Time and Tide

by Peter Grainger

  ‘This is quite complicated. But if we focus on what we’ve got so far – by ‘we’ I mean us here on the coast – I’d say the following. I think that Gina Clark is a good witness. Everything else that she said about Sokoloff rings true, so I believe her when she says that he told her he had stayed in the area earlier this summer. Also, I can see no reason at all why she would invent such a story. Similarly, I can’t see why Sokoloff would invent that himself; it’s too random, and it wasn’t going to help him get Gina Clark where he wanted her, was it?’

  Waters paused. It was not clear whether he was waiting for an answer but Smith said, ‘Apart from your misuse of the word ‘random’, I’d go along with everything you’ve said.’

  ‘So, I think he did visit up here recently. As an outsider, he would hardly know about somewhere like Overy unless he’d actually been there and had some reason to remember it – such as staying there. This is the only pub in Overy, and we know it does bed and breakfast. To me, all this suggests that he did stay here.’

  ‘But no-one that we’ve spoken to remembers the name or recognises the photograph.’

  Waters nodded – he had thought it all through before he began his summary.

  ‘Sokoloff might have signed in under a different name – that would explain half of it. I’ve never worked anywhere like this but if there is a constant stream of guests, staying only one or two nights, there must come a point when you stop remembering them all. Maybe he only stayed a night, didn’t drink in the bar and didn’t have breakfast. In that case, he’d hardly be seen except by the person he settled the bill with; if that wasn’t Mr Williams personally, he might never have seen him.’

  All true, thought Smith, and all quite strange because he was, he realised, listening to his own thought processes being spoken aloud by another. When Waters first joined the force at Kings Lake Central, he did not reason in this way, and now he did.

  ‘Alright – I can go with that up to a point. But now you’ve got to lay something else over the top of it. If you hadn’t spent ten minutes wandering up and down Lighterman Street behind the hotel, we would have bumped into a couple of characters who were also looking for information about recent guests here, instead of being nearly bumped off the road by them. I’ve a hunch that would have been a highly entertaining meeting. Or was that all just a coincidence, Detective Sergeant Waters?’

  Coincidence. Waters took his time, seeing if there was a way in which he could edge around it, because in any conversation about work with Smith, this was the land-mine word. Coincidence was allowed in, but only under the strictest of conditions, and Waters knew almost by instinct that this present situation didn’t meet them all.

  Smith said, ‘Put everything you’ve got on the table in front of you, and shuffle it all around. If you can’t do it literally on bits of paper, you’ve got to do it in your head. The best pattern is the most likely explanation, but you’ve still got to weigh it all up. In the end, you go with the best odds.’

  ‘Assuming, then,’ with a glance at Smith that said, yes, I know, ‘that Mr Williams was telling us the truth about what took place today… I didn’t see the men in the car because I was watching the car – but the car sort of fits, doesn’t it? A kind of up-market BMW? Williams said they were ‘southerners’ if not Londoners, and so was Sokoloff. If Sokoloff was up here for a reason, not just on a whim – and again, that doesn’t seem right for him – then it’s likely that others were involved one way or another. He wasn’t supposed to disappear and then drown – and someone else wants to know what happened to him. It makes sense.’

  ‘Agreed. But what if Mr Williams was only telling us half a tale about what happened today?’

  Waters thought, and then said, ‘Which half?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But this is what’s bugging me. Fair enough, these heavies might be trying to find out what happened to Sokoloff, but you have to ask why. Are they after revenge for what was done to him? Are they going to do some serious harm to whoever they think was involved? And another thing, the thing that’s really bothering me, is this – you go into a bar and say “We’re looking for a bloke called Bernie Sokoloff, mate. Do you know him, and if you do, have you seen him lately?” The barman says no, sorry, can’t help you, never heard of him. What do you do after that?’

  Waters was nodding. Smith saw Marge pop her head out of the kitchen and look around to see where they were seated – he put up a hand and waved to let her know. Though the bar was hardly crowded; three cyclists had come in, wearing all the gear, and judging by the bulging thigh muscles they had plenty of the idea as well.

  ‘I see what you’re driving at, DC. You’d move on to the next place and ask the same question. You wouldn’t get into an argument with the barman over whether he was telling the truth or not.’

  ‘Unless?’

  ‘Unless you had some reason to think that he was lying.’

  ‘This is all very iffy – but to me that’s a slightly better fit than believing that they went off at the deep end for no reason whatsoever. And remember, if we’re right about the two heavies, they already know that Bernard is dead, don’t they? They won’t have been asking if anyone has seen him, unless they’re playing a very devious game indeed. I think they asked some other sorts of questions. It got very nasty very quickly and that explains why Mr Williams was so pumped up that he thought you were just more of the same. Did you see the faces of those people sitting just here when we first came in? Frightened enough to leave those half-eaten dinners on the table. Which is a pity because they would have been useful to talk to, more so than the three stooges over there.’

  Two crab salads had been sighted at 12 o’clock. As they landed on the table, large oval plates of fresh crab-meat, colourful mixed leaves, wedges of lemon and two little pots of a white condiment which, under severe questioning, Marge admitted was her own version of sauce tartare with a little something extra to go with the crab, Smith said that she had done them proud. She smiled and then he asked her whether she was on duty every day during the summer months. Perhaps she thought that he was already thinking of a return visit, but Waters knew better, knew what questions might have followed if she had answered yes. However, Marge only did lunchtimes – Brian did the evening meals, but they were very good, too…

  The first few mouthfuls were too sensational, in the literal sense, to be spoiled with conversation, but then Waters went back to Smith’s previous thoughts.

  ‘The three stooges? I’ve heard of that. Or them. Was it before television?’

  ‘You do realise that when I’m gone you’re going to need a new target for your ageist comments?’

  Waters chewed his next mouthful in silence; he could do without the reminders. Then he said, ‘No, seriously. There’s a point here. What you said, about those people leaving – it’s true. But those three over there never said a word about it, did they? They were the closest to it, and we’re police but they never referred to what had just happened. That’s a bit odd.’

  ‘There’s no shortage of “a bit odd” round here. Have you heard the phrase ‘Normal For Norfolk’ yet? Apparently, incoming doctors used to write ‘NFN’ on some of their patients’ medical files, once they’d realised what they were up against. I know the old boy with the moustache, by the way.’

  Waters looked across the room at the subject of their conversation before he said, ‘Really? He didn’t look as if he knew you.’

  ‘When I say, “know”, I mean I know who he is – or rather what he does. When Sheila and I first had the caravan – must have been just about the first weekend – we had a car battery go dead overnight. Shirley, you remember her from that night when you stayed in the caravan with that Clare, Shirley called a local garage to sort it out and that’s who turned up. Several years ago now, I’m not surprised he doesn’t recall it.’

  ‘Well, he’s older than you. He’s probably retired as well.’

  ‘Not according to the oil on his fingers, he hasn’t. But the o
ther one I don’t know. A very weathered face, though – something outdoors, I’d say.’

  Waters ate more quickly than Smith. He put the knife and fork together and admitted that fresh crab was almost as good as some people said it was. With the remaining fragment of the wholemeal, home-made bread, he wiped up some of the sauce.

  Smith said, ‘Good. As you’re done, you can fetch me something to read. I like to have something to read with my lunch – it’s no reflection on the quality of your conversation.’

  Slightly puzzled, Waters opened up his iPad and said that Smith could read the lunchtime news on it if he wanted.

  ‘No. It all just repeats itself, since about 1994. I fancy something a little more challenging. Go and ask if you can have the booking-in register for the B and B. It’s on the shelf behind the bar, below a nice single malt called Speyburn, which you don’t often see in a pub. I’m sure Mr Williams won’t mind at all.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Owen Williams did seem to mind, just a little. He asked Waters questions before he handed over the register and then there came the inevitable look in Smith’s direction. Smith responded with a smile, pointing to the empty plates and putting up a thumb.

  He could not remember the name of the law but since the early 1970s, places offering an overnight stay are obliged to keep a register of their guests. The early 1970s – that might even have been something to do with the regular visits the country was receiving from the IRA. Waters handed over the book, which was not a posh, purposely designed one like that in The Royal Victoria; this was a cloth-bound hardback notebook, A4 in size, bought from a stationery store and ruled off into columns by the manager of The Queens Arms.

  Smith said, ‘What did Gina Clark say, exactly? Can you remember?’

  ‘ “Earlier in the year”.’

  Oh, for the memory of the young…

  Smith began to leaf back from the present day. It seemed that Williams had been telling the truth about being busy; there were a dozen entries in the past week, which was about right for the three rooms that were available. He turned back one month’s worth of entries, and then began to read each one, looking at the name, the home address and the phone number. Creating an entirely new identity isn’t as easy as people imagine, and Sokoloff might have invented a name but used his actual address or mobile number.

  As Smith studied the register, Waters looked around. Most of the posters were grouped together on the walls near to where the regulars still sat but there was one that he could read from here – or at least he could make out the larger letters.

  He said, ‘So who exactly was Julie Shapiro?’

  Without looking up from the page he was on, Smith said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Really? When Mr Williams said “The Julie Shapiro”, you said “Yes, of course. I remember now”.’

  ‘Did I? I must have been exaggerating.’

  ‘Exaggerating? How can you… Either you…’ but it was, of course, a typically dissembling, deflecting Smithian response, and Waters didn’t pursue it. Instead, he prodded his iPad back into life, and in a few seconds he was reading alongside Smith.

  More cyclists arrived – the earlier three were obviously just the advance guard of a larger party, and The Queens Arms began to sound busy. Smith looked up on one occasion, and though he was occupied behind the bar, Williams twice looked in their direction. Those looks sent Smith back to the register with renewed determination, but there was nothing that he could remotely connect to Sokoloff, and the record was, as far as he could tell, a perfectly complete and legitimate one.

  He turned to Waters and said, ‘I haven’t come up with anything here. What about you?’

  ‘There’s a page on Wikipedia.’

  Waters turned the screen towards Smith so that he could see the photograph of a girl. It was a posed, publicity picture – she was leaning against a wall and looking slightly away from the eye of the camera, pouting a little as she had been told, her hands on her hips, wearing the mini-skirt and calf-length boots of the time. She was stick-thin, brunette and very, very pretty.

  Waters said, ‘This is who we saw in the dunes at Barnham Staithe.’

  It wasn’t spoken as a question but it was clear that he was still having difficulty processing the idea.

  Smith said, ‘Go on – what’s it say? I wasn’t entirely exaggerating – she was in show business, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Read it for yourself. There’s one interesting detail.’

  A pop sensation in the late 1960s, the new voice and the new look that had taken the charts by storm, a girl from the backstreets of Cardiff who had got on a train with five pounds in her purse and who had, within a year, won a recording contract with a major label. Smith skimmed over the mentions of The Swinging Sixties, Carnaby Street and Top of the Pops, searching for the one interesting detail. He didn’t recall the titles of any of the songs that had made the charts in 1971 except for one - ‘This Little Broken Heart’; that was there, somewhere deep in his memory. Even as a twelve-year-old, he had been listening to a different kind of music, but that song was playing on a radio somewhere in his past.

  Near to the end of the entry, Smith found the detail that Waters had spotted; Julie Shapiro was a stage name for Gwyneth Williams, born 1946 in Cardiff.

  ‘Well, well. Our Mr Williams is Welsh, too. Her son, maybe.’

  Waters took back the iPad, and Smith said, ‘I wonder why she chose Shapiro. There was another one, another singer of that name… All this remembering is hard work. That’s the trouble. The longer you live, the more there is to search through. Shapiro…’

  ‘Helen Shapiro?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘I’ve got it here. She was another pop idol sort, from London. Can’t be a relation, I’d say. Maybe Julie was just using the name to get noticed. I wonder what happened. Wiki just says she had a very successful but brief career and then “disappeared from view like so many others of that era”. And I wonder how she ended up here, of all places.’

  Smith said, ‘Or any other era. There’s never any shortage of young girls who want to be stars. It’s not a new thing, it’s just more obvious now. That Warhol has a lot to answer for, with his fifteen minutes of fame. I reckon Shapiro is a Jewish name, though. That’s a bit random, as you’re rather fond of saying.’

  Waters considered it and then shook his head – too much of a stretch, that, and Smith was inclined to agree. Owen Williams had perhaps not been entirely honest as yet but there was no reason to think that Sokoloff’s death was explained by events that took place forty five years ago.

  Waters reached out his hand and said, ‘Have you done with the register?’

  Smith assumed that it was to be taken back, but Waters opened it flat on the table in front of him, at the current date, and began to work his way back, just as Smith had done. Smith could be impatient, of course, but he never objected to a fresh pair of eyes going over something that he had examined himself. He simply watched Waters for a moment or two before he said, “You never did answer the question, Detective Sergeant – what would you do next? It’s all very well Googling faded pop stars and the lost age of the mini-skirt, but what is the plan? If anything, the water is a little muddier than when we started the day. I cannot see Detective Inspector Terek being very impressed with our efforts up to now.’

  Waters, it seemed, was ignoring him. He turned to the back of the record book, peered closely at it and then flipped to where he had held a place with his thumb. He did this twice more, and then carefully laid the record flat on the table before pointing with an index finger.

  ‘Next,’ he said, ‘I might ask someone to explain this.’

  The join was almost invisible. So much so that Smith was not annoyed that he had missed it as much as he was surprised that Waters had discovered it; a page in July had been replaced. With a sharp blade, someone had cut it out very close to the centre of the book, leaving a stub of about one quarter of an inch. Then they had pasted onto th
e stub a new page – that was what Waters had been looking for at the back of the book, and sure enough there was a matching stub, this time cut even closer to the base of the page. Someone had taken out the back page and used it to replace the one they had removed. It was a neat job.

  Smith said, ‘Well done. How did you see that?’

  Waters leaned over the book again, as if he needed to double-check his explanation before he gave it.

  ‘I didn’t see the join until I looked for it. What made me look was the writing on the page. Whoever did it changed pens a couple of times to make it look authentic but they hardly altered their writing at all. But we do if we make a log of anything over time. Our handwriting changes depending on how busy we are – sometimes it’s tidier than others, or smaller or larger. This page is too even, especially when you compare it to others in the book.’

  And once you looked, it stood out more and more – Smith could see that as he flipped the pages back and forth as Waters had done. Someone had copied out the entries on the page that they had cut out in a single session of re-writing, going to the trouble of using different pens to complete the deception. They had, too, made an attempt to change their handwriting but not enough, and Waters had spotted it. Interfering with the register was a deliberate act, and almost certainly a criminal one in itself; it had not been done without good reason. Something had been hidden.

  ‘More than well done, Waters – bloody well done. Make a note of the dates. This page covers the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and part of the eighteenth of July. And get a picture of it as well. How can you do that? Take it into the loo?’

  ‘I’ve already got a couple, and the pages either side.’

  ‘How? You haven’t taken your phone out yet.’

  ‘With the iPad?’

  Smith’s face was momentarily blank, and Waters said, ‘They’re pretty useful things, DC. You really should try to use the one they gave you. Where is it?’