An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation

by Peter Grainger

  The driver turned again, still laughing, but the amusement gradually disappeared as he read the warrant card that was being held up towards him.

  They had stopped at the main gate.

  ‘I am head of security.’

  ‘That’s as maybe but I wasn’t talking to him,’ indicating the first guard who had waited for him on the road, ‘I was talking to you. I’d like to meet your leader, whoever employs you here at Manley Park.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘I don’t know yet but the longer you keep me hanging about, the more time I’ve got to get the wrong idea.’

  There was no fear in the younger guard’s eyes, just annoyance that he had been outplayed. A glare at the first guard as if he was in some way to blame for not discovering the identity of the intruder, and then he asked for Smith’s ID card. He marched away with it into the office adjacent to the barriers. Fit, disciplined, hair trimmed to number three: not long discharged thought Smith, as he watched another guard in the office move out of the way so that the head of security could use the telephone there. Three of them already, and he doubted whether he had met the whole security force yet – they must be some sort of paintings up at the big house.

  But the ones that hung on the walls of the reception room in which he was waiting were dark, drab things, not old masters or Impressionist masterpieces – Smith’s knowledge of the painter’s art stretched that far, if no further. The furniture was good, though, and he got up out of the heavily upholstered sofa to examine some of it more closely – Sheila could have told him plenty about this stuff, her dad being in the business. He stood at the window then and looked down the gravel drive; the dust from the jeep still hung in the air above it, and he recalled the head of security’s hands as they gripped the wheel, the knuckles on both grazed and scabbed. There hadn’t been much conversation. Smith had asked whom he was about to meet and the answer had been ‘Captain Hamilton.’

  In the hall-way a board creaked, and the door behind him opened with a click. Smith continued to stare out of the window, not turning around until the voice spoke to him.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Smith, I am so sorry to have kept you.’

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Captain Hamilton?’

  ‘Yes. They will call me that. It isn’t at all necessary. Jonathan Hamilton – Jon.’

  ‘Is it an army rank, sir?’

  A hesitation and a puzzled look before the answer.

  ‘Yes. Obviously.’

  ‘Well, not really sir. You might have been a pilot, or in charge of a boat.’

  ‘I see. Attention to detail, eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  He was tall, and elegant in movement, manner and speech; Smith sensed public school, then possibly Oxbridge and certainly Sandhurst. Tall but thin, painfully so when one looked more closely at the hands and the wrists, and then, alerted, you studied the face again and saw the tightly-drawn quality to the skin, like the faces of those old soldiers who had survived the Japanese prisoner of war camps. But Hamilton was not that old, despite the silver-grey hair, nowhere near it – he couldn’t be more than late forties, and possibly not even that. Smith calculated quickly: age, length of service, rank, retirement – something not quite right here.

  ‘What can we do for you, sergeant? Anything at all… Despite your unorthodox means of entry. I’m sure you have a good reason for that.’

  ‘Yes, I think so, sir. My apologies for it, though. The security chaps did seem a little on edge.’

  ‘Just doing the job they are paid to do.’

  ‘Very well equipped. The uniforms, and radios - and things.’

  Hamilton looked more closely at the detective in front of him – a very ordinary-looking sort, and passing him in the street one would take him for a rather shabby carpet salesman or a disappointed junior clerk in accounts. He waved him over to the sofa and then sat himself in one of the armchairs facing it.

  ‘You still haven’t said what your reason was for coming into the estate, sergeant.’

  ‘That’s right, sir, I haven’t. Is it a large estate? I do have a good reason for asking.’

  ‘If one includes the farms, it’s over a thousand acres.’

  Smith nodded and smiled back at the owner of all that – if he was the owner, of course. It was a bit of an odd set up.

  ‘And a fine house, too.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I know the army pensions are generous but I didn’t realise that they ran to all this! You are retired, sir?’

  Hamilton sat back into the armchair. There was a weariness about him but the pale, grey eyes never left Smith now.

  ‘Are you always this - direct, sergeant?’

  ‘It has been remarked upon from time to time, sir. I assume that you are a busy man and it would be best not to waste your day.’

  ‘Quite. So far, it appears that I am the subject of your investigation. Yes, I am retired from the army. I had a full, varied and satisfying career; I can give you all the details if you need them. I have no complaints about my pension but Manley Park is available to me through a family connection. My interests include salmon fishing, riding to hounds, chess and the novels of Evelyn Waugh.’

  Now it was Smith’s turn to reconsider the man sitting in front of him. Hamilton was a type that he knew, that he remembered all too well; of the officer class, utterly convinced of their own superiority, so certain of it, in fact, that they could inspire the absolute loyalty of certain other types of men in the ranks beneath them – men like the head of security, still smarting in the main gate office, angry that he had not been able to protect his commanding officer from the attentions of the grubby little policeman. Was Captain Jonathan Hamilton any more than one of that sort?

  ‘Thank you, sir. You’re quite right, I should explain why I am here. We are looking for a gentleman who we think passed this way last weekend. We don’t have a name and we don’t know for certain that he’s done anything wrong but we would like to speak to him.’

  ‘To eliminate him from your inquiries?’

  ‘I believe that’s how they put it on the television, sir.’

  Hamilton smiled again, an apparently friendly smile acknowledging that he was actually enjoying the conversation.

  ‘And you’d like to know if we’ve seen or heard anything. Nothing out of the ordinary has been reported to me, sergeant. We live quietly here.’

  ‘Your men seem very well-organised; no doubt they would have reported to you any odd characters hanging about.’

  The phrase was carefully chosen and Hamilton did not miss it.

  ‘I still find ex-services people the most efficient, in most things.’

  ‘And loyal too, I expect.’

  Hamilton only raised an eyebrow at that, as if it was a statement of the obvious.

  ‘Just one more thing, sir. We think that this man might have been travelling along the river. I take it that the river itself does not form part of the estate. Despite the holes in the fence.’

  ‘I thought that those had been mended.’

  Just a momentary edge of irritation there before the measured voice resumed, ‘But you are quite right. The river was the old boundary but the public footpath – intervened. As a gesture of goodwill to the local community, we moved our security fencing to the other side of it.’

  ‘I see, sir. Very public-spirited. I don’t think I need trouble you further today.’

  ‘Today? You expect to be back, sergeant?’

  ‘It’s early days in this one. You never know what will turn up.’

  ‘Of course. Well, at least you know where the gate is now. I’ll give you a lift down there.’

  ‘No thank you, sir. I need to be getting a half hour’s brisk walking five times a week. Doctor’s orders. And it’s a lovely day for it…’

  Smith was half an hour late getting to the Riverside Café in Upham, an event so unusual that Maggie Henderson looked positively relieved when he eventually walked in through th
e open double doors.

  ‘What happened? We were just about to get the helicopter up.’

  ‘Tell you in a minute. Anything?’

  Nothing. Not a soul that they had spoken to had remembered a lone canoeist that Saturday afternoon. Various other minor offences had been reported by over-enthusiastic pensioners, including speeding cabin cruisers and a dramatic increase in dog-fouling; they even had a genuine lead for the drugs team about the occupants of one of the narrowboats, but nothing on the person of interest.

  ‘Hmm. He kept such a low profile, you’d almost think he didn’t want to be noticed, eh? Oh well, it was a longshot. Me? I was unavoidably detained. No, literally, I was detained by these big, beefy security guards…’

  He told the story over the next five minutes, playing up to their questions until all were laughing. The only detail he left out was the discovery of the ashes by the river – ashes that he was almost certain were from the canoe that they had been searching for that morning. The odd couple would understand why he did that; when he told the whole story to Waters later, he would have to explain why he had done so. It was strange, he thought, how having someone completely new around made you realise just how complicated things could be.

  ‘Come on, we’ve got time for another tea. What are you all having?’

  When Smith left the table, the three of them watched him go, still smiling at the story. It was John Murray who spoke first.

  ‘So what did he find?’

  Maggie Henderson nodded and said nothing.

  Waters said, ‘Just a bit of bother by the sound of it!’

  ‘No way. Why go into this Hall place? Why get taken to see the head man? He was onto something or at least thought he was.’

  ‘Still, it must have given him a fright, being picked up like that, especially if he thought they were armed!’

  The two older detectives looked briefly at each other, and then Maggie explained quietly – she could see Smith just picking up the tray at the counter.

  ‘Chris, you’ll make a lot of mistakes early on in this job, we all do. But don’t let that be one of them - don’t underestimate DC.’

  As soon as they were back at the station, Smith headed for the duty desk, with Waters in tow. Charlie Hills was there again, standing behind the counter and looking vaguely bored.

  ‘Haven’t we got any other uniform sergeants? Why is it always you? What have you done to need this much overtime? I thought Gamblers Anonymous had sorted you out.’

  ‘Afternoon, DC,’ with a nod to Waters.

  ‘Afternoon, Charlie. You on again tomorrow morning? No? Bugger. Can you fix something up for me now, before you sod off?’

  ‘Blonde or brunette?’

  ‘I don’t care what sort of hair they’ve got but I need a couple of plods, and one of them needs to be able to press the go button on a camera.’

  He told Charlie about the pile of ashes, about the location, about looking for the plastic bottle in the wire fence, as long as some dutiful, litter -conscious citizen had not removed it. All the while he could sense beside him the growing surprise as Waters listened to what was being said. Charlie had been taking notes but when DC finished he looked up again.

  ‘DC, I don’t want to step on SOCOs’ toes here.’

  ‘I doubt it’s a crime scene, Charlie, at least not of the sort that we ever send SOCOs to – burning a canoe? I’m keeping that quiet, by the way. I just need some proper photos and some other eyes on it. And another sample. You know I wouldn’t drop you in it, unless you deserved it.’

  ‘I’ll see what can be done. Going down to the caravan? Lovely weather for it.’

  ‘Yes, might do.’

  ‘If you don’t and just fancy a beer…’

  ‘Thanks, Charlie.’

  Waters didn’t need to say anything when they got back to the office, which was empty apart from the two of them.

  ‘Chris, I’ve got a call to make, some notes to write and a lady to see before she goes home, so I’ll give you an abbreviated version, OK? First, I’ve got sod all to go on and nothing that will stand up to a lawyer who’s still in primary school; hard-working detectives do not need to be burdened with my fantasies at this point. Second, they are not on the team – there is no team, and you don’t count yet. As such, they have no need to know. Third, they know how I work. Fourth – I don’t remember what’s fourth but something is. You, however, are in the privileged position of knowing almost as much as me – but only on this case, obviously. Is that OK?’

  Waters nodded, and asked what he could do to help. Smith asked him if he had yet rung back to Pisces Marina and Waters put up his hands as if in self-defence.

  ‘Really, DC, it’s kind of you but I don’t need your he-’

  ‘No, I’m serious, Chris. Get hold of that Barry. Ask him what sort of wood those canoes are made of. Ask him if they’ve got an old one we could set fire to, if we needed to. Of course, if you do happen to be speaking to that Clare…’

  Smith went into the back room, a tiny adjunct to the main office that contained a photocopier and a couple of old, battered filing cabinets. Waters was at work already, speaking to someone on the phone; a good lad, busy and not asking too many questions at the wrong moment. Smith closed the door quietly. He could pick up the landline – they were everywhere, installed years ago when there was actually money to spend – but he tended to use them only when he wanted to make a public announcement these days. So it was out with the mobile – not much battery left but it should be enough.

  This was the first call he had made to DI Paul Harrington since his return to work. The two of them had worked closely on several cases over the past three years, sharing each others’ ideas and DCs, creating a team of eight detectives rather than the usual four, that was twice as flexible and three times as effective as the norm. After the trouble with Wilson and his cronies, it was inevitable that one of them would have to leave for pastures new, and it could have gone either way.

  ‘Paul?’

  ‘DC? I’ve told you, I need to move on with my life. Don’t try to come after me.’

  ‘Yes, most amusing.’

  ‘What we had was wonderful, DC, but it’s over now. You’ve got to accept that.’

  ‘My battery is pretty low…’

  ‘I’m sure your GP can prescribe something but a man of your age has to be careful.’

  ‘How’s life in Longmarsh?’

  ‘To be honest, DC, it’s relief to be out of that bloody place. I hadn’t realized. Out here, I’m a bigger fish again in a nice little pool. People make me cups of tea – another month and I’ll have them massaging my feet.’

  They talked for several minutes, and Smith was soon convinced that Harrington was quite serious – he really was happier away from the station that they had shared for three years, happier away from the politics, happier dealing with crime that generally seemed to have a more pastoral flavour to it. It was the bleep of a failing battery that reminded Smith why he had called in the first place.

  ‘Paul, have you still got that Army records contact?’

  ‘Sometimes I think that’s all you ever wanted me for, DC. Yes, why?’

  ‘If I gave you a name and a rank, could your man look him up for me? He’s retired. It’s just a background check.’

  ‘Course it is. What about your own contacts in that department?’

  ‘Mine? All out to grass or under it by now. This is strictly off the record. If it’s a problem…’

  ‘No, go on. I’ll need a favour sooner or later.’

  Detective Inspector Reeve had a hair appointment after work, one that she had had to wheedle out of the salon. But the very successful-looking solicitor who had asked her to dinner this Friday evening – a little younger than her, rather flattering – might be worth it. Professionally she had already made a mental note about potential conflicts of interest further down the line but for now… So she had quietly begun tidying her desk immediately after lunch, and now she was only
waiting until walking out of the main door would seem just a little premature rather than indecently early.

  After the knock at her door, the carefree ‘Come in!’ and the appearance of Smith, she slumped a little. It was on his face, the slightly perplexed, somewhat apologetic look that said through a smile ‘I know you told me not to find anything but…’ And he had brought the file again – it looked thicker already but surely she was only imagining that.

  He told her of the morning’s events, holding back nothing but giving no indication of his thoughts or inclinations. When he said that he thought the men were armed, she looked more concerned and said that that was something they could check, something solid that could be looked at. Smith shook his head.

  ‘Private property; excessive maybe but not illegal if they hold licences. And they will hold licences. It would only put them on their guard, if you’ll pardon the expression.’

  ‘Does that matter, DC? Do you really think that these people have anything to hide? It’s just conjecture… Coincidence?’

  ‘What I think is – well, it’s this. Somebody knocked young Wayne on the head before he drowned. I don’t think it was intended to kill him – there is some slight evidence that they tried to revive him. But then they didn’t report anything, they left the body in the river – that is criminal behaviour. The last person who probably saw the boy alive is the canoeist, who is, we now know, not a straightforward sort of chap: false name, foreign, apparently invisible to most members of the public, apparently steals the canoe. I find what I believe to be the remains of it a few yards from the security fence around a posh country house and grounds full of armed guards, a couple of whom bear the marks of a recent encounter of the physical kind.’

  Reeve stared down at the open folder, at the notes written out in Smith’s dense, neat handwriting.

  ‘But the Army, DC? That’s always horrible. Are you absolutely sure he couldn’t have been an airline pilot? Or even an astronaut?’

  He made no answer. She was right, of course, but sometimes the dice fall the way you’d least like them to fall. A cleared desk, handbag on the chair, ready to go, and his watch glanced at, telling him that it was almost five o’clock.