‘I knew you would understand.’
‘Oh, well… We’ve all lost people.’
‘They were great friends for sixty years and then he’s gone. You look away from someone and look back and they’ve disappeared. I can’t imagine it.’
He didn’t need to try, of course, and after a moment she realised that.
She said, ‘Sorry, wrapped up in my own concerns. I didn’t mean to be insensitive, I-’
‘You’re looking out for your family - that’s what we do. I don’t mean to sound like a soap opera but in the end it’s about that, isn’t it? Everything else, as they used to say, is just toothpaste. I’m not going mad, am I? They did used to say that, in an advert or something?’
She almost laughed at last and reminded him that being so much younger – they had yet to establish quite how much – she might not remember the same advertisements as he did.
‘But you’re right. At times like this, you realise. It is about family. And friends.’
‘Well, enjoy the caravan. If there is anything else you need, just ring me.’
He was saying goodbye then but she was not.
‘I wouldn’t want to deprive you of the whole weekend. This might be the only summer we have this year. You could come down and say hello. I’ve told her all about you – I think that she would like to meet you. Say you will come… Sunday afternoon?’
Chapter Ten
The duty solicitor had done her job properly – she had advised Michael Symons that if he retracted the alibi that he had given Gareth Stone and told the truth now, there was little likelihood that he would be given anything more than a ticking off. That’s what he did – he had not seen Stone on that Monday evening at all. Instead, he had spent it with a girlfriend in Lakenham – it was a bit awkward because although she was his girlfriend she was someone else’s wife – and she might be reluctant to admit it but that’s where he was on the 17th of June. Gareth had phoned him on the Tuesday morning, saying he’d been out night-hawking and might need a bit of cover. He hadn’t said anything about Mark Randall, and Symons had agreed a story with him. When the police first contacted Symons, they hadn’t said what it was about and so he had assumed that it was about night-hawking; when he realised the truth, that they were looking into the death of Mark Randall, it was too late – he had already lied to them. Yes, Gareth Stone had been to see him since, several times, and had sworn that he had had nothing to do with what happened to Randall.
At that point, of course, the interview with Symons had taken a new direction – what exactly had Gareth told him about where he was that night? He would have told him something, if only to convince Symons that he had not just alibied a murderer; he might even have told him the truth. Symons did not hesitate for a moment. Telling the truth after weeks of lying can come as a profound relief, even to the very guilty, and by now the interviewing officers were convinced that Michael Symons wasn’t guilty of much other than gullibility.
Stone, Symons said, had told him that the two of them, himself and Mark, had gone out to Lowacre that night in Stone’s van. They had planned to work two different fields for a couple of hours and meet up at one in the morning. Gareth said that he dropped Mark off at a gateway to one of the fields by the river near the Abbey and then drove on another half a mile to a field that he had been working himself on and off for a month. He went back to the gateway for one o’clock as they had agreed but Mark never showed up. Stone called him several times on his phone but there was no answer. He went some way down the footpath but could not find him – it was pitch dark because they had chosen a night with no moon on purpose, as you do… And Stone said he wasn’t going to wander about with a torch shouting his name, asking for trouble. He waited until two o’clock and then left. Stone said he woke up early thinking about this, and so he drove over to Mark’s house but there was no sign of him there. He got worried then and went back out to Lowacre after dropping off some decorating gear at the next place he was working. When he drove up the Lowacre road at about ten o’clock there were already police vehicles parked in the field where he had dropped off Mark Randall. He carried on by, circled back to Lake and phoned Symons, as he had already told them. When Detective Sergeant Wilson had said to Symons then, ‘So what do you think happened to Mark Randall, Michael?’, Symons had said he had no sodding idea but Gareth was not a killer, he knew that much. And Wilson had said, ‘No, they almost never are.’
Smith heard it all second and third hand, of course; by the time he had arrived at the station on the Tuesday morning, Reeve had contacted the CPS again and been told that they could charge Gareth Stone with the murder of Mark Randall. Wilson had done so at seven thirty, just half an hour before Smith turned up to be told the story by Serena Butler and Waters. Smith could see that they were both pleased and excited to have been a part of it all, and they wanted to know what he thought about it. He told them that he thought they had done well, and that Detective Sergeant Wilson thought the same thing. He managed to avoid repeating Wilson’s earlier comment that DC Butler could be an awkward cow at times – since then he had heard how well she had performed in the interviews and it was she, of course, who had made the connection between Gareth Stone and the calls received on Mark Randall’s phone. And it was good for them both to have worked in another team and to have seen that there is, to coin a phrase, more than one way to skin a cat.
The charging of suspects is not an exact science, however much we would like to believe otherwise. Sometimes you do it using an element of intuition – or what Charlie Hills still called a hunch. In the telephone call to the CPS you can lay it on thickly, convincing them that it’s simply a matter of time before you have all the pieces in place, and they’re not stupid either – sometimes, as they well know, it’s easier to find those last pieces once you have charged a suspect. Sometimes the prosecution service lawyer will give you the go-ahead simply on the basis that they backed you before and you won, like a favourite nag in the two thirty at Kempton Park. Smith didn’t voice these doubts to Butler and Waters because he wasn’t sure that they were actually doubts at all – and because he did not want to be suspected himself of trying to take any of the shine off what Wilson had achieved.
The two of them would be busy writing up for an hour or so, and he let them get on with it. He switched on his own desktop and did some routine housekeeping, wondering what he would find himself doing next – he might even have to go to DI Reeve and ask, which was something that rarely happened. Usually he just sort of knew but these were not usual times. He thought about his meeting last night with Joseph Ritz then; he had gone home, been distracted by the call from Jo and gone to bed without writing anything down in his own notebooks – that surely was a sign that he wasn’t really onto anything himself, and that brought him back to Gareth Stone.
The case against him was a decent one but you have to see it as it will appear in several months’ time and from the defence QC’s and then the jury’s perspectives. The van had now been impounded and forensics would literally go over it with a microscope. They would quite probably find evidence that Mark Randall had been in it but that would prove nothing – the two men were known associates. There would almost certainly be no blood because Randall had been struck down and died in the field – there was no reason to question the evidence already gathered in that respect. Forensics might be able to put Stone in that same field but he had told Michael Symons a story that would account for that; if Stone now, with his alibi gone, told the same story to the police, if he said OK, this is what really happened, I just panicked when Gareth didn’t show up, how were they, the police, going to prove otherwise? They had opportunity covered, and they had half a motive – the obsessive nature of the activity, the potential monetary value of the finds – but they needed something else. They needed the murder weapon.
He was staring vacantly at the screen – as if he might find the item by Googling for it – when Detective Inspector Reeve came into the room, and he did
not notice her. She spoke his name twice, standing near to his desk, and the first he knew of it was when Christopher Waters caught his attention by waving a hand and then pointing to the senior officer in the room. There were smiles and jokey comments then – did someone say he was having a senior moment? – and Smith felt just a flicker of irritation at it all.
The inspector was dishing out the next lot of tasks on the Randall case. Waters was to go out with Mike Dunn and liaise with the forensics people who were going to take Gareth Stone’s life apart, starting with his home, in about an hour’s time. There had to be officers on hand to catalogue every process and possible find. Serena Butler was to contact and then meet with Michael Symon’s lady-friend and get her to confirm his own alibi; under the circumstances she might find it easier to do so with a female police officer. Reeve was coming to Smith’s role with increasing reluctance and he thought, she’s going to take me off this – she could at least show mercy and do so in the privacy of her own room - when O’Leary entered the office from the far-side door and came quickly across.
‘Sorry, ma’am. Message from Sergeant Wilson?’
‘Go on, Simon.’
‘It’s Gareth Stone, ma’am. He’s asking to be interviewed again.’
Reeve looked around at them with a smile and said, ‘Here we go!’
‘Ma’am?’
‘Simon?’
‘Sergeant Wilson thought that it would be good to have the same two officers in front of him.’
In other words, awkward cow or not, John Wilson was asking for Serena to sit in with him on what would be a crucial interview in the case.
Reeve said after just two or three seconds’ thought, ‘He’s right. Serena go and find John. Have you got the details of Michael Symons’ love life? Pass them over to DC. You don’t mind, do you, DC? Be a nice ride out to Lakenham for you.’
A nice ride out to Lakenham? She was taking the mickey, of course, reminding him of the embarrassing moment with Superintendent Allen where he, Smith, had described his ramble with Steven Harper, and if you dish it out then you have to be prepared to take it sometimes. But what would it be next – filing? Twenty, even ten years ago, that was a way of getting the old boys who could no longer cut it over the finishing line, the prize for doing so being the generous pension, but these days there wasn’t any filing to be done. As Smith drove out of Kings Lake he thought, it’s as if that bloody surgeon removed more than a few bits of cartilage from under my knee-cap… But hand on heart he couldn’t blame Mr Constant; the operation that had affected his ability to focus had been carried out across the water, and for the first time he wondered whether its after-effects might be permanent.
Driving, however, had always been something that helped him to think, and so he did not hurry to get to Lakenham. This murder weapon business, then. Staring at his monitor screen earlier, he had been struck by something – not in the way Mark Randall had been, obviously, but it had left him a little dazed nonetheless. He might be wrong and he would, therefore, need to check this, but surely metal detectorists do not carry large shovels about? They dig their finds up, yes, but they would use trowels, that sort of thing; the machines don’t detect three feet down, do they? Mark Randall had not been battered to death with a hand-trowel… If Dr Robinson and Olive Markham were correct and a heavy shovel was the murder weapon, its whereabouts now was not the only matter in question – one had to ask why Gareth Stone, as a painter and decorator, would have had such an implement in his van. If the killing had been premeditated, then it might have been Stone’s weapon of choice – though it was far from an obvious one – and if not premeditated, assuming that Randall was struck exactly where he died, then Gareth Stone would have had to have carried the shovel out to the field before something caused him to attack Randall with it. Which brings me, Smith thought, back to square one: why would a metal detectorist carry a heavy shovel out into a field? They use trowels, that sort of thing…
Smith became conscious that he was driving even more slowly, not wanting to get to Lakenham yet. A lorry hooted its horn behind and then passed him on a wide bend – Smith took the hint and pulled over into a layby that conveniently appeared on his left. He turned off the engine and wound down both the driver’s and the passenger’s windows. Beyond the grass verge there was woodland, oak trees casting a deep shade in which he could make out nothing because of the sunlight above. He thought, there are probably deer in this wood. Deers and new ideas are very similar – approach them too directly, too quickly, and they run away. At my age I might be too slow and clumsy to find them again, so better go carefully. I’ve never met Gareth Stone in person, all I’ve done is watch him for a few minutes on a video link. From that I could not tell whether he killed Mark Randall, but this murder weapon business is really bothering me now. Wilson is experienced and Reeve is clever – they will see that this matters. It’s not my case and it’s not my place. But where is this bloody shovel and why was it there in the bloody first place?
Bridget Jones bore not even a passing resemblance to her more famous namesake. When Smith had called her before leaving Lake, she had asked that he did not come to her home – she said that she would meet him in the carpark of The Green Man, and when he checked that against her home address he could see that she didn’t need to travel very far – about a mile. If the pub was one of her regular haunts, she might still be recognised, be seen getting into a strange man’s car, but that was her business.
She was waiting for him in an old red Ford Ka. He drew up alongside and spoke to her through the still open side window, and then she got out and came round to get into his front passenger seat. Within a minute the landlord of The Green Man had appeared at the pub’s rear entrance and had stood scowling at them for some seconds before going back inside, and Smith thought, he’s had all sorts of trouble in this car park before. Various possibilities crossed his mind: the landlord might call the police who might turn up in a squad car and start asking awkward questions – definitely one for Detective Superintendent Allen; another interesting possibility was that when Michael Symons had said ‘girlfriend’, he might have been using the term loosely, because, meeting a detective for questioning or not, Bridget had dressed for the occasion. Whereas the red mini-skirt might have been able to justify itself by reference to the prevailing weather, the above-the-knee, black suede boots most certainly could not. Somehow she managed to cross her generous thighs in the confined space that a middle-aged Peugeot offers and then she pouted a little as if to say that this was not really her idea of a suitable venue for a first date but never mind. And here we are, thought Smith, sitting in my car, me and Mrs Jones…
Yes, she had been seeing Michael Symons for a while and they were in love. Her husband worked nights – that’s why we couldn’t meet at my place she said, as if Smith himself was another potential boyfriend – and he, Michael that is, usually came round on a Monday, and sometimes Thursdays as well. He had been with her most of the night of the 17th of June. When Smith had asked whether anyone else would be able to confirm that, she gave him what he had to assume was her naughtiest grin and asked him exactly what sort of a girl did he think she was – the best course of action then was undoubtedly to make no attempt to answer, and he took it. He explained that the matter under investigation was a serious one and that at present he only had her word for it that she knew Michael Symons; people under suspicion had been known to pay for such alibis. He knew that the mention of payment was a risk in so many ways but she responded decently enough this time; she took out her phone, pressed and flicked it a few times and held it up showing a picture, a selfie of the two of them. It was Michael Symons, without a doubt.
She said, ‘I’ve got some more pictures if you’d like to see them.’
He declined and remembered his conversation with Dolly Argyris yesterday. Is it me, he thought, or have most of the women in the world gone mad? Maybe it’s both – they’ve gone mad because of me. He glanced at himself in the rear-view mirror but
could detect no obvious changes that might explain this phenomenon.
Mrs Jones said, ‘Are you going to make me give evidence? I’d rather not but I know you can force me to if you want. Will there be a court case, in the papers and everything?’
Smith remembered Gareth Stone wanting to be interviewed again and said a silent prayer of thanks before telling Bridget Jones that he didn’t think it would come to that. She looked a little disappointed and he had to tell her three times that she was free to go.
When he called the station, he was put through to Alison Reeve. He gave her the short version of his Bridget Jones story, which concluded with him saying that as far as he was concerned, Michael Symons’ second version of what he was doing on the night of Monday the 17th of June was the true one. Reeve thanked him a little more than she needed and he knew it was because she felt guilty about sending him out on such an errand, but if she thought that was compensation enough, well, another think was on its way. When she asked him if he was coming straight back to Kings Lake, he said that he was not.
‘OK. Is there something else you’d like to check out?’
‘No. But it is another fine morning. I thought I might pootle down to Hunston.’
‘And do what exactly?’
‘There’s a nice little tea-room at the old end of the sea-front. A pot of tea for one and a tea-cake would be very pleasant. There are bound to be some coaches in today, you know, the senior citizens’ excursions. They’ll pop in to the tea room and we’ll get chatting – we might even end up having a round of crazy golf.’
‘That’s fine, DC. Take the whole day. There will probably be bingo in the evening.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
He waited then and eventually she said, ‘I didn’t really hurt your feelings, did I?’
The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation Page 12