Smith ended the imaginary conversation there. This was why he did not break ideas too early – not everything that matters is best done by committee. And, if he was being completely honest with himself, he wasn’t about to break this one because it was so thin that he could hardly justify the time he was spending on it to himself, let alone to a senior officer. Was there anything else to support it? An odd look on Joe Ritz’s face as they left Abbeyfields. Oh yes, that would go down a storm with the barrister for the defence.
Still… Apart from Phil Jefferson right over the far side, the office was empty and might be for a few more minutes. Eastlingsands, wasn’t it? Might be worth checking that Brother Andrew Waring did spend the entire fortnight there. A fortnight seemed to be a long while – you could retreat so far in that time you might meet yourself coming back around the other side. He Googled, found it and studied the website – nondenominational, funded by charitable donations and voluntary contributions, beautiful gardens, coastal walks, tranquillity. He dialled the number.
‘Hello? Yes, this is Brother David from Abbeyfields, in north Norfolk? Yes, I’m sorry, of course you do, but I’m new, just arrived – well, thank you.’
He listened on to the extended words of welcome, feeling a little guilty but mostly concerned that he might have to say something of religious significance before this conversation was over. When at last he was invited to state the reason for his call, he explained that Brother Jeremy had asked him to check the dates of the retreats made by members of the Abbeyfields community since the beginning of the year – he wasn’t sure but he thought this might be so that they could make an appropriate donation. It was almost a mistake as the pleasantly surprised voice of the lady on the other end asked whether that would be an additional donation to the one that they had already made just a month ago.
He said, ‘I think it might be – as I said, I am new to the friary, so…’
But it worked, the thought of an additional donation, and she soon was giving him details of this year’s retreats from Abbeyfields. There had been three of them – the first had been of three days, the second of four, and the final one, Brother Andrew’s, of almost two weeks. As a newcomer – a novice even, Smith told himself – he made the ingenuous remark that that had been a longer retreat than usual, hadn’t it, and she told him that it had. Brother Andrew had spent a week in seclusion but Eastlingsands had worked its magic and in the second week he had even taken out two other residents to watch birds on the marshes.
Brother David said, ‘Oh, that sounds wonderful! I’m looking forward to the time when I can visit myself. But I expect you are busy. How far ahead do we need to book a place?’
Several weeks usually – says a lot about our world now, doesn’t it, she said – but it was always worth ringing to see. When did Brother Andrew book up his fortnight he said as conversationally as he could, and she looked it up for him.
‘He didn’t as it happened. It was just a phone call, and he came down the next day. Sometimes life takes us by surprise, doesn’t it?’
And Smith thought, I don’t know about sometimes – it seems to happen to me nearly every day. He thanked her and then, as an afterthought, asked whether residents of Eastlingsands could receive phone calls if they did not have a mobile phone.
‘Now, we discourage phones. We ask politely that they be left in a safe in our office, or at least switched off during a stay. Personally I think that the mobile phone is the cause of much of the stress that people come to us to recover from, don’t you, David?’
He couldn’t argue with that, especially when you possess one of those phones that are smarter than you are; if he didn’t already own a caravan called Lapwing just fifty yards from the woods at Pinehills, he might be considering a stay at Eastlingfields for real. But yes, she said, when he pursued it, of course people can be contacted in emergencies and we sometimes pass on a message so that people can get back in touch with their busy lives.
To ask whether a record of those calls was kept was tempting but would sound too suspicious, and so he left it there. Besides, Abbeyfields only had the one phone, and it was a landline – easy enough to check. The woman said ‘God bless’ at the end and he just avoided saying ‘And the same to you’ – a simple thank you sufficed and then she was gone. Smith hoped that she wasn’t off to spend that additional donation.
He settled himself then for a good stare out of the window while he considered what he had learned but it was not to be. Within a minute, John Wilson had entered the office, gone straight to his computer and begun an assault on the keyboard. Jefferson had asked his boss what was up, got some sort of monosyllabic answer and had then gone to stand behind and look at the same screen. Then Waters and Butler arrived, followed by Simon O’Leary and the rest of Wilson’s team. Last in was Alison Reeve, and Smith realised that she must have rounded them up from the canteen, or the car park where one or two had been smoking after a leisurely lunch – but there was nothing leisurely about the detective inspector as she waited for them to get to their work-stations.
‘Everyone listening? We’ve heard from Norwich. Because the shovel went straight there instead of through the station, they’ve done prints first. They have a thumb print. John is double-checking as I speak but I can tell you that it isn’t Gareth Stone’s.’
She paused and let the looks of consternation pass across the room but Smith was watching her face closely – it was a face he knew well and there was no hint of consternation on there.
‘Nevertheless, we do have a match to the database. John?’
Wilson didn’t look up at her as he said, ‘Still coming through, ma’am,’ and Waters made a comment about fibre-optic cables to Serena Butler.
Reeve said, ‘OK. I can also tell you that two hours ago Superintendent Allen authorised expedited blood-work on the shovel at a ridiculous cost to the taxpayer. I have just been telephoned with the results and we’re expecting detailed confirmation in an email shortly. The blood on the shovel is Mark Randall’s.’
Consternation turned to delight – quietly shaken fists and murmurs of approval which Reeve was quick to end.
‘Finding what is almost certainly the murder weapon is a major step forward but it puts us nowhere near the finishing line. This result does not put Stone in the clear as yet but it does mean that we will be beginning a new line of inquiry as soon as BT pull their finger out. John?’
Wilson was nodding now, and then he said, ‘The thumb print is a full match to a Brian K Davis. According to records, he lives in Gaultways, out towards Wisbech.’
More exchanges of looks; this was not a name that had come up in the inquiry so far, and not a name that any of the officers in the room had encountered in the course of their work, or so it seemed to DI Reeve as she panned across the room. And then she saw that Smith had raised one finger.
‘DC?’
‘I’m only going from memory here but I think that Brian K Davis was convicted at Lake Magistrates’ about two years ago for deliberately interfering with a badgers’ sett, and for possession of implements intended for the purpose of badger-baiting.’
Legends are born in such moments. Offences like those are never investigated by plain clothes detectives, at least not in Norfolk, and so there was no reason for Smith to have known of such convictions. Wilson looked suitably appalled, and still more so when DI Reeve asked him to confirm or refute what Smith had said by reading out details of the man’s convictions from the screen in front of him. It was true – this was the very same Brian Davis. Then Wilson read out other convictions and charges and offences that had been investigated but not pursued – Davis was a veritable and dedicated fanatic, it seemed, when it came to maintaining the old country traditions of torturing the wildlife. Currently he was under a suspended sentence for hare-coursing.
Waters looked puzzled and Serena was grinning at O’Leary and Jefferson, who were not grinning back at her. Smith could have told them all that it was only three days since he had read the
story in the online archives of the Lake Evening News. He could have explained that his doing so wasn’t the result of some sort of extra-sensory perception or a bizarre coincidence; he was simply following up on something that Steven Harper had mentioned, but why spoil the fun? Reeve sent a little shake of the head in his general direction, and took charge of the developments. She gave Davis to Wilson, which was fair enough; he hadn’t exactly made any mistakes as far as Gareth Stone was concerned but he was going to have to do the de-arresting business if and when it happened – getting the lead on Davis would be fair compensation for that. She made it very clear that there were to be no moves at all today, other than quietly putting a pair of eyes on Mr Davis in Gaultways within the hour; this was exactly how Smith himself would have proceeded. In the meantime, ‘Let’s have lists of all Davis’s known associates for every offence on which he has been questioned – names, addresses, numbers, vehicles, the lot. Put someone who is on top of their game onto establishing whether there has ever been any connection between Gareth Stone and Brian Davis – we must do that before Stone is released, if he is. And let’s be grateful that Stone is still here in the cells or we’d have been making a trip to Norwich in the morning. Anything else?’
She was speaking then to her two sergeants, and Wilson would have noticed that this was the first time that she had done so in this investigation. Smith said, ‘How long before we get the full forensics report, ma’am?’
‘I suppose it depends on how much there is. I will forward it all to both of you as it comes in. Superintendent Allen has got them moving on it somehow. John is going to be busy with the people, DC, and so can you liaise with him on anything else that comes out from Norwich today and tomorrow? And you said that the farmers out at Lowacre had mentioned this badger-digging thing. Is it worth going back to them now that Brian Davis has appeared on the scene? Take one of your team if you want to go out there again.’
Which was a polite way of saying to Wilson that Smith was running his own people on this now. He reminded them both that from tomorrow morning they would have an additional pair of hands as long as Richard Ford remembered to dress properly before he left for work, and Wilson made a remark about puppy-training again. Reeve said to keep him on a short lead as if this was just station banter and Smith accepted it as such but behind it he knew that Wilson had felt the need to score some sort of point because of the events of the past few minutes.
Back at his desk with Butler and Waters, Smith told the two of them about Ford, and they immediately had ideas for how to welcome him to the team as embarrassingly as possible. The episode of his own return-to-work gift had clearly filled them with confidence, and Smith reminded himself that he had meant to have a word with Charlie Hills about that – he would do so this afternoon, once business was concluded here. It had been agreed with Reeve and Wilson that these two should search for any connection between Stone and Davis – a desk-based search in the first instance, followed up by interviews if they found anything at all.
They would not do so – Smith was certain of it. As for another visit to the Harpers, well, a phone call would probably suffice. Steven Harper had first mentioned the badger-digging business, of course, but it was unlikely that he knew any more than he had already told them. No – as he watched Serena and Chris getting to work – a good team now – and as he finally began to make some proper notes about this case, it wasn’t Steven Harper that Smith was thinking about.
Chapter Fourteen
Friday the 5th of July, the following morning, and Smith was awake at five o’clock. He lay in bed, listening to the light shower of rain as it passed over the gardens of the Milfield estate, drifting north-east – it would cross the coast in about an hour and then the finer weather should re-establish itself for a few more days, according to the forecast. He hoped so, if only for the sake of the two women staying in the caravan. In the end he had agreed to go down just for a couple of hours on the Sunday afternoon, long enough to say hello and make a little conversation.
At ten minutes past five he was thinking that in theory he could still change his mind about today. He could, if he moved quickly now, still phone the airport and book himself onto a flight – one left at 09.15 – and be walking across the tarmac in Belfast little more than an hour later. The funeral was at midday. There would be surprise, of course, but almost everyone would be pleased to see him, and almost everyone would accept that he had the right to be there, too. It would be a strange and sad occasion; the burial of a few bones and a few hopes along with the resurrection of many memories of Brann O’Neill. Afterwards there would be something of a do, it being Ireland, and he would meet Cati and Brady, and the others that he had not seen in thirty years, back from countries around the world to say a final goodbye to the brother that they had now lost for a second time in their lives. Lia would be worried and disappointed that he had changed his mind and broken their agreement but he doubted whether she would make a scene; he guessed that she would say little with words and plenty with her eyes, that was all. And of course, he would see Diarmuid and the girl, and that would be something, to meet them so smartly dressed and solemn and grown up, with their lives in front of them, part of a future at last. Smith even smiled a little at the thought of Mairead McCain – she didn’t like him much, which was fine, but she was good for Diarmuid, a fool could see that, and she would be an excellent mother if she chose to be, and then he would have a grandchild, too.
And after all that he could leave. There was bound to be a return flight on a Friday afternoon, and he could be back here in time for supper. He hadn’t taken an unexpected day off in twenty years and the current investigation would proceed in an orderly fashion without him. Waiting at the airport, he would know that at eight o’clock this morning there would be a knock at the door of Brian Davis in the village of Gaultways. He didn’t need to be there to envisage the usual scenes – the protestations, the distressed spouse if there was one, barking dogs, crying children, staring neighbours. It would carry on without him. Reeve would conduct the interview properly, procedures would be followed, Davis would be held in a cell for an hour or two to soften him up, there might or might not be a duty solicitor involved, then another interview with some disclosure of the case against him and another invitation to spill the beans – we can’t make any promises, Brian, you know that, but if you cooperate now it might be better for you later on. No-one ever measures whether it was, of course, but these are the games that are played, the things that are said nine times out of ten.
At a quarter to six he got out of bed and went to the window. There was still time and he continued to plan the journey but he knew that he would not make it. Lia was right – she always had been. Let the O’Neills bury their own. He was not one of them, and never had been. Looking down into the garden, he could see that the shower had gone but it had left the paving slabs wet and shining in the early light of the coming day.
To say that Brian Davis came quietly would be an understatement; Brian Davis came in absolute silence. Smith had stopped at the door of the interview room, opened it and looked in – Davis looked up at him but did not react at all other than that. Smith had said, ‘Good morning, Mr Davis. Has anyone asked if you’d like a cup of tea?’
No answer came the stern reply. Smith looked at Russell Young, the uniformed constable on duty in the interview room, and said, ‘Very wise of Mr Davis. I expect he’s heard about the switch to Cheapo Chinese tea-bags. What about you, Constable Young?’
The uniformed man kept a straight face and answered, ‘Good of you to ask, sir, but no thank you.’
Still not a flicker from Davis.
Back in the office, he found Alison Reeve and John Wilson in discussion. Davis had not been arrested and therefore they could not search his property without a warrant; they could arrest him now on a charge serious enough to allow a senior officer to authorise a warrant – and murder should cover that – but Detective Superintendent Allen had made it clear again this morning t
hat as there might already have been superfluous arrests in this investigation, he did not feel inclined to make more them without very good cause. They could ask the suspect if he minded them searching but it was unlikely that he was suddenly going to begin making any noise. Davis didn’t look worried; he had been arrested often enough to know that one strategy was to keep absolutely silent until the police were forced to disclose something of the case that they were investigating – he could then, with or without legal advice, begin to construct a story of his own that fitted the disclosure. In Smith’s view, the one surprise card they had was the nature of the possible charges. Davis had been told nothing of these and was probably assuming that this was another investigation into a wildlife crime, related to his being under a suspended sentence. ‘It might be worth,’ he said to Reeve and Wilson, ‘just running that past him in a short initial interview. It isn’t disclosure just to warn him that the charges might be somewhat more serious than chasing a hare with a dog. And if he nibbles at that, we could mention the date of the night in question, and tell him that we’re going to be asking his whereabouts then at some point. I assume we’ve still got someone at his place?’
Reeve nodded and said that they would try the initial interview and then meet afterwards with Superintendent Allen. The rest of the forensics report had arrived and they should all read it before anything else – she gave Wilson and Smith a quarter of an hour to do that, and then she and Wilson would meet with Davis.
Waters and Butler were busy at their desks, already having divided up between them lists of contacts and convictions for Mark Randall, Gareth Stone and Brian Davis; databases can do the donkeywork but, as yet, only the human eye can be cast creatively over what they produce. Waters had shown himself to be particularly good at this and Smith was happy to leave it with him, confident that if there was a link, the new boy would find it – except that he wasn’t really the new boy any more.
The Rags of Time: A DC Smith Investigation Page 16