Luck and Judgement: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  Smith said, ‘Find McFarlane’s brother – he gave us contact details. I’m surprised he didn’t have it all printed out ready, a sworn statement confirming that brother Donald gave him four thousand quid for half a car… Contact the brother and arrange to interview him. See proof of the purchase and all the details.’

  ‘You mean, go down to Northampton?’

  ‘Yes. Have you got your passport with you today?’

  Waters smiled, no doubt thinking about which pool car he’d be able to take, and Smith nodded to Murray, which meant that he would be going along for the ride.

  Reeve said, ‘Are you getting in McFarlane’s face?’

  ‘Not really, unless the two of them look very much alike. I wonder if they’re twins. We should also do a check to see if Mr Donald has another phone account hidden away, and a full check on the one he’s been so open about. If you think we’re going to annoy the Super by doing this stuff, say so.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Then I won’t keep bothering you by telling you what we’re doing.’

  ‘You want to keep after him? For how long? If that’s not an impudent question to ask my sergeant.’

  ‘Until I’m convinced that he’s beaten us.’

  ‘How long does that usually take?’

  ‘Years.’

  Serena Butler and Mike Dunn were listening to them.

  Smith said, ‘And then he gets an entry in a very exclusive notebook which sits on my shelf at home.’

  Reeve was smiling at the other two.

  ‘And what happens to them after that?’

  ‘Every now and then I take it down and look through it. I say to myself, has he really beaten us – or she, there are a couple of ladies in there. Has anything changed? Is there some new forensics miracle that would make it worth digging out the old evidence? Is someone who knew the truth now in prison or on their death-bed? If I dressed up as a Catholic priest, would they finally tell me what happened?’

  Mike Dunn was laughing.

  Reeve said to them both, ‘You think he’s joking, don’t you?’ and Mike Dunn answered that he hoped so. Serena Butler thought before she spoke, and then she said, ‘No.’

  Reeve looked from her to Smith.

  Then she said, ‘OK. Let’s look at the money again. Does Donald McFarlane have other accounts? Does his wife have accounts? In between typing up your full evidence reports, you two can sort that out. Superintendent Allen has told me that Wood’s charge will be in the Evening News today – he’ll want to handle that. Somehow I’m going to use Stuart Aves’s re-arrest as a reason for going back to Nordco and Marinor to ask about the security contract process… DC, you’d better do some deep breathing and stretching. Three o’clock in the old gym? Allen reminded me again this morning.’

  At lunchtime he took a walk around the station, heading for the reception desk and Charlie Hills but taking the scenic route. There wasn’t a room that he had not been in at some time during the past twenty years, and for every room he could have told you which cases had taken him there, which villain or victim had told him their story in that place. In twenty years he had been confronted here by every example of man’s inhumanity to man and woman and child, it seemed, but also by acts of extraordinary bravery and kindness; he could remember the courageous individuals who had come into the building and given up the names of family members and friends before disaster could strike, and to him there was no greater act of unselfishness than that. Had human nature changed in those twenty years? Many people are a little more isolated, more inward-looking, somewhat lonelier than they used to be, perhaps, but they’re still people, when all is said and done.

  Charlie was leaning over a table behind the counter when Smith came in through the side door. The detective filled the kettle from a jug on another table and switched it on. Charlie continued reading as he spoke.

  ‘Alright, DC?’

  ‘Yes, Charlie. Just feeling a bit fin de siècle…’

  ‘Really? My dad used to get that. The doc told him to chew liquorice root. Apparently it’s good for the digestion.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  Smith moved closer and saw that the desk sergeant was reading that day’s Lake Evening News – they ought to change the name of the paper if it was out by lunchtime. Charlie turned it back to the front page and pointed.

  ‘Congratulations are in order, I see. DI Reeve and her team strike again.’

  The two right-hand columns were headed “Missing Rig Worker – Local Man Is Charged”. Smith skimmed through it, checking only for the correctness of the details, of which there were few – the novelty of reading about cases in which he had played a part had long since vanished, and inaccurate publicity could sometimes do more harm than good to an investigation. But all seemed OK here.

  ‘How the hell do they get it out so quickly? It was only in the magistrate’s three hours ago.’

  ‘Technology, DC. The reporter sits there, typing it up on his doo-dah as it goes along. He clicks send and it’s on a screen in the newspaper office. Someone else clicks print, and it’s on paper and in a van. The only delay is likely to be the never-ending roadworks in North Lane. If they’ve run out of fibre-optic cable again, the papers arrive on time. It’s marvellous how it all fits together, really.’

  The kettle boiled. Smith put two tea bags into two mugs, and stared for a moment at the darkening liquid – how many times had he drunk from these mugs or mugs very like them over the years?

  He said, ‘Any sign of reception reconstruction?’

  ‘No. It might be just one of those things that you never hear about again.’

  ‘Or maybe, after she saw us she reported that they need to demolish the entire station and start over.’

  The trick with tea made in the mug is to remove the tea-bag quickly, more quickly than you imagine that you would need to, and that way you avoid the excessive after-taste of tannin. Smith dropped them into the waste bin under the counter. Charlie had gone back to the paper, leafing through it as only local newspapers can be leafed through. Smith felt in his trouser pocket for the twist of silver foil that he had prepared earlier, before he left home.

  The bottle had been at the back of the medicine cupboard for three years. There was no date on it, and no label detailing the contents; only the consultant’s own handwriting on a plain label, very legible handwriting for a change because the man had clearly wanted no mistakes to be made with what he was giving to the patient’s husband. The fellow was a senior policeman after all, and in discussions over several days, as they prepared to send her home to die in peace, the two men had come to an understanding. The label said “One only to be taken as required. No more than three in any twenty four hours.” Smith had said to the consultant that he presumed it was some form of morphine, and the consultant had not said that it was not. When they left the hospital that spring morning, the consultant himself had walked to the door with them, and Smith had taken his hand and thanked him for all that they had done, and that he personally had done.

  The consultant had said, as the nurses helped her into the taxi, ‘The final blessing is to be free of the pain. You might not need them all. If you do, if you need more, come and see me in person – don’t go through my secretary for that. Goodbye, Mr Smith, and good luck.’

  Sheila had gone almost a month before she took the first of them, and when she did so their effect was dramatic. She could sit up again and walk with a stick into the garden for a few minutes. Her appetite improved a little, and Smith had blessed the doctor again in his absence. How does one value those final weeks, days, hours and minutes? For the first time in his life, Smith had forgotten about work – he could not have told anyone a detail of the case that he had been dealing with before he took compassionate leave, and the Alwych notebook on his desk lay untouched for six weeks.

  The fall as she came back into the house had seemed innocuous but he sent for the GP anyway. She felt the bones in the thin, pale arm and s
aid that she thought there was a hairline fracture, that Sheila really ought to go to Accident and Emergency… In the kitchen, Smith had said, ‘This is the cancer and the treatment, weakening the bones, isn’t it?’ Yes, the doctor had said. He had asked her, ‘So what can they do?’ Then he had answered his own question; ‘There’s nothing they can do but they’ll keep her in, and she wants it to end here, in her home.’

  The GP had said, ‘I can give her something for the pain.’

  Seventy two hours later, he called the same GP again, and she had said, ‘I’m on my way, Mr Smith, but-’ and then the pause because she did not quite know how to say what she had to say. ‘You know, don’t you,’ she had said, ‘that in these circumstances the police have to be there as well. Would you like me to call them for you…?’

  Charlie Hills said, ‘What have you got there?’

  Smith looked down at the tablets in the silver foil.

  ‘These are my anti-depressants, Charlie. I’ve been on them for years. That’s why I’m always so cheerful. Would you like one?’

  ‘No thanks, DC. I’m happier being miserable.’

  He had brought two of them. Three years is a long time. Most tablets expire long before that – and his thought had been, it would be a bugger to take one and find that it wasn’t quite enough, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. If he collapsed with a heroin overdose in the middle of a police fitness test, well, that would be something, wouldn’t it? That would be going out in some style. And it was a shot to nothing because, though a little better, his knee wasn’t yet up to the beep test – it was either the tablets and maybe he would still fail, or no tablets and fail for certain.

  He sipped the tea – it could have done with ten seconds less tea-bag – and considered it again. One or both?

  Charlie Hills said, ‘I didn’t realise that you could get better just by looking at them. Maybe I will have a go.’

  Smith swallowed. One of the tablets caught in the back of his throat, and his mouth was quickly full of the acrid taste. He drank more tea to wash it down, and looked at his watch – half an hour to go. Time to put on the track suit, might as well look the part.

  He turned to Charlie and said, ‘We who are about to die,’ followed by a salute, which Charlie returned. Then, as he walked along the corridor towards the locker room, he found that his mind was full of Ralph Greenwood – images of him sitting by Joan Riley as she quietly died and of their final conversation in the snowy garden of Lily House. If Ralph could see him now… Sometimes life is just circles and ironies.

  The hand that he brought up to his face was shaking a little as if he held in it a heavy iron bar instead of the cigarette. He steadied it between his lips, took a slow pull and then watched again as the glowing tip danced before the back of Lake Central police station. But the lights in the building were a little wavy too, and he could not be quite certain what was happening; if it had not been a cold and blustery spring dusk, he would have sworn the station was shimmering in a heat-wave. He’d better get this all sorted out before he drove home, that much was definite…

  There had been seven officers present at the assessment, all male and all likely suspects as fellow malingerers. Smith knew two of them, and the three stood together as the instructor-come-assessor gave out the instructions and demonstrated how to use the dyno to show upper body strength. ‘This,’ said the instructor, from behind his barrel of a chest, ‘will show whether you have sufficient power to subdue and apprehend a fighting or struggling suspect. Let’s have a volunteer to demonstrate the technique.’

  One of Smith’s acquaintances stepped forward, and Smith said to the other, ‘And if you don’t, you can always use parts of your vehicle. I find a car door highly effective.’

  The instructor glared round, searching for whoever had spoken.

  ‘The only reason any of us are here today is because you all missed at least one previous assessment. Concentration, please.’

  Smith watched and listened then but the dyno held no fears for him – the free weights in his garage were still in regular use. With such a small group of reprobates, the instructor made it personal and at the end he read out their dyno scores in reverse order. Smith came second, despite being, he was sure, the oldest man still standing in what must be the oldest police gym in England.

  ‘And now that we are all nicely warmed up, it’s the one you’ve all been looking forward to, gentlemen. Let’s get beeping!’

  There were more comments and mutterings as they went through the recommended stretches but Smith had fallen silent. The exercise on the dyno had pushed up his heart rate and circulation, pumping whatever was in those tablets around his body. He bent the knee cautiously as he worked the hamstring. He could feel no pain, no pain at all; the problem was that he couldn’t feel anything else, either. He looked down at his arms and legs, and everything seemed to be working normally – no-one was giving him odd looks but he felt like a puppet whose strings were being snipped off one by one.

  And then they were lined up like schoolboys on sports day, and a loud, echoey voice was counting down. Smith ran hard, ran for all he was worth, and the air and the noise rushed past his face. Stop, turn, it doesn’t matter which leg, turn and run again, beat the sound, don’t whatever you do come last. The air wasn’t air at all but water sloshing around him as he pulled his way through it towards another turn and another and another. Everywhere was arms and legs and gasps, and the beeps were running into each other, like a car alarm or maybe it was a heart monitor and he had just died…

  A heavy hand, so heavy, slapped his shoulder, and the instructor was saying that granddad had put them all to shame. But you’ve all got through it somehow, you idle bastards.

  Breathing deeply wasn’t helping at all, and he realized that whatever was happening to him was going to continue for a long time. At least here, in his favourite smoking place next to the police mortuary, they wouldn’t have far to carry him if he was still here in the morning. He looked up, over the building and into the night sky. That orange glow, that city radiance, he thought, is especially bright tonight – tonight of all nights. This is what he told them, of course, the sixth formers there to listen, lynx-eyed, to the old policeman lecturing them about drugs. He told them, drugs make you feel wonderful – for a while. He always said that it was only for a little while but actually this looked like it was going on for quite a long while. He might have to re-write that bit, make a note of it tomorrow if he ever got there. Not that he felt that wonderful.

  Something else had been apparent for some time now, and that was that he was eventually going to be sick. It was like a goods train a long way down the line, coming on slowly but unstoppably. Hopefully, it would be properly dark by the time that it arrived, and no-one else would see the state that he was in. They might assume he had been drinking, of course, and what an irony that would be – if his desperate efforts to remain in the force had given Allen a reason to dismiss him from it after all. He tried to smile but could not be certain that he had succeeded, and it was all such a bother, to be honest, trying to work it all out, what he would say if anyone came along and asked if he was alright.

  After he was sick, he thought he might feel better, as one does after drinking too much, but he only felt different – colder, somehow thinner and still light-headed. He had lost track of the time but it was properly dark now, and there were not so many lights on in the station. No-one had walked by. He thought about where he could sleep this off in there, in the good old Kings Lake Central station; he had slept in there more than once on camp beds but that was years ago. Now it would be frowned upon, health and safety… He attempted another smile because he didn’t feel very healthy or safe out here.

  He wanted to sleep, and decided to smoke another cigarette in order to keep awake a little longer. He didn’t appear to be shaking as much but the exhaustion was rising up through him like a tide running into the harbour, lifting all the boats, making them swing about on their moorings, get
ting quite dizzy now.

  Someone had appeared in front of him, someone tall, someone with a voice that he recognized. A hand came out of the darkness and took hold of his arm, and the dizziness became suddenly a flood of gratitude that some kind person was pulling him out of all this and onto the harbour wall. Harbour, a place of safety and sailing ships, and fish and chips…

  Smith heard himself saying, ‘Must have overdone it in the fitness test. I’ve had a bit of a turn,’ and then he heard Waters saying, ‘Let’s find Charlie, DC. We’ll take you home.’

  As they walked away, a voice was asking Waters why he isn’t in Northampton.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Morpheus, king of dreams, is the favourite son of Somnus, the god of sleep – so named, perhaps, because, as we think we rest, he reshapes our realities into things that we barely recognize. Smith rarely remembered dreams and so had come to believe that he rarely had them. But now, as the chill March morning light forced its way through the bedroom curtains at a quarter past seven, the dreams of last night returned to him.

  There had been people in his house. Listening hard now, he could hear nothing but at some time there had been people in the house. He remembered searching for them – though whether he actually left his bed he could not be certain. He searched room by room, and then realized that there was a girl buried in every bedroom but if that was true, where was the fourth one? What had he missed? These girls were young and beautiful, but very cold and pale. Later, in another dream, they had left him but now there was a voice, a woman’s voice in the darkness, talking in secret, laughing – at him? – and again, when he searched he could find nothing. But how can you find a sound? Someone played his guitar and that silenced her – but this was cruel because this time it was not the guitar gently weeping but the woman.