Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Round the next bend is where the blood was but the rain will have washed that away. He stops and peers, and maybe there is still a trace of it. Funny old stuff, blood is. Someone bled a fair bit just there on the side of the road and it dried on the tarmac. He thinks he knows who that was but you can’t be certain about much in this life.

  He limped on, the pain getting worse again as it does if he goes any distance. Then, behind him, came the sound of a vehicle and he stepped up onto the sandy verge, turning to see who it might be. Mark Williams in a hurry and a bad mood as usual, and he didn’t even acknowledge the man’s half-raised hand, just a bit of a glare as he went by.

  He stood for a long time, looking along the road until the sound of the car had died away. Spent hundreds, probably thousands in that pub, paid for that tank of fuel himself, he would think, and never even been offered a lift up into town… Marjorie had – if it had been her going by, she would have stopped, what with the wind and rain, and asked him where he was going. But it looks as if she’s gone as well now, since all the trouble with the police.

  It’s a mile and a half from the quay to the main Hunston to Wells road where the bus stops are, and it took him almost an hour. He stood in the shelter by the east-bound carriageway as if he planned to carry out his usual visit to the supermarket to buy the food that would get him through another week, and a couple of bottles to keep him going when the pub wasn’t open – he stood in the shelter as if he intended to get on that bus but he was deep in thought. Thousands, and never mind no lifts, not even a kind word every now and then, not from a single one of them, except for Marjorie, and she’d gone now.

  When the bus pulled up, the door opened automatically. He could see that there was no-one else on it and perhaps that was why the driver muttered a curse when the down-and-out refused to climb up the steps, and stabbed at the button to close the doors before he pulled away quickly towards Wells.

  As soon as the road was clear, the man limped across to the other bus stop. There was a young mother and her little girl waiting. The child, about three years old, looked up at him and said hello. He smiled and looked at the woman, who pulled the girl closer to her side. But the little girl hadn’t understood, and she said to him, ‘Are you going to Kings Lake on the bus, too?’

  The young woman managed to force a smile and told the girl to stop bothering people. But he looked back down at her daughter and said, “Yes, I am.’

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  Smith was watching from across room 17 as John Murray pulled on his jacket, and he was envious of the opportunity to get out of the office and do something. A scrapyard near North Walsham had several Mercedes re-shaped into cuboids; over the telephone none had sounded very promising but this investigation was now heading in the direction in which every possibility was to be examined, no matter how unlikely. Mike Dunn was going with him, and already waiting by Murray’s desk.

  Then the internal phone was ringing, and Smith picked it up. It was Charlie Hills down on the front desk, enjoying, no doubt, the final few weeks before his empire fell and the new barbarians of interior design put up a screen for him to hide behind.

  ‘DC? Is John Murray there?’

  ‘Only just – he’s on his way out. What’s up?’

  ‘Got a bloke down here asking for him. Well, I say that but he’s not literally asking – he’s got one of John’s cards.’

  Smith made the stop sign to Murray and Dunn.

  ‘Charlie, he gives them out like vouchers for free pizzas. Can I deal with it? Ask him what he wants.’

  Charlie Hills’ voice went away from the mouthpiece, and Smith could hear little of the short conversation that followed, except that Charlie told whoever it was that he couldn’t expect to just come in and see someone, he’d have to give them some idea what this was about. But when Charlie’s voice came back it was different, too light, too deliberately offhand.

  ‘He wants to see the big bloke who gave him the card, DC. It’s nothing much. He just wants to tell him about how they put the body onto the boat in the middle of the night…’

  ‘Just you to start with,’ Smith had said to Murray. ‘We don’t want him scared off. Take him into the interview room and if someone has just happened to leave everything switched on, so be it. Let him say it at his own pace, don’t – why am I telling you this? You know how to handle it. Off you go. I’ll be down there myself and next door in two minutes.’

  As Murray left the room, Smith said to Waters, ‘Find the DI straight away and get him down to the recording suite, that’s where I’ll be.’

  Taking the stairs two at a time, he thought to himself, what did Alison Reeve say – we’re not going to get an eyewitness turning up out of the blue? She should be encouraged to voice her doubts aloud more often. Crick? This is the thin bloke who props up the bar… And I spoke to him myself that first Wednesday. What’s happened? Where has this come from now?

  When he reached the recording suite, which was situated adjacent to the interview room that Murray was using, Smith paused and caught his breath before going in quietly. Just as he had suspected, someone had indeed left everything switched on; he could see on the screen all that happened next door and hear every word.

  Murray was still at the conversational stage – he had obviously asked how the man had got to Kings Lake and Crick was describing the bus journey. He wandered off into how he usually went the other way, to the supermarket, and Smith was evaluating then another important matter. Mr Crick was a drunk but was he drunk now? He studied the man’s face as he talked and listened closely to the words – and no, as far as he could tell, Crick had not been drinking this morning. Thank goodness he came here first and not after his visit to the supermarket.

  Murray said, ‘Alright, then, Tally. Thanks for coming in today. What was it you wanted to talk about?’

  Certainly not drunk this morning – Crick understood straight away that the detective in front of him had just got down to the serious business. A hand went to the side of the gaunt face and scratched lightly at the grey stubble as he considered his words, and then he seemed to be unable to find any at all. He was staring down at the empty table, and Smith caught the quick glance into the camera from John Murray.

  Murray said, ‘The sergeant downstairs said something about a body, Tally. That’s a serious matter, so you just take your time. There’s no hurry.’

  The door behind Smith opened, and Terek and Waters came in – Waters closed it quietly, and Terek stared hard at the screen before saying, ‘Why is John in there alone with him?’

  Smith said, ‘It was Murray he asked to see, sir.’

  ‘Yes, but… Is it being recorded as well?’

  Smith looked down as if he needed to and saw that the red lights were on.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Has the witness been informed? If he has not, then this is inadmiss-’

  ‘I wasn’t here at the start, so I don’t know, but I don’t think he has. I would not have done under the circumstances. Also, we don’t know that he’s actually a witness to anything at the moment. That’s what Murray is trying to establish, sir.’

  Terek was annoyed, not least, of course, because Waters was present, but Smith was looking at him very directly, and not wavering at all. After a few more seconds, Smith said, ‘Let’s just see where this is going first. We can straighten it out later, if we need to.’

  Murray said, ‘How about a cup of tea, Tally?’

  It was a simple enough question, a little act of kindness, but it seemed to unlock something in Tally Crick.

  He said, ‘I ain’t told no-one else. Nobody knows what I saw.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  For a big man capable of charging most doors off their hinges, John Murray could speak surprisingly softly.

  ‘I saw them puttin’ him on the boat in the middle of the night.’

  ‘When was this, Tally?’

  This is the correct way, edging first before the completing th
e central figure.

  ‘The Saturday before last. Middle of the night… Early on the Sunday morning.’

  ‘Who did they put on the boat?’

  ‘The bloke they found down at Barnham, ’as to’ve been him. Won’t have been two of ’em floating about, will there?’

  Murray sat back and looked at Tally Crick as if he was surprised. Then he said, ‘Well, this is a serious matter. You did right to come in.’

  Crick nodded – it was probably a long time since anyone had told him he had done the right thing.

  Murray said, ‘OK. And did you see who put him onto the boat? You said “them” just now.’

  The hesitation was natural because we all know that in the naming, something irreversible happens – lives are altered forever when names are spoken. Then Crick nodded again and said, ‘Yes, I did see. It was Peter Vince and his mate Fisher.’

  Smith felt Terek’s hand on his shoulder but he was already rising out of the chair.

  He said, ‘Yes, that’s it. Chris, go in and tell John you need a word outside – he’ll get it straightaway. We need someone to go back in with him in five minutes. We need someone down here to run this recording and sign off when it’s done. And we need someone to bring in three cups of tea every half an hour. This is going to be a long job.’

  Waters had gone in a moment. Terek looked stunned and then he uttered a single swear word, though it was a good one.

  Smith said, ‘We’re back in the fast lane. We ought to let the DCI know, sir.’

  ‘Smith? DC… Stop this “sir” thing. It’s absurd. I don’t mind it from the rest but… You’ve met this character before, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You go in with John then, no new faces for him to worry about that way. I’ll be in here with DCI Reeve if she’s available.’

  ‘I think she will be.’

  ‘Bloody fantastic work, DC!’

  ‘Nothing to do with me. It was John Murray’s contact – I didn’t even know he’d spoken to him.’

  Terek went to the door and turned.

  ‘I have to disagree. The work your team does is everything to do with you. Get straight back in there before he has time to reflect. I’ll bring the tea myself.’

  It was a moot point whether Peter Vince and Johnny Fisher had such contempt for Tally Crick the drunkard that they didn’t care whether he saw them or not, or whether they had on that night simply forgotten that he existed, but the ramshackle boat on which he had lived for two years was moored in the permanent water of the lagoon, little more than thirty yards from the slipway. Another twenty yards beyond that was the single lamp on a pole that burned all night, and which, along with the full moon, had given Crick enough light to see what took place.

  The noise of a vehicle had woken him sometime after midnight, he could not be more precise as to the time, and from his bed, after pulling the curtain aside, he had watched as the truck reversed down the slipway. Yes, he said, he recognised it straightaway as Peter Vince’s truck. He’d thought it was a bit odd but that was about high tide and maybe they were going fishing or something – he knew that Fisher had boats there. So he’d just watched, half-asleep, and then they pulled something out of the truck, something so big they could hardly manage it between them, and started dragging it towards the end of the slipway. Crick explained that even at high tide there’s a bit of a drop to the water. Anyway, it wasn’t until he heard the shouts and screams that he realised this was a man they were dragging along…

  Smith and Murray sat quietly and listened, each reconstructing the awful scene in his own way, and no doubt beyond the lens of the camera that recorded it all, others were doing the same. Then, Tally Crick told them, Vince had stayed holding this man down at the edge of the slipway and Fisher went back up. Two or three minutes later there was a boat on the water – Crick described the two little lights he had seen on its cabin, one red, one green – and Vince had pushed and Fisher had pulled the body into the back of the boat. Then Vince had looked around, looked straight at Crick’s boat but of course it had been in darkness, no way they could see him watching, before he climbed off the end of the slipway and into the boat as well. Crick heard the motor as it pulled away into the creek. Not really believing what he had just witnessed, he got up, went outside and watched its lights travel down the creek in the direction of the open sea.

  Couldn’t sleep after all that, he said, and yes, by the time they got back he’d had a drink. He thought they were gone about an hour, maybe a bit less. He was back inside his boat, of course, keeping out of sight. They were a lot quieter coming back but he saw Vince driving the truck up the slipway, saw Fisher get into it and then they drove off.

  During the two hours of that interview, Smith took the witness over each of the key elements three or four times each, approaching the story from different angles and probing it as a defence lawyer would whilst at the same time never appearing to doubt the integrity of the man who was telling the story. He had said at one point, ‘Tally, it was dark. Can you be absolutely certain that it was the two men you’ve named who did this?’

  Crick said, ‘Known them for long enough, haven’t I? It was Vince’s truck and Fisher’s boat. Who else was it going to be at that time of night? Besides, I could see them plain enough in that light.’

  But it was an almost casual question from Murray, near the end, which produced in the two interviewing detectives a moment of astonishment. Murray said, ‘Any idea why they might have done this, Tally?’

  ‘Revenge, wasn’t it! He was a big bloke, near as big as you,’ nodding at Murray, ‘and a real nasty piece of work. He gave them a pasting the first time, so when he turned up again they must have decided to sort him out a different way.’

  After an exchange of looks, Smith said, ‘He gave them a pasting the first time? When was that, Tally?’

  ‘Weeks ago. A couple of months probably.’

  ‘Oh yes, in July. We know that this man had been in The Queens Arms before. And you were there as well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, when we showed his photograph about a week ago – remember I was with that other young detective – you didn’t tell us that. You didn’t tell us you’d seen him before. Why not?’

  Crick had been growing paler during the lengthy interview, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, even before Smith asked the question. Almost certainly he was in need of a drink, and Smith was calculating how much longer they had before their witness began to look unconvincing on the video.

  ‘They told me to keep my mouth shut. About everything.’

  ‘Peter Vince and Johnny Fisher told you not to tell anyone what you’d seen in the pub?’

  ‘And Williams. He said to say nothing. There was a drink in it, but that’s all it was, one drink.’

  Now Mark Williams had been implicated but to what extent was unclear – the interview had almost too many possibilities at that moment, and Smith had to choose.

  ‘Tally, we know, as I said, that this man had been in the pub before. We’ve been told that he was asked to leave – he was kicked out, really. What you’ve just said is different to that. What happened?’

  Crick said in a voice that was half amused and half bitter, ‘Asked to leave! They tried it on and he put them both on their arses! Quick as you like, he was - like a proper heavyweight.’

  Smith said, ‘This was Vince and Fisher? The man hit them?’

  ‘More’n once. Fisher stayed out of it then but Vince went back and had another go. He got some more of the same, knocked over again.’

  ‘And what was Mark Williams doing?’

  ‘Behind the bar, shouting and swearing.’

  In the pause, there was almost a smile forming on Smith’s face – the sea-fog was clearing and he could make out the silhouettes of more distant objects at last.

  ‘And you were also in the bar the Saturday before last, when the man came back. What happened that night, Tally?’

  ‘He jus
t came in and sat down. Didn’t say a lot but you could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Do y’know what I mean? Mark went over and spoke to him but I didn’t hear what. The only thing was that the bloke said something about they’d already had a warning – he definitely said that. He was laughing at all of them. Real nasty. I wouldn’t have crossed him for all the beer in the pub.’

  John Murray said, ‘What about Vince and Fisher? They just sat there?’

  ‘Didn’t fancy it again, did they? Fisher went out after a while. I thought he’d run off but he came back.’

  Smith caught Murray’s look and they had both reached the same conclusion – that was when the tyres had been cut. The attack on Sokoloff was a premeditated one, in that case.

  Smith said, ‘What happened next, Tally?’

  ‘Don’t really know. It was a horrible night, with this bloke just sitting there grinning. Scary. I thought it might all kick off again. I had a bottle or two on the boat, so I left ’em to it.’

  There was a pause, and Crick, perhaps thinking that they had yet to believe what he had told them, said, ‘I mean, I’d seen the blood on the road a couple of days after. I didn’t connect it all up straight away but I expect it was him, wasn’t it?’

  Another pause but for a very different reason.

  ‘Tell us about the blood on the road, Tally. Where was this?’

  And as he told them, Smith looked openly into the camera. Even as he did so, DCI Alison Reeve was on her phone and calling scenes of crime. Do it now, thought Smith, this bloody afternoon, if you’ll forgive the thought – we’ve had rain but there might still be something. Send them in an unmarked car and have a story ready if any curious local driving by wants to know what’s going on.

  At the end, Smith asked the question because someone else in a wig and a gown would sooner or later.

  ‘Tally, why have you come forward now? Why have you made this statement to us today?’

  He took a surprisingly long time to answer. Smith had sensed the years of being treated with derision and contempt, the never-ending jokes made at the drunkard’s expense, the loneliness and pain of an addict’s existence, the slow spiralling down towards an ignominious end in an institution or a shop doorway, but the answer, when it came, surprised him.