… Well, children, this is life, or at least this is how it sometimes ends.

  He asked the girl if she was alright to continue, but his eyes were on the boy. She nodded – petite, blonde, with a brave little chin that any father would be proud of. So he asked her to show them where the group had been sitting that afternoon, and she walked down towards the river’s edge and pointed at the short, summer-dry turf. Automatically Smith looked for signs that people had been sitting here but too many days had passed already. Then he asked her simple, factual questions, nodding and encouraging her until he felt she was over the worst of it, at least for now.

  ‘And when that first canoe went by, the one the other boys went after, Wayne was on the bank here. With Nadia, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Were they an item?’

  ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

  Steven’s voice was higher pitched and more emotional than he had intended; there was a moment’s silence as all three turned to him in surprise.

  ‘I don’t see the point of that, or of this!’

  He waved his arm at the river and the meadow but ended up pointing accusingly at Smith.

  ‘Well, Steven, that’s understandable. I wouldn’t expect you to see the point of it because you’ve never been in this situation before and, God willing, you’ll never be in it again.’

  The hand dropped away. Smith could see that the youth was close to tears, and he could also see that the girl had noticed that too; he had to be careful not to alienate her.

&n
bsp; ‘But, sadly, I have been in this situation before, several times. I have to ask you to trust me.’

  Another silence while all present considered, in their different ways, their response to the quietly spoken words.

  ‘As much as we might like this just to be about the facts, it never is. It never can be because people are always more complicated than facts. It’s a great help to me if I can get a sense of what sort of person Wayne was – it might help me to understand why he did what he did. Because what he did in some way or other led to his death, didn’t it?’

  The girl put a hand on Steven’s arm and looked up at Smith.

  ‘Yes, they went out together. It was an on and off thing but they were getting quite close again. I always thought they’d end up together.’

  ‘So although Wayne was a bit miffed about leaving the college, he had some good things going on as well, yes? He was cheerful that afternoon, his usual self?’

  She nodded.

  ‘And he was fit, wasn’t he? I mean that in the old-fashioned sense, obviously.’

  This time she had half a smile for him and he relaxed a little, sensing that he had regained her confidence.

  ‘What was his sport? He was a very well-built lad, looked as if he worked out somewhere.’

  Steven spoke again, this time with more self-control.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Because I’ve been to see him, son. Another part of my job, I’m afraid.’

  He knew that would be a jolt for them; the living, especially the young, let the body of the departed go quickly. They had not thought of the cold corpse patiently waiting for its final rites of passage out of this world and into some other.

  ‘He was a good rugby player. He had trials for the county a couple of years ago. He could have made it if he hadn’t been lazy about training.’

  Smith saw the pain in the boy’s face, the conflict ever present between telling the truth and speaking ill of the dead.

  ‘Thank you. A great shame then, isn’t it, a terrible waste. So I’m getting the impression that young Wayne could look after himself. If he got involved, say, in a bit of a punch up, he’d usually be alright.’

  To his surprise, they both spoke at once, eager to share memories about that.

  ‘God, yes!’

  ‘Nobody messed with him after year eight!’

  ‘Why? What happened then?’

  Steven Neale said, ‘A couple of year ten boys had it in for him. They started bullying him on the way to school. One day Wayne decided he’d had enough, and they both ended up at the doctor’s surgery. He should have done boxing rather than rugby, I told him that.’

  Smith had all he wanted about the boy by now but the question had opened up some sort of release and for the next five minutes or so he let them talk about Wayne. There were some tears but also a few smiles.

  As that was coming to a natural end, Smith caught Waters’ eye and gave him a silent, nodded invitation to ask any question that was on his mind.

  ‘Thanks very much, both of you. This has been really helpful, and we know it isn’t easy. Before we go, may I just ask a couple more things about that afternoon?’

  They were looking at Waters now, willing to help.

  ‘It’s probably not important but the second canoeist has never come forward. It might be that he was a visitor to the area and hasn’t seen the local news. Can you remember anything else about him, anything since you made your statements?’

  A good start, thought Smith – reasonable, reassuring, encouraging but not giving away much about the officers’ own lines of inquiry.

  ‘He was on his own. About forty, maybe?’

  ‘No way, not that old - in his early thirties.’

  Smith would take the girl’s judgment on that – the man was probably in his thirties.

  She said then, ‘He was wearing a black T shirt – I think we said that. He had quite muscly arms… And he paddled the canoe quite fast, like he’d done it before.’

  ‘Something odd though was…’

  The hesitation was picked up, perhaps too quickly, by Waters.

  ‘Yes? What was odd?’

  The boy said, ‘Well, he never really looked at us. I mean, you would, wouldn’t you? A load of people on the bank, making a noise, and one of them diving in as you were going by? I remember him just kind of glancing once and then back to pulling the oar through the water.’

  ‘Was there anything else in the canoe? Behind him or in front of him?’

  A good question, the kind that comes to you instinctively.

  Melanie and Steven looked at each other, both trying to picture the canoeist and the canoe as they slid by again on the stream of memory.

  ‘There was something behind him. A green bag?’

  ‘It was a rucksack, I think.’

  ‘Quite big, if we could see it from the bank.’

  ‘He might have been camping, it might have been a tent and stuff.’

  ‘So it was a two-man canoe?’

  All eyes turned to Smith.

  The girl said, ‘It must have been – but I didn’t notice that until now.’

  ‘And that’s why we’re here, just to see if anything else comes back to us. It almost always does. Can I repeat what Detective Constable Waters has already said? You have been very helpful and – and I don’t mean this to be in any way patronizing – very brave. I know how painful this can be. But if it helps us to understand what happened to your friend, well, that makes it worthwhile. Thank you.’

  He half-gestured to the car and they obediently turned and made their way towards it – sometimes Smith couldn’t understand why teachers ever had any trouble with them. Waters looked a little puzzled, no doubt disappointed at not being able to ask another dozen questions.

  ‘Good effort. Nice question about what else was in the canoe. They don’t know anything else, just a couple of decent kids. None of them was ‘involved’ as we say. But I’d like to have a word with our mystery canoeist. I’d very much like to have a word with him.’

  The drive back into Upham was a quiet one; for different reasons, everyone in the car needed time to reflect on the afternoon’s events. As Melanie Carter walked away towards her front door, Smith could see that Steven Neale was hanging back as if he had something more to say. Smith said nothing, allowing whatever it was to form of its own accord.

  ‘I just wanted to say that… I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘When we got there this afternoon. I was rude. I know I shouted.’

  ‘Forget it. Perfectly understandable. One thing, though.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘One way or another you’re getting it out of your system, which is good, because if you don’t it’ll do you more harm in the long run. I don’t know about her, though.’

  He nodded towards the girl, who was waiting at the door, out of hearing but watching them. ‘You’ve got a little diamond there. You want to take good care of her over the next few weeks.’

  ‘Right. How did…?’

  ‘We call it “reading between the lines.’’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s all in a day’s work. Modern policing and all that. Thanks again, Steven.’

  Even after they had dropped off the two witnesses, there wasn’t much conversation in the car. They were on the outskirts of Kings Lake and slowing down into the afternoon traffic before Smith glanced across and said to Waters, ‘Alright?’

  Waters looked back, blinking a little as if he had been daydreaming, and nodded.

  ‘As long as you’re not thinking of giving it all up after a trip out with me – I don’t need that on my conscience. If you’ve made a bad career choice, can you save the announcement for some time next week rather than this?’

  ‘Just thinking about those two and Wayne Fletcher. All the time I was at school, nobody actually died.’

  ‘I think that’s what we call a good thing, isn’t it?’

  Waters didn’t reply.r />
  ‘Do a lot of thinking, do you? I mean it comes in handy in this job but you can overdo it.’

  And then, as the words formed, as they found their way to the front of his mouth and tumbled out, the sensation of a switch clicking on somewhere in his head and a blinding flash – ‘Still waters run deep, I suppose.’

  They were waiting at a set of lights. He looked across again and saw the smile, a little weary smile at a joke that had been made since the younger man was at the school where nobody actually died. But that wasn’t it. Something in the profile maybe, or the set of the mouth – Smith couldn’t be sure what had made him realize at last, but neither was he in any doubt.

  ‘I used to say that to a DS, years ago. His name was-’

  ‘Waters. I know.’

  ‘Bloody hell! You’re Dougie Waters’ boy!’

  ‘I know. The lights have changed.’

  Smith pulled the car out into the junction, not taking his eyes off the road but still shaking his head.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something? Dougie Waters!’

  ‘Well, you being a detective, I thought…’

  ‘Yes, alright, point taken, I suppose. But you could have said something.’

  ‘I didn’t want it to seem as if I was, well, trying to take advantage. I don’t think everyone needs to know my dad was in the force.’

  At least this explained how the request had been made to DI Reeve before they had even met. They were at the next set of lights. Waters looked a little uncomfortable, as if even admitting who he was might be perceived by Smith as using his family connection in some way.

  ‘Listen. Your dad was a good sort, and a bloody good copper. He covered my backside more than once, I can tell you. What’s he up to now?’

  ‘He works for himself – well, he runs his own business.’

  ‘Very nice. What line of work?’

  ‘The same.’

  The station was ahead of them now, and Smith didn’t speak again until they had pulled into the car park.

  ‘What do you mean? An agency, private detectives?’