Time and Tide

by Peter Grainger

Smith looked up at Waters.

  ‘Where was it? This looks like a newspaper report.’

  ‘It is. The Times produces an occasional legal supplement, and they included this because it’s unusual. Appeal Court judges don’t normally give advisory rulings, apparently…’

  ‘Alright – you’ve read it. Give me the short version.’

  Julie Shapiro had written her memoirs. She had found an agent who had found her a publisher – this much could be safely assumed although it was not included in the court report. The report began with the fact that the publisher, after reading the autobiography, had appointed a specialist lawyer to review the material and advise them on the extent to which it might be considered defamatory by certain individuals named in it. The lawyer had concluded that the safest course was to show an advance copy, before publication, to the certain individual who might be at most risk of considering himself defamed by what she had written – someone called Francis Jacobs. Mr Jacobs’ lawyers had immediately begun an action to prevent publication on the grounds that it was defamatory material.

  ‘It’s quite interesting when you get into it,’ Waters said, and he obviously had done so. ‘They rested their argument on the test which says the material would “contain an imputation which is likely to lower a person in the estimation of right-thinking people” – you can see how arguing that out might take a while. Anyway, Mr Jacobs won the first round. The publisher’s lawyers took it to appeal, and that’s the ruling you’ve got there – except that it isn’t really a ruling. The Appeal Court judge said that in cases like this, no offence has been committed because no material has been published, but when it is clear that publication is likely to lead to the offence of libel being committed, it is the duty of a judge to advise against publication, which is what he did.

  ‘He spends some time explaining that the burden of proof rests upon the defendant, not the claimant – I thought this was the really interesting bit…’

  Smith stared at Waters for a moment and then said, ‘You’d better not have any more wine.’

  ‘…what it means is that Mr Jacobs doesn’t have to prove that what was written about him was false; it’s down to Miss Shapiro to prove that it is true. The judge said that as it stands, or rather as it stood, the memoirs contained too many unsubstantiated allegations, but he made it quite clear that if these allegations were to be better substantiated within the text, then an argument that publication was in the public interest might succeed in a future legal challenge.’

  The court report was several pages long. Smith clicked to the end of it, and said, ‘Can you send me a copy?’

  ‘No problem – I’ll do it now.’

  ‘I also have a few questions.’

  ‘I thought you would.’

  As Smith opened his mouth to speak, Waters carried on.

  ‘The first one is probably, does this have anything to do with the investigation into Bernard Sokoloff’s death? The answer is, I have no idea. Following on from that, who is Francis Jacobs? The answer is, again, I have no idea. I can’t find anything else about him at all. Third-’

  ‘Excuse me? Would you mind if I had a guess at what it is you have guessed I might want to ask?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Third – what exactly did she write about this Mr Jacobs? It must have been pretty hot stuff, mustn’t it? Are there any clues at all?’

  Waters thought before he answered.

  ‘Well, no. They don’t put any details into the court report. It’s a defamation case. If they published the details then the court report itself could be viewed as defamatory, which would defeat the object… Unless the report contained additional substantiating material, obviously.’

  ‘Yes – obviously.’

  Waters continued to stare at the screen and Smith continued to stare at Waters.

  ‘Chris? If you’re not going to do anything else at weekends, you could study for a law degree. The Open University?’

  ‘Right! Just because I’ve dug this up and read it, you don’t have to take the mickey. I was only-’

  ‘Whoa! Hold on! I’m serious. I’ve known coppers do it. If anything can turbo-boost a career, it’s that. You need to be thinking that way. I know you came off the accelerated program voluntarily but you’ve done your couple of years in the trenches. Hopefully, you’ve learned something and…’

  In the two years that Smith had known Christopher Waters, he had seen him hit and hospitalised with a broken nose, very drunk once, in love twice and broken-hearted once, though that was soon likely to change to twice as well by the look of things – but he had never seen a flash of temper before. There was a short, awkward silence before Waters spoke.

  ‘Sorry. I know you meant well, I just – anyway, sorry.’

  ‘I’m hoping that this has nothing to do with my imminent departure.’

  ‘No. Not really – just the final straw, probably. Personal stuff that I don’t need to bring to work.’

  ‘This is hardly work, Chris. The redoubtable Miss Diver, then?’

  Waters nodded – ‘I think it’s all over bar the shouting.’

  Smith had changed his mind about the wine, and he poured another glass for Waters; he could always get a taxi home and collect his car tomorrow.

  ‘If you want some advice, it’s this – don’t bother with the shouting. If it’s done, it’s done and you might as well part as friends. I’m not one to say I told you so, but I told you so – it takes an exceptional woman to put up with a detective’s life, especially if he’s serious about it, which you should be. Maybe it will be third time lucky, though it would help if you could stop falling for young ladies that you meet during the course of our investigations.’

  Had Smith really spotted the connection with Janey Cole already? Waters did not need to go there at all, and so he moved things on.

  ‘What do you think about Julie Shapiro? Is this anything at all?’

  ‘Impossible to say without more information, and some answers to more questions. People have got themselves done in for less than defamation of character but I can’t see how this libel business has anything to do with Bernard Sokoloff. Who is Francis Jacobs? What has she written about him that merited a case in the Appeal Court? That sort of lawyer starts at a few hundred quid a day, and that’s just for getting out of bed. Why did her career come to a halt overnight? She obviously is a woman with some stories to tell but quite how that got Bernard run over and drowned is beyond me.’

  Waters closed the laptop.

  ‘A waste of time, then.’

  ‘Oi! None of that! I’ve taught you better than that. No stone unturned. Has anyone got anything better than this?’ – pointing at the Mac. ‘No. Something brought Sokoloff to The Queens Arms, I am certain of that, and who’s to say it wasn’t something in the landlady’s past? It’s a valid line of inquiry. On Monday morning, mention this at the briefing. Keep it short and low key, and ignore any snide remarks. Alright?’

  Waters stayed until the early evening. They talked about work on and off, and Smith broke one of his own golden rules and reminisced because it felt like a special occasion, in some odd way. Waters found out more about his own father’s time as a detective with Smith than he had ever heard directly, and it struck him that these men were like veterans from the great wars of the last century – the things that they had seen and had had to do were spoken of rarely, if ever.

  After Waters had left in the taxi despatched from ABC by Dolores Argyris, one of his many contacts and sources in Lake, Smith poured a single malt onto a single ice-cube. He took it outside to the patio but there was an unexpected chill in the air. The sky to the west had a faint flush of pink. In the garden, the Michaelmas daisies seemed to glow a little in the coming shadow, and further back a robin was singing its autumn song for the first time that year. He turned away after a moment, went back inside and closed the doors.

  The files that Waters had sent to him would be attached to an email. He could switch on his deskt
op and take a look now, or… Or not. Tomorrow. He had the day to himself, tomorrow, and he would read the files then if it hadn’t come to him. What it was he had, as yet, no idea – but there was something in Julie Shapiro’s story. Something wrong or something that he had missed. He would need at least two more of these whiskies to be sure that it would not keep him awake.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Smith briefed his team before the briefing on the Monday morning – they all had something useful to say, and he didn’t need to say any of it for them. At least Waters seemed to be in better spirits, and he reflected that something springs eternal in a young man’s breast, even if it isn’t exactly hope. Detective Inspector Terek, on the other hand, looked somewhat serious, and it was a fair bet that Superintendent Allen had made remarks about the lack of developments in the case after a week – especially as his own visit to the Elliot family in Cromer had been a dead-end.

  Smith felt no need to report on his own weekend’s work. Over breakfast on Sunday morning, he read the files that Waters had sent to him, putting the Telegraph aside. Then he re-read them more carefully, and whatever was hidden there had not revealed itself. This was annoying, and he thought about it most of the way up to the caravan. The last family to hire it, however, had been meticulously tidy and he hardly needed to touch anything – just a quick wipe-over and it was done.

  He went to see Shirley Salmon at the office and they discussed his plans for next year, or rather the lack of them. Did he want to hire the caravan out at all, now that he would soon be retired? He could come down during the week in future and stay for as long as he liked. He could bring friends down to stay… Shirley looked sideways at him as she said that, and he knew that she was inquiring in her own way about the attractive woman who had twice been to the caravan in his company, but he exercised his right to silence on that matter.

  And then, on the return journey, he had driven first into the town and parked outside The Royal Victoria Hotel. There he took out his notebook and wrote down the time and the mileage from the dashboard of the car. After that, he drove to Overy and parked outside The Queens Arms, writing down the next mileage figure and how long the journey has taken him. There was no sign of life at the pub but someone might have looked out of a window and recognised his car. If they had done so, all to the good – he had said “au revoir”, after all.

  Then he repeated the process twice more, driving first to Deepford and then on to Barnham Staithe. He had no theory that he was testing, and the information that he was writing down was probably of no use, but he was at least doing something instead of simply trying to remember, or rather to work out, what had bothered him about Julie Shapiro’s story. Whatever it was, he seemed to be no closer to finding it.

  Superintendent Allen was not present at the briefing but he had plainly passed on his concerns to Detective Chief Inspector Alison Reeve. One week is often seen as a significant milestone in any investigation, and they were just a few hours short of the moment seven days ago when the unfortunate girl who had never wanted to go and see the seals in the first place had spotted the body going out with the tide. They didn’t need reminding, but DCI Reeve did so anyway, under orders.

  And if, thought Smith, that girl had not spotted Bernard Sokoloff’s corpse? If that big spring tide had carried it back out into the North Sea, never to return, would we ever have heard his name? Nobody locally had cause to report him missing. The partner or girlfriend in London would have done so eventually – presumably – but would the search for him ever have reached north Norfolk? Who else knew that Sokoloff was here? Whoever had that burner of a mobile phone, maybe…

  John Murray was telling the meeting that he had been to see Charlie Hills’ son on Saturday morning, and he had been told straight away that the SUV parked at the rear of The Royal Victoria Hotel for forty minutes early on Sunday the 11th of September was an early Toyota Hilux. There was not enough detail in the image to say which model exactly but Anthony Hills had no doubt. Murray pointed out that there was nothing to directly connect this vehicle to the investigation but Terek did the sensible thing and asked him to start work on a list of locally registered Hiluxs, just in case.

  Then it was Serena Butler’s turn. After discussions with the team on Friday afternoon, she had been back in touch with the RAC breakdown engineer. He confirmed that he had walked all around the car park of The Queens Arms on the Saturday night in search of a vandalised Mercedes – he had also gone down with a torch as far as the jetty but had found no sign of one. The woman that he spoke to at the pub had no idea what he was talking about and he had concluded that it had been a hoax call.

  Finally, Waters told the briefing how he had spent his Saturday morning, without saying that he had been at Smith’s abode. He did only what Smith had suggested, giving them the outline, and adding that Julie Shapiro’s story was of interest only because her nephew, Williams, was thought to be not yet cooperating fully with the investigation – there was nothing to connect Miss Shapiro directly with what had happened to Bernard Sokoloff.

  Terek thanked the three of them, and then looked around at the rest of the assembled detectives as if there might be more to come. There was a short silence during which the fact that only Smith’s team had been putting in unpaid overtime became apparent to everyone in the room. Wilson was staring at Smith with a blank expression, but it was what Murray was doing that had his attention; Murray had leaned across to Waters, and he was asking something. Waters replied with a nod, reached for his laptop, opened it and put it into Murray’s huge hands.

  John Murray had a phenomenal memory for detail, and Smith kept one eye on him as he listened to DCI Reeve saying that she had a conference call later that morning with the Met officer leading the other end of the investigation - did anyone have anything that she could follow up, any questions, any suggestions? It all sounded a little desperate. Murray, meanwhile was still reading through Waters’ notes and articles, and now Waters himself was watching him do so.

  Smith thought, come on, John, put me out of my misery…

  Murray asked a question again and Waters answered it. Then another question, and Waters didn’t answer – he just looked across at Smith with raised eyebrows and widened eyes. Now Murray was looking in Smith’s direction, too.

  ‘What’s up?’

  The room went quiet, and all eyes were on Waters and Murray.

  John Murray said, ‘It’s a name in what Chris found on Saturday. Might be something – might be nothing.’

  A name – it’s a bloody name.

  Smith said, ‘Go on. One more bit of nothing won’t make a lot of difference, will it?’

  Murray said, ‘This bloke who took the Julie Shapiro woman to court, his name was Jacobs. Well, I’m pretty sure that if someone looks back to the original notes about Sokoloff’s business, the health club, they’ll find that’s also the name of his business partner, the one who owns the other fifty per cent.’

  In England, Wales and the Isle of Man, 1.150 per cent of the population has the surname Smith; the number with the surname Jacobs is tiny in comparison, but over the Greater London area it still amounts to a couple of busloads of individuals. Nicholas Jacobs was easy to find, though, through company records, and he had been a director of the business since its beginning, as had Bernard Sokoloff.

  Smith, Wilson, Terek and Reeve stood in the detective inspector’s office and looked at the scant information on the screen; in a few minutes, Reeve would double-check all this with the officers in Dagenham, but as far as Kings Lake Central was concerned, Nicholas Jacobs was as clean as the proverbial whistle.

  Smith said, “He’s fifty two. Whatever was written in Julie Shapiro’s little black book, it wasn’t about him, unless he was getting up to some serious mischief when he was still in short trousers.’

  Wilson said, ‘I went to school with someone called Jacobs. It’s not that unusual a name.’

  Reeve said after a pause, ‘Even so, we’re going with it for now
. Simon, I’ll use your phone if that’s OK. The three of you might as well hang on here and see what turns up.’

  She got into conversation with a female detective inspector whose name Smith had not yet heard in the investigation; strange to be so far from the centre of things that that can happen. Better get used to it, though, because soon there won’t be a centre of things to be far away from.

  Dagenham had nothing on Nicholas Jacobs, not even a parking ticket. The business was completely legitimate – they had already looked at that when the investigation into Sokoloff’s death first began. Another dead end was looming but the woman at the other end of the line must have said something about it being a bit of an odd coincidence, though, and Alison Reeve agreed; Smith would never meet that lady in Dagenham, he would never even know her name, but he had taken an instant liking to her.

  Reeve put down the phone and said, ‘She’s gone to find Sergeant Fuller.’

  She glanced at Smith before saying to Terek, ‘Where would we be without our Sergeant Fullers?’

  It was clearly going to take several minutes and Smith didn’t want to spend them hanging around in Terek’s office. He offered to fetch something to drink – Terek asked for a weak tea with no milk or sugar, Reeve just nodded and Wilson said no thanks – to the bitter end, then, he would not be beholden to Smith.

  He paused at the doorway to room 17 and three expectant faces looked towards him; he shook his head, shrugged and continued on towards the canteen.

  When the phone finally rang some twenty minutes later, Alison Reeve gave a little start, and then she looked at the three of them before she answered it, just as Smith’s team had looked at him. There are pivotal moments in every serious investigation, and one develops an intuition for them.

  Smith’s hearing seemed as sharp as ever. He could tell straight away that this was the same female detective, and early on he heard her say the name Jacobs several times. Reeve was focused on listening and making brief notes in pencil, in her large, flowing hand – Smith could get five times as many words on a page of A4 as the detective chief inspector. The Dagenham detective did virtually all of the talking for the next three or four minutes; all they heard from Reeve was an occasional ‘OK’ or ‘I understand’ or ‘Yes, we will’. And then, as the first signs came that the call was coming to a conclusion, Smith heard another name mentioned – a name that made him doubt his ears after all, because that could not be true, he could not have heard the woman say that name.