O’Leary wandered over eventually and asked what he should be doing. There were many possible answers but Smith only told him the simple truth – that Dunn had gone off with Waters and they were already doing it. There wasn’t anything else at the moment. O’Leary had found his way back to Wilson’s side of the office.
Smith sat and thought about the case, then. It had been a proper case almost from the start for him and soon it would be so for everyone else involved – something would happen that would begin transforming the intelligence that they had been gathering into evidence. He thought about his chemistry teacher, Basil Woods, and the day on which he had demonstrated to the third form the effect of a catalyst in a chemical reaction. The details had long since been forgotten but the principle had not – that in an instant one substance can be irreversibly transformed into another. They were close to finding the catalyst that would transform this missing persons investigation into something much darker. And if I’m wrong about that, he thought, then maybe it is time for me to go.
Alison Reeve and Serena Butler came into the office together, and Smith made a comical show of sitting up straight, as if he had had his feet on the desk.
Reeve said, ‘It’s alright, we’ve not been plotting, we just met in the corridor. You first, Serena.’
Butler looked reserved again, as if each time she left the building she reverted to the woman who had first appeared on a reluctant transfer from Longmarsh; Smith thought about his visit to Maggie Henderson last night, grateful that she had not resigned from the force just yet – there was still some faint hope for the future.
He said, ‘Banks?’ in an effort to get her going again.
‘Yes. I’ve located the batch of notes. Twenty thousand pounds’ worth went into Barclays’ main Lake branch ten days before the weekend of the 15th. It was split three ways. They kept two thousand for their tills. Three thousand went to Hamptons Superstore and the rest went to the Eastern Shires Building Society. But they don’t record the serial numbers when they divide it up now. We can’t work out which notes went where after they left Barclays.’
As she was talking, Smith had found the relevant piece of paper and he added the new information to it.
‘We can use a bit of intelligent guesswork, though. Bell surely had more than the two thousand he gave away, so that takes the bank out of it unless the new notes had been mixed in with old ones – let’s assume they were not for now. He didn’t hand in a five thousand pound note at Hamptons and get three grand in change, and as far as I know they haven’t been robbed in the past fortnight. That only leaves the building society. Next step?’
‘Give them a ring.’
‘No. Go in person, get the manager in his office – sorry, or her office – and explain. Make it sound like an urgent matter that needs priority, now while you’re in the building. It’s vital that we trace this money, etcetera. While you’re there, see if there are any accounts in the name of Bell. What records do they keep, is there CCTV on the counters, how long do they hold onto it? And anything else you can think of on the way.’
Reeve said, ‘Serena, I’ll come along, but you can do the talking, everything that DC says. We might as well team up as I’m going out to Marinor and it’s on the way.’
She turned to Smith.
‘I got in touch with them. They have a personnel director and I’m seeing him before lunch. He knows it’s about Bell, so it shouldn’t take long. I got the feeling that they are anxious to avoid bad publicity about fatal accidents – he was very keen to cooperate.’
Smith said, ‘I’ll bet he is. I was only thinking this morning, funny how it hasn’t hit the local news. Somebody pulling a few strings? If we think it would help, we should hand it over ourselves.’
Reeve considered it.
‘We’ve got plenty happening at the moment. Let’s keep it quiet for another day or two – if it goes public then it does, it won’t hurt us either way. Any other developments?’
He told her about the sighting in the bar, about the phone, and about what Waters and Dunn were doing. He knew that she was aware of O’Leary, sitting at his usual desk on the other side of the room, and so he told her what had happened there as well. She looked hard across at the other team then but said nothing for a moment.
Then she said, ‘OK, you were right – I’ll deal with it. Have you replied to the email about the assessment? They copied me in.’
He nodded.
‘And you don’t have any problems with it other than actually managing to be there on the day?’
‘No.’
She waited for the smart remark and it did not come. Then she said, ‘Fine. Get the team together for late this afternoon if it’s possible. We need to review where this is going before I get asked why we are spending a small fortune investigating a man who fell off an oil rig.’
‘Gas platform – just in case you are speaking to the media.’
‘Talking of which, has Superintendent Allen had a word with you?’
‘Many, many times.’
‘About this writer person?’
‘Her name is Jo.’
When he put on that poker face, it was impossible to say whether he was being serious or not. Reeve waited and watched for another second or two, and then she turned and headed for the door. Serena looked at Smith then and he nodded for her to follow.
Chapter Twelve
When he was sure that they had gone, he took the card out of his jacket pocket and laid it on the desk in front of him. As forensic evidence, of course, it was now useless – in that he had perhaps been careless. But then, how could it ever have been used? Pointless dwelling on that. More productive surely to think about how he would present his ideas to the meeting that Reeve had asked for, later in the afternoon. There were two of them. One involved the expense and inconvenience of an officer away overnight, and the risk of his working alone – risk to any future case, obviously, rather than a personal risk but you could never be sure. He remained convinced that at some point during Bell’s last weekend ashore, someone had been seriously hurt, or worse.
The second idea involved the kind of investigative tactic that appeared in every other episode of the latest detective series on the television – he invented a new one then, just for fun, ‘Allen’s Law’ – but which most officers rarely encountered in their working lives. The Velvet MSC was invisible using all the normal searches, other than that it did have an alcohol licence. There it was classified simply as a private members’ club which meant that it could never hold a function that was open to the general public. Smith thought that, if they knew what went on there, most of the general public would be mightily relieved. Or at least he hoped that they would. These days, who could tell?
But its very invisibility told him that a conventional approach was unlikely to be successful. They did not advertise, and they had no website that he could find; perhaps Waters would have some ideas on that but this was not for a boy scout’s eyes, was it? Should he send him out for biscuits while they talked about this? The Velvet MSC was not going to hand over membership lists, addresses and telephone numbers without every sort of search warrant imaginable, and that could take days, even weeks, if he could get one at all; looked at coldly, he could hardly put together a case for one based on what they had so far. They might have CCTV but he wasn’t sure that he would want to watch it, not if Maggie was right, and certainly not in mixed company… What he had in mind would create a few other problems but it would circumvent most of those he had just been through in his mind. It had to be worth a try – but who the hell would actually go and do it?
O’Leary looked as if he had been told to sit on the naughty step. He had joined the afternoon meeting but had said nothing because he had nothing to say – Alison Reeve had obviously dealt with it. Smith looked around and counted; seven of them altogether, if you included O’Leary, and if they had all been sergeants and inspectors it would have been quite like old times.
He said, ‘Right.
Let it never be said that I am not sexist – ladies first.’
Reeve nodded Serena Butler in.
‘ESBS have CCTV but it deletes at the end of Saturday, the last working day of the week, so nothing to look at there. I asked for a list of cash withdrawals of two thousand pounds and over from the day they received the Barclays money, which they gave me, along with the names. There are no relevant accounts in the name of Bell.’
Smith held out a hand and she passed the list to him. He looked down it – not for very long – and his expression never altered. Then he handed it over to Waters. They all watched him as he studied it.
Waters said, ‘Bloody hell!’
‘There are ladies present, Chris.’
Waters looked around, colouring up before he realized that Smith wasn’t serious. Reeve asked to look at the list, and said that she could not see anything yet. Smith explained.
‘Obviously we didn’t put out the names of everyone that we spoke to on the platform, no need, but one of those we did speak to is on this list. McFarlane is the name of the company man who represents Nordco’s interests there. He has excellent taste in coffee.’
Reeve looked at the list again.
‘He took out five thousand on Monday the 12th. A note says the request was made on the 7th in writing, due to the amount involved.’
She stopped and thought it through a little more.
‘It’s circumstantial,’ and then with a look at Smith, ‘but it’s also a bit of a coincidence. If it’s the same Mr McFarlane.’
Waters said, ‘How is that circumstantial? If it is him, how does he explain how Bell got the money other than that he gave it to him?’
It was Smith who answered.
‘You’re not just jumping the gun, you’re leaping over a couple of howitzers as well! Which money? Do the building society record the serial number of each note given to each customer? I doubt it,’ and Serena Butler was shaking her head. ‘So all this gives us is that a Mr McFarlane took out a sum of money on a day when the Barclays notes were in the building. We don’t know that he had any of them – it could be a coincidence. And then you assume that Bell was given the notes, whereas he might have stolen them. Or maybe it was a loan being repaid – I’ve heard dafter explanations. Or if McFarlane was given some of these notes, they passed through the hands of a third party during that week.’
A silence, with Waters perhaps feeling that he had allowed himself to get carried away. Smith then continued.
‘So, first things first. Is it the same Mr McFarlane?’
He looked at his watch.
‘That’s my first job in the morning – they’ll be on old-fashioned office hours. But as DI Reeve has said, this could be a bit awkward for him if it is, and if we approach it in the right way. We believe in coincidences, sometimes, but we do not like them, ever, not in this job. Good work from the financial investigations wing.’
Serena Butler had to suffer the looks of everyone else around the table before Smith pushed on. They hadn’t all realized yet – maybe Alison Reeve and John Murray suspected it – but that was the moment when the phosphorus ignited or the magnesium strip caught fire or the litmus paper turned red. Smith couldn’t recall the details or the substances, but that was the moment all right.
‘Moving on – phone shops.’
Perhaps Mike Dunn was aware of Waters’ feelings when he told him to report back what they had found.
‘One shop was closed. No idea why but we’ll have to go back just to eliminate them. In the other three, we found that the particular model of Samsung was sold four times on the Monday, but only one was before 11.00am. This was in The Phone4U just off the market square. The consultant who sold it was-’
Smith said, ‘The what?’
‘Consultant – that’s what they call the sales staff.’
‘Dear me. Go on.’
‘The consultant was there when we called but he couldn’t remember the sale. But they do have it on CCTV. We told them to put the original somewhere safe but I’ve got a copy of the file on this stick.’
He held up the item in question, and now Smith could see why Waters had brought up his laptop. He told him to play it. The clip was, mercifully, better than the usual blurred and grainy sequence of jerky manoeuvres; full-time wrongdoers these days are always aware of cameras and will position themselves to give away as little as possible but this man didn’t behave like that. There was no sound, naturally, but he had not said much anyway. The consultant pointed to a couple of things, trying to interest the buyer in some extras but had no success, and the whole transaction took no more than three minutes. He was in his late thirties or early forties, dark-haired, not tall but squarely built, jeans, short zipper jacket, no distinguishing features. Even after seeing the film, Waters said, the consultant had struggled to remember anything more about the man or the sale. Smith asked Waters to read out the time stamp on the video – it was 09.58.
Alison Reeve said, ‘We might get facial recognition on that if we put the best frame through records.’
‘One day,’ Smith said, ‘that will work but I’ve a feeling that one of you will have to come and whisper it over my spot in the churchyard when it does.’
Reeve was undeterred; the young – or younger – have such faith in technology.
She said, ‘Chris, get a copy to Trevor down in tech and let him play around with it. Two excellent results so far – well done. John – your witness?’
Murray said that he now had a signed statement from Esme Fairhead. Yes, they could go to her flat and look out of her windows, and water her plants while they were there. As for when she saw those men outside the Bells’ flat, she could not be sure but it might have been about 11pm.
Smith was happy for Reeve to take this meeting – he was in her team, after all, and it had been a long time since matters were the other way around. One part of his mind was evaluating the strength of each new piece of data, imagining how well it would stand up to scrutiny by, for example, that new defence QC he had seen for the first time at last month’s Crown Court. It had not been a case of his but she had been frightening – young, black, beautiful and lethal. If someone like McFarlane was involved in Bell’s disappearance, that’s the sort of weaponry he would employ, and that’s why he had to keep everyone’s feet planted firmly on the ground. They had a long way to go. But Reeve herself had something – that had been clear to him from the beginning of the meeting.
‘Right,’ said Reeve. ‘This morning Serena and I met with the personnel director, or rather the director responsible for personnel, at Marinor. This is the company that employed Bell on the platform. We wanted to know how he got the job, especially as, as DC has pointed out, offshore firms do not lack applicants and they are usually choosy about anyone who might give them trouble in the rather confined space that they have to live in for weeks at a time. Mr Yealand was unaware of Bell’s history, and looked uncomfortable when he did hear about it from us. He called in the personnel officer, who was basically put on the spot in front of us. She,’ looking down at her notes for the first time, ‘Davina Eley, began to look even more uncomfortable. He sent her out to fetch the recruitment file – it was all a bit embarrassing. To cut it short, there had been no advertisement. Bell had appeared at the Marinor reception one day and asked to speak to someone in the personnel department – the hapless Ms Eley, as it happens.’
‘Good phrase, that,’ said Smith.
‘He asked to be considered the next time they had a vacancy, and gave them a contact phone number – but not for himself, for someone who would vouch for him. By this time, the director was on the verge of a minor heart attack, if there is such a thing. He sent her out again to look for the phone number, which was not on the file. But it was on the notepad she brought back with her. When we got back, I dialled it. I got the name of the woman who answered simply because she identified herself. I don’t know who she works for as yet, and I did not say why I was calling, I just acted as if it was a
mistaken call. Obviously, we need to follow it up. If Bell bypassed the usual recruitment process, we need to know how and why.’
Smith asked for the name of the woman who had answered the call, and when he heard it, he looked at Waters. Waters knew the look by now, and knew that he had missed something.
Smith said, ‘I can tell you who she works for, and what she does. She works for Nordco, and she is Donald McFarlane’s PA.’
There had been a moment of stunned silence before he looked at Waters again, and said, ‘Now you can say “Bloody hell!”’
Conversations broke out around the table, and Reeve allowed it to go on for a minute or so; even O’Leary seemed to realise that something significant had happened. Her look to Smith said something like ‘Well, we were right…’
But as the voices died away, it was Mike Dunn’s words to Serena Butler that everyone heard – ‘… more by luck than judgement, though!’
Now the room fell quiet once again – some eyes went to DI Reeve but it was Smith who spoke next.
‘Mike’s right. Sometimes it’s hard to say where one finishes and the other begins, but he’s right. In this job, you need both to be successful – luck and judgement. Some people have a lot of luck and a little bit of judgement, and others have them the other way round. I’ve known some good coppers whose judgement I’d back to the hilt but they never seemed to have that little bit of luck that breaks cases, but I’ve never known one who got there through sheer luck, not in case after case. You need both.’
Dunn’s face had fallen a little, and Smith gave him a brief, genuine smile to say that there were no hard feelings.
‘And you need to know when you’ve just got lucky – some people don’t recognize that moment. While we’re on such profound matters, and just in case anyone thinks we just broke a case – we didn’t. Think about it. Our Mr McFarlane only has to say that he knew Jimmy Bell and of course he gave him a leg up, and we’re back to square one with the money. Giving a mate a hand and not telling us about it when he’s disappeared might look a bit odd but it isn’t a criminal offence or even close to one. Feet on the ground, please, and be careful about what you say to people. There’s a long way to go on this. Ma’am?’
Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation Page 16