Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  They arrived in Overy at a little after nine o’clock. Smith pulled over to the side of the road two hundred yards short of The Queens Arms and the four of them had spoken briefly again. He had said, ‘We might end up looking heavy-handed here. If her first answers are just the oh-it-must-have-slipped-my-mind sort, and she brazens it out, the best we can do is get annoyed and make the statement-taking uncomfortable.’

  Terek shrugged and said, ‘Agreed. But you’ve met the woman – you didn’t give us the impression half an hour ago that she’s the sort to brazen it out, DC.’

  ‘And I don’t think she is. I’m saying, though, that we have to play this very much by ear. But we’ll start off as we agreed. All set?’

  They pulled into the car-park, got out and Waters made a show of photographing the registrations of the five vehicles already present. Then, led by Smith, they entered the building. A young woman was wiping over the tiled floor with a mop and bucket; she stopped and stared in surprise at the unexpected and official-looking arrival of four stern-faced individuals. Smith glanced around, and saw two tables at the far end set with cutlery and condiments for the fried breakfast that was cooking in the kitchen behind the bar – one couldn’t see it but one could certainly smell it.

  The girl said, ‘Can I help you?’ and then Williams appeared from the corridor that led out to the rear yard. He saw Smith first and then three more detectives.

  ‘Jesus H Christ! Now what?’

  “A case of mistaken identity, Mr Williams, but be not afraid – we’re not here to speak to you on this occasion. Can you tell me whether Marjorie Harris is in the building, please?’

  The expression on the bar manager’s face in those first few, vital seconds might have been anger, it might have been fear, but it was not plain old-fashioned surprise, and that told Smith a great deal. In that moment, he decided that they were keeping to the plan agreed in room 17 – one way or another he was getting Marjorie Harris out of this building before the interview proper began.

  Serena Butler sat in the back seat with her, rather than the more usual front one, there to be talked to if the woman wanted, but they travelled back to Kings Lake in virtual silence. On a couple of occasions, Smith saw Serena looking at him with a quizzical expression that meant do you want me to chat to her, and he had shaken his head – if he was right about Marjorie Harris, the longer she had to dwell on all this, the better.

  He drew up in Market Street so that Detective Constable Butler could take her in through the front entrance, which was more imposing and intimidating than the one that they invariably used for themselves; then Smith drove around to the rear car-park. Once back inside, he checked his phone but there was nothing yet from DI Terek or Waters – and there might not be for an hour or so. The plan was for them to make a thorough nuisance of themselves now that there had been mysterious new developments in the investigation into the disappearance of Bernard Sokoloff. People would need to be interviewed and re-interviewed, including the present guests who plainly had absolutely nothing to do with the events of the previous weekend. Life at The Queens Arms would be showing no signs of returning to normal any time soon. ‘And,’ Smith had said to Terek, ‘it’ll give you a chance to meet everyone.’

  When they took Marjorie Harris upstairs, Smith left her at the doorway into room 17 with Serena while he went across and found a pretext to chat with Murray. The room was busy but eventually every officer had looked across and seen the woman who had been brought in for questioning by Detective Sergeant Smith, and with every look she should be feeling a little more afraid. She had no trace of a criminal record, and if she had ever in her life been inside a police station before, Smith was sure that she had not gone beyond a counter with a Charlie Hills behind it.

  Serena Butler could play the reassuring female presence to perfection. She sat beside Marjorie Harris as Smith deliberately fussed and fiddled over ensuring that the forthcoming interview would be taped and video-recorded; she asked regularly whether the poor woman was alright and whether she needed a cup of tea, to the point where Marjorie must have been convinced that there really was something to be afraid of, after all.

  Finally, Smith was ready, and Serena came around to sit on his side of the desk in the interview room – another move designed to test the interviewee’s nerve. He explained her legal rights at this stage in the proceedings; she was not under arrest, and she was nowhere near being under arrest, but, nevertheless, she was entitled to legal advice before she answered any questions at all. Would she like to speak to someone before the interview began?

  Her answer was a slightly bemused no, she could not see why she needed to do that… Smith winced a little and glanced at Serena Butler. Marjorie Harris saw the look, just as he had intended, and then he said, ‘That’s fine, Marjorie. Is it OK to use your first name, by the way? Good. As I say, you don’t have to have legal representation at this stage. And if you change your mind at any point, you say so; we will stop the interview and arrange for you to speak to a solicitor. OK?’

  All this was having the desired effect, so much so that he felt a momentary twinge of guilt for what he was doing to the guileless woman in front of him – and he was convinced already that she was just that. Even so, this still required careful handling. His investigative instincts were telling him that he was just inches away from the thread which, if carefully pulled, might begin to unravel the mystery around Bernard Sokoloff’s demise, but his experience was telling him something else – that a moment’s carelessness in questioning a witness can cause a case to collapse.

  After the drama of that heightening tension, a return to the mundane as Smith checked her details again – her full name and her place of residence, how long she had lived and worked at The Queens Arms, and so on. He thanked her each time she gave an answer, and then put down the pencil he had been using to enter her responses into his notebook – an entirely superfluous procedure, of course, with all the technology making digital records, but watching their answers being written down can unnerve the interviewee much more than the blinking light on a video camera.

  An hour had elapsed since Marjorie Harris got into the detective’s car, and ten minutes since she sat down in this interview room. She understood in some vague way what he was doing – making her wait and worry, and found that difficult to equate with the rather nice man who had chatted to her in the kitchen and then had been so complimentary about her food.

  And as if he had been reading her mind, he said, ‘Right then, Marjorie. First of all, I should say that this has absolutely nothing to do with that excellent crab salad you served up a couple of days ago.’

  Then he turned to the young woman beside him and said, ‘Lovely. When this is all over, you should get out to Overy and try it.’

  He was smiling at Marjorie then, and that remark about this being all over and the implication that things might return to normal gave her a kind of hope; perhaps the matter wasn’t so serious after all.

  Then the detective was opening the iPad on the table in front of him. He pressed buttons and pictures of a man appeared, glaring into the camera that had taken it – the heavy, dark features photographed first from the front and then the side. Everyone knew that the police took pictures like these. He pushed it around so that she could see the screen the right way up.

  ‘Marjorie. Can you tell me whether you recognise this man?’

  She shook her head.

  Smith said, ‘You don’t recognise him or you can’t tell me?’

  When she spoke, the woman had the sense of her words tumbling out too quickly, and that was because of the pressure they put you under, all this waiting and moving you about, telling you where to sit and writing down whatever you say.

  ‘I’ve never seen him myself, not face to face – but I know who he is… Was. Does that mean I recognise him or not?’

  The detective seemed impressed, as if, under other circumstances, he was the sort of man who would happily spend an hour debating the many mean
ings of the verb ‘to recognise’.

  ‘You said just now, who he was. Can you explain that for us?’

  ‘He’s the man who was found in the water at Barnham Staithe this week. It’s been on the local news, on the radio and the television.’

  ‘You’re right, Marjorie. This is that man. We haven’t released his name to the media yet – sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t. It just depends on the nature of the investigation. But we do know his name.’

  He was looking at her with a different expression now, as if she had lied to him or as if she might be about to do so; he was nothing like the man who had made her blush with pride a couple of days ago.

  He said to her, ‘Do you know his name, Marjorie?’

  ‘No.’

  A pause. He was writing something else down in the little black notebook, and in no hurry. Then he said, ‘I’m going to ask you a similar question now. I want you to consider your answer carefully. Alright?’

  She nodded, staring at him and scarcely breathing.

  ‘Do you have any suspicion of what this man’s name might be?’

  Marjorie Harris did consider that carefully before she said, ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘But you’re not absolutely certain. I see.’

  He was brisk then, in those few words, and she thought that she might have made a mistake. Or was that just what she was supposed to think?

  ‘Marjorie – we’re not quite done with this name problem. We’ll try it another way. I’m going to tell you this man’s name, and I simply need you to tell me whether you have ever heard it before. Is that clear? Hopefully you’re not going to tell me that you don’t think you’ve heard it before…’

  Said with a smile that she could no longer quite believe in – the whole experience was quite disorientating and uncomfortable.

  ‘His name is – or was – Bernard Sokoloff. It’s an unusual name. Not one you’d hear every day somewhere like Overy, is it? Have you heard the name before, Marjorie?’

  Something changed in Marjorie Harris then – a slight movement in her shoulders that might have been resignation or relief, but something changed and both detectives saw it, though no amount of zooming in on the video recording afterwards would have revealed it. She looked back at the detective sergeant, and his eyes were intent upon her face, eyes surprisingly blue and clear.

  She said, ‘Yes, I think… Yes, I’ve heard that name before.’

  ‘Good. Very good. That makes life much simpler for you and for us, Marjorie.’

  ‘Why simpler for me? I don’t understand.’

  Smith turned to Serena Butler and nodded. When she spoke, her tone was kindly and unthreatening, deliberately so.

  ‘Because last night I interviewed a man who said that he had mentioned the name to you more than once in a recent conversation. He described you to a T, Marjorie. You must have made an impression.’

  Marjorie Harris was middle-aged and missing from her own life, living alone in a room that she didn’t even pay rent for, working all the hours God sends because she had nothing better to do; the suggestion that she had made an impression on a man was faintly absurd, and she frowned at it.

  Smith said, ‘So, Marjorie, when did you hear the name Bernard Sokoloff for the first time?’

  Evidentially, it would be much more significant if she told them herself rather than having to be reminded; fortunately, now that it was out in the open, she had no qualms about doing so.

  ‘Last Saturday night. I expect you’ve talked to the breakdown man,’ looking at Serena, ‘who knocked on the door. He’s the only man who… It was him, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘He knocked on the door several times. It was dark. I wasn’t going to answer it as I was in bed but he kept banging on the door, so I did in the end. He was quite annoyed. He said he’d had a phone call saying there was a breakdown in the car park – did I know anything about it? I said I didn’t.’

  She watched the detective sergeant then, writing in the notebook, taking a long time to write not much at all because he was thinking – and he could only be thinking deeply about what she had just told him. Eventually he looked up and spoke.

  ‘What time was this, when he knocked on the door of The Queens Arms?’

  ‘It must have been getting on for half past twelve. It had been dark for a long while.’

  Another pause while he considered that; the sergeant seemed to be examining each of her answers with a jeweller’s eye-glass, as if he was searching for flaws in diamonds.

  ‘Half past twelve? What time does the pub usually close on a Saturday night? You were all locked up and in bed by midnight?’

  Marjorie Harris had the feeling then that the real interview had only just begun.

  She said, ‘We close at eleven. I don’t think we were very busy last Saturday, so… I was in the kitchen doing some prep because we had Sunday lunches booked. Mark closed up on time that Saturday.’

  ‘Bang on time, by the sound of it. But then there is someone hammering on the door, after dark, and it’s you that goes to open the door, Marjorie. That’s a bit odd, isn’t it – it’s a lonely spot, out there. Why didn’t Mark answer the door?’

  ‘He wasn’t there. He’d gone out.’

  The detective sergeant wasn’t looking at her any more. He touched the start button on the iPad and the face of Bernard Sokoloff reappeared. She thought he was going to ask her more questions about this man, but he didn’t – he stared at the picture and then wrote something in the notebook. After that, he pushed the notebook across to the female detective; she read what he had written and nodded.

  ‘Let’s get this clear then, Marjorie. Mark is in the pub at eleven o’clock, when he locks up. By half past midnight or thereabouts, when the patrolman knocks on the door, Mark has gone out. Is he in the habit of going out at that time of night?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. We don’t live in each other’s pockets…’

  The detective simply waited for more.

  ‘But I don’t think he does, no.’

  DC Butler said, ‘Do you know where he was going?’

  ‘No.’

  Smith was lightly drumming the fingers of one hand on the table, as if they were now wasting time. He said, ‘And what did he say to you before he went out? He must have said something, even if it was only “I’m going out!”.

  ‘He just said that he had to nip out for a while, and…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He said to lock up behind him, when he’d gone, and not to open the door to anyone.’

  The fingers stopped drumming.

  ‘He specifically told you not to answer the door to anyone while he was out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you did. And the breakdown man mentioned the name of the missing driver to you – Bernard Sokoloff.’

  ‘No. He just said a Mr Sokoloff. I remember it because he made a comment about bloody foreigners, and I thought it sounded a bit, you know, racist.’

  Smith leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms; he seemed so lost in thought now that the interview might have come to an end there and then except that Serena Butler came forward to fill in the space that he had left.

  She said, ‘Marjorie, do you know what time Mark came back to the pub?’

  ‘No, I don’t. As I said, we don’t… I didn’t hear him come back after I’d gone back to my room for the night.’

  ‘OK, that’s clear enough. The next morning, did you mention to him that the RAC man had knocked on the door?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was that because he had asked you not to open the door to anyone? You thought he might have been annoyed that you did?’

  Marjorie Harris shuffled a little then, not seeming to want to answer that directly. After a few moments, she said, ‘It wasn’t anything important, that’s all. You get incidents in the pub, and people knocking on the door at different times – it isn’t like a normal house, is it?’

  The
female detective was persistent as well as friendly – ‘So you haven’t told Mr Williams about the RAC man that night?’ and after the woman had shaken her head, Serena said, ‘You just mentioned incidents in the pub, and we know what you mean, they can be lively places. Were you aware of any incidents last Saturday, before you closed up for the night?’

  No, again. She had been at work in the kitchen most of the evening, she’d already told them that, hadn’t she? Also, she had spent an hour upstairs talking to Miss Shapiro – the landlady liked to do that occasionally. The bar had not been busy at all, just a few local people and one of the couples who had stayed for a couple of nights. She hadn’t heard anything and she hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.

  Marjorie Harris must have assumed at that moment that her ordeal was almost over. The detective sergeant seemed to have lost interest, and the young woman had asked only the most obvious questions which she had been able to answer easily. There was one thing nagging away at her, of course, but the two detectives seemed to have missed it – and if they had, well, it couldn’t be very important after all.

  Smith uncrossed his arms and then, slowly almost to the point of infuriatingly slowly, he wrote something else in the notebook and showed it to his partner. Then he looked up at her again.

  ‘So far, so good, then. But what I have to ask you about next doesn’t look so good for you, Marjorie. In fact, it’s causing me considerable concern. When I came to The Queens Arms that first day, when you made Detective Constable Waters and me that salad, I showed the picture there on that iPad, didn’t I? Thank you. You told me that you had never seen him before, and I can believe that is possible. But I also told you a name, just as I told it to Mr Williams – Bernard Sokoloff. The same name that the RAC man asked you about after midnight the previous Saturday, or Sunday morning. You had heard that name, that quite unusual name, twice in five days, but you never said to me, oh, that’s the name of the man whose car was supposed to have broken down last Saturday night. We all forget names, Marjorie, but you’ve already told us you had at least one reason to remember it; what that breakdown man said about these foreigners. A bit racist, you thought. You can see why this is causing me concern, can’t you?’