An Accidental Death

by Peter Grainger

  ‘No, not much of that. He’s in the office, mostly. That keeps him busy.’

  ‘He’s got a couple of ex-jobbers working for him, then?’

  ‘About ten, I think.’

  ‘Ten? That’s not an agency, it’s more like a rival force! I know what those people charge – he must be doing very nicely. Good for him. Well done, Dougie!’

  In the short silence after that, Smith was back there again, in the saloon bar of the… Where was it, The Blue Boar? The saloon bar, just the two of them, Dougie apologizing over and over, and himself saying it didn’t matter, if that’s how Dougie really felt, then it was the best thing. As long as he was certain… Maybe if he took a month off, he might feel differently, but knowing that he wouldn’t because in the man’s eyes, behind the man’s eyes, he could see the damage that the case had done. Dougie Waters had toughed it out whilst others had quietly found ways not to confront the horror of it any more, had had words behind closed doors and got themselves redeployed onto other business. Yes, Dougie had toughed it out, and he was there when they made the arrest. Unbearable, the tension of it that afternoon, and when Andretti had twisted away and made a break for the window, any of them would have done the same, knocked him down, punched him again, and again to make sure because that monster must never be allowed to walk down a street with decent people again… And because Dougie had two young daughters.

  ‘So he’s alright then, your dad?’

  That the boy knew something of the story was certain, but Smith could not judge just how much – it was better to err on the side of caution.

  ‘Yes, he’s good. Obviously he tried to put me off… But he’s also supported me when he saw that wasn’t going to work. Since I got this posting to Kings Lake, he’s talked a bit about the old days. A bit about you.’

  ‘Your mum, how is she? Sorry, I’ve forgotten, but we never really…’

  ‘Yes, she’s fine. Retired, thanks to dad’s business.’

  ‘And your sisters? There were two, I remember.’

  ‘All doing well. I’m three times an uncle!’

  ‘Ha, at your age!’

  ‘He asked me to say… Well, just to be remembered to you.’

  ‘Remembered? You tell him that I’ve never forgotten it, the time we worked together. Him and John Streeter and Eddie Hart… The four musketeers. I expect you’ll have to Google that as well. I was D’Artagnon, the good-looking one. You give your dad my best regards.’

  There was more, something in Waters’ face that was unsaid, perhaps a question unasked but it could wait. Uncovering the past was like uncovering some archeological remains, best done slowly, with a fine brush, time’s work being so fragile. And the day wasn’t over, there were still two or three hours before they could claim a full day’s pay.

  He sent Waters into the office with a list of things to do. Where could canoes be hired between Kings Lake and Upham? Had anyone reported a canoe being stolen at around the right time – or, come to that, one being found? Did any riverside pubs have CCTV overlooking the river, and if so, had any of them actually been switched on last weekend? Smith knew some of the answers already but it was all good baby steps for a young detective about to make his way in the world.

  Bloody hell – he’s Dougie Waters’ boy…

  Instead of phoning each canoe shop and marina listed on the screen directly from there, Waters wrote the names and numbers into his notebook first – that way he would have a record of each one that had been contacted. After the brief conversation with the first entry – in which he learned the difference between chandlery and boat hire – an officer that he had not yet met appeared as if from nowhere beside his desk. The man was thick-set and powerfully built, and his being a little below average height emphasized the fact. The hair was intensely dark, and though he was clean-shaven the jowls and chin showed where a beard would appear the moment he put his razor away. He pushed out a hand and Waters half-stood as he took it; the eyes smiled but the grip was little short of an attempt to intimidate the younger man before he could gain the advantage of his height.

  ‘Good to meet you. Chris, isn’t it? What are you working on?’

  Waters explained, aware that he did not yet know the other detective’s name. As he talked, he saw the eyes roam over the screen, over the open notebook, and then over his own face.

  ‘Well, I thought that one was dead and buried – not literally but you know what I mean! What’s DC found then?’

  Something told Waters not to elaborate. He played the office boy, the carrier-out of meaningless chores, and watched the other man’s expression closely.

  ‘We all have to begin somewhere, don’t we? I expect he’s just giving you something to practise on. No doubt he’s off on something else already, just left you to make some lists.’

  The comment was well-judged, just demeaning enough to slip through Waters’ guard:

  ‘No, he’s following up on the canoeist.’

  ‘Right. Where?’

  ‘He’s gone out to Oldmills Lock, wherever that is.’

  ‘And what’s he after out there, I wonder?’

  Waters sensed that he had said more than intended already, and shrugged.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Waters. Look forward to working with you some time. It isn’t always this boring!’

  He was already walking away, the smile on his face impossible to read.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t get your name.’

  ‘No, that’s right, you didn’t. John – John Wilson.’

  Chapter Six

  Reg Harrison had worked on the river one way or another all his life – dredgers, weed cutters, boatman when they were strengthening the banks – but he reckoned this last job, and it would be his last job, was the best. As a part-time lock-keeper, he only worked from April to the end of September when the boating season was busy; the rest of the year he could enjoy his retirement. So there was some money coming in on top of the pension, and something to do other than the garden or going to the shops with Margaret – the best of both worlds.

  Of course, it wasn’t all a bed of roses. Some of the boat owners were proper little Lord Nelsons in their daft caps and blazers, and they thought that he was some sort of servant or hired help but he could soon put them right, and it was surprising how often the lock developed a fault when someone got really awkward. And sometimes you had odd characters hanging around, like the one who had been standing at the far end of the lock wall for the last five minutes.

  He didn’t look like a jumper but you could never be sure. Not a business-type, too scruffy, but too normal-looking for a vagrant or an alcoholic. Reg checked through the binoculars he kept ready for the kingfisher; a clean-shaven bloke in his fifties who spent some time looking up and down the river as if he had lost something or was waiting for someone to appear. But there was no-one else about, and when the man began to walk towards the little chalet that Reg viewed as his home from home, he reached under the desk and felt for the iron bar that would double as a baseball bat if the need ever arose. You couldn’t be too careful.

  ‘Afternoon.’

  Reg nodded, not getting up from the desk, and waited.

  ‘I take it you’re the lock-keeper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  In the following pause, the man looked at him steadily until it was Reg who felt the need to continue.

  ‘You lost your boat?’

  The man shook his head, smiling now, friendly enough.

  ‘Only we don’t get many visitors on foot, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, right. I’m parked down at the layby. I took a short-cut across the field.’

  ‘Well, I hope you walked round the edge - ’e ain’t the happiest of farmers.’

  ‘Right, I’ll bear that in mind. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Well, before you start, we had all this out last year. I’m allowed to earn for exactly the number of hours that I do earn, it’s all above board and I can’t understa
nd why you benefits people keep coming back about this. You check with the Environment Agency office in Kings Lake and don’t come bothering me again.’

  Still smiling, the man reached into a jacket pocket and took out a small, leather wallet, opened it and placed it on the desk in front of Reg.

  ‘Oh, right. I’m assuming that they’re not sending coppers out to deal with benefit frauds, then.’

  ‘Not yet. And if I may say so, you don’t look the type.’

  Pacified, Reg looked more closely at the warrant card.

  ‘Sergeant, it says. Don’t your lot normally go around in twos?’

  ‘Not all the time, not any more. Spending cuts – you should write to your MP.’

  Reg released his hold on the bar under the desk and pushed the wallet back towards its owner.

  ‘What can I do for you, sergeant?’

  ‘Ah, right. I was wondering whether anyone does a duty here on Saturday afternoons – last Saturday in particular.’

  Reg was already reaching for the logbook as he answered.

  ‘They do, me and Bill do it, alternate weeks. You’re in luck because it was me last Saturday, but we keep a log anyway.’

  Smith nodded approvingly, resisting the temptation to take charge of the logbook himself as Reg continued, ‘Do you know what this is really for? They say it’s for our own protection but we know what’s going on.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘They want to know if they can save a bit and end these duties. Put up a sign and tell people how to do it all themselves. That’s what’ll happen.’

  ‘It’s the same everywhere, cuts and more cuts.’

  Reg had the book open at the last completed page.

  ‘Here we are. We record all traffic, and the registration numbers of cruisers.’

  ‘What about canoes?’

  Reg glanced up from the book.

  ‘And canoes. Technically they should be registered as well but lots aren’t. Not our job to enforce that but we note ’em all down.’

  ‘May I take a look?’

  Reg spun the book around and the detective ran a finger slowly down the final column of entries. At some of them he stopped and read across the page, looking at the times recorded.

  ‘This is really helpful. You had several canoes through that afternoon. I’m looking for one in particular.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Probably a two-man canoe but only one occupant, a man in his thirties. Probably had a rucksack or some sort of camping gear in the boat as well.’

  ‘This one.’

  Reg turned the logbook halfway round, peered at it long-sightedly, gave up and reached for his glasses. They both studied the entry at the end of his finger.

  ‘With respect, Mr …?’

  ‘Harrison, Reg.’

  ‘With respect, Reg, how can you be that sure?’

  Reg removed his glasses, folding their arms before folding his own and explaining; he would have a story to tell Margaret tonight.

  ‘We get all sorts through here, sergeant, all sorts. You have to able to spot the awkward ones and the characters.’

  ‘Was this one awkward?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that but he was a bit odd. He did ’ave some gear with him. He came upstream and pulled out onto the bank down there, on the right, started to unload it. I went out and walked down the wall towards him. I shouted out that I’d let him through, no need to unpack it and porter it. There were no cruisers waiting, it was no bother to me… Anyway, he looked a bit confused, as if he didn’t understand. I said it all again, put your stuff back in the boat, I’ll open the lock for you. Eventually he got it, re-loaded and I opened up. He sat in the boat, just looking ahead and waiting, never said a word.’

  ‘You got a good look at him, though?’

  ‘I did, and I could pick ’im out if I had to, before you ask.’

  ‘And he never said anything?’

  ‘Ah, well he did in the end. I was a bit miffed, having gone to some trouble and him seeming ungrateful. I said sort of sarcastically as he was setting off, ‘Any time, mate, no bother!’ and then he looked back at me and said ‘I am sorry. Thank you.’

  ‘And that was all he said?’

  ‘It was. But I don’t think he knew how to say much more.’

  ‘What makes you say that, Reg?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t English, was he? One of these east Europeans, I’d say.’

  ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Ah, you hear it often enough in the town these days. What’s he done, then?’

  Smith was frowning and didn’t answer straight away.

  ‘Done? I don’t know that he’s done anything at all, Reg. Except disappear.’

  Back in the car, Smith opened his phone and studied the picture he had taken of the logbook page for last Saturday. Enlarged, the details were visible enough, and the time matched – Vine’s Drove was a few miles upstream. Reg Harrison’s description had been thorough: short dark hair, a bit of a tan, big chap, well built – he had the boat half out of the water singlehandedly before Reg shouted to him – a black t-shirt and jeans, black trainers with some white and red on them. Reg described him as ‘young’, which also made sense. There could be little doubt that this was the canoeist that Wayne Fletcher had pursued on the river that Saturday afternoon.

  Smith closed the phone, checked the contact details for Reg Harrison in his notebook and then sat with both hands on the steering wheel, gazing over the stubble field that he had just crossed. The youngsters had described this man as an expert canoeist, so why would he get out and carry the canoe and the bags around the lock? And once in the lock, why avoid the lock-keeper and sit in silence a few feet away? Might just be an unsociable sort… Or he might be someone going out of his way to avoid contact with anyone else for a reason. A foreigner, too. Reg didn’t think that this fellow knew how to say much more – but perhaps he didn’t want to speak so that his accent would not be heard and remembered. This was a man who did not want to be noticed, and Wayne Fletcher had noticed him.

  When the phone vibrated and cheeped in his hand, Smith jumped in surprise and then pulled a face at himself in the rear-view mirror. He didn’t recognize the number.

  ‘Who is calling Acorn Antiques?’

  ‘DC?’

  ‘Possibly – depends who’s calling him.’

  ‘Chris Waters.’

  ‘Oh, alright then. Got anything?’

  ‘I think so. A marina in Kings Lake, missing one canoe.’

  ‘Brilliant! I’ve made a bit of headway myself. Good God, is that the time? We’ll have to do yours in the morning.’

  ‘I’ve fixed it up for nine, provisionally.’

  ‘Nine? I don’t normally do breakfast meetings but in this case… Good work. I’ll see you in the office, half eightish.’

  ‘You made some headway? What are you thinking?’

  It was too soon to say much; he needed to leave it, come back to it and reflect on it, sometime later in the evening.

  ‘It’s early days, Chris, early days… But it’s a little whiffy, this. Something doesn’t smell quite right.’

  She would say oh, you’ve got one of those cases, haven’t you? Well, disappear upstairs and scribble on your bits of paper. You’ve got one hour, and then your tea will be ready. It was always one hour, and it became a standing joke, but it led in the end to a kind of mental discipline. He knew that if he wasn’t careful he could spend days and nights on end worrying at a case, and he’d seen plenty of police marriages, or more specifically detectives’ marriages, hit the rocks that way even without the detour through the whisky bottles. Sheila knew it too, of course, and there was wisdom in her allowing him a little time at home on a case, just enough time before she demanded his presence on the sofa.

  Smith sat upstairs in the same spare room, at the same desk and looked at his watch. He would give himself an hour, then, while the shepherd’s pie cooked, then he’d read a bit more of last Sunday’s ‘Telegraph
’ and watch the amateur boxing finals. What more could a man want from life?

  At some point tomorrow he would have to see D I Reeve – she would decide whether the case, if it was a case, deserved any more time and effort. What could he put in front of her? The canoe hire company might throw up something else, but what did he have here and now? He had some photographs of fading bruises on the fine body of a dead young man, bruises that were not easily explained, but which were not entirely inexplicable in view of what the young man had done. The blood tests showed that Wayne Fletcher was under the influence of alcohol and cannabis before he went into the water; some might argue that the cause of death here was the foolishness of youth. Motor boats had gone up and down the river, and one of these might have struck the body, bruising it and even washing it into the margins where Frosty’s diver had discovered it. Smith listed each of these points on a piece of paper, neatly bullet-pointing each one.

  On a second piece of paper, he laid out in identical fashion another set of points. In any death, accidental or otherwise, it is fundamental that one speaks to the last person to see the deceased alive – and for the first time Smith’s pencil hovered and hesitated over the page. One could argue that the other youngsters on the bank were probably the last to see Wayne but something was telling him that they were not, that the boy had been seen by the canoeist after they rounded the bend in the river. The nature of that ‘something’ was the problem, of course; a suspicion, a hunch, a guess? Added to it were a couple of other details; the canoeist had never come forward and he had behaved somewhat oddly at the lock further downstream. The fact that he was, according to the lock-keeper, a foreigner was neither here nor there these days, and might even explain his unwillingness to have a chat with Reg Harrison. If the missing canoe was the same canoe, that sort of helped a bit but he wasn’t sure how yet. D I Reeve wasn’t nearly as bad with numbers as she had pretended, and she would certainly know her hours’ allocation budget for the month. It would be touch and go, this one.

  Twenty minutes left. How good a swimmer was Wayne Fletcher? They hadn’t asked that and should have done, needed to, tomorrow. Rugby player and year eight boxing champion maybe but he might have been a very average swimmer, despite what the girl had said in her statement, perhaps making it more likely that he drowned accidentally and never reached the canoe.