Smith said, ‘And you can also stop the offensive language, sir. It’s a breach of the peace, and more to the point, I don’t like it.’
Holding the man’s surprised stare, Smith also managed to take in something of the rest of the bar. A thin, unhealthy-looking character sat at the far end of the counter, an empty pint glass in front of him, watching the unfolding confrontation with mild interest, as if this sort of thing happened here most lunchtimes. Further back, at one of the tables, half-hidden in the shadows created by the sun streaming in through a window, two older men were doing the same. Smith had the feeling that if the attack on Waters had gone ahead – or even if was to do so now – none of these people were likely to intervene.
‘Oh – you don’t like it? You’ll like it a bit less if I wraps it around your effing head!’
Ah – Welsh. That explains some of it, then.
‘I’ve asked you politely to stop the threatening behaviour and the offensive language. If you continue to refuse to do so, you’re giving me no alternative but to arrest you. I can guarantee that the matter will be dealt with at Kings Lake rather than Hunston and that it will involve an overnight stay in the custody suite. Please hand the bat to Detective Constable Waters.’
The man’s anger was subsiding a little, enough for him to at least allow for the possibility that the two men in front of him might be who they were claiming to be.
‘Anyone can claim to be coppers… But you two don’t look much like it, no more than the others. Seen no ID or nothing, have I?’
He looked across towards the two men in the shadows, and sure enough one of them shook his head in support.
Reaching into the inside pocket of the jacket that was still slung over his shoulder, Smith stepped closer to the man – to within three or four feet. It was intentional, a clear statement that he was not to be intimidated. He took out his warrant card in its old leather case and presented it to the bartender’s face.
‘I am Detective Sergeant Smith from Kings Lake Central police and this is Detective Constable Waters from the same. For the second time, sir, please hand the bat to my colleague. Then you can tell me what this is all about.’
There are plenty of sound operational reasons why you do not conduct interviews with people carrying offensive weapons, but this was also about control and a battle of wills. The man took his time reading the warrant card but he could only make that last for so long before he had to decide whether to give way – and one thing had become clear to him; the lightly-built man behind the warrant card had no intention whatsoever of giving way himself.
The bartender flipped the rounders bat into the air, and it completed one hundred and eighty degrees of a revolution before he caught it by the business end and held it out towards Waters.
Smith had asked if there was somewhere quiet that they could talk – he didn’t want any sort of an audience, or anyone overhearing what he had to say. The man led them behind the bar through to a kitchen, where a middle-aged woman was working, slicing up loaves of bread – he said to her, ‘Marge, get the bar, will you? I need five minutes with these two,’ and she left without a word, though she must have heard all the commotion.
Owen Williams had managed The Queens Arms for the past four years, and no, they didn’t have a lot of trouble out here but, today you see – and Smith stopped him there, which was unusual, thought Waters. Normally Smith would have let the man talk away, watching closely while he did so.
Smith said, ‘You manage the bar, Mr Williams. Can I ask you where the owners are today?’
There was hesitation, which was understandable – Waters himself couldn’t see the relevance of that just at the moment.
Williams said, ‘Well, she… Look, me sounding off like that, nothing to do with her, is it? No need to bother her.’
‘I don’t think I said I intended to bother her, sir. I simply asked where she is today.’
Williams was a man not accustomed to going backwards or sideways, thought Waters – he’s a man who generally goes where he wants to go, when he wants to go. Powerfully built, with long arms, almost too long for his squat, broad frame, Williams’ thick, reddish hair had been dealt with severely by its last barber – it was little more than a crew-cut. Thinking back a few minutes, Waters realised that he should have been somewhat more afraid than he had been.
‘I expect she’s up in her room, then.’
‘And her name, Mr Williams?’
Again the curious reluctance to give a straight and immediate answer. In fact, Williams didn’t answer at all and it was Smith who spoke next.
‘The only reason I ask is that I’ve been a customer myself in the past, sir. Not for a few years, but I wondered whether it was still the same lady.’
If that was intended to reassure Owen Williams in some indirect way, it worked.
He said, ‘Well, I should think it is. More than twenty years she’s owned it.’
‘And her name? I could just go out and look at the posters on the wall, of course!’
Williams looked hard at Smith, as if he was coming to some sort of a decision, and then he said, ‘Yes, you could. No need, though. Julie Shapiro. The Julie Shapiro.’
The name meant nothing to Waters, but Smith said, ‘Yes, of course, I remember now.’
The fact that Smith remembered seemed to matter to Williams – he nodded and looked at Waters as if to say, there you are, then.
Smith said, ‘So, Mr Williams, you said that you don’t get a lot of bother out here normally, but today…? What happened today? I’m assuming that’s why you decided to threaten and verbally assault my colleague – that he came in on the end of something?’
The smile was friendly enough but the words were serious, and meant to remind Williams that he would do best to maintain his more professional demeanour now that lines of official communication had been established.
‘Well, yes. Sorry about that, young man. We’d just had a couple of characters trying to throw their weight about, see, and I was still flying, you know, and then you came in and started asking questions, without so much as a by-your-leave. I thought you were more of the same. Sorry, again.’
Smith looked from Williams to Waters and back again.
‘I see, sir. If DC Waters didn’t make it clear who he was, that’s remiss of him. Our turn to apologise.’
Waters knew better than to protest his innocence at this point. His warrant card was still in his hand from when he had attempted to show it to the bartender. Smith was almost certainly sacrificing a pawn to gain a better position. Williams was nodding again.
‘So, sir. What exactly did these visitors say or do that got you so annoyed that you frightened DC Waters half to death? How were they throwing their weight about, as you put it?’
‘Look – I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. You gets used to it working in a bar. Some people have the attitude, don’t they, and you has to let them know who’s boss, that’s all.’
Smith was nodding now, as if a full and frank explanation had been given.
‘A couple of characters, you said, Mr Williams?’
‘Yes.’
‘Two men?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did you happen to notice what sort of vehicle they were driving?’
Waters, in all the excitement, hadn’t made the connection.
‘No, sorry, I didn’t see that. But like I said, I don’t want-’
‘But obviously you can give us a full description. We’ll do that first of all, just in case this is the start of something bigger, you know – we don’t want serial insulters of bar staff on the loose in this part of the world, do we? Not with tourism being so important to the local economy. My colleague will take all the details.’
Williams was reluctant but found himself in no position to refuse. Waters tapped the details of suitably vague descriptions into his iPad as Smith left them to it and wandered around the kitchen; at one point, he went back to the doorway and gazed into the bar, a
s if he was slightly bored, but Waters knew better; something had piqued Smith’s interest. Suitably vague descriptions they might be, but neither detective had any doubt that the men being described were the occupants of the car that had driven Smith’s Peugeot off the road not many minutes ago.
When that was done, Smith returned and said, ‘Good, well done. Almost photographic, those descriptions. We could probably get CAD-fits done from those alone. Now, I’d like you to tell me, Mr Williams, exactly what these men said to you. What was it they were after?’
Williams had allowed his buttons to be pushed, and said in return, ‘Look! I’ve told you! Nothin’ happened, we just ‘ad a few words and they buggered off! Not as if I’m pressin’ charges, is it?’
Waters was expecting the look when it came – theatrical surprise at the questionee’s response. He had seen it a hundred times before, and gave his usual shrug in reply.
‘Well, no, sir – you might not be but as for us… Your threatening behaviour earlier on needs to be more fully accounted for, in my opinion. If DC Waters decides to bring charges himself, you’re going to need something to say in mitigation, if convicted. These things are best said to us now, rather than by your solicitor in the magistrates’ court.’
Owen Williams didn’t know what to make of it. The detective sergeant appeared to be in complete earnest about this, even though the arrival of the police could have nothing to do with his confrontation with the drivers of the Lexus. Somehow the situation had got entirely out of control.
‘If you could just tell me what they said to you, Mr Williams. Their exact words wherever possible…’
Two men had come into the bar about half an hour ago, quite smartly dressed, and at first the manager had thought that they were business types having lunch somewhere different for a change. They were not local, though, their accents gave that away – southerners. Smith had said then, ‘Londoners, maybe?’, and Williams answered that he couldn’t say that for sure. Anyway, they hadn’t even ordered a drink before one of them started saying they were looking for a friend of theirs who’d been staying in the area. They gave a name, but it wasn’t one that Williams knew and he told them so.
Instead of accepting that and buying a drink, one of the men, the younger one, became insistent. He said that the landlord knew who they were talking about, and one way or another he was going to tell them where this man was.
Smith had interrupted then and said, ‘And all this came out of the blue? You had no idea who this man was that they claimed to be looking for?’
No, said Williams, all bloody nonsense as far as he was concerned.
‘And the name of the man they were looking for was?’
Williams had shrugged and said that he couldn’t remember that – things were getting a little heated by then. Smith had looked long and hard at Williams before he said that perhaps someone in the bar might remember. They would have heard all this, wouldn’t they? Williams shrugged again, shrugging a little too often now, and Waters didn’t need the glance from Smith to tell him that not recalling the name of the man so sought after by the southerners was a little hard to believe.
Smith said then, ‘So, to get this absolutely clear, Mr Williams – two men that you’ve never seen before came into your bar and wanted to know the whereabouts of a man you’ve never heard of. And when you said you couldn’t help them, they turned nasty, and you had to throw them out – or at least ask them to leave?’
‘That’s it! Crazy, isn’t it? You can see why I got a bit mad, eh?’
‘I can, in a way… But – and I can only hope and pray that you’re going to manage your astonishment a little differently this time, Mr Williams – the really crazy thing is that Detective Constable Waters and I also came here today to ask you whether you have any knowledge of a certain person. Now we don’t claim that this person was a friend of ours but we are very interested in what he was getting up to last weekend. And you’re absolutely sure that you cannot recall anything about the name that those other two visitors gave you when they came into the bar no more than forty minutes ago?’
Yes, he was absolutely sure of that. Who is the person that they are making inquiries about this morning?
Waters had the iPad at the ready, and when Smith gave him the go-ahead, he showed the image to Owen Williams. Both detectives watched him closely but there was no reaction other than a shake of the head as he said, ‘No. I don’t recall him.’
Smith said, ‘Does the name Bernard Sokoloff mean anything to you, Mr Williams?’
‘No… Don’t think I’ve ever heard of him, either.’
‘Is that name anything like the name of the man that your earlier visitors were asking after?’
‘Probably not, then. It hasn’t rung any bells at all…’
‘Not the sort of name you’d forget, is it? Sokoloff? Anyway, thank you for your cooperation, Mr Williams. May I ask how many rooms you have to let here? Just bed and breakfast, I assume.’
The question wrong-footed Williams a little, but the answer was three, two doubles and one twin, and yes, in answer to the next question, they had been fully booked for most of the summer.
Smith was making a point of eyeing the sandwiches, then. He apologised for disrupting the work in the kitchen, and said that the least they could do was to have their own lunch here, especially if Marge could manage a crab salad. Mr Williams wouldn’t mind, would he, if they showed the picture on DC Waters’ iPad to the customers in the bar while they waited? Mr Williams said he wouldn’t mind but as he was here seven days a week himself, no rest for the wicked, it was very unlikely that anyone else would recognise the man if he hadn’t himself. Smith said he understood, quite understood, but this was the worst thing about his own job, making routine inquiries. Most of the time, it comes to nothing at all.
As they were leaving the kitchen, they passed the said Marge on her way back. Smith apologised graciously to her as well, for disturbing her preparation, and then he asked whether she used fresh lemon juice in her crab salads. When she said that she did so, Smith complimented her and said how much he was looking forward to it. The woman flushed at the unaccustomed attention, and went on her way, determined to make two exceptionally fine ones, which, Waters had no doubt, was exactly what Smith had intended from the beginning.
Chapter Seventeen
The middle-aged couples had left The Queens Arms already, perhaps made uncomfortable by the scene they had witnessed, followed by the arrival of the police. Their place had been taken by two younger people and their two well-behaved small children; this was important, as Smith had a distinct aversion to eating in the presence of disruptive ones and was inclined to let the parents know in such situations.
The three men, however, were still present in that timeless way in which some people seem to inhabit a bar, as if they are part of a painted background in front of which other performers come and go. The unhealthy-looking man at the bar stared at the picture on the iPad and shook his head in a mournful fashion; Smith asked him if he was a regular here, and at that the man looked a little more cheerful, because he could answer yes to that one.
In the shadowy alcove, the two older men regarded the iPad itself with suspicion, before saying that they too had never seen anyone like that around here. The bigger of the two, in overalls and his sixties, with a thick handlebar of a moustache and heavily oil-stained fingers, said, ‘Looks like a nasty piece of work. What’s he done?’
Waters said, ‘We’re not sure what he’s been up to – finding out where he has been is our first priority. Are you in here most days?’
The moustached man glanced at his drinking companion before he answered, ‘That’s a bit of a leading question, that is. Implications could be drawn from that. But yes, we are. I reckon that if your man had been around, one of us three here would’ve spotted him.’
Smith chose a table at the other end of the bar, near the back entrance to the pub. The door was open, and there was a view of a yard that had a stack of
pallets, a disorderly row of empty beer barrels and the variously coloured plastic bins that recycling policies now demand. It wasn’t neat and tidy, and though Williams had claimed that the rooms had been busy all summer, there were surprisingly few people here in the bar on a sunny September lunchtime. The place had undoubtedly gone downhill a little since his last visit some years ago.
Waters checked the iPad for a wi-fi signal but there was no sign of one. Smith waited with resigned patience until Waters had exhausted all possibilities and then he said, ‘Right. Imagine a new scenario, imagine that you are sitting where I am, and that next to you is a rookie DC, fresh out of the academy or whatever it might be called in the brave new world of law enforcement that is always about to get going. Got it so far?’
Waters was paying attention.
‘OK. Other than the change in personnel that I have just explained, everything else has occurred just as it has this morning. Only now, it’s down to you to draw some inferences or make deductions or whatever it is we do. It’s down to you to decide what happens next.’
Waters was still paying attention but showing no signs of doing anything in addition to that. After a short intermission, Smith said, ‘Feel free to begin whenever it suits you.’
‘Right…’
Owen Williams reappeared behind the bar. He looked in their direction, and then without being asked he pulled three pints with the hand-pumps, one pale brew and two of a much darker one. The individual at the bar reached across and took the pale ale, and the man who had said nothing at all as he sat beside the other in the alcove, got up and fetched the two dark beers. As far as Smith could see, no money had changed hands. Perhaps they ran accounts and settled up at the end of the month.
Waters stretched his long form a little further, folded his arms and leaned back in the chair. His face had that faraway look which meant that there was probably still time for a cigarette out by those bins, but it wouldn’t be right, not before a crab salad. Then Smith fell to wondering whether he might run a pub in his retirement – he would have to do something, he couldn’t float about in a dinghy all day and every day.
Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation Page 15