Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Waters said thanks for the tea, and then, ‘I reckon I’ve got him going out of the hotel on the Saturday morning. Just after eleven o’clock. Look.’

  It was Sokoloff without a doubt, a big man walking away from the hotel’s entrance and then left towards the harbour. He wore no jacket, and those were not the trousers of his suit, either. A casual, cream-coloured polo shirt and casual, camel-coloured slacks. Without being asked, Waters re-ran the sequence several times. It was not ten seconds long and it seemed to give them very little.

  Waters said, ‘He’s on his own. He might be going to meet someone but equally he might just be going out for a stroll around the town on a sunny morning. Not wearing a jacket, so I doubt whether he was going very far. I suppose he might have walked round to Lighterman Street and got into his car from there.’

  A shadow fell over the screen and John Murray watched the next replay with them.

  He said, ‘Is that our man?’

  Smith said, ‘Yes. Fits right in, doesn’t he? Just a regular visitor.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s what he was, DC.’

  Smith looked around at Murray then and saw the piece of paper in his big hand.

  ‘What’ve you got, John?’

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s anything yet. In the briefing this morning, you said that the guest register at the pub might have been tampered with. What were the dates involved?’

  With an entirely unconvincing air of impatience, Smith said, ‘You do realise that the information you require has been placed on the central database for this investigation by Detective Constable Waters?’

  ‘Yes, DC. But I thought that as the two of you were standing just a few feet away from my desk…’

  ‘Don’t worry, John – I’m sure you’ll all get the hang of it in the end. Are you going to give me that piece of paper or what?’

  Three hundred and thirty pounds to Ikea for a new single bed; two hundred and twelve pounds to the Green Dragon Chinese restaurant in Ilford – and that must have been quite a repast – and fifty six pounds’ worth of petrol bought at a BP fuel station.

  Smith said, ‘I know that a certain class of person thinks that Ikea designs are criminal but I don’t fancy calling the CPS on it.’

  Murray was shaking his head.

  Smith looked again before he said, ‘That’s one hell of a Chinese meal, John. Are you telling me Bernard was a member of the triads as well as being an East End mobster?’

  Waters leaned across to see the paper in Smith’s hand.

  He said, ‘Where was the fuel station, John?’

  ‘Bingo. That’s the BP station on the Hunston by-pass, the one we’ve driven past several times already this week.’

  Smith focused in on the item on Murray’s list, re-reading it several times to be certain.

  ‘No mistake on the date?’

  ‘No. We can easily check with the garage’s records but it’s genuine. Sokoloff’s card was used to buy fuel there on the 17th of July.’

  Smith stared at John Murray’s notes again but this time he wasn’t seeing the letters and numbers – he was trying to see past them to the event itself. Was it morning, afternoon or evening? Which way was the Mercedes facing? North towards the coast or south, going back to the smoke? Was there anyone else in the vehicle? Was there even the remotest chance that the fuel station’s anti-drive-away CCTV for that date was still in existence?

  He said to Murray, ‘Good work. We can dig a bit deeper on this. Get back to the bank and see if you can get the time of day on it.’

  Murray went to go straight away, and Smith stopped him.

  ‘John? Is there anything else to go with that, on or around the same date?’

  Murray had already checked.

  ‘Nothing. Whatever he did while he was up there in July didn’t involve using that card. Cash, maybe, or another card we don’t know about.’

  ‘OK. See if you can get that time of day.’

  Detective Inspector Terek had made one small but significant change to the arrangement of desks and chairs in room 17 – he had added one of each for himself, something that DI Reeve had never done. She often came into the room during an operation, and often sat down with them, but Terek had decided that a more permanent presence was required. He was looking up from his desk now, and the quizzical expression on his face might mean that he had realised there had been some sort of development.

  Smith turned to Waters and said, ‘The next time you see that Gina Clarke, you should offer to buy her a doughnut.’

  ‘I’m certain she would rather the offer came from you, DC.’

  ‘What do you make of it, though? If you were being pernickety, you’d say that it doesn’t prove Sokoloff was at Hunston, only that his bank card was. But common sense tells us that it was in Bernard’s own hand when it was used to buy fuel, and that the fuel probably went into his Mercedes – two months ago. Even better; the date he filled up is one of those which has been so craftily replaced in the register at The Queens Arms. Doesn’t prove a thing, of course, but what are the odds?’

  Waters said, ‘We should take it to DI Terek. We ought to be talking to Williams again. The arson attack gives us the perfect excuse, even if it wasn’t connected.’

  ‘Not connected? And what are the chances of that? No need to worry about our new DI, though - I bet you Gina Clarke’s doughnut that he’ll be over within five minutes. That sounds a bit wrong, I know, about Gina’s doughnut, but our Simon isn’t so short-sighted that he hasn’t seen that Murray just brought us something. Remember what I’ve been telling you about managing up? You’ve been practising on me since the second week you were here but soon enough you’ll be doing it for real. If we go charging over to him saying we’re off to Barnham or Overy again, there’ll be another post-mortem into the ins and outs of that. Whereas if we…?’

  ‘Wait until he tells us to go?’

  ‘Because he thinks he…?’

  ‘Worked it out for himself?’

  ‘Precisely. And here we go. Look industrious or something.’

  Terek stood by Smith’s desk, staring at the screen to see if he could work out what was going on without having to ask. He couldn’t and so he did ask, and Smith said that Murray had come up with a funny little detail that might be of interest – it was difficult to be sure at this stage…

  Thirty minutes later, the Peugeot was heading for the coast once more.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Waters went into the BP garage while Smith waited in the car out on the forecourt. There were cameras on the front of the shop but there was little chance that they would be able to find any record of a routine purchase made two months ago. Still, you take every long-shot that you can, and occasionally you hit something.

  When Waters walked back he was shaking his head, confirming Smith’s suspicions. As he got in, folding his six foot something almost in two, he said, ‘It’s on a two-week deletion. But I managed to get them to agree to look up the rotas, so we’ll get the name of whoever was on duty eventually. I left them my number.’

  As Smith pulled away, Waters was back into his iPad, which was pretty much all he had done since they left Kings Lake. He had it propped up on his right knee, and Smith could not have seen what was on the screen if he had wanted to, but he could guess that it was as likely to concern the detective constable’s love life as his professional one. Katherine had been giving him the run-around, much as Smith had predicted when it first got going. Which made him think about Sheila and how lucky he had been himself, and then that made him think about Jo, and the text he had received early that morning. She apologised for not calling him as promised the night before. They had been having dinner on a boat on the river Isar – one of these romantic restaurants that float about as you dine on your wiener schnitzel – and the engine had broken down. Didn’t get home until after midnight, she had written, so much for German engineering! I’ll try again tonight. And, of course, he couldn’t help wondering who ‘they’ might have i
ncluded.

  Strange. We cannot see the future, we can only imagine it, which isn’t the same thing at all. And if we could see it, would we be able to bear it? If, five years ago, he had looked into a dark glass and seen how his marriage was to end, what then?

  Without warning and apparently from nowhere, music filled the car – drums and bass and backing singers oohing away before Julie Shapiro launched into the chorus of ‘This Little Broken Heart’. Waters stabbed a finger at the iPad three or four times before he managed to turn the thing off, apologising as he did so.

  Smith turned slowly and looked long before he said, ‘Are you trying to send me a message? Is this about my decision to retire? I know it might seem like the end of your world now but time is a great healer.’

  No, Waters explained, it wasn’t that, though he did expect to need counselling at some point – it was just that as they were going back to The Queens Arms, he thought it possible that they might meet the owner this time. He had been doing a little more research, that was all. And he had never met anyone famous, apart from Smith, obviously.

  ‘Well, I’ve interviewed one or two celebrities over the years, and the one thing they all had in common was feet of clay. If you don’t know what that means, we should track down your RE teacher and prosecute him, or her. What else have you found out about Miss Shapiro?’

  ‘She was a bit more than an overnight sensation. She had several hits, one after another. The one I just played got to the top of the charts. She also appeared on something called Top Of The Pops. Whatever went wrong must have happened suddenly, she just seemed to go off the radar completely. Six years ago, as part of what this article calls the retro revival, they released a CD of her greatest hits. If I bought it, do you think DI Terek would sign it off as an expense?’

  Waters was very good at keeping a straight face these days.

  Smith said, ‘Absolutely, yes. It’s highly likely that hidden away in those meaningful lyrics is the key to explaining what happened to Bernard Sokoloff. Go for it.’

  ‘Right, I will.’

  Smith glanced across again and saw Waters tapping away. Waters saw the look and said, ‘Downloading to iTunes. We can play the whole CD in a minute or two.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  They were passing the left turn down towards Barnham Staithe, and Waters looked that way until it was out of sight. Smith shook his head a little at youth in general, and at lovelorn detective constables in particular.

  After a minute or so, Waters said, ‘I quite like the old pop music, DC. It has a sort of innocence, doesn’t it, compared to all the explicit stuff today?’

  Smith didn’t answer, but thought, well, yes it does.

  ‘It must take you back, hearing all those old tunes. Music is very evocative for the elderly. My nan loves a good sing-song in her retirement home.’

  Smith looked at Waters again but there was only the usual, slightly day-dreaming expression, and no hint that he knew Smith was watching him. I take it back, thought Smith; he’s very, very good at keeping a straight face these days.

  ‘Mr Williams, I could say that we were just passing and heard about your spot of bother, but that would be a lie. We’ve come down specially from Kings Lake to see it for ourselves. But are you absolutely certain that someone didn’t leave the chip-pan on? That’s the commonest reason for fires in kitchens, so they tell me.’

  Williams’ face had not lit up with delight when they walked back into the bar of The Queens Arms. The pub had just opened and there were no customers as yet, but the patrol car was still parked outside, and that’s never a welcoming sign for any passing trade. It was Constable Warren again, and Smith had managed a few words with him before speaking to the bar manager. ‘A bit dismissive,’ Warren had said, ‘Just wants us out of the way, I think. He didn’t seem interested in who did it – just wanted the crime number for the insurance. It’s only minor damage, really.’

  Williams had made no attempt to move from the centre of the bar where he had been standing when the detectives came in from the car park. He glared at Smith and said, ‘I been through this already twice this morning. As it burned a bit of the side door which is over there,’ pointing behind them, ‘and the kitchen is where it was the last time you was here, I doubt if it was a bloody chip-pan fire, man!’

  Like many Welsh people, Williams seemed to get more Welsh when he was angry, and probably when he was tipsy. And also when there was rugby on the television, most likely…

  Smith, however, was satisfied that he had Mr Williams’ full attention now.

  ‘Over here, you say. Right, let’s have a look at the damage – at the scene of the crime.’

  It was, or had been until very recently, an old-style UPVC door, quite out of keeping with the rest of the property – a cheap option because it was never intended to be seen or used by the public – and the attempt that had been made to set fire to it was equally basic. One needed no training in the forensics of arson to work out that someone had poured a flammable liquid in through the letterbox, and had then set it alight. Several square feet of the carpet nearest to the door was heavily scorched, and above that the low ceiling was covered in oily-looking smoke damage. The door itself, or at least the area immediately below the letterbox, had warped and partially melted without ever properly catching fire. If it had done so, the result might have been very different, because there were exposed beams in that ceiling, and if the flames had got hold of those, the entire building might have gone for good.

  Smith said, ‘I see what you mean, sir. The only way this could have been a chip-pan fire was if the pan had caught alight in the kitchen and then someone had picked it up by the handle and ran this way, trying to get it out of the building. If they had then tripped here on the carpet – which is a little rucked up – they might have thrown the burning fat onto the door and produced an effect not unlike this one.’

  Williams was looking at Waters. It wasn’t exactly an appeal for help but there was something in the look that the detective constable recognised because he had seen it a number of times before – it was the look that people had when they were being thrown off-guard and before they had realised that this was so. Waters gave his practised shrug, the one that seemed to be saying, I know, this is what I have to put up with all day long.

  Williams said, ‘Why in God’s name would I invent a story about some kids trying to start a fire if it was a flaming chip-pan?’

  Smith looked surprised – ‘I couldn’t say, Mr Williams. People do the funniest things when they’re under pressure. Insurance? Perhaps the pay-out is more complicated if the owner’s carelessness is to blame. Have you got all the regulation extinguishers and fire-blankets in the kitchen?’

  For a brief moment they had in front of them the same Mr Williams who had threatened Waters with the bat a couple of days ago; there were chords in his thick neck, straining taut with the effort to control his temper, and his face had flushed darker. And the angrier he became, the more blithely unaware of it Smith seemed to be.

  He said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr Williams. I don’t think it is a chip-pan fire cover-up – I’m just saying that’s one interpretation of the evidence in front of us. It’s our job, to consider all possibilities. We don’t like to jump to conclusions. Now – these kids you were talking about. Were they in the bar last night? We’d like lists of everyone you can remember who was in the bar, as well as everyone who was staying overnight. We’ll need to speak to them all, today.’

  Williams had gone to protest but he had already missed his moment – suddenly the detective sergeant was business-like to the point of being rather brisk. In fact, he was walking away as the bar manager began to answer, and both he and Waters had to follow on back to the bar.

  So no, there hadn’t actually been a group of youngsters in the bar last night. ‘But obviously,’ said Williams, ‘it’s the first thing you think of, isn’t it, when there’s a bit of stupidity like that… Bit of vandalism from the bored youths in the vill
age, most likely.’

  There was a long moment of silence then, in which Smith looked from Williams to Waters and back again, with a puzzled frown, as if Williams had answered in an entirely foreign language instead of one that was only moderately so.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Williams, but it was most definitely not the first thing we thought of when we were told about the fire this morning. Detective Constable Waters and I both had quite different thoughts to that. We thought about the two gentlemen with whom you had an altercation yesterday lunchtime. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten that they managed to wind you up to the point where you almost attacked Detective Constable Waters with the schoolgirls’ version of a baseball bat because you thought he must in some strange way be associated with them.’

  Williams was shaking his head but the thought could not have come as any surprise to him, Waters concluded; only an idiot would have expected two policemen not to have put two and two together in such an obvious way as that. Another silence, during which Waters caught sight of the woman from the kitchen – she came to the door and looked at what she had heard going on, and then she retreated out of sight again. Smith hadn’t raised his voice at all but there was something in the tone of it at moments like these which compelled attention.

  Smith said, “Would you describe yourself as a rather phlegmatic man, Mr Williams?’

  If Williams knew the meaning of the word, he wasn’t giving anything away.

  ‘Because when we asked you about those two characters yesterday, you dismissed it as a misunderstanding, a bit odd but nothing for us to worry about. And now we’re here less than twenty four hours later because someone tried to burn down this building last night while there were people inside, and you’re telling us it was most likely “a bit of vandalism from the bored youths in the village”. You seem to me remarkably composed for a man suffering such travails, Mr Williams.’