Allen raised his eyebrows and looked at Smith.
‘And you carried all this out on your own, Smith?’
‘No, sir. DCs Murray and Henderson helped in the search, and I was ably assisted by DC Waters throughout.’
‘Ah, Waters. He’s not even – he is a trainee detective, isn’t he, DI Reeve? This is rather irregular, if he has been out and about on his own, unsupervised, asking-’
‘With respect, sir?’
There was a different note in Smith’s interruption this time.
‘He was being fully supervised at all times by me, sir, but in my view that should not mean that I have to be at his side at every moment. I bear full responsibility for everything involving DC Waters, including his injury and-’
Allen raised both hands.
‘We are coming to that, Smith. Do you have anything to add to the account that DI Reeve has given of the investigation into the drowning of Wayne Fletcher? Do you fully agree with it?’
‘Yes, I do, sir. She was very supportive – and the operational decisions I took are my responsibility alone.’
‘But that’s the point! You must see this, both of you. They should not be yours alone, we have a chain of command for a reason! You of all people should know this, Smith. Every step should be…’
He seemed to run out of whatever it was that got him through the day. Reeve and Smith waited, looked at each other, and waited some more. Eventually it was Smith who spoke again.
‘Should be what, sir?’
‘I know I’m wasting my bloody time. But one day, mark my words, one day…’
Smith looked out of the window again. He could make out the sea beyond the docks now, and it was blue for a change. Perhaps they were right about this coming weekend, a touch of an Indian summer after all. He would do what he had thought about earlier that morning, he would mention the caravan to Waters.
‘Right, Alison, give me your understanding of what took place at 32 Woodhurst Road on the night of the arrest.’
Reeve said, ‘Before we go on, sir, I would like to say that uncovering the truth about Wayne Fletcher’s death was a remarkable piece of investigation. In my opinion, sir.’
Allen sighed and looked pointedly first at one and then the other.’
‘Yes, I know it was. Well done, Smith.’
‘Ably assisted by DC Waters, sir.’
‘Yes, I’ve got that too, Smith. Now, if you don’t mind, Inspector Reeve?’
She could go only on what Smith had told her and the statements that she had read. Allen tutted when she explained that Smith had gone to the property alone, and when she mentioned the parts played by Captain Hamilton and the ‘other interested parties’, the superintendent shuffled in his seat as if he had a personal problem that was beginning to play up a little. When she finished speaking, he lifted his hands from the desk, palms upwards, in a gesture of vague despair.
‘I don’t know where to begin, to be honest, and I don’t know that it really matters. Smith, why did you go into that house alone? I’m not saying that it was unprofessional but-’
‘We all have our own ideas about what is professional, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. I had met Mirsad Subic and developed a sort of relationship with him. I was certain that he had not been involved in any attempt to injure anyone else – he did not know what his daughter was involved in until it was too late. I think he began to trust me. If I had not been on my own, I don’t think that would have happened. Similarly, if we had gone into the house mob-handed, the two younger Subics would have been much less cooperative. More people might have got hurt that way, sir.’
‘Yes, I hear all that. You are very good at defending your actions after the event, Smith.’
‘I don’t think you can defend an action before it has taken place, sir.’
‘I – don’t quibble, Smith. I’m going to ask you a couple of direct questions. These are important matters. You should think carefully about how you answer them.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘Do you know the whereabouts of Captain Jonathan Hamilton?’
The look of surprise on Smith’s face was genuine – he even glanced at Reeve to see if she had been expecting that, and could tell that she had not. Smith answered no to the question.
Allen said, ‘Because he has now disappeared. A few days ago he was telephoned, and he agreed to come in and be interviewed. He seemed most willing to cooperate, and had no doubt that the explanation for his actions would be acceptable to us. He did not, however, arrive at the stipulated time. Subsequent enquiries have failed to establish his whereabouts.’
The look on Smith’s face might have been misinterpreted as a smile by anyone who did not know him well.
‘If I understand you correctly, sir, someone phoned him up and alerted him to the fact that we now wished to speak to him about his threatening behaviour and the way in which his security guards assaulted a police officer as he carried out his duty? Why on earth hadn’t we already arrested this McVie character and all the guards? I don’t know why I wasn’t allowed to fin-’
‘Because you were also a potential material witness, Smith, and we felt it best. Besides, the guards had already gone.’
‘Gone, sir? Gone where, when?’
‘Hamilton fired them all immediately because of their behaviour. He has no idea where they went after that.’
‘I bet he doesn’t. And then we went and warned him off! What idiot made that phone call?’
‘That is not relevant to what we are doing here this morning, sergeant.’
There was an awkward pause before Allen asked his next question.
‘Detective Sergeant Smith – were you aware that the ‘other interested parties’ mentioned earlier might include members of the, er, the intelligence services?’
‘I don’t see how I could be aware of it, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, they never made us aware of it, sir. We were never informed that they might have been called in to investigate something which, as far as I can tell, never took place.’
‘What never took place? Try and be clearer, Smith.’
‘The terrorist attack on Captain Hamilton, sir. In fact, the only person attacked at Manley Hall was Petar Subic. Perhaps that’s what they were investigating… Anyway, no-one ever told me. Did you know yourself, sir?’
‘Of course not. Are you telling me that you had no suspicions at all?’
‘They don’t call them the secret service for nothing, sir.’
Alison Reeve turned away and reached into her bag for a bottle of water – she seemed to have developed something of a cough.
Superintendent Allen stared down at the papers on his desk as if there might be some clue there as to how he might bring this to a conclusion – but he couldn’t, not quite, not yet.
‘There are still things that I don’t understand. I mean, how on earth did Hamilton’s guards find that house in Woodhurst Road? Why go to all that trouble to find a man who had simply tried to break in? I cannot see any evidence of ‘a terrorist attack’. How did the intelligence services get involved in the first place? And why intervene when the police were already on the scene?’
Neither of the detectives made any attempt to put Allen out of his misery. Eventually he slumped back into the black leather executive chair and said, ‘And the injury to DC Waters. It could have been much more serious, much more. And it would make more sense if he had received it from the person that he eventually arrested, of course.’
‘I’ll point that out to him, sir. It should be recorded that DC Waters showed considerable courage in confronting several men outside the house, sir.’
‘Yes, that has already been noted too, Smith. Now I have to try and make some sense of all this before the press briefing this afternoon. It’ll be like treading on egg shells, I can tell you…’
‘Please don’t make me do that again.’
‘Do what?’
‘Go in there with you and him.
It hurts.’
‘He won’t be here much longer. He’s thinking about retirement, golf and fishing and all that. We had quite a chat about it not long ago.’
Alison Reeve closed the door to her office and they sat again in the two chairs by the window. It was almost lunchtime, and the road below them, Hills Road, was filling with slow-moving traffic. Reeve got up again and switched on the kettle that stood on a tray on the floor. She found two teabags in a desk drawer and put them into two mugs that stood on the windowsill. Smith watched her and wondered whether he should apologise again but there didn’t seem much point – and anyway, he knew that she had stepped over the line herself more than once in the past. The only difference was that he really was old enough to know better.
‘Did you keep the folder?’
‘Yes.’
‘Somewhere safe, I hope.’
‘As houses. Just a little bit of insurance.’
‘Did you read it all, in the end?’
‘Yes.’
The kettle boiled and she poured in the water straight away, which was a mistake; always wait ten or twenty seconds – you get a better cup of tea that way.
Smith said, ‘Did you want to see it?’
She shook her head firmly.
‘No way. The less I know, the more I like it.’
‘But you’re a bit curious. And if you haven’t actually seen it with your own eyes, well, it’s just hearsay.’
She went to her desk and from another drawer took out a packet of dried milk powder. She held it up and Smith pulled a face – she put two spoonfuls into her own mug, folded the top and replaced it into the desk; quite meticulous in her own way, DI Reeve, a bit retentive even. Perhaps he ought to look into getting her a life of some sort as she was too busy to do it herself.
‘You could just tell me the interesting bits while we drink this classy cup of tea, I suppose.’
And so he did.
Rijad Subic was a mining engineer, living in the small town of Potocari not far from Srebrenica. Mining was an important industry, Smith said – in fact, Srebrenica itself means ‘silver mine’. Reeve had said then, with a smile, ‘Not a lot of people know that!’ Smith explained that he had read the folder more than once and had been online to check a few details for himself – for all he knew, Mirsad was making it up or at least exaggerating. But he wasn’t, that was clear enough, and all the facts and figures were in UN documents available to anyone on the internet.
Rijad was also a local community leader, a man much respected, the sort of man who would naturally be involved in any attempt to end the constant shelling and sniping from the Serbian troops that periodically surrounded the town. Two hundred and ninety-six such villages and small towns were destroyed in that way between 1992 and 1995, Mirsad’s folder explained. Rijad, a Bosniak himself like all of his extended family, led meetings of the different ethnic groups in the town, helping to combine them as a united front against all such attacks. When the young British army officer came one night, offering to help them liaise with other towns, offering not arms, obviously, but support in many other ways, it was natural that he would soon be introduced to Rijad Subic.
UNPROFOR’s role was strictly peace-keeping, of course, but in Bosnia everyone understood the art of realpolitik – it had been a way of life there for centuries. If the British were willing to surreptitiously give support to the Bosnians against the Serbs, so be it; they would have their reasons. Meetings took place in back rooms with the officer and his assistant, who were never in uniform, naturally. It went well and many on the committees saw more hope than they had seen for a long time.
But Rijad Subic was a careful man, and a well-connected one. He began to make inquiries, ask questions and visit some old political friends. That was how he discovered that months earlier in another part of his country, a British officer had been suspected of shocking duplicity; a number of British armour-piercing shells had found their way into Serb hands as a result. The name was not the same but that meant nothing. Rijad persisted and was eventually certain that this was the same officer who had recently arrived in Potocari; he arranged for someone who had seen the man before to secretly watch one of their meetings and it was confirmed.
Reeve interrupted at that point.
‘Rijad Subic was Mirsad’s brother, Petar’s father?’
‘Yes, an older brother. From what I can make out, they lived only a couple of hundred yards from each other in Potocari.’
‘What did Rijad do?’
‘He made a mistake.’
Perhaps Rijad Subic had wondered what to do – perhaps he even thought about how he could use this knowledge to the advantage of his community. But somehow, on the day after the meeting at which the British officer was recognized, the news that he had been seen got back to the officer. That same night, Serbian fighters had attacked during the small hours. It was a guerilla-style incursion, just automatic weapons and pistols. They targeted only three houses, killing the occupants of every one before disappearing back into the night. Rijad’s home was one of the three.
‘How many were killed?’
‘In total? I don’t know. But Rijad Subic, his wife and five children were all shot dead in their beds.’
Reeve was quiet, looking out of the window, shaking her head.
‘How did Petar escape that?’
‘Would you believe he was canoeing with a party of scouts?’
‘And then he came back… And someone had to tell him that. God…’
‘I had no idea until I read up on it. A hundred and ten thousand killed in three years – in Europe? More than a million displaced – in Europe?’
Mirsad had two young daughters. When the chance came, he left the country, feeling a sense that he was betraying his brother and his nieces and nephews, but knowing that sooner or later his own family would be the target; revenge was expected, it was part of his country’s subconscious now, and people would assume that eventually he would take revenge for Rijad’s murder. But before he left, he gathered together all of his brother’s papers, and once in England he spent years writing down his own recollections of those times. Rijad had never told him of the events involving the British officer, would never have taken that risk, but it was there in a small, insignificant-looking notebook – Captain Jonathan Hamilton. It might have been another alias, of course, but Mirsad Subic was a lawyer, a thorough, patient criminal lawyer, and he found the name through researching service records. He made no attempt to find the man he suspected himself, having to weigh the good life that he was building for his family in their new home against the possible consequences of such publicity. However, when his daughters, particularly Hanna, were of an age when they could no longer be distracted from wanting to know the truth about themselves and their history, he had told it to them. He could never have imagined that it would be one of those girls who would eventually discover the man whom he was certain had arranged the murder of their cousins.
‘So how did Hanna Subic find him?’
Smith pulled a wry face before he answered.
‘You know that thing I never believe in?’
‘Coincidence?’
‘Yes, sod it. She’s a nurse at Lake General. Several months ago she completed her specialist training and moved onto the oncology ward. One of her first patients was…’
‘Captain Hamilton?’
‘She was so shocked, she turned away and took off her name badge in case he recognized it, that’s how certain she was of who she was looking at. She told me herself. Of course, if he’d dropped the rank… A bit of the old hubris, there.’
‘You’ve spoken to her, since the arrest? I thought that you-’
‘Informally, off the record, nothing prejudicial.’
Reeve looked at him, still uncertain.
‘I owed Mirsad Subic that much. Without his help, who knows? He filled in a few gaps.’
‘What’s wrong with Hamilton?’
Smith took a long pull at the tea, finis
hed it and put the mug onto the windowsill.
‘Ah, now I have to believe that this is where coincidence ends and poetic justice takes over. That makes me sound a bit harsh perhaps but life has made me that way – well, a copper’s life has anyway. He’s got leukaemia, and not one of the stoppable sorts.’
Reeve’s expression said, OK, got that but where’s the poetic justice?
Smith said, ‘There are a number of ongoing claims amongst ex-military personnel from that time, and from Bosnian residents. Unexpectedly high rates of incidence which they argue are related to, Madam Detective?’
She sat and thought for perhaps twenty seconds.
‘I read something in the papers months ago. The shells, the armour-piercing?’
‘Depleted uranium. I like to think that he personally carried some across the border.’
‘But why, for God’s sake? What could he, or we, possibly gain by doing that? The Serbs were the aggressors, weren’t they?’
Smith nodded.
‘Yes, but the politics out there was horrendously complicated, and still is. There was nothing in his folder, but Mirsad Subic had a theory about it. Did you know that there was an Arab brigade, fighting on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims? No, nor me. They called themselves the Mujahideen – so now it’s beginning to sound familiar. These guys were fundamentalists. Perhaps they were an early sign of what was to come. Perhaps the intelligence people didn’t like the look of this, couldn’t be quite sure where that was heading, and so they took out a little insurance with the Serbs. Who knows? When it gets that complicated, it gets that dirty…’
Reeve stood up and Smith followed suit. Hills Road was gridlocked but at least the sun was shining properly now. Smith thought again about finding Waters, and he was heading for the door when Alison Reeve asked him a final question.
An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation Page 19