Time and Tide: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Smith said, ‘Alright, Mark – let’s try this another way. After you left the pub and went to Pauline Beavan’s house, did you communicate further in any way with Peter Vince or Johnny Fisher?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘Good. Did they communicate further with you? Did you get a call or a message saying that they had, I don’t know… Sorted Sokoloff out or taken care of the matter?’

  For Detective Inspector Terek and everyone watching on the monitors, these were sound, logical and routine steps along the way to defining precisely Williams’ involvement, but for Mark Williams it seemed, perhaps, that the reason the face of this ageing detective sergeant had haunted his waking hours for the past few days had now become clear – the small man with the scar on his cheek and the very blue eyes was a practitioner of the dark arts. Williams’ hand went involuntarily to his jeans pocket to check that his mobile phone was still there, and it was…

  ‘OK. I got a text from Peter.’

  ‘What did it say?’

  ‘What you just said, pretty much.’

  ‘Fine. If you have your phone with you, we’d like to see it. Of course, at the moment you’re still at liberty to refuse, Mark.’

  Williams said after a pause, ‘I deleted the text, though.’

  Smith looked at Terek and said, ‘Oh dear…’

  Williams said, ‘What? I told you what it said. Write it down for you, if you like.’

  Terek was shaking his head as he said to Williams, ‘It’s not that. Did you delete all your texts? No? You just deleted that one, and perhaps any others from Peter Vince. If you are in front of a lawyer appointed by the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr Williams, they will be inclined to argue that that was an admission of guilt; you deleted the text because you knew it might implicate you in the offences under consideration. It probably isn’t evidence of conspiracy but it does suggest you were an accessory.’

  ‘Accessory? Accessory to what, man?’

  It was Smith who said after several seconds, ‘Mark, you know what we’re investigating here. It could make you an accessory to the murder of Bernard Sokoloff.’

  The legal language had bewildered Williams, as was, no doubt, DI Terek’s intention, and Smith’s peculiarly sympathetic and almost sorrowful statement of the seriousness of his situation had frightened him – no, more than that, it had effectively finished him. They agreed a fifteen minute intermission then during which Williams would be advised by the duty solicitor. Back in his office, Terek said, ‘I’ll check with the DCI but I think we arrest as soon as we go back in – he knows it’s coming. We’ll take the phone and get to work on that straight away – Superintendent Allen will authorise a search of it. That text message was a good guess of yours, wasn’t it?’

  Smith was getting the over-the-spectacles stare this time.

  ‘Yes and no. It’s what they do, isn’t it, the amateurs? Footprints and fingerprints everywhere. Whereas someone like Frankie Jacobs would never make such a mistake. That’s why he’s got a mansion worth millions in the leafy lanes of Surrey. Another of the ironies in this job - the people who least deserve to be caught are the easiest to catch.’

  ‘You don’t think Vince and Fisher deserve to be caught?’

  ‘With respect, that’s not what I said. Sokoloff was as nasty as Williams says, I’ve no doubt of that, but those two Norfolk boys should pay for what they did to him. They’ll deserve it but men like Jacobs have, in my personal opinion, done incalculably more harm. He deserves it more.’

  Smith waited then and eventually the stare came to an end. He might have dodged it this time but when Terek read the actual words of the text from GoFone, he might decide to take another long look in Smith’s direction. Still, Serena was as sound as they come, and if she just happened to get the job of looking into Williams’ mobile account, then it would go down as another of DC Smith’s lucky guesses, wouldn’t it?

  He said, ‘I agree with the arrest – if he needs one more nudge, that will do it. Serena has good contacts with the phone companies. Do you want me to get her onto that this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely. If we hear what I think we are about to hear, DCI Reeve and Superintendent Allen will go for the arrests this evening. She’s already asked for the warrants. Let’s get back to it.’

  DCI Reeve has already asked for the warrants. Once upon a time, she would have told him so herself… It’s already tomorrow, Smith, and those same flowers that yesterday were smiling are dying now.

  When Williams got back to The Queens Arms it was about ten minutes past two in the morning. Peter Vince and Johnny Fisher were waiting for him in the car park, sitting in Vince’s Toyota truck. They got out of the truck when he arrived and they wouldn’t tell him straight away what had happened. Fisher said they had earned a drink.

  Williams had unlocked the pub and the three of them went inside. He had given them both a glass of whisky and Fisher had told him not to be a mean Welsh bastard, it should be a double at least. When Smith asked how they seemed, Williams didn’t really have the words – he said ‘Sort of high’ because Johnny Fisher wouldn’t usually have spoken to him that way. Smith recognised the state of mind Williams was describing, the strange elation that comes from committing an act so far beyond the boundaries of what is acceptable that for hours afterwards all perspectives have been shifted to somewhere new and unrecognisable.

  Then Vince, who seemed less affected, told him that after he, Williams, had driven away, they went looking for Bernard Sokoloff. They had expected to find him by the car, the Mercedes that Johnny had disabled, and they had gone prepared – Fisher had a baseball bat from his boat, and Vince had his weapon of choice, the heaviest monkey wrench he could find in the back of his truck, but Sokoloff wasn’t there.

  They decided that the Londoner must have realised he was in some sort of danger when he saw his car and he had made his escape. He could only have set off along the road, so they went after him in the truck. They hadn’t gone far before they saw him in the headlights. Vince had put his foot down, intending to frighten him off the road but Sokoloff had stopped, turned and then tried for some reason to get to the far side of the road instead of the nearest. The Toyota had hit him full on at about thirty miles an hour.

  Williams had paused there in his account of what they had told him. They had more than enough recorded now but it would seem indecent not to let him complete what he had to say, and so Smith and Terek sat and waited in silence.

  Williams said, ‘He was unconscious. Peter said they could see a bad head-wound – they thought he was dead. So then they had to decide what to do. They could call the police and claim it was an accident driving back from the pub, but if the story ever came out about him knocking them down before, who’d believe them? Johnny had a boat down at the quay a couple of hundred yards away. They could dump the body out at sea, and the chances were it wouldn’t be found…’

  But by the time they got to the quay, Sokoloff was coming round. They could have changed their minds but did not – the die had been cast. Perhaps they reasoned that if Sokoloff had been saved, he himself would tell the police the whole story and then it could be attempted murder anyway; they were risking little more by completing the job. Who knows what goes through the minds of otherwise ordinary men in such extremis?

  They dragged him shouting and screaming into the back of the boat but it was the small hours and there was no-one else around; even now, neither Williams nor Fisher nor Vince had given any thought to the man who lived on the shabby little cruiser without a name not forty yards away from the scene of the worst part of their crime. Fisher started the engine and Vince had covered up the struggling, injured Sokoloff with a tarpaulin, after going through his pockets and removing anything that might make identification easy. They had taken him a mile out to sea and east of the inlet before dropping his body over the side. He was floating and gasping and trying to swim but they didn’t think he would last for long.

  ‘I said to them, “What about
his car? It’s in my bloody car park with four slashed tyres!” Peter said he was going to get one of his trucks, it would be gone by dawn. And he said they knew where he was staying, they had the keys from his pockets. The Royal Victoria… Johnny would go in there and sort it out, get his stuff. I don’t know what they did with it. I don’t know any details after that but I heard the truck in the carpark about half an hour later. I didn’t get any sleep that night. Haven’t had much sleep since, I can tell you.’

  It took another three hours to organise the arrests, and to everyone involved, that felt like three days. When such a serious charge is involved, the process can be expedited, especially if there is a risk of flight, and to be fair to him, Detective Superintendent Allen’s mastery of the bureaucracy involved was useful on these occasions. Nevertheless, it all takes time.

  There are several reasons why arrests are often made early in the morning. The suspect is often asleep and more easily surprised; one can gain valuable seconds while they are confused and in states of undress, believe it or not. Violent resistance is much less likely in an early morning raid than in an evening one, not least because they almost certainly will not have been drinking or be under the influence of drugs. Another, less obvious reason, is that the police can then carry out the initial interviews in normal working hours – if one makes an arrest and then allows the suspect to sleep in the cell ready for the following morning, one has lost a third of the initial twenty four hours during which a suspect may be held without charge.

  There was some discussion as to whether they should now hold off until the morning. Reeve might have been persuaded that way but Terek argued that the risk of one or both suspects making a run for it was then increased because Williams had been missing, as far as they were concerned, all afternoon already. If they went to The Queens Arms tonight and found it closed, if Julie Shapiro told them where he was again, they would assume the worst. At best, the police would then be giving them another night in which to prepare themselves. Smith listened to the debate and thought Terek was right, but that wasn’t the only reason the detective inspector was ready to go for it; he had the light in his eyes, the adrenaline in his veins, the thrill of the hunt running right through him. If they waited until morning, Terek wouldn’t sleep anyway – Smith remembered that feeling. And a new DI doesn’t often get to make arrests for murder in his first fortnight.

  It was almost seven in the evening when five vehicles containing eighteen police officers left Kings Lake Central. For two arrests this might seem excessive, but the property searches and vehicle seizures would be carried out simultaneously. Mike Dunn and O’Leary from Wilson’s team had been in place and watching the two men since five o’clock, and both were now at home in Wells. The vehicles left together and were a convoy for a mile or so before the evening traffic around Lake intervened, but that did not matter; officers in each one were equipped with short-wave handsets. Mobile phones were not to be trusted when timing was as critical as this.

  Smith and Waters were in the Peugeot and at the back of the pack. Their part in this was not to make an arrest themselves but, as soon as Peter Vince had been arrested by DCI Reeve, to go to his garage with his keys, make an entry, secure the Toyota Hilux for forensic investigation and then, in Vince’s office, begin again the search for the missing Mercedes. Waters had been a little disappointed.

  On the Hunston road, the traffic opened up and Smith saw Alison Reeve’s Audi ahead of him overtaking a couple of times. He didn’t follow suit in an attempt to keep up because as soon as they reached the narrow lanes beyond Hunston, everyone would have to slow down anyway – they would all need to re-group and communicate before going in for the arrests.

  Waters said, ‘Weird, isn’t it? All this to get justice for someone like Sokoloff.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s weird. It rains upon the just and the unjust, so I suppose we have to get justice for the just and the unjust. The only problem I can see is that there are just too many justs in that sentence… We don’t get to make the call on what’s just and what isn’t, thank goodness. And besides, we have to follow it through to the end – we still don’t know the whole truth here.’

  ‘Don’t we? What Williams has told us sounds pretty convincing.’

  Smith pulled his maybe face but didn’t answer.

  ‘You don’t think he was telling the truth?’

  ‘I think he probably was but that’s only a part of it. “Probably” isn’t enough unless the judge decides to draw a very clear line for a jury as to where reasonable doubt is in a case. What if Vince and Fisher now tell us that Williams master-minded the whole thing, and that’s why he made sure he was visiting Mrs Beavan, giving himself an alibi as well as a treat?’

  Waters thought before he answered.

  ‘From what I’ve seen, I don’t think he’s that clever, DC.’

  ‘And maybe making us think that is part of his cleverness. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but I’ve seen it plenty of times before. That kind of cleverness is nothing to do with education or certificates or having letters after your name. Never underestimate the power of animal cunning. I could show you people in Kings Lake who we never could…’

  Waters was smiling, not in an unkindly way, and Smith didn’t finish the sentence.

  The left turn down to Overy and The Queens Arms was a mile behind them when Waters said, ‘That’s DCI Reeve’s car pulled over,’ and then they could see her standing at the side of the road, waiting for them.

  Smith drew in behind her and she was by his window before he could wind it down. He said, ‘What’s up, ma’am?’

  ‘I’ve just had a heads-up from DCI Lilley. She went to see Frankie Jacobs this afternoon and he wasn’t at home.’

  ‘Made his escape to France, then.’

  ‘No. They found a man cutting the lawn, of all things. He’d been told by one of the staff that Mr Jacobs was making a trip to the coast today…’

  She didn’t need to say any more.

  ‘Do we know what time they left?’

  ‘Sometime after lunch as far as she could tell. He wasn’t alone.’

  In all the discussions and planning, Smith had forgotten his promise to Mark Williams that if he, Mark, was not going home, Julie Shapiro would not be left on her own. Even Tally Crick was still being looked after in a pleasant room in Kings Lake Central.

  Reeve said, ‘I can radio for some uniforms to get down there. It shouldn’t take too long.’

  ‘If it’s all the same, ma’am, I’d rather go now. It’s only a mile back down the road – we’re literally five minutes away. Call for uniforms anyway and we’ll just hang around until they turn up. You never know – Frankie might just have fancied a bit of Brighton rock.’

  She told them to go, and stood in the road doing some old-fashioned traffic duty until Smith had completed the three-point turn. They both knew that Jacobs had not gone south that afternoon but Reeve made the judgement call not to suspend the arrests – she made the call that Smith would deal with it.

  Waters seemed to sense the situation as well; he squared himself in the passenger seat, fixed his eyes firmly on the road ahead and said nothing more as the Peugeot cornered into the Overy road. They went quite quickly through the now-familiar bends, they passed the point where the Lexus had forced him off the road, they passed the patch of flattened marram grass where the two SOCOs had left their vehicle before taking the samples from the road earlier in the afternoon, and then the roof of The Queens Arms was in sight.

  Smith slowed a little. The creek and its boats and sailing dinghies came into view, and finally they could see the pub’s car park, and the Daimler parked right outside the entrance.

  Chapter Forty

  Smith drove on slowly into the carpark, turned around and then headed back to the entrance, where he stopped but kept the engine running. The sound had brought someone out of the pub – a youngish, near-shaven-headed man in a smart, dark suit. The man closed the pub door and planted himself
in front of it. He wasn’t especially tall or broad, and if anything, thought Smith, that makes him more dangerous.

  ‘So, Chris… Dammit, you’ve got me saying it as well, between the lot of you. Anyway, this is one of those situations where we don’t have time for a lecture or a seminar or a tutorial. I’m getting out and you’re getting into the driving seat. You stay in it and keep a close watch, and if anyone starts approaching – other than me, obviously – you drive off to a safe distance. Get ma’am on the radio and tell her what the situation here is, and that we would like that uniform support but there’s no point in stopping the arrests for this. OK?’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to have a word with matey over there, and then I’m going in to have a word with Frankie Jacobs.’

  Waters twisted in his seat and looked over at the pub and its solitary guard.

  ‘On your own?’

  ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but it won’t make any difference whether you’re there or not. It might be easier for me to get in on my own.’

  Waters seemed dubious, to say the least.

  Smith said, ‘The sort of drivers and gardeners Jacobs hires aren’t going to be bothered by the likes of you and me if it comes to a punch-up, so there’s no point in two of us getting beaten up, if it comes to that. It’ll just bring my retirement forward a bit. Do as I say, and keep the engine running until I get inside.’

  He took a step away from his car and then turned and said, ‘One more thing. When I’m over there, get a snap of the vehicle on your phone.’

  ‘Evidence?’

  ‘No. I just want a picture of me with that car. It’s a classic.’

  It was a V8 250 with automatic transmission, and possibly one of the last models built around the original Daimler engine before Jaguar took over production. The finish was immaculate - British racing green with a full dark green leather interior and a walnut dashboard, and it came off the production line at about the same time that Smith did. He bent a little to look inside, then straightened up and crossed the final thirty feet to the character who might have had the privilege of driving it here. The man had watched Smith every inch of the way but had made no move since positioning himself in front of The Queens Arms.