Luck and Judgement

by Peter Grainger

  ‘Could you what?’

  ‘Tell them, I suppose.’

  Smith looked at the card with a frown – he didn’t feel he was much further forward.

  ‘And this is the club – Velvet MSC?’

  She nodded and he picked it up again, examining it closely to see what he had missed the first time. Nothing.

  Maggie said, ‘Married Singles Club.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘For people who are married but would like to still be single, in one way at least. I suppose a club allows you to meet like-minded others discreetly.’

  The light was dawning. Smith held the card a little further away, as if it carried some risk of infection.

  ‘So is it just for married couples? Not that they fit into my idea of a couple if this is what they get up to but…’

  ‘I’ve a feeling that they find a way of admitting a few singles, just to spice things up. Especially if they happen to be good-looking.’

  Smith took her point, his mind now back on track after the momentary surprise at what she had just revealed to him about what might lie beneath some of the quiet, suburban lives in Kings Lake.

  ‘Dear me. Whatever happened to the pictures and fish and chips on a Saturday night? So Vice had a look? But if it’s on private premises, no money changing hands, no technically illegal goings on, I suppose… I had no idea, not in Lake.’

  ‘DC, things go on that would make your hair stand on end. They probably always have but these days it’s out in the open, so to speak. There are websites, magazines, organised holidays abroad, the works.’

  ‘You seem very well informed.’

  She gave him a mock mysterious smile, and he responded with a slight shake of the head. The card was not cheap or shabby, not just a one-evening pass into whatever took place behind those locked and no doubt guarded doors. At some point he might have to ask but he was sure that Lucy Bell would know nothing about this. Nevertheless, it made some sense – the condoms, the smart clothes, – and this might explain the extra phone. Maggie said nothing as she watched the new information being slotted into place, like a child’s puzzle in which the squares are shuffled around until the picture is complete and correct.

  He said, ‘Presumably it would be a tricky membership list to get hold of! And I don’t imagine everyone owns up to who they really are.’

  ‘Probably a lot of Smiths on it.’

  ‘Yes, very good. And a few Browns. But it has to be worth a look. He went somewhere that weekend.’

  Maggie eased herself back in her chair, still struggling to get comfortable.

  ‘From what John’s told me – which I know won’t be absolutely everything – I can’t see why you’re trying to track his movements. You know he went onto the rig or whatever it is, the platform. What he got up to before that isn’t that important, is it? OK, he lost a bit of blood in his own bathroom – who hasn’t?’

  Smith gave her a somewhat perturbed look.

  ‘I cut myself when I was shaving once. It wouldn’t stop for a quarter of an hour.’

  She said, ‘Alright – I’m not on the case. No doubt you’ve seen something that’s keeping you awake at night. Just make sure it doesn’t keep John awake – he needs to get plenty of rest before this arrives.’

  She had both hands on her belly now, stroking it gently as a man might caress a giant marrow he has produced for the vegetable show.

  ‘Maggie, I’d best be off so that you can all get some rest. What was it you were going to tell me, as if I can’t already guess? But I appreciate you letting me know first.’

  A puzzled look passed over her face before the smile.

  ‘Oh, yes. But I’m not telling you this, only asking whether you’d like to, obviously. Some people don’t take it seriously but we know that you would. If you feel that it would be too much to ask, we will understand.’

  She had lost him again – it must be the hormones. He held out his hands, palms upward in surrender, and waited. She looked down at the bump and then back at him.

  ‘We would like you to be our godfather.’

  On the way home, his phone had buzzed with a new message. At traffic lights he had opened it and saw that it was from Jo Evison but he did not read it. Even when he was indoors, it was some minutes before he looked at what she had sent to him – David, sorry to bother you but I need a quick word. Ring me?

  Not more than fifteen minutes later, he was reading an email from her. Checking the times, he saw that the email had been sent shortly after the text. It said I sent you a text a while ago but realise that you might be too busy to reply. Or too annoyed. Has anyone at work spoken to you about the book? If so, it’s my fault. My agent does some of these things for me. She has a new assistant called Wanda. Wanda has a degree in American Studies from Oxford and is therefore, for all practical purposes, useless. Wanda took it upon herself to do everything on a list that I wrote down for Lisa, my agent. This should never have happened, and I can only apologise – obviously you would have wanted to raise it with senior officers first. Sorry!

  He grilled the two fresh herrings that he had collected from the delicatessen on the way home, and ate them with the organic wholemeal bread and butter from the same establishment. The day had been rather short of coffee, and so he made some – he would do a little work on the case tonight in view of the latest information and so it might help to keep him alert. After that, he went out onto the patio and smoked a cigarette, the first of the day, getting into training for the fitness test that he had still not confirmed, having been too busy again. Funny how work gets in the way of the more important things… A chilly, clear night ahead, a sky full of stars, and a waft of sweet scent on the dark air – must be that viburnum in the border at the back. The flowers would be glowing a pale pink in the gloom.

  His phone pinged and vibrated on the dining room table. He went back in and found another text from the only author of his acquaintance – Did you get my email? So she had sent him, in the past hour and a half, a text, followed by an email followed by a text about the email. If he did not send some sort of reply, it looked as if she would be having another sleepless night. He sent from his phone ‘Yes, got them all. These things happen. Tell Wanda I’m having her thoroughly investigated.’

  Then he went upstairs and sat down at his desk. He didn’t feel alone, however; Jimmy Bell was there and the two of them were getting closer by the hour. Typing the name of the club into Google produced absolutely nothing but that didn’t surprise him at all. The Velvet MSC would require a different approach altogether.

  When he walked into the office the next morning, having spent a few minutes with Charlie Hills admiring the elegance of the old reception desk area that had somehow eluded them before, he saw Mike Dunn standing behind Waters’ desk, both of them watching something on the screen. He detoured behind them before they were aware of him and looked for himself – a film of a man steering a boat across a stormy sea, the view out through his window as the waves tilted everything first to the right and then the left, rain lashing against the glass – he didn’t know that boats have wipers just like cars.

  He said, ‘What have I told you about playing video games during working hours?’ and carried on towards his own desk. Waters called him back.

  ‘I found this on You-tube. Look, there in the background – that’s the Elizabeth. This was filmed by someone on a supply boat in some rough weather. It makes you realise what’s involved. He has to position this boat under the crane on the platform and then crewmen have to hook things on and off the boat – all with it heaving about. They must get danger money.’

  Smith watched it through to the end in silence and then told Waters to re-run it.

  He said, ‘Can you actually see what they’re taking on and off?’

  ‘It’s all the big stuff that you couldn’t fly in. Like that generator we saw? And fuel, I suppose, and fresh water. Mostly it’s these square containers in the film – like smaller versions of the ones you see on l
orries.’

  The men on the deck of the supply vessel wore hard hats and protective gloves but if the crane driver above or the man in the wheelhouse made a mistake, those would count for nothing. The video had no sound other than a few muttered comments but the wildness of the day and the danger of the work spoke for themselves. Smith turned to Waters.

  ‘What made you look at that?’

  ‘Just curiosity, I wanted a bit of background on the platform, and there it was.’

  ‘If you were looking for background, it was more than curiosity, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Dunn was watching and listening – Smith was famously eccentric but he could also be painfully sharp. Dunn was also aware that Wilson had entered the room from the opposite door and was probably taking note of how ‘his’ men were being used by Smith. O’Leary was nowhere to be seen.

  Smith said to Waters, ‘It could be useful. Can you send it to me, or the link or something? I’ll take another look at it.’

  He was halfway to his own desk before he stopped, thought and went back to Waters and Dunn again.

  ‘In fact, can you follow this up a bit? Get back to your mates on the platform and find out who keeps a record of all the comings and goings of these supply boats, and where they’re based. It’ll either be here in Lake or Yarmouth. Get a company name and a contact number. Mike, come and talk to me – I’ve heard nothing about what you found yesterday, so do I assume that you found nothing?’

  Dunn followed Smith to his desk. They had gone to the betting shops first and had indeed found nothing of any use other than the fact that one assistant manager had recognized the photograph of Bell.

  Smith said, ‘Long Odds?’

  Dunn looked surprised and said, ‘Right. How did you know?’

  ‘Not important. Carry on.’

  ‘They knew him but hadn’t seen him for a week or two. He wasn’t about in the week before he disappeared, and they definitely hadn’t paid him any big winnings.’

  ‘Good. Pubs and bars?’

  Dunn took out his phone, pressed a couple of keys and read off the screen some of the details that he told to Smith. The third bar they visited was The Wherryman. It was popular with workers from the docks and the offshore industry. One of the girls who served behind the bar knew Bell as a regular customer; she had been working that Saturday night, the 15th, and was sure that he had been there for the first part of the evening.

  ‘Even better. Any details? Why did she remember him?’

  There was more, and Smith thought that either Dunn or O’Leary or perhaps the two of them, had done a decent job.

  Dunn said, ‘She’s a looker and Bell, I’m guessing, always made a point of chatting her up. He was sitting on a stool at the bar doing just that when a couple of blokes came in. One of them knew Bell, came over and then Bell went off to a table with them. She made a comment about her company not being good enough then, the way they do, and Bell said he’d be back. She remembers them drinking plenty over the next hour or so – this taking us up to about nine – but she never actually saw them leave. She thinks they probably all left at the same time, though.’

  Smith sat and thought. If Murray could get Esme Fairhead to be a little more precise about the time she saw men outside Bell’s flat, then the picture would be getting clearer. Three or four men, she had said, and now they had three men drinking and then leaving a pub a short drive – or a longish walk – from The Towers that same evening. At the same time he could hear Maggie’s words from the day before – What he got up to before isn’t that important, is it? – and he knew that others were probably thinking the same. But it was important, it had to be. Bell was out drinking, chatting up barmaids and telling them he would be back – business as usual, and from somewhere he had money, serious money, enough for him to pay back a little of what he owed, enough for even James Bell to indulge his conscience. None of that pointed to a man intending to end it all by a leap into the North Sea. An accident? He could not dismiss the idea entirely but it had no life in it, no interest for him, no colour at all, like a corpse forgotten in a mortuary.

  ‘Good stuff, Mike. I’m assuming you’ve got this barmaid’s vital statistics, should we need them? OK. Where’s O’Leary?’

  Dunn shrugged.

  Smith said, ‘Meeting with Special Branch, I expect. As you’re on this for a day or two, get Waters to bring you up to speed on it, fill you in on anything you’ve missed. If he uses any of his big words, get him to draw you a picture.’

  He folded his arms as he watched the two of them working together at Waters’ desk. Dunn asked questions and Waters answered, opening the folder that he always kept on every case, notes neatly organized chronologically, switching screens on the PC, confident and clear. Smith thought, he’s come a long way in a few months, and Dunn was treating him as an equal.

  A young, uniformed PC came into the room and looked around. As was customary, no-one took any notice until he held up a clear plastic wallet and called out, ‘Samsung phone from Norwich?’

  The room was silent then. Smith put up a hand and heard Wilson’s comment come across the room – ‘Another new phone, DC? I don’t know what you do with ‘em!’

  Somebody laughed but when Smith glanced around, he could see that it wasn’t Dunn – there were two other detectives sitting close to Wilson, the remainder of his team at present. He took the wallet and signed the proffered form. The constable walked away. Wilson made a point of watching him go and then said, ‘They’ll be having pizza delivered next!’

  Any response would only add fuel to it, and so Smith left it alone. He could see Waters watching and waiting, and beckoned him over. Dunn followed.

  ‘Go on – you found it. It’s even got your prints on it.’

  The phone was still in its original evidence bag. There was a brown envelope which Waters slit open with the blade on a little multi-tool that Smith had never noticed before, and he thought, but then he is just like a boy scout sometimes. Waters read the report, frowned and went back to the beginning. Smith picked up a pencil and scribbled something on one of his pieces of scrap paper.

  Waters said, ‘There is no call history on this phone.’

  ‘I think that we already knew that.’

  ‘No – there never has been a call history on this phone. Nothing has been deleted. It’s never been used apart from the initial set-up call.’

  ‘I said it looked new when you first picked it up…’

  Waters now had the report in one hand and the phone in the other, as if he could not quite believe that the one referred to the other, as if there must be some mistake.

  Smith said, ‘What about the contact list? Anything?’

  ‘Loaded onto the phone on the 17th of March.’

  ‘Ah – the missing Monday.’

  ‘There’s a bit more in the report. The time of the set-up call was 11.08 but there are no contract details registered – it was, or is, a pay-as-you-go phone. And it was 92% charged at the time of examination, with £10’s worth of credit to go.’

  Smith was writing again on another piece of paper.

  He said, ‘So, if I’m right, no contract details means no contact details, no way of tracing the owner, especially if they paid with cash. You go in, buy a phone in a box, set it up. Are they usually sold with some credit on? I thought so – about a tenner’s worth, I expect. So what do we do now, Mike?’

  Dunn asked Waters for the report and read it over himself. Wise – even experienced officers can miss the obvious; two pairs of eyes on everything is good procedure. Waters glanced at Smith who raised an eyebrow.

  Dunn said, ‘Lots of people order over the internet now which would be a nightmare to trace. But he’d have had to do that in the week before – you couldn’t get same day delivery before 11.00. And that would be at the flat where his wife said there was no sign of him… If you needed a phone in a hurry, you’d go to a shop, and if you managed to buy it before 11.00, you probably went
to a shop in Lake. I expect that’s what we’re about to do as well.’

  ‘Spot on – make a list. And don’t forget they’ll all have CCTV if it hasn’t already been wiped. Show his picture but don’t be dogmatic on that – you want details of every one of those phones sold, as much as they can give us. Check which staff were on duty – if they’re not in today, chase them up. Over a week, so the tills will have long been emptied but – oh, Mata Hari has arrived.’

  O’Leary was talking to Wilson on the far side of the room. Smith watched for a few seconds and then continued.

  ‘And while you’re out and about, have a think on why a man who owns a nice iPhone went out and bought this one on a Monday morning when his wife thought he was on Elizabeth – if you’ll pardon the expression – and Elizabeth thought he was home in bed with a poorly tummy. Why he bought it, apparently in a hurry, and then never used it. Look, I don’t know what O’Leary’s playing at but we need to get on. Mike, it’s up to you – shoot off on your own or take Waters with you if you want some company. Up to you.’

  They left his desk. The hesitation when they got back to Waters’ was momentary, and then they were gone. O’Leary was still talking to Wilson and had not noticed that his partner had deserted him for a younger model. Smith picked up the piece of paper on which he had written as Waters was studying the lab report on the blue Samsung phone, read it and then crumpled it before binning it. He had written ‘£5 to win – never was a call history’.

  He sent an email saying that he had received the email inviting him to the gymnasium the following week, and then felt his knee under the desk. It was recovering, as it always did after a day or two, but there was a slight puffiness which was fluid gathering after the stress of exercise. It was annoying. He was and always had been generally fit. The occasional yoga kept him flexible enough, he still used the free-weights in the garage and he still walked regularly, especially when he was up at the caravan – miles up and down the vast open beaches of Wells and beyond. Everything on the assessment was within his abilities except for the short sprints and turns, which had to be completed within a set time.