Once they were alone in her office, Smith said, ‘What’s up?’
‘Remember the other day? How much police time do we intend to waste on this?’
‘Vividly. Why?’
‘I’ve just had a tete a tete with Allen, on the same thing. It’s important that we make every effort to throw some light on this tragedy.’
‘Go on.’
‘If there was a witness, we must find him, for the sake of the family.’
Smith was silent – first the frown and then the chewing of the inside of the lip.
‘What do you make of it, DC?’
‘Mixed messages? Or someone’s had a change of heart.’
‘First Devine and now Allen? It’s a bit creepy, to be honest.’
Smith looked hard at her then. He had to tread a fine line here, had to remember that she had had no experience of dealing with this sort of stuff. She had grasped some of the implications but probably not all of them. One thing was certain – he could not tell her about the tails. If he did, she would either call the whole thing off, either out of fright or principle, it made no difference, or she would up the ante and insist that the case needed more officers and more senior officers. The first result would be morally wrong, and the second one operationally so. And he had to consider her position, too. She had places to go, bigger and better offices to come, no doubt about it, whereas he did not. If he cocked this up, at the end of the day it didn’t matter – he’d simply have given them a good reason to make him do what he was obstinately refusing to do.
‘Did Allen actually say ‘find him’?’
She nodded.
‘Hard to believe he’s actually read and remembered the witness statements. I can’t think how else he’d have known that. But anyway, don’t read too much into anything Allen says – I never have. They might just be humouring us. If no-one’s going to ask you why I’m wasting police resources for a few more days, that’s a good thing. And Waters is having a lovely time.’
He didn’t go straight back to the desk but went instead to his car and smoked number one of the day. First he marched them up to the top of the hill, and then he marched them down again… A total change of direction from above. Why? First they didn’t want anyone looking for the mystery witness, particularly an experienced officer, and then they did. If he was right about being followed, and he was, then one possibility was that ‘they’ wanted to see what he turned up – or rather, who he turned up. Taking everything into account, the most likely suspect was his own most likely suspect – the canoeist. I’ll be glad when I can give you a name, thought Smith. And that meant something; it meant that Mr Canoeist was still at large. One possibility had been that he had met some sort of an end at Manley Hall – he’d been roughed up by security and sent away for some serious questioning, or worse. If Smith was now being viewed as a sniffer dog, it meant there was something, someone, to be found. The canoeist had got away.
‘Have you ever been to a funeral?’
‘Yes, I went to my grandmother’s last year.’
‘Sorry to hear that. How old was she?’
‘Eighty four.’
‘Cremation?’
Waters nodded.
‘Well, this will be a very different affair to that – and I mean no offence. This is an untimely frost as somebody once said – a young person with everything still ahead of him. We can’t imagine it – and there will be a lot of people there. Grief is contagious in that situation. And it’s a burial, which is even worse. Not so many these days but you can understand it. They want somewhere to go – some place to be sort of close to him. It will be bloody awful.’
‘But you’re still going. Why? Is it a duty, expected of us?’
Smith pulled his face of distaste.
‘There are those who would say it is. Showing the human face of the force and all that… I don’t know. I just picture those two we took out to Vine’s Drove. They’ll be there, in pieces. They ought to see one of us, I think. It shows we haven’t forgotten.’
Waters considered it.
‘I’d still like to come, if it’s OK.’
Smith reached for the tray of scrap paper on his desk, and a pen.
‘You won’t know where anything is, will, you – the church, and the cemetery which is on the other side of town now. Here’s my address, get there about ten thirty. I don’t give this out to just anyone, so if my place gets torched in the next couple of months, I’ll know where to look.’
Wilson entered on the far side of the room, followed by three of his team. They took no notice of Smith and Waters but the conversation that they continued was a little louder than it needed to be. Wilson was saying, ‘Well done, lads, feather in your caps. Strong lead on the ATM thing – we’ll have the bastards within a week. There’s a drink for everyone if it’s any less!’
A couple of cheers followed as they sat down at their screens. Wilson too sat down and slowly swivelled his chair until he could see Smith across the intervening tables. To no-one in particular, he said, ‘It’s good to get some proper villains in our sights, isn’t it?’
Waters looked at Smith who said, perhaps a little louder than he needed to, ‘If that’s all he wants, he could buy himself a mirror.’
Then they talked about what could be done next. Smith said that he wasn’t sure yet, that whatever Waters offered would be considered. More people on it? Not a chance – too little to go on for whoever would need to authorize that, and what would they do, apart from sit in the road outside the house? The ideas dried up after that until Smith said, ‘What have we got that’s concrete? We’ve got a name – Subic. Can we find out anything about any of them? You remember the daughters’ names?’
Waters took out his notebook.
‘I made a few notes last night after work. Just in case.’
‘Adriana and Hanna, yes? You take them, I’ll take mum and dad.’
‘And do what? Sorry but… I already looked in records.’
‘Now we have to be creative. Get your Google thingy out. I’ll phone Interpol.’
‘Really?’
Smith looked flatly back at him, and Waters coloured a little – this was a strange way to learn. Smith was heading out of the office when he stopped and came back to Waters.
‘Time to phone another school – you’re good at that. Those girls probably went to Lake Community. Get anything, even if it’s only dates. If anyone asks, it’s a missing persons inquiry. We are missing a person, aren’t we?’
Chapter Fourteen
Lake Community College confirmed that the girls had attended but they were reluctant to give more information over the telephone. Smith had a contact of his own there who might have helped but instead he let Waters go out in person and alone – the first time that he had done so. Smith remembered how that felt, like the first drive after passing your test.
Mrs Subic, bless her, was invisible. One could sense the life of quiet devotion to her family in her complete absence from the bureaucratic universe around her. He did find a little more about Mr Subic, however. The Solicitors Regulation Authority gave basic information which confirmed what they already knew, and a follow-up phone call, after some minutes of holding on and then persuading the official that no member of the august body was under investigation, did turn up something interesting. In the UK, Mr Subic had indeed practised predominantly as a civil and commercial solicitor but in Bosnia he had, at an early age, been a leading partner in a practice of criminal lawyers. It had no direct bearing on the case – or matter under investigation, Smith reminded himself - but it did explain his impression that Mr Subic was not to be easily intimidated.
Encouraged, Smith turned his attention to the daughters as Waters had not yet arrived back. If the elder one, Adriana, had married, she had not changed her name; he was actually able to find her on Facebook. He didn’t know what half the page meant but reading some of the posts suggested that she did indeed live in London and work in the financial sector. There were pictures, too, of parties
and friends and holidays; he would not have recognized her as the demure girl whose picture he had seen briefly at the Subic family home. In contrast, Hanna was as invisible as her mother – not a trace on any of the social networks of which he was aware. That was odd. Smith knew that he was inclined to generalize about things and blamed his age entirely, but younger siblings, especially daughters, were usually more inclined to kick over the traces, an expression his own mother used to use. But not this one, it seemed.
So, if she was in Bosnia she had to have travelled fairly recently. He started dialling and then recalled that he would need a query number to access that information, whether he went online or by the phone. Who was it who said that paperwork could stop any army? It could sink a police force without trace. He called DI Reeve and she gave him the code he needed.
‘Thanks. Has the Home Secretary called to say well done on the funeral?’
‘Not yet. I wondered if I might get a CBE, though. Are you finding anything on this Bosnian family?’
‘Bits and pieces. It’s the way this has been all the way through. You get the odd glimpse of something that might be something. But I’ve got half an idea.’
‘Want to share?’
‘It’s a bit unorthodox. Up to you.’
‘In that case, not yet. Maybe it will just go away. Maybe I’ll win the lottery this weekend. You haven’t forgotten you’ve got more schools to do, have you? And you’ve got to go and arrest Jason Budge before the end of the month – for the crime figures.’
‘I’m not sure I can take the pressure.’
‘You could always try getting promoted again. Bye, DC.’
Hanna Subic had travelled to Bosnia and back again three times in the past six months. ‘And back again’ – her last movement was into England a fortnight ago. Mrs Subic had said something like ‘She stay there for good, I think’, and also that she didn’t see her daughters as often as she would like. The girl leaving her underwear about the place might not be Mrs Subic’s youngest but what were the chances of that now? If you played the percentages, as Smith did most of the time, despite what others might think, then the chances of that were small. Mrs Subic had also said ‘She met a boy’, and maybe that part was true.
He was wondering how to get a look at the rest of the flight list for Hanna Subic’s last arrival when Waters came into the office, notebook in hand. He sat down in his usual seat and then edged it around to Smith’s side of the desk.
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Both girls attended the school, both went into the sixth form. Adriana left ten years ago, she’s now twenty eight then, and Hanna two years later, so she’s twenty six. Both were clever but only Adriana got the results – business studies at university. Hanna was more difficult. The teacher they got in to talk to me was her head of year, just a coincidence, and she remembered her well.’
‘You did get lucky. Difficult how?’
‘In the lower school she was confrontational and challenged authority. Once she went into the sixth form it became more political. She organized protests against all sorts.’
‘Good. I like to see youngsters challenging the status quo. They were a rubbish band. I can see there’s more.’
Waters was excited, fighting hard to keep it back a little longer.
‘Hanna declared herself to be a lesbian at one point but Mrs Adams doubted it. She thought it was done just to have more to campaign about. She was popular with a group of more disaffected students, their leader, really.’
‘I’m getting the picture. And?’
‘Well, that’s about it for Hanna. She left with indifferent A level grades and Mrs Adams has no idea what happened to her.’
Smith’s surprise was obvious.
‘Is that it? ‘Mrs Adams has no idea’? Well, I’m seriously disappointed in both of you. I thought it was going somewhere. Sounds like just another teenaged rebel without much of a cause to me.’
Waters looked crestfallen and stood up.
‘Sorry, DC. I did my best, really.’
He half-turned away, paused and looked back again.
‘So, I was just about to leave when Mrs Adams asked me if I’d like to know about the other one.’
‘The other what?’
‘The other Subic that went to Lake Community College.’
Smith acknowledged the nice move and pointed to the empty chair.
‘Sit down and tell me, you idiot.’
‘He was a cousin, three years older than Adriana. He came when they were still in the lower school but was there less than a year and never settled. As far as Mrs Adams can remember, he went back to Bosnia.’
‘Did he live with the Subics?’
Waters nodded and said, ‘Same address on the records. The three of them were close while he was there, for obvious reasons, but Hanna, Mrs Adams says, was always with him – she sort of idolized him. She played up more after he had left.’
‘Got all the details?’
‘It was all typed but Mrs Adams scanned them and emailed it to me – should be over there waiting. I don’t know whether she should have done but…’
‘Want a tip? Email back a really grateful message. Even better, phone or call in person. And then put her in a brand new book called ‘Contacts’, just in case you end up working in this division. These people are priceless to you.’
Waters accepted the advice.
‘What’s next?’
‘Next, you tell me his name.’
‘Oh, sorry… Petar Danin Subic.’
There was no such name on any flight list but that meant nothing, especially if Petar Subic had entered the country with the purpose that Smith suspected him of having. Where was he now? Perhaps in the Subic house; Smith might be able to swing a warrant on what little he had, but if that drew a blank, the whole thing was blown. And when he thought some more, what could he have written on the warrant? A charge of being Bosnian? Stealing a canoe? Of dropping litter? Assaulting some private security guards? The best would be travelling on a false passport. He came back to the idea that had first formed as they sat outside the Subic house. He had described it to Reeve as a little unorthodox but he had done worse, and it should be a safe enough manoeuvre for Waters to get involved in, though with only the two of them, Waters would have to be on his own again for a while.
Sometimes you can see Dougie in him, Smith thought as he watched the boy reading again whatever was on the screen in front of him. Now and then he clicked to different pages and typed away for a minute or two – probably making his notes that way now, they wouldn’t have notebooks at all in years to come. Already the younger detectives carried their iPads around with them, tapping away, going online as they stood at crime scenes and ordering a birthday present, last minute, for the girlfriend. And he wondered whether Dougie Waters himself ever noticed it, himself replicated in the boy – just in the turning of the head or the quizzical look, the slight stoop because he felt he was too tall sometimes or the staring away when he really needed to think. What was it like to have a son, Smith wondered again, more objectively now, little of the old pain left any more.
The following morning, Waters arrived early. Smith showed him into the living room, pointed the way to the kitchen and told him to make himself at home before going back upstairs to finish shaving and dressing.
Waters sat on the sofa and looked around. It was comfortable, a tidy home, larger than it appeared from the outside – a semi, it must have three bedrooms and a sizeable garden at the back. The colours were beiges and creams and browns, carefully coordinated but perhaps a few years old now; Charlie Hills had told him about Smith’s wife and Waters wondered whether it was difficult to redecorate a home that still reflects the tastes of someone who has died. He took a second look then, a slower and more thorough look at the contents. A good sound system, a small television and more books than he had expected - two sets of built-in shelves, floor to ceiling. He could read some of the titles on the spines of the larger books on the
nearest lower shelves – a series of National Trust guides, some volumes about British wildlife, and at least half a shelf of gardening books. Waters stood up and went to the furthest set of shelves. Some serious fiction and Shakespeare amongst the lighter things, an odd mixture of beach reading and classic novels, including a couple of his own A level English texts, and a whole shelf of books about music, modern music from histories of the blues through the 60s – ‘The World Turned Upside Down!’ one of them shouted – and on into the progressive rock of the later decades. Beside those were half a dozen volumes about the history of the guitar both as an acoustic and an electric instrument.
‘Practising your observation? I can guarantee you won’t find any slinky underwear in this house.’
Waters turned, a little embarrassed. Smith was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and black tie – an expensive and well-fitting suit that showed another side to him entirely, as well as making him seem several years younger. Waters was suddenly aware of his own feeble efforts to dress appropriately for the occasion.
‘A lot of books about music. Do you play? Or did your wife…?’
‘I used to fiddle around a bit. Sheila was the expert on music, she read all of those and more – should’ve gone on Mastermind with it.’
‘Only I couldn’t see any instruments.’
‘The music room is upstairs. Don’t look impressed! It’s a bedroom with a couple of guitars and an amp.’
‘And you still play?’
‘Not really. But Harvey Goldsmith is constantly ringing me up and telling me to get back on the road. Do you want anything? A nip before we head off, Dutch courage?’
Waters shook his head, and Smith explained.
‘Like I said yesterday, this is going to be horrible. If you’ve had enough at any point, just walk off back to the car. Ready?’
At first it was the scale of the funeral that surprised Waters. The two of them stood at the back of the church – Smith didn’t say so but he obviously felt it would be inappropriate for them to sit when other more immediate people might have to stand. They watched the mourners file in over several minutes, some already in tears, others grim-faced at the monstrous injustice of such a thing as this. He saw, amongst many sixth form students and some younger ones, Melanie Carter and Steven Neale, holding onto each other as if without such support they would both collapse – the black clothes that had somehow taken years off Smith had added years to them, and it all looked wrong. Melanie had noticed him, them, and he had half-raised a hand in recognition before dropping it awkwardly down again. If Smith noticed, he didn’t show it; he stood upright, silent, arms at his side as if on some awful parade, his gaze fixed somewhere ahead and a little above the growing congregation. By the time all was ready, the church was overflowing, and many others stood with them at the back and out into the porch.
An Accidental Death: A DC Smith Investigation Page 13
