Persons of Interest: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  He winced a little and prayed that there wouldn’t be too much detail, not on a full stomach.

  When the phone call was over, he poured another mug of tea and took it into the conservatory. Another lovely sunny morning, and this late spring was slipping by, unnoticed most of the time because he had a case on. That was one of the few things that used to annoy her, and sometimes, if it was a long-running thing, he would arrive home on a Friday evening to find the bags packed for the caravan, just for the weekend. Protest was pointless then, and, of course, it usually helped anyway – something would come to him as they walked the dog through the pinewoods or out on the dunes, as if only distance had been needed for him to see it – the grey-green distance out beyond the sea at low tide or the azure distance of the cloudless sky above them on a summer Sunday morning.

  Not half an hour, Waters had said, more like twenty minutes – that was how long he had been in Micky Lemon’s before Bridges had arrived. Take off a minute or two for the spotty youth to make a call... They were not far away, either in another bar or a flat, a house even, but not far away. Bridges and his enforcers were still there in the part of Lake that they had been watching, and they just had not been lucky yet. You need a little luck but you can’t rely on it – and the harder you work, the luckier you get. Of course, that did not mean that Tina Fellowes and Cameron Routh were in the same place; more likely that they were being held somewhere else, somewhere that would allow Bridges to keep his distance, just in case. Surveillance was all they could do until or unless RSCU came up with new intelligence – they had to find someone and follow them, and that’s about as old-fashioned as it gets these days.

  When Waters came down, Smith told him what he had planned for the day and there wasn’t much protest.

  ‘You’ll need a change of clothes if you’re going to be sitting in a car with me all evening, so we’ll do that, call in at your place on the way out this afternoon. There’s food in the kitchen if you do decide that you need to eat again, and if you want something to do, the lawnmower’s in the garden shed, key hanging up by the back door.’

  Waters somehow managed to look sad, grateful and very young all at the same time. He said, ‘OK. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Going into the office to see if I can find out what they’re not telling me yet. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’

  He left the kitchen, car keys in hand, and then came back in with a serious face.

  ‘And don’t go touching my stuff.’

  There were more people in the building and on his floor than he expected, more than usual on a Saturday, but it was impossible to say how many were involved in the case, and it was not his place to go around and ask them what they were doing. There were no messages on his desk, and when he sat at it for a few minutes no-one came up and told him what was going on. His mouth tightened in irritation; there should at least be an incident room by now, a place where things were being centrally recorded, a nerve centre. He tried Alison Reeve’s internal phone but there was no answer. Presumably she was in today, as he would have been in her situation, but he had no means of knowing.

  He could at least check the rota for tonight. It was taped up on a whiteboard. He crossed out Murray’s name and wrote in Waters’; the other car would have Wilson and Dunn again tonight, which at least gave the operation some sort of continuity. With something approaching frustration, he returned to his desk and began looking through all the surveillance reports since this started, hoping to find something that he had missed, arranging them in date order and then geographically, working outwards from The Wrestlers.

  The door opened and it was Harry Alexander, looking around for someone – unfamiliar with the room, he did not at first notice Smith at his desk. When he did so, there was a smile of recognition, followed soon after by a handshake.

  ‘Good to see you, David. I’d ask how you are enjoying life in this quiet backwater but you seem to be out in midstream at the moment! I meant to catch up yesterday but this is all a bit frantic, isn’t it?’

  Smith pointed to the other chair in front of his desk, and Alexander sat down.

  Smith said, ‘Yes, Charlie Hills said you seemed a bit focused when you went by the front desk.’

  Alexander hadn’t lost any of his sharpness – he took it on the chin, smiled and said, ‘I’ll make a point of catching up with him before I leave, David. It’s been a long time for all of us. Twenty years?’

  ‘Feels like two hundred sometimes. How is the family?’

  ‘Oh, well. All the children careered up and married. I’ll be a grandfather before I know it!’

  There was a pause and Smith would have bet the fiver that he was going to win from Murray on what would end it.

  Harry Alexander said, ‘I was sorry to hear about your wife, David. I sent a card...’

  ‘Yes, I remember that, thanks. How is your own good lady?’

  The best he could do – he couldn’t recall her name.

  ‘Ah. We divorced a couple of years ago. It was very amicable, we’re still friends.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harry. I didn’t know.’

  Another pause, one of those two hundred years moments, thought Smith. He remembered Bert Miller then, their old boss. He would have said, “What’s this, the bloody Women’s Institute? Stop nattering and get on with it, you two.”

  Smith said, ‘There ought to be an incident room for these two kids, Harry.’

  ‘There is – Cara and Alison are doing that as we speak, a big room up on the next floor. Didn’t anyone tell you?’

  It was a pointless question and Smith didn’t answer. Alexander got up as if he was expecting Smith to follow him to the room and view the progress, but Smith stayed where he was. Alexander sat again and waited.

  ‘Nobody is saying anything for certain, Harry, but I get the feeling that some of the characters involved in this would murder those two youngsters and then order in a pizza.’

  Alexander nodded.

  ‘And for those sort of characters to be involved, this has to be a massive deal.’

  ‘We believe it is.’

  ‘It’s all about the timing, then. They’ve been in Lake for some months now, and they’ve had two hostages for three weeks. It can’t be going on for much longer.’

  Alexander returned his stare. He was putting the regional head of RSCU under pressure – there was no need to say that it was for old time’s sake because Harry Alexander could feel that for himself. But if you’re on eighty thousand a year, you’ve got to expect a bit of pressure from somewhere. If it helped find Tina Fellowes and Cameron Routh, he’d put Alexander’s grandmother under a bit of pressure, too.

  ‘David, I know it feels as if you’re – I mean your teams, not just you – being kept in the dark on this one, but... This is a particularly delicate situation. There are good reasons why we’re not disclosing everything to everyone at the moment.’

  It was Smith’s turn to nod and wait, but he added in a twitch of the eyebrows for good measure.

  ‘I’ve read your witness statements. You won’t have missed it – you know what the main reason is perfectly well.’

  There are times when it’s best if someone just says it out loud, and Smith thought that this was probably one of those. If he was wrong, not much had been lost.

  ‘Yes. We’ve found a bad apple. Or at least we’ve found out that there is one in the barrel. I don’t think it’s me, though.’

  It was impossible to know how much Alexander had been told, either; Smith could understand the reasons behind it but they were playing a game of Blind Man’s Bluff in which everyone was blind-folded. Professional sensitivities are one thing, he thought, but there are lives, young lives, at stake here – everybody knows it but not everyone seems to be acting accordingly. Someone had to go out on a limb to get this thing moving, and at that moment Harry seemed to have been reading his thoughts.

  ‘What do you need to know, David?’

  ‘How big a deal?’

>   ‘Several millions at the very least. It might be considerably more.’

  ‘Heroin?’

  ‘Could be some but it’s mostly cocaine.’

  Smith still used a paper calendar. It was propped up on his desk, just a local, promotional thing with ‘Welcome To Norfolk’ printed across the top and a picture of the pier at Hunston. The dates were those for the current year but everything else was at least half a century out of place.

  ‘Your best guess as to when, Harry?’

  ‘The ship we’re most interested in is due to arrive on Tuesday afternoon.’

  Three days, and then anything could happen. Tina and Cameron might just be dropped off in town and wave a cheery goodbye to their captors but for Smith at least that was not the most likely scenario.

  ‘And this is the London organization someone mentioned earlier?’

  ‘Yes. They had a major supply route into Essex disrupted a few months ago. This is them getting back into the game.’

  The amount of money involved was huge but if what Harry Alexander was saying was right, the gang concerned had even more than that at stake – and that made them even more dangerous. Smith was looking at the dates, the days remaining on the calendar, and frowning; someone else upstairs must have already realized how critical this had become.

  Alexander said, ‘It’s a pity your local man wasn’t a bit more forthcoming.’

  ‘Stuart Routh?’

  ‘Yes. We know that they were talking to him before something went pear-shaped. He’ll know things that could put some of these people away.’

  ‘Which is just one more reason why they took out some insurance, isn’t it?’

  ‘Would it be worth bringing him in – giving him the blackest picture possible and seeing if we can change his mind?’

  Smith gave it some thought before he answered.

  ‘I doubt it. When I visited him I’d say he was looking at a pretty dark picture already. If these are the people who got Lionel Everett taken out of the game, and I’ve no reason to doubt that now, they achieved their aim. Everyone else involved got the message loud and clear.’

  Alexander had been open with him, and Smith should, by rights, return the favour and tell him about Waters’ late-night encounter with Duncan Bridges; operationally, though, that would make little difference but Waters might then be facing some sort of disciplinary action more stern than a fried breakfast. He dismissed that thought and went to the bottom line with Harry Alexander.

  ‘What has been decided if Tuesday afternoon arrives and we haven’t found them?’

  There was a longer pause then. Alexander looked down at the desk, his brow creasing as if he was still in the process of making that decision but Smith knew it wasn’t so; regional commander he might be but someone above him had already examined that scenario and come to a conclusion.

  ‘We’ll watch it closely, obviously – but, if necessary, we’ll go ahead.’

  ‘Meaning that you’ll send people in. Seize the goods and arrest a few Russian seamen. Or Portugese. Or Koreans?’

  ‘We couldn’t risk letting a shipment like that get on the road – we couldn’t risk losing one like that, David.’

  True enough, he thought, that’s a lot of dope, a whole container-load of misery – but think, too, of the publicity such seizures bring. It might make the third item on the national news. Someone had to justify the months of work that had already gone into the operation, too – someone, somewhere, could tell you exactly what it had all cost, even though the price of a life or three was difficult to quantify.

  Alexander said, ‘It will be pretty much all your own people from Kings Lake who go in. We’re not trying to muscle in and grab the glory.’

  Smith had picked up the calendar and a pen. He drew a circle in black ink around the coming Tuesday. They were done here.

  ‘To be honest, Harry, it’s another door that I’d rather be kicking in.’

  He typed The caravan’s unexpectedly free this weekend and not booked next week. You could have a few days, no charge. Shirley’s fine with that once she’s met people. Let me know. By the way, I’m still a free man, David, and then he pressed send. Getting out of the car, he looked up and down but the house was still in one piece.

  Waters was in the garden, cleaning the fresh grass cuttings off the mower. Smith cast a critical eye over the lawn before giving his verdict.

  ‘Not bad. You’ve got the stripes almost correct, first go. How are you fixed for doing it twice a week?’

  The exercise had given Waters some of his colour back.

  ‘Is it cash in hand? I could do it – I don’t have much else on at the moment.’

  Smith waited until he could see the face in front of him clearly – just a rueful smile, no self-pity as far as he could tell.

  ‘Yes you do. A promising career that would benefit from your full attention for a while, some of the best colleagues that anyone could wish for, myself included, and a terrific family with whom you’re going to be spending a couple of days this week.’

  Waters stood up, the cleaning done, and looked at Smith before he spoke.

  ‘Are you taking me off the job?’

  ‘No, not at all. You’ll be doing the shift with me tonight. John Murray was desperate to spend some time with his wife’s family, so that’s turned out just right. But tomorrow I want you to bugger off to the country estate your old man calls a house and take a breather, that’s all. We all need one now and then in this job – and I don’t consider the odd naughty weekend in my caravan as taking a breather, it’s quite the opposite. If nothing else, you’ve got to think about whether you stay on the programme, and that’s something you should discuss with your dad, face to face, not over the phone.’

  Waters put his hands into his trouser pockets and shrugged; Smith took that as a sign that he was halfway to winning this particular battle.

  Waters said, ‘What did you find out at the station?’

  If he told him everything, there was a chance that Waters would not agree to taking any time off – now it was Smith putting the blindfolds on other people. Briefly he wondered what his life would be like without the daily ironies.

  ‘Not much that we didn’t already know. Let’s say that we’re not time-rich on this one but it really doesn’t make much difference who’s sitting in which car for the next couple of days, does it?’

  ‘I don’t suppose so.’

  What was wrong with the people in his team? Last year he had started getting pressure from ‘Human Resources’ – he had inquired in the past whether there was an ‘Inhuman Resources’ department but had received no answer as yet – because his detectives were not taking their allocated leave at the required rate. He practically had to book their flights himself before John and Maggie agreed to a fortnight in Rhodes. But the problem with Waters was that when his mind was on the job, it was a good mind.

  ‘But thinking about that, DC, after last night I’m compromised, aren’t I? If we see Bridges, there’s a chance he might see me. That could have serious consequences.’

  It was a small risk that Smith had already allowed for – sometimes you take them.

  ‘True. You could wear a disguise... Or we might have to pretend to be a courting couple and go into a clinch.’

  The hen blackbird landed on the newly cut lawn, her beak full of worms. They both watched her launch herself into the air again and disappear into the bush that held the nest.

  Waters said solemnly, ‘DC, you know this job is important to me, but there are some places I’m just not prepared to go.’

  ‘Chris, I understand. I’ve lived a long and at times eventful life. I have known rejection before this moment.’

  Waters said, ‘I hope we can still be friends,’ and then they both laughed as he began pushing the mower towards the garden shed. But Smith thought, that wasn’t quite how the conversation ought to have ended. Rejection? Why did he have to go and mention rejection? And which one of them might have uttered those
immortally hopeless words – I hope we can still be friends?

  His phone had buzzed with the reply while they were still out on the lawn but he did not look at it until he was back in the house and on his own – A shame. If I hadn’t already made plans, I might have taken you up on that. Been meaning to ring since yesterday, something odd has come up. Can tell you’re working – let me know a good time, J X.

  Ah, plans... And how could she tell he was working? But that was easy, of course – the “unexpectedly free” in his own message said it all.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Wilson and Dunn had arrived first by a few minutes and taken the prime position again, watching the front entrance of The Wrestlers. Smith drove into the side-street, this time parking on the side nearest to the pub, and doing so almost unconsciously because it had been drilled into him deeply a long time ago; avoid routine, never be complacent, the tiniest things make the biggest differences. Nevertheless, there wasn’t much to look forward to – maybe Waters would be able to explain the finer points of Goth culture if the un-dead threesome appeared again, but presumably that wouldn’t be until after the sun had gone down.

  After the conversation with Alexander, he had found Alison Reeve up in the new incident room with Cara Freeman – they were arranging the furniture. He took her to one side and asked whether she was aware of the timing on the RSCU operation in the docks, aware that whoever was running Bridges and his security staff only needed hostages for perhaps three more days. Yes, she was, she said, but what can we do? As she spoke, Smith wondered who ‘we’ were. Is it us, he thought, the mere mortals, the foot soldiers? She was talking about regional commanders and assistant chief constables as if she had just encountered such beings for the first time but he couldn’t blame her – she hadn’t had his thirty years to realise that whilst we might all be humble foot soldiers, those who lead us all have feet of clay. DCI Freeman was impressive when you got to know her, he could acknowledge that, and Alison Reeve had been impressed; it would be another one of those ironies if the DCI who had come looking for him ended up by taking away his DI. He had left them to it, plugging in phones and asking a technician to network the computers, and he had not been annoyed, not even disappointed – he was too busy thinking it through again to bother with any of that.