Persons of Interest: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Waters began talking to someone, and Smith listened in. He was good on the telephone, sounding older than his years and asking questions in a quiet but authoritative way, as if he simply expected to be given the answers – that was more than half the battle. He repeated things as he wrote them down in that little red notebook, which was not quite as good as writing them down in a little black notebook but it was progress and it would do for now.

  Smith put up a hand to get Waters’ attention and said quietly, ‘Has she still got it?’

  Waters nodded – he must have already been told. At the end, Waters asked again for the name of his informant, thanked them and wrote that down as well before turning to Smith.

  ‘Katherine Diver, she’s test driving it. They ask people to put down a substantial security deposit – he didn’t say how much – and do all the usual checks. The potential purchaser insures the car and gets to drive it around for a day or two. The manager said that with these cars they do not expect people to make their mind up there and then – it’s not like buying a second-hand Peugeot.’

  ‘He actually said that, did he – a second-hand Peugeot?’

  ‘Yes, he actually said it.’

  He was learning to keep a very straight face as well, and Smith let it go.

  ‘And you’ve got her details. Right, there’s still no sign of life here, so put her into the system. If anyone comes in, I’m going to say you’ve started threatening me, elderly abuse and all that, OK? By the way, what’s the car worth?’

  ‘Forty five thousand.’

  It would take a few minutes – Smith went down to the canteen to fetch some tea and stale buns.

  Waters began talking as soon as he got back into the room.

  ‘No record but I got an additional notification thing which I’ve followed up. I think you’re going to love it.’

  Smith carried the tray around to Waters’ desk, wondering where the other three were that the girls in the canteen said he had walked off with and never returned; they said they knew where he lived, and that Dawn was pretty scarey.

  ‘Go on – I’m short of things to love in my life at the moment. There’s no need to take that personally but you can if you want.’

  ‘Katherine Diver has recently applied for a licence from the SIA – not the CIA but the SIA. It’s-’

  ‘Yes, I know what it is. How recently?’

  Waters looked back at the screen.

  ‘Six weeks.’

  Smith had moved behind him so that he could see the screen for himself. He still had not put down the tray with its two mugs and two buns.

  ‘There are a couple of professional bodies. Type in “Association of British Investigators”. Good, that’s it.’

  He leaned in and squinted at the screen – too far away and he couldn’t read it, too close in and... he couldn’t read it. He’d thought before that there must be something wrong with this new lot of screens. After some more serious squinting, he was able to make out the headings and point.

  ‘Go to there – Provisional Membership.’

  ‘OK, got it. Full list, sort by county... Here it is – DDA, Diver and Diver Associates, Inquiry Agency. There’s a link to their website.’

  ‘Yes, go on. But don’t tell me anything else yet – something’s happening inside my head.’

  He sat at his own desk. It wasn’t so much a light bulb coming on as a faint electrical buzz, the sound of a discharge between two synapses somewhere in the darkness. It was the name, of course, it had to be. Diver. Diver... things take a little longer these days. And then he had it.

  ‘It’s in Kings Lake, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Queen’s something, off the market square...’

  ‘Queen’s Parade, number eight. I didn’t even know we had any, and my dad’s in the same business. I’ll read the rest of it.’

  While he did so, more memories returned. Bernie Diver had died more than a year ago, and he hadn’t been very active for a while before that. As far as Smith knew, there had been no ‘associates’, and Smith had only ever once come into contact with him professionally; Diver had come into the station to report that while serving some papers in process work he had been threatened and that the people doing the threatening were almost certainly involved in activities that went far beyond his remit as a private investigator. Smith had been told this by the duty detective that day who had taken down the details, and Smith himself had gone downstairs to hear more. It had not been Smith’s case in the end but it did lead to a decent conviction, and he hoped that the officers concerned had been duly grateful. But that was years ago. He had no idea whether Bernie had had a family but for the old business to be resurrected after so long seemed unlikely – and Bernie had been a short, overweight man, a little too inoffensive perhaps for the profession that life had chosen to hand to him. There seemed to be no conceivable genetic connection to the young woman he had recently seen cat-walking along Mrs Fellowes’ front path.

  But if she was what she had applied to be, then things had just got slightly more complicated – what was the sister of a man murdered in prison doing consulting a private detective? Presumably it had not been a social call; they did not look as if they might be members of the same knitting circle or Zumba class. Smith sat and thought, and could make no sense of it. The only definite thing was that in visiting Sandra Fellowes just to satisfy his curiosity, he had signally failed.

  He said, ‘Go on, then, just the highlights.’

  It was a joint enterprise, the other partner of the business being Jason Diver. Smith groaned inwardly and a little outwardly – he had never had good experiences with young men named Jason. The agency claimed to undertake the usual range of private investigative activities with their team of experienced operatives, and so on and so on. The website mentioned their membership of the ABI without saying that it was provisional, and everything on screen, according to Waters, looked new and shiny, not the interface of an established company.

  ‘In which case,’ said Smith, ‘what is she doing looking at forty five grand cars?’

  Waters said, ‘I’ll bookmark all this. There’s only one way to find out, though, isn’t there?’

  He was tidying up his desk, ready to go.

  ‘DC Waters, are you suggesting we waste yet more time on this when we have already been given our orders? We have to report to RSCU tomorrow, and I’ve a good mind to make you do it if you insist on distracting me.’

  Something about the way Smith kept a stern face could still fool Waters occasionally. He blinked in surprise and tried to look apologetic.

  Smith said, ‘Or you could just follow your instincts. This will slow down promotion but improve your clear-up rate. That sounds like a contradiction but it isn’t at all in the modern police service. The choice is yours. Here are the keys to the second-hand Peugeot, which might refuse to start for you – you can decide where we’re going next if it doesn’t. But if you want to go anywhere near the market place, the best parking is on the eastern quayside.’

  Chapter Eleven

  Smith had been wrong – by the time that Waters had finished parking the car on the quay, Petar Subic was a free man. The judge had given him a fifteen month sentence – manslaughter along with failing to report a death, and concealment of a body – but almost ten months had already been served on remand, past the point at which a well-behaved prisoner, and one not considered a threat, would have been considered for early release. The judge was of the opinion that Subic would have qualified for that; in addition, he, as a foreign national, could also have been released under something called the Early Removal Scheme. As Subic had already expressed the wish to return to the country of his birth, nothing further would be achieved by detaining him here.

  Smith thanked Mrs Butterfield’s junior, closed his phone and said, ‘Well, you missed a chance there – I’d have given you odds that he’d do a little more time. Mrs B must have really put the wind up His Honour. Mind you, they’ll pro
bably be having dinner together this evening.’

  Waters said, ‘Is it a result, as far as we’re concerned?’

  ‘Totally.’

  ‘And justice for Wayne Fletcher?’

  ‘Ah, well, not so straightforward. How do you measure that? I imagine that his family might not be so happy about it. They could even ask for a review, but I hope they don’t.’

  ‘Would that involve us again?’

  ‘Doubtful – just the merits of the sentence, but that sort of thing can go on for years.’

  From here, looking downstream across the wide, tidal river, they could just make out on the opposite bank the buildings of Scanlon’s Offshore Services where they had arrested Philip Wood. Waters knew that the resolution to that case was months away as well, but his first case was done, as of a few minutes ago; he could remember sitting at the desk next to Smith’s on that first day, reading about Wayne Fletcher’s death, looking at the photographs sent over by Frosty Winters at the diving unit, and he would never be able to forget Petar Subic as the first man he had arrested, but now it was over.

  Smith was looking across the river too, having thoughts of his own, but thoughts that seemed very much concerned with the present.

  He said, ‘We’re really going out on a limb here, and we haven’t got long – that meeting with RSCU starts in an hour. Seriously, this is nothing more than nosiness, so we’d better tread carefully. Don’t go throwing your weight about and upsetting people or we might get complained about.’

  ‘OK. I’ll try to restrain myself.’

  ‘And there’s a word for that sort of thing as well. I blame that book for all this.’

  ‘Which book?’

  ‘The one about sex in a paint shop. Why would anyone even need fifty shades of one colour? There’s too much choice in everything these days. That’s why people can’t make decisions any more. My advice is to stick to beige. You can’t go wrong with beige.’

  The walls of the offices of Diver and Diver Associates had been freshly painted in a light green, as had the walls of the single flight of stairs leading up to them. ‘Offices’ is perhaps too generous a word – there was a single office which was reached through a smaller room that was serving currently as a waiting area, a kitchen and as a store for cardboard boxes, some empty, some as yet unopened. The main door, with its new-looking nameplate, had been ajar and Smith had not knocked but simply pushed it open and stepped inside.

  The door to the inner office was also open and they could hear someone in there, talking into a speaker-phone though the replies were too tinny and distorted to be easily understood – the end of the conversation that they could hear was about internet connection speeds and the fact that the occupant of the office was not happy with them. Smith was listening, of course, but he was also looking slowly around the room like a panning camera, and Waters had learned to do the same. The cardboard boxes related mostly to IT and office equipment – printer, scanner, keyboards – but there was also in one corner a heap of discarded protective plastic wrapping that must have come from larger objects such as desks or chairs. The small desk in this room was one of the new items, standing at an odd, operationally useless angle, and the only thing upon it was a large, leafy plant in a pot, the kind that are a must-have in the modern work-space because they de-ioinise the atmosphere and bring a sense of calm; by the sound of the way the phone conversation was going, Waters thought, someone ought to move this plant into the other room. It was possible, of course, that Diver and Diver were not actually open for business yet – there was no evidence of more than one Diver nor of anyone that might resemble an associate.

  Smith half-turned towards Waters and gave the familiar shrug that somehow involved his eyebrows more than his shoulders; he had obviously seen and heard enough because he then looked back at the open door to the inner room and said loudly, ‘Shop!’

  There was an immediate silence, followed by the click of a phone being replaced or a call being ended on the speaker. They were both watching the doorway, and Waters tried to picture what the man would see – Smith short and upright in a jacket, shirt and tie as always, despite the warmth of the weather, and himself, taller and somehow more awkward, in just a sweatshirt and trousers that were almost-but-not-quite jeans – did they look like policemen? It was remarkable just how many of the people that they had to deal with knew exactly what they were, whatever they were wearing.

  But Jason Diver, it seemed, was not one of them, and the irony was not lost on Waters. There was first surprise on the face that appeared – surprise that there were two people standing in the reception-to-be – followed by a smile that was meant to be business-like because this was a brand new enterprise and it was just conceivable that they might be customers.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, I was busy on the phone. As you can see, we’re moving offices and everything is upside down – you know how it is! What can we do for you, gentlemen?’

  In these situations it would be Smith who spoke first, it always was unless they had planned something different beforehand, but for now he continued simply to stare at the man in the doorway, and Waters could guess why. Diver was as tall as himself, very thin, very blue-eyed and very blond; he could not prevent the bizarre thought that the girl he had seen climbing out of the Ferrari had actually been Jason Diver in drag. And then there was the voice, the accent – so cut-glass that it was almost comical.

  Finally Smith said, ‘This is Diver and Diver Associates?’

  ‘Yes – at your service!’

  ‘Private investigators?’

  Bemusement was not a word Waters often associated with Smith but there was undoubtedly a hint of it in that last question.

  ‘We prefer to think of ourselves as enquiry agents, but whatever the nature of your problem, your privacy is assured. As I say, we are in the process of moving but do not let that put you off – we are already operational. Would you like to come through?’ And he stepped aside and waved an arm from them into the room behind him.

  Diver’s office was larger and more impressive than expected – from the huge bay window was a view of a courtyard and a lane leading up to it that Waters had not known existed, a part of the old town, with the enclosed back gardens of what must be expensive houses or apartments. Parked in the courtyard was a black Saab convertible; Waters was practising memorizing these things for situations like this where taking the notebook out of his back pocket would be inappropriate but this one presented no problems: 1990 JD. Some of the new IT was in evidence of the desk but there was clearly more to come – cables and connections seemed to be leading in all directions from the tower that occupied one end of the table.

  ‘Please have a seat.’

  Diver went to the other side of the desk and sat in the brown leather, high-backed swivel chair – Smith and Waters took up the invitation and occupied the two seats that had been placed as if in readiness for their visit.

  Smith said, ‘Who are ‘we’, Mr Diver? You said “We prefer to think of ourselves...”’ and then he looked around the room as if to emphasise that only the three of them were present.

  ‘My partner is Katherine Diver – hence Diver and Diver.’

  He was indulging them, still smiling – it was natural that clients in sensitive situations would want to know something about the people they were about to employ to resolve those situations.

  ‘I see. And is Katherine Diver also Mrs Diver, sir?’

  The ‘sir’ was a giveaway and Smith knew it perfectly well, but young man behind the desk did not alter his expression when he heard it.

  ‘No – she is my sister. Obviously we appreciate that there are some circumstances in which our clients prefer to have a lady working for them. If you would like to explain the nature of your own situation, we can discuss which of our team would best suit you...’

  The beautifully modulated vowels faded into a silence; Diver glanced at Waters and perhaps glimpsed there some trace of amusement, or pity or some odd blending o
f the two. Then Diver’s eyes returned to Smith – Waters could not see it from where he was sitting but he knew well enough that fixed gaze, that sensation of being at the centre of the cross-hairs, wondering when the finger will begin to squeeze the trigger.

  ‘As in the case of Mrs Fellowes, sir?’

  The smile wavered and then returned – it was just conceivable that Diver and Diver had already had their first personal recommendation.

  ‘Well, naturally I cannot discuss... If Mrs Fellowes has put you in touch with us, I’m sure that we can... We would be happy to-’

  ‘I’m sorry, we should have introduced ourselves – Detective Sergeant Smith from Kings Lake Central police station, and this is Detective Constable Waters from the same.’

  Diver’s face was a little tanned as if he had enjoyed some winter sunshine far from Kings Lake Central police station, but not enough to conceal the blush that appeared in his cheeks.

  Smith continued, ‘So I do apologise for that, sir, very remiss of me. But before you make the usual noises about client confidentiality, let me say that this is just a courtesy call, nothing more. We just happened to come across Ms Diver during an investigation yesterday and thought we ought to make ourselves known to her – to avoid any embarrassment in the future.’

  It sounded so reasonable, just mutual, professional respect, and Jason Diver had certainly heard nothing like it before.

  ‘Oh, well, yes, I see. Thank you. Katherine is out ‘on the case’ at this very moment but I will tell her that you called, and I’ll make a note of your names and numbers.’

  ‘Very good of you – obviously any help we can get will be much appreciated. We like to work closely with as many agencies as possible.’

  ‘Absolutely, we feel the same. And I’m sure that it can be a two-way street, that there might be times when we could ask you... Sergeant Smith and Detective Waters, you said?’

  He was making a note on the brand new pad in front of him. After that moment of awkwardness, this had turned out to be a most fortuitous meeting.